#but lately all videos posted are so quick and there are so many cuts not a fan

[relaxingifs]

friendship ended with instagram, now i use pexels to find videos to gif

[inkskinned]

they want to talk about mental illness and acceptance and how everyone is a little ocd it's cute and quirky and their "intrusive thoughts" are about cutting their hair off and you say yours are about taking a razorblade to your eye and they say ew can you not and everyone is a little adhd sometimes! except if you're late it's a personality flaw and it's because you are careless and cruel (and someone else with adhd mentions they can be on time, so why can't you?) and it's not an eating disorder if it's girl dinner! it's not mania if it's girl math! what do you mean you blew all of your savings on nonrefundable plane tickets for a plane you didn't even end up taking. what do you mean that you are afraid of eating. get over it. they roll their little lips up into a sneer. can you not, like, trauma dump?

they love it on them they like to wear pieces of your suffering like jewels so that it hangs off their tongue in rapiers. they are allowed to arm-chair diagnose and cherrypick their poisons but you can't ever miss too many showers because that's, like, "fuckken gross?" so anyone mean is a narcissist. so anyone with visual tics is clearly faking it and is so cringe. but they get to scream and hit customer service employees because well, i got overwhelmed.

you keep seeing these posts about how people pleasers are "inherently manipulative" and how it's totally unfair behavior. but you are a people pleaser, you have an ingrained fawn response. in the comments, you have typed and deleted the words just because it is technically true does not make it an empathetic or kind reading of the reaction about one million times. it is technically accurate, after all. you think of catholic guilt, how sometimes you feel bad when doing a good deed because the sense of pride you get from acting kind - that pride is a sin. the word "manipulation" is not without bias or stigma attached to it. many people with the fawn response are direct victims of someone who was malignantly manipulative. calling the victims manipulative too is an unfair and unkind reading of the situation. it would be better and more empathetic to say it is safety-seeking or connection-seeking behavior. yes, it can be toxic. no, in general it is not intended to be toxic. there is no reason to make mentally ill people feel worse for what we undergo.

you type why is everyone so quick to turn on someone showing clear signs of trauma but you already know the fucking answer, so what's the point of bothering. you kind of hate those this is what anxiety looks like! infographics because at this point you're so good at white-knuckling through a severe panic attack that people just think you're stoic. even people who know the situation sometimes comment you just don't seem depressed. and you're not a 9 year old white kid so there's no way you're on the spectrum, you're not obsessed with trains and you were never a good mathematician. okay then.

mental illness is trending. in 2012 tumblr said don't romanticize our symptoms but to be fair tiktok didn't exist yet. there's these series of videos where someone pretends to be "the most boring person on earth" and is just being a normal fucking person, which makes your skin crawl, because that probably means you are boring. your friend reads aloud a profile from tinder - no depressed bitches i fucking hate that mental illness crap. your father says that medication never actually works.

you still haven't told your grandmother that you're in therapy. despite everything (and the fact it's helping): you just don't want her to see you differently.

[dustxechoes]

Little Ziyi rant copied from a discord conversation

I am so annoyed that when people talk about Flatwell they talk about his implied connection with Rusty and his non existent connection to O'Keefe and not his actual textual connection to Ziyi How involved was Flatwell in her upbringing Was AC piloting just a natural talent for her or has he been preparing her for it from a young age How did being a spy impact his ability to meet her emotionally How much else does he keep her in the dark about Is she expected to step up if something happens to him There's so much His spycraft literally gets her killed directly in the first playthrough how does that impact him. fuckin. why does no one but me talk about this am I insane am I not seeing the same video game everyone else is

She has so much going on and is important to so many other characters but somehow manages to dodge everything important to the main plot and from the player's perspective is an optional encounter that takes about fifteen seconds to beat with you only finding out who she is afterward for a quick emotional gut punch also the coolest thing she does is only alluded to in a single line of dialogue that was fucking cut but Arshile, Rokumonsen, Flatwell, Rusty, none of them have dialogue that changes if she's dead or not and I am eating my own organs wondering if they know there is a mission where you fight side-by-side with Flatwell having potentially killed his daughter is he aware you did that does he even know she's dead or is he just so pragmatic he's able to set that aside if it means getting the job done in a later mission you can fight Rokumonsen in an optional encounter who name drops her specifically while the two of you are standing about three hundred yards away from where she died and that dialogue is the same either way do they not know or is it just an oversight This late in the game they'd have to have at least noted her as 'missing'

but they probably wouldn't be able to confirm her death because Arquebus most likely scrapped YUE YU for parts after you left but their man on the inside would not have heard anything about a captured pilot When she fought Raven they were doing a job on the down low for Balam, so while they'd definitely know from Rusty that Raven was the other pilot involved in Operation Wallclimber they wouldn't be aware that they'd returned to the metaphorical scene of the crime or fought Ziyi there unless they'd somehow managed to recover YUE YU The Wall was her post, if she went missing the same day it fell they'd have to at least suspect she went back. So if she never returned I guess the assumption is that she was either captured or killed by Arquebus. But they'd have no way to confirm it either way and Rusty wouldn't have heard anything. Which must be particularly devastating for Flatwell because he was warned about Arquebus' attack on the wall ahead of time and made the calculation that either the additional resources they'd need to commit to holding it weren't worth the cost, or that preserving Rusty's cover was more important, and took Ziyi off duty at the time to keep her out of that fight. Only for her to rush back and, from what they would know, be either captured or killed attempting a counter attack alone all because she wasn't kept in the loop. shit is free real estate why am i the only one that cares about this

[groovinrightalong]

Do u have any trans masc Max Mayfield headcanons?

I haven’t thought much about it but now I have so MANY thoughts!

-Max hasn’t had a lot of positive relationships with the men in his life, so it takes a long while for the “hm I don’t feel quite right” to click. He doesn’t feel super comfortable as a girl, but he looks at his step-dad and Billy and is like “well I don’t want to be anything like that, so this has to be okay.”

-He definitely knows more about gender/sexuality stuff than the others because of growing up in California. So he’s thought a lot about it over the years, but just kept coming to the conclusion that he’s a tomboy (again, no positive relationships with men.)

-It’s actually because of Lucas (and the rest of the Party, by extension) that he really starts to get more comfortable with the idea. Because Lucas is sweet, and he’s gentle, and so unlike any of the other men he’s been around. Lucas is the first person that kind of cracks his view on gender roles and what exactly defines a man.

-He butts heads with Mike a lot at first just because of how insistent Mike is about him being a girl, how he’s different and unwelcome because of it, but (if this is also transmasc Mike) they realize they’re actually really similar and grow closer because of it, or (if this isn’t transmasc Mike) Max realizes that it isn’t the “girl” thing that bothers him, it’s the fear of replacing El.

-If it’s both transmasc Max and transmasc Mike, Mike comes out WAY earlier than he would’ve on his own.

-The boys are all really supportive when he comes out (which would probably be around the season 3 era). They don’t really get it at first, but he’s their friend, and they’ve always been very vocal about how they’d kill for a friend if needed. And really, seeing Max as a boy isn’t all that different from what they were doing already, so it’s an easy adjustment.

-In a similar fashion to Max teaching El about being a girl in the show, the guys take him out on a “boys only” night. It isn’t really any different than their usual hangouts- they go to the movies, play video games, eat way too much junk food, but the boys only title makes Max feel all fuzzy and warm inside.

-He comes out to Billy while he’s dying. He didn’t ever really plan on doing it at all, but his step-brother is dying in his arms and he needs to get it off his chest before it’s too late. Billy is a lot of the reason it took so long for him to feel comfortable as himself, and he thinks Billy knows that once it’s out in the air. Unfortunately, Billy’s dead before he can really give much of a reaction, just a weak little “I’m sorry.” And that’s nowhere near enough to make up for everything.

-He comes out to his family that night in a screaming match with his step-dad. Neil is an asshole about it, but it doesn’t really matter because the whole argument starts because he’s gonna leave them. Susan is incredibly supportive, and she turns around and kicks Neil out even though she’d been begging him to stay moments before. Gives Max one of those big, therapeutic hugs where Max just sobs into her shirt.

-Max cuts his hair off after Billy’s death. He’s never had a problem with his hair, he actually likes it long, but he’s messed up over everything that happened. He leans a lot more into the stereotypes he hated as a kid, acts rougher and more stand-offish. He breaks up with Lucas, stops hanging out with the rest of his friends. He feels awful, because this is the first time in his life that he’s only surrounded by people that support and love him, but he feels like he doesn’t deserve it.

-(Vecna has a field day with all that)

-Post canon, he does grow his hair back out again. Lucas dramatically informs him that men with long hair are hot (bi king), to which Max shoots back that that would mean Mike was hot. Lucas gives Mike a quick once over and is like I mean, yeah.

-Lucas likes to greet people and go hi, yes, this is my boyfriend Max. He’s so cool. He pretty much single-handedly saved Hawkins that one time. And Max stands there with his face bright red in his hands like oh my god shut up

-Lumax and Byler double dates with an obnoxious amount of homo, striking fear into the hearts of conservative smalltown Indiana

YES I love this sorry for making it angst near the end but yes yes transmasc Max I love him💞

[accio-victuuri]

I don’t know if I will tag this as CPN because it is mixed in there— but this is mostly about the fake apology letter/anti thing connected to XZ. Also my thoughts on some turtles being unfair to XZ lately.

I’m just putting everything under the cut cause it’s a topic i’m not fond of talking about. but seems necessary at this point.

Today, the shrimp opinion book posted a reminder to fans. If you don’t know what they are, it’s a solo fan account that is allegedly connected to the studio. It’s not new for artist’s studio to respond to certain fan groups and have them relay information. If you notice, WYB’s team does the same. In this case, the opinion book has been popular for some lowkey announcement and a way to manage the fans.

The related information regarding rumors being spread online and the apology letter had been confirmed with Studio immediately, the related information on the artist are all made up and totally false. The related information in the apology letter appearing today, we have also communicated with Studio and clarified, Studio had always been using reasonable and lawful methods to protect his rights. But we have currently confirmed with lawyers that this person was not contacted, the content described by this person is contradictory, with purposes unknown. Hence we hope that everyone do not join the discussion of this, treat this carefully, so as not be exploited. All malicious rumors will undergo professional assessment before carrying out reasonable. protection of rights, we hope for everyone to await good news quietly.

So what exactly happened?

The apology letter that was posted is someone taking back their words about what they posted last 3.27 about XZ’s alleged romantic relationship. They are saying it’s false. Letters like this are usual, it’s one condition asked for when c-ent stars are suing accounts for slander.

The info this person posted was about XZ & 🍆. saying that they are in a relationship blah blah blah, all kinds of stuff ( i’m not gonna post it anymore cause it’s anti material ) . Notice that the studio refuted that too = are all made up and totally false. So there’s that. I mean, this is nothing new. Everyone knows that he is not dating 🍆. They are colleagues/friends. That’s it.

What irritates me is how turtles ( particularly on weibo ) are celebrating this because it seems like XZ & his team is quick to clarify dating rumors. and most especially this one cause for some reason, people are unreasonably threatened when XZ interacted with 🍆 onstage @ Weibo night. Going as far as to insinuate that GG is rude and at certain times was only being nice for the cameras. I mean, that’s the same thing that antis say about him! You know that right? and it’s the exact same bullshit that i hate when solos apply it to him and WYB. When they say “the two are not even friends and that GG was doing it for the CQL promo”. Even if you have solid evidence from hundreds of videos that they are friends. At the very least, they are friends. and I hope we do the same courtesy to XZ’s friends and female co-stars. He is an actor. They are both actors. They will be paired with lots and lots of female celebrities. It’s part of the job. XZ & WYB’s relationship is not commercial, it’s real. So don’t apply those rules to them.

I also wish turtles to be more kind to XZ. I don’t understand why there seems to be a double standard when it comes to him. The general reaction from that interaction in 3/25 is so horrible towards XZ — like it’s his fault cause he won’t stand next to WYB. How WYB is a poor lovesick fool looking at XZ who was ignoring him. I wonder if people really understand how delicate their careers are and how careful they always have to be. Especially Xiao Zhan. So maybe we can be more considerate towards XZ? Be more understanding.

Trust him. He always delivers. He always does. We’ve seen it many times so it’s unfair to shift the blame on XZ and make it seem like he holds all the cards. I don’t know what he was to do to please certain people and i don’t want him to feel frustrated that he will just stop dropping candies altogether. It feels like most turtles are so critical of him and his relationships. He needs people on his side. They both do. They can’t live in a small bubble of just the two of them. Of course they have to be careful with who they surround themselves with — but that’s their judgement and not ours.

Anyway, that’s enough rant for today. I just needed to say it. XZ deserves all the love. ♥️ seeing him happy in his vlog today made me want to defend him from what i’ve been seeing lately, so. yeah.

[annalyticall]

Thoughts on Attack on Titan

Me being 10 years late to things, I was recently convinced to watch Attack on Titan and I ended up binge-watching the entire anime (and reading the final manga chapters) these last two weeks. I had purposefully been dragging my feet about watching this show since I had heard so much controversy surrounding it; that it was sexist, pro-fascist, pro-nazi, pro-imperialist, pro-propaganda, and heavily anti-Semitic. All pretty good reasons to stay away from something, I think.

But then I saw a video about how the criticisms leveraged against it were not quite so black-and-white, and how the show was more complex than those labels gave it credit for. Admittedly, that piqued my interest. I want to come to my own conclusions about the media I consume, so I decided to watch it with an open mind and a discerning eye.

And boy did I discern... a lot.

I am recording my very very lengthy opinions about Attack on Titan and its manga ending under the cut, mostly so that if anyone asks how I feel about certain things portrayed in the show, I can reference them to this post. Here's a quick table of contents:

The Themes

The Good

The Bad

The Problems

The Characters

Conclusion (and why Jean is the best character you can't change my mind)

Anime and Manga spoilers ahead.

The Themes

Attack on Titan tackles a lot of different themes throughout the course of the story. Possibly too many. Right now, I'm listing the big ones I noticed here because I will be referencing back to them later. Also note I am stating these themes as they are presented in the text, not as my own personal beliefs.

The human desire to create meaning in life and death. Does dying for a cause give life meaning? If the cause is hopeless, would dying for that cause be in vain? Is it enough to know that the living will continue your legacy after death? Does honoring the dead give their life meaning? Is the gift of life itself meaningless if not used to ensure humanity's ongoing survival? Is it enough to simply exist? Characters that most embody this theme: Zeke, Eren, Armin, Jean, Levi, Hange, Erwin, Historia, Ymir (of the Cadets), Marlow.

Everyone is shackled to a dream. Does the desire to fulfill a dream make you a slave to it? Will devoting your life to a dream of freedom make you paradoxically a slave to the very ideal? Will the hope of achieving a dream drive people to do terrible things they never would have otherwise? Is true freedom in the ability to let go of a long-held dream? Characters that most embody this theme: Erwin, Eren, Levi, Kenny, Armin, Jean.

The corrupting power of love and loyalty. Similar to an enslaving dream, will blind devotion to someone (in a romantic, platonic, subordinate, or familial relationship) drive that person to do terrible things just to be with them or make them happy? How far can that love go? Is blind devotion even love? Is it wise to love if it creates fatal weakness? Characters that most embody this theme: Mikasa, Armin, Eren, Zeke, Annie, Reiner, Falco, Historia, Ymir (of the Cadets), Ymir (The Founder).

The cycle of violence is endless. As long as more than one person is alive on Earth, there will always be conflict. Is it worth fighting to break the cycle when the cycle is inevitable? Is it necessary to perpetuate the cycle in order to survive in a world that forces violence? Is humanity worthy of saving if saving it demands the loss of one's own humanity? Characters that most embody this theme: Erwin, Eren, Armin, Reiner, Jean, Floch, Hange, Levi.

The pursuit of truth and wonder are the driving forces behind humanity's ability to work together. Propaganda and the obstruction of truth might work to pacify the populace short-term but will always be defeated once people put in the effort to truly understand others and the world they live in. The promise of discovery and truth are invaluable sources of hope and ingenuity. Characters that most embody this theme: Hange, Armin, Erwin.

People are people. Everyone is capable of great evil or great kindness, regardless of what nation, class, or race they were born into. Everyone has strengths and everyone has weaknesses. Everyone is influenced by their own hopes and dreams. The recognition of these innate similarities is crucial for forgiveness and acceptance across boundaries. Characters that most embody this theme: Reiner, Jean, Eren, Armin, Sasha, Gabi, Falco.

There is no accurate measure of good and evil. Being a "good person" is subjective, based more on personal goals and cultural ideals than on a base standard for "good." When faced with a difficult decision, perhaps it is best to choose whatever option will cause the least regret, a measure that is unique to everyone depending on an individual's values and on unknown outcomes. Live a life you can be proud of. Characters that most embody this theme: Armin, Annie, Levi, Jean, Eren, Reiner, Gabi, Ymir (of the Cadets), Historia

As you might have noticed, I chose to summarize many of these themes in a list of questions, and for good reason: oftentimes, the theme is raising a question but is almost never interested in giving it a straightforward answer. Instead, AOT will often raise a question, and over the course of the story, you get to come to your own conclusions depending on how the characters act. For example, I listed Jean as a character that embodies "meaning in life and death." Does Jean give Marco's death meaning by honoring his memory and values each time he's faced with a moral dilemma? That's up for the audience (and Jean) to decide.

Compared to other shonen that tackles similar themes and questions, this freedom of interpretation was novel for me, and for the most part, I loved it. Fullmetal Alchemist is the only other shonen I can think of that I've seen that touches on similar subject matter, but the tone of FMA is not nearly as dark, bleak, or ambiguous. While I also love FMA, the world of AOT is much more harrowing to navigate, and I found it exhilarating to have my preconceptions of its world challenged at every turn. Such a thematic approach felt grounded since real life is also not so easy to navigate. Unfortunately, this also has a glaring downside, which I will discuss in my "The Problems" section.

The Good

The first 3 seasons and almost everything that entails. To be quite honest I have very little to criticize about this show before the basement reveal. The pacing is almost perfect and I was always on the edge of my seat wanting to know more. The mysteries are intriguing and, upon slowly getting more and more answers, the narrative either only raised more tantalizing questions or completely recontextualized previous scenes, constantly giving the show new breath. The action is exciting, the stakes are heart-poundingly high, the losses are devastating, and the gore is graphic and stomach-churning but I think it necessary to absorb the horrifying and hopeless nature of the setting, which serves to heighten the few victories the characters actually do get to experience. There also isn't much of The Problems yet in these seasons.

The music. The soundtrack is undoubtedly one of the best aspects of this show and is quality throughout.

Animation. While I prefer the fluid and expressive animation of the first three seasons compared to MAPPA's comparatively stiffer animation of the final season, MAPPA still gave plenty of jaw-dropping sequences for the most impactful moments.

A tragic, queer, CANON romance. The fact that Ymir is canonically lesbian is amazing to me if only because I haven't watched a shonen yet where one of the main cast is actually lesbian, let alone has a significant portion of screen time devoted to establishing her unambiguous feelings for another woman who also reciprocates her feelings. AND THEN their romance ends tragically in-universe not because it's gay but because of narrative circumstances that were simply beyond their control or understanding. "My only regret is not marrying you." How romantic is that?

Female character design. Specifically all the big noses. As a big-nose-haver it makes me happy to see women have big noses and still being seen as pretty. That, paired with the fact that women are hardly ever sexualized and are often portrayed just as strong if not stronger than the men was nice to see after being exposed to so many infantilizing and sexualizing shonen tropes. That said, there could have been more diversity in body shape and skin tone.

The setting (of Paradis). I am going to stress here that I strictly like the world-building of Paradis, which is the main setting of the first three seasons. Marley and the rest of the world after Season 3? I'll get into that later.

Erwin vs. Armin. I consider Levi's decision to save Armin over Erwin to be the true thematic climax of this story, and I thought it was exceptionally well done. I've seen endless arguments about whether or not saving Armin was the right choice, so I'll throw in my two cents: if you think Levi should have saved Erwin, you are Missing The Point. In this moment, Levi, a character who fights for the greater good but is not quite as pragmatic as Erwin and who has a deep hope for humanity's future but is not quite as idealistic as Armin must make an emotional choice here, not a tactical one. Maybe saving Erwin might have been better for the Scouts, but the truth is Erwin was selfish, and Levi had already come to terms with this when he told his old commander to "give up on your dream and charge to your death." Armin, on the other hand, had a pure and selfless dream about the world outside the walls, and that is what Levi decided to value for humanity's future. That is the symbolic meaning of that decision, not whether or not Erwin would have been a tactically better commander.

It is enough to simply exist. Manga spoilers for the final chapters ahead. I said this was a question raised by one of the main themes of the story, "Is it enough to simply exist?", and I was pleasantly surprised that the ending gave it an answer through the conversation Armin has with Zeke. After so much deliberation about genocide, sterilization, war, the inherent and unbreakable cycle of violence, and so many other depressing themes surrounding the depraved nature of humanity, having the main takeaway for the series be "we were put on this Earth simply to enjoy it and to enjoy each other" was a cathartic release. I know I'm probably going to cry when that bit is animated.

The Bad

The frustrating thing that is Eren Yeager. I suppose this is biased but I really do not gel with Eren. Even in his Season 1-3 era I did not like him and his one-track angry boy mind, only ever finding him tolerable during the Uprising arc when he got a healthy dose of humility which he immediately ruined with his pitiful self-flagellation in the midst of a dire titan battle but I digress. This characterization does make a whole lot more sense though when he enters Season 4, when all of his personality traits are only slightly twisted in order to make him the villain, ala Walter White. Didn't make him any less frustrating.

The frustrating thing that is Mikasa Ackerman. She started out great. Then Eren turned into a titan for the first time and things quickly went downhill. After that, it seems like her character was retroactively changed from being the stoic and protective older sister to being the blindingly devoted and fussy love interest. I might have been okay with it if she had ANY other defining character traits, or hell, even any relationships outside of Eren and Armin. Manga spoilers, but she doesn't even have a strong relationship with Jean, who she apparently marries in the epilogue. Between Eren and Mikasa being two of the three main characters, I unfortunately felt very little towards them which was a not-so-small problem in my enjoyment of the series.

The humor is... fine. I get it, a show as dark as Attack on Titan probably shouldn't try to be funny, nor would I expect it to be. Still, the few attempts at humor it did have fell flat for me, especially when a lot of it leaned on Sasha's potato and meat gags (and a really uncomfortable torture gag after the Uprising Arc? Hey, what was that about? That was kinda fucked up, right?) Now that I think about it, the hardest I ever laughed while watching this show was when Reiner nonchalantly tells Eren that he and Bertolt are the Armor and Colossal Titans simply because I wasn't expecting the biggest bombshell reveal of the story thus far to be so casually dropped like that.

The Titan mechanics got so fucking convoluted. Don't get me wrong I love a good mystery and I don't necessarily mind the supernatural time-warping twists that the Titan storyline took up to a point. It's just that the story kept adding so many conditions to Titan powers and lore that it was getting hard to keep track of it all. Okay, so the Colossal Titan will create an unavoidable nuke during transformation even though it clearly didn't do that at the raid on Trost, sure. Okay, so Reiner can survive a fatal injury to his person as long as he manages to transfer his consciousness to the Titan body first, sure. Okay, so Eren can't awaken the Founding Titan's ability unless he's in contact with someone of royal blood, sure. Okay, so the Founding Titan's abilities can alter the biology of all Eldians, and also control all Titans, and also deactivate all Titan hardening, and also impose the will of the king onto all its future royal successors, but it's somehow NOT the Titan with the power to see the future? Sure? Okay, so Falco inherited the Jaw Titan, but because he was originally turned with Zeke's spinal fluid, he ALSO inherited aspects of the Beast Titan even though Zeke is still the Beast Titan and it's never been established that the spinal fluid used for the original Titan transformation affected the inheritance of Titan shifter abilities? Why not, at this point.

Uprising Arc and its overly simplistic military coup. I didn't dislike the arc as a whole, but it was a very lengthy detour from the main objectives the series was already on track for and added to the repetition of Eren getting kidnapped. Additionally, I thought the coup to overthrow the old government was too... easy? It was really only made up of two setups: one to expose the corruption of some random military police guy to the press and turn public opinion in favor of the Scouts, and one to expose the government's selfishness to the military commanders enough to convince them to depose their current leaders and pardon the Scouts. Then the Scouts essentially say "Hey Historia here just killed a Titan and has royal blood (trust us) so she's going to be the queen now. Please ignore the fact she is also a Scout and therefore could easily be a puppet queen for the military branch that was until very recently public enemy number one" and everyone just kinda accepts this. I don't know, it didn't do much to sell me on realism in a world that had done so up until that point.

Wow, the stakes are getting pretty high, I wonder if... WAIT, 80%?! That was kind of my reaction to the whole manga finale. I don't mind high stakes, but when we're talking about the horrific genocide of 80% of humanity at the hands of our main character, uh, that scale is a little hard to grasp. This also feeds into The Problems, which I'll get into later, but all in all, I think after a certain point the story just got too big for me to stay believably invested in what was actually happening.

Endgame plot thread irrelevance (especially for the female characters). Why did Historia get a whole story arc just to be sidelined and pregnant for the whole rest of the story? What happened to Yelena? What happened to Mikasa's relationship with the Azumabito clan? What's the deal with Ymir? So many things were rushed at the end that it was disappointing to see so much setup for very little payoff. Unfortunately, the female characters seemed to get the brunt of this.

The Problems

Okay, so this section is basically why I made this post to begin with. I want to address all of the criticisms I've seen for Attack on Titan and give my honest opinion on them because, yes, I do think it's more complex than I've seen people give it credit for, but neither is it free of harmful interpretations either.

On the topic of being Pro-Imperialist, Pro-Nazi, Pro-Facsist, and Pro-Propaganda: Attack on Titan is positioned against all these things. Just because a media depicts something doesn't mean it's condoning or endorsing it. Imperialism, fascism, and propaganda are all present in the story but are very often forces that the main characters must fight against. It might not go as far as to say "military bad" but it definitely says "war bad, genocide bad, euthanasia bad, blind devotion to one's country bad" and a whole host of other issues that it does not depict in a favorable light. Now, the viewpoints of the mangaka might be in question, and I can't say much about the way he supposedly views Imperialist Japan. I'm just saying, in the context of the show, I don't see an unquestioning approval of imperialism being portrayed here.

On the topic of Sexism: eh, maybe. It feels weird to be so nonchalant about that but to be honest, it's not prevalent enough to stand out compared to other shonen. Female characters might not always see fully fleshed-out arcs, but neither are they handled in a way I would deem sexist other than the very strange exception of Mikasa's one-sided obsession with Eren somehow mirroring the "love" a child bride sex slave had for her abuser 2000 years ago. That said, strong characters like Annie, Ymir (of the Cadets), and Gabi manage to have fairly compelling motivations and growth while also being love interests. There's really no fan service to speak of, and some of them even get to be gay. So, you know, I'll take it.

On the topic of Anti-Semitism (Disclaimer: I am not Jewish): yeahhhhhhh... so, up until the end of Season 3, I was confused about this claim. I mean, there were Titans, mindless man-eating monsters that could resemble the blood libel spread about Jewish people, but I thought it was a bit of a stretch. Besides, while the walled city is evidently based on 19th-century Germany, there isn't really a divide between the people who live there and the people who can turn into Titans; given the right conditions, any human character in the show could potentially turn into a Titan, so I didn't see the problem. If anything, I thought it was just a modified take on the zombie apocalypse genre.

Then the basement reveal happened, where it's revealed the walled city we had been following the last 3 seasons wasn't actually the last bastion of humanity as both the audience and the cast once believed; it is actually an island where distinct people called Eldians fled to escape the persecution they faced for their unique ability to turn into Titans. Turns out the rest of the world is populated by many diverse cultures who all hate the Eldians for their ancient Titan-enabled crimes against humanity. The Eldians who aren't trapped on the island of Paradis live in the gated ghettos of the Nazi-Germany-coded nation of Marley and are forced to wear star-embroidered armbands to denote their subhuman status.

Okay. Yikes, I thought. But I still gave it a chance, because as I mentioned before, just because something is depicted in media doesn't mean it's being supported or condoned. I was hoping that, at some point, the claim that Eldians committed atrocities with the Titans or the claim that only Eldians can turn into Titans would be proven wrong. Neither of these hopes came to fruition. It's revealed that Eldians did a lot of good with their Titan powers, true, but they also waged endless warfare in the name of a King that enslaved them. So, while they weren't really to blame, they certainly did commit the crimes that earned the world's ire.

This is a problem. If the imagery of the armbands and the WW2 ghettos were never involved, perhaps I could give the story the benefit of the doubt and see the Eldians as a fictional race created for the purpose of illustrating the cycle of violence and the need to relate to each other as humans first. But the problem is, they are very explicitly compared to Jewish people, thus insinuating, whether intentionally or not, that Jewish people do have these monstrous qualities and did commit crimes that earned them the oppression they continue to face when in reality, they did nothing to deserve it.

As an additional "yikes," there's also the questionable existence of the Tyber family, the only Eldian family in Marley allowed to have wealth and political influence. It's revealed that the Tybers have essentially been pulling Marley's strings the whole time, which... wow, really doesn't do much for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that Jewish people are actually in control of everything, huh. Thankfully, the Tyber storyline is short-lived, but then there's the Yeagerists, a fascist Eldian party that wants to counter-genocide the entire world before it can genocide Eldians. Triple yikes. Let's throw in Zeke's plan for forced sterilization against his own people for a solid quadruple yikes.

However, there are also important distinctions to make between Eldians and Jewish people that are in the story's favor. While the Eldian people of Marley are mistreated and considered subhuman, Marley still puts in the effort to brainwash them into thinking they are the "good" Eldians in order to earn their unconditional loyalty and turn them into frontline soldiers in their war to conquer other nations and the island of Paradis, something that doesn't really mirror Nazi Germany and gives us a reason to sympathize with the Eldians who were once the "bad guys" of Season 1-3. There's also the fact that 95% of the show's main cast IS Eldian, and up until the basement reveal we've only known them as human. Everything until that point has essentially served to make us identify with Eldians more than anyone else. While the rest of the world may dehumanize them, we the audience react negatively to any mention of them being less than human because we've only ever seen them fight to survive in a world where they thought they were humanity's last hope. We want to see them make it out of this alive.

And here's where my internal conflict with the show lies; it would be so much better if it cut out the WW2 imagery. Sure, there would still be plenty of subtext that could lead people to compare Eldians to Jewish people, but it wouldn't be so distractingly obvious and spur additional real-world comparisons where there aren't any. The sudden jump to 20th-century Germany is also somewhat jarring and I wouldn't have minded if Marley was based more on just another nation of the same era rather than a 100-year jump forward of the same setting (though it does make in-universe sense, what with Paradis being 100 years behind technologically but I digress). Basically, I think a LOT of the story's problems with probably-unintentional-but-still-present anti-semitism could have been avoided if the war and race allegories weren't given the same tact and grace as a David Cage game.

But now that brings me to what I think is Attack on Titan's fatal flaw: thematic ambiguity. "But Anna," you may say, "you said the freedom of interpretation is what you loved about its themes." You're right, I did say that. I still do. But ambiguity is a double-edged sword: it gives the audience freedom to derive unique meaning from the text and connect with it in deep, personal ways, but on the other hand, if a theme is too ambiguous, the author runs the risk of either telling a meaningless story or telling a story that conveys an unintended meaning. I think an author must have SOME intention with a theme if it is to be included, and must provide some sort of guide (usually with a character or two) to point the audience in the right direction. I'll give an example of what I mean for both instances in Attack on Titan.

For an example of a well-executed ambiguous theme, I'll turn to the question "Is humanity worthy of saving if saving it demands the loss of one's own humanity?" that I listed under the "cycle of violence" umbrella. Specifically, this question is raised after the Battle of Stonhess, where Erwin allows a Titan battle to rage in the middle of a populated area for the slim chance he could capture Annie alive and extract information from her. This decision cost hundreds of innocent lives, and worse of all, Annie was of little use to him. Erwin stands behind his decision for the greater good and Armin rationalizes the battle as a net gain, but Jean presents Armin with a counterargument: "If it's that easy to let the fight turn us all into monsters, maybe we don't deserve to win." Still, we aren't given an outright answer to who's right and who's wrong here. Instead, the guide we are given is in the way ideologically-opposed characters like Erwin and Jean are treated by the story: Jean maintains his humanity, minimizes civilian casualties whenever possible, and in the end, is left with few regrets. Erwin, on the other hand, feels the weight of all the lives he callously sacrificed in the name of a "greater good," which we learn was perhaps more selfish than he let on. Upon resigning himself to death, he laments all the innocents who died at his command. It is through these characters that we learn who, ultimately, was in the right, and what that theme is trying to tell us (also coincidentally applying to the theme "live a life you can be proud of.")

For an example of a poorly-executed ambiguous theme, I'll turn to the question "Is it necessary to perpetuate the cycle of violence in order to survive in a world that forces violence?" that I also listed under the "cycle of violence" umbrella. This question is perhaps no more apparent than when the main characters are faced with the terrific power of the Rumbling, basically a Titan-powered WMD Eren uses to preemptively wipe out humanity before it can inevitably attack Paradis. While many characters deliberate the ethics of this, there are two characters who have starkly different viewpoints: we have Floch, a Yeagerist who is in full-hearted support of the attack and is uninterested in saving human lives if they are not Paradis Eldians, and we have Hange, who despite being a Paradis Eldian beats an impassioned fist against a table and delivers the rather on-the-nose line "Genocide is wrong!"

So who's right? Well, anyone with any sort of media literary sense will say "Hange, obviously." Because Hange is portrayed as a good person (usually) and Floch is portrayed as a villain (usually). The problem is both these characters fight valiantly in the name of their cause and incidentally die in the same scene while imparting their wishes to the heroes for how they want the world to be. Anyone watching who harbors even a fraction of Floch's nationalism might see that and say, "Floch was in the right. He righteously died for his country and he almost won against an impossible enemy." There's also the problem that Hange does not give an alternative answer to the Rumbling and even admits they don't have one, they just know the Rumbling is wrong, which doesn't do anything to add to the theme in question. Unfortunately, the Rumbling is presented as the only reliable line of self-defense for Paradis, as it's already established that diplomacy has almost no chance of working and that the only other plan is, of all things, sterilizing the Eldian people to appease the world that wants them dead with as little bloodshed as possible. What would have been the only other recourse, the order of a partial Rumbling to wipe out the world's military bases, is immediately taken off the table when it's revealed Eren never had any intention of doing that. Therefore, the story doesn't give us any answer to this question at all, since the characters never get to find an alternate solution for themselves and are forced to simply stop the Rumbling before it can kill too many people despite the risk of dying in the process or play along with Eren's predetermined plan. For a story so bent on saying "genocide is wrong" it does a weirdly good job of presenting it as a survival tactic.

Now, I wouldn't normally have that much of a problem if a story fumbled a theme or two. Not everything has to land perfectly. That said, Attack on Titan NEEDED to deliver these themes clearer than it did, because of one major reason: it was dealing with questions involving fascism, genocide, war, and eugenics. You should not casually raise these issues as a backdrop to a theme that can't be delivered on, because then you run the risk of attracting people who very much are pro-fascist, pro-genocide, pro-war, and pro-eugenics and will blatantly misinterpret everything in the text in order to warp it and fit their worldview (a risk I think FMA managed to avoid by being very blunt with where it stood on those same issues). On the flip side, you'll also repel people who otherwise might have loved the story because at some point they heard someone say "Oh yeah Attack on Titan is awesome, the Yeagerists are cool and I agree with the main character's plan for genocide," and rightfully be put off from that. Then they'll turn around and tell the next person, "Hey, don't watch that, I heard it's pro-fascist and pro-genocide," and that person will go "Oh thanks I didn't know that, I'll stay away from it," and that person will be me for the last ten years.

The Characters

Eren and Mikasa: I'm lumping these two together because I already talked about them at length, but I will say, for being the two main characters on which the finale hinged, I think they were both too simplistic to fully deliver on any of the complex themes they represented. Hell, when listing all the themes each character embodied, I only listed Mikasa under one of them, which is not great for a deuteragonist. Not only that, but Mikasa didn't even really deliver on her one theme: she broke the Titan curse by "letting go of her enslaving love for Eren," but did she really? She kissed and then absconded with his decapitated head to give him a proper burial, then returned each year to his grave with Jean and her family (who remained faceless) to leave a flower behind for him. I get it, he was important to her as a childhood friend and that alone means she should try to remember him despite the monster he turned into, but the framing of this suggests she never really let go of him and was shackled to his memory even as she tried to move on.

Armin: The thing about Armin is that while I ultimately think he's the heart of the story and the main driving force for good (as evidenced by the fact he's the only character I listed under ALL the themes I mentioned earlier), he also reads more like a symbol than a character. That's fine, a character doesn't need to go through an arc to be good, but for me, personally, a character in this kind of setting needs some form of growth for me to form an attachment to them. I'm not just talking about how Armin steadily grows okay with murder because that still doesn't do much to change his rosy outlook on life. The most excited I ever got about Armin's development was when he manipulated Bertholdt into thinking Annie was being tortured because holy shit that's kinda dark for Armin and I thought maybe his strategic mindset was going to start getting the better of his morals, but then that's never really touched on again. It's because I was never quite sure what the rhyme or reason was behind his actions that I found myself disconnected from him as a character, despite being inspired by him as a symbol.

Jean: My favorite character and a sorely underrated one at that. Won't say anything more about him here because I'm dedicating it to the Conclusion.

Levi: Second favorite character. Back when Attack on Titan's popularity was at its peak, I would see Levi on my dash all the time and I would roll my eyes thinking he was just another brooding anime bad boy the girls were fawning over. But I get it now. Yeah, he can brood, and yeah, he can be a bad boy as an ex-criminal who is no stranger to violence, but most of all he's compassionate. He cares deeply about the lives of his comrades and almost never values the "greater good" when decisions are left up to him. Granted, I think he becomes a little one-note after the Erwin vs Armin choice when he resolves that his only motivation from now on will be killing Zeke, but you know, after everything Zeke put him through, I think he earned it.

Hange: Third favorite character. They injected much-needed energy and sincerity into the story right from the start, and they only became more complex as the story went on and circumstances forced more and more responsibility onto them. I'm also glad that, while they are a good and moral character, they also don't mull over hard decisions that a veteran soldier probably wouldn't mull over. If worse comes to worst, they know they may have to resort to torture or violence to protect their comrades and the pursuit of truth. Still, they almost never push this any further than necessary, unlike Erwin before them.

Reiner: Fourth favorite character. I had basically no opinion on Reiner until Season 2 when he pushed Connie out of the way of a Titan's mouth and I thought "he's kinda cool." And then so so so much happens after that. I almost never knew how to feel about him. Is he the bad guy? He's killed so many people, he has to be. But then, why do I still like him? Why do I feel so bad for him? Season 4 only added to those mixed feelings, showing him to be suicidal and suffering from PTSD after all the violence he inflicted when he was just a child soldier. I think most of the themes about "people are people" is best illustrated in Reiner, and how he is able to overcome the pain of life through his dedication to the next generation and to the former friends he had hurt in the past.

Ymir (of the Cadets): Fifth favorite character. Like Reiner, I didn't really have any opinion on her until Season 2. While her contribution to the story is brief, it did a whole lot. Her backstory is technically our first introduction to a world outside the walls which also introduced a whole new mystery. Also, her love for Historia was probably the most genuine example of romantic love I can point to in the entire story, and the most emotionally touching one at that. She's also the one who introduces the theme "live a life you can be proud of" verbatim, which proves to be important for everyone.

Sasha and Connie: Truth is, I don't really have any favorites after Ymir, and how I feel about everyone else is some variation on neutral (except Floch). As for Sasha and Connie, I'm throwing them in the same bucket of "likable-enough comic-relief characters that have some semblance of a character arc but not nearly enough to justify their screentime." People might hate me for this, but I actually think Sasha contributed more to the narrative when she was dead than she did when she was alive. That doesn't mean I wasn't sad when she died, though.

Erwin: People might hate me for this too, but I think Erwin is overrated. I think many dudebro fans see him as the peak representation of heroic masculinity, as an unflinching and at times ruthless commander who takes charge and shows no weakness. That is not true. It's revealed Erwin does have a weakness, a selfish drive to redeem his father's suspicions about the outside world, a drive that makes him fear his own premature death, in the end. True, that drive has paved the way for the Scouts to clear impossible hurdles but also has it led to many senseless and brutal deaths that the story does not intend to justify. Erwin is flawed, incredibly so, and I wish more people could see that.

Historia: I had no opinion of her in Seasons 1-2, even during the love story she had with Ymir. It wasn't until the Uprising arc that she grew on me, as she started to mature beyond her "Disney princess" persona that had previously seemed so out of place in a story like this. That said, after she got pregnant in Season 4, I was disappointed to see that there wasn't much of a point to her character anymore despite being the literal queen.

Annie: I wanted to like Annie. I wanted so badly to like Annie. That's really only for aesthetic reasons because when the show was at its peak I saw her on my dash and fell in love with her as a fellow short blonde girl with a big nose and a name that starts with Ann. After getting to know her character... well, I don't dislike her. I think she served her role in the story well enough. She's just fairly simple once you learn her motivation, and she's hard to get attached to if you don't like emotionally-constipated characters.

Bertholdt: Oh, Berry. Unfortunately, every feeling I could have had for him I already felt 5x more for Reiner, so Berry became rather redundant. Also, his constant stare unnerved me. I did feel bad when he died though. RIP Berry.

Marlow: He didn't have a huge part in the story, but I think he was significant if only for one moment: the second before his death when he thinks of Hitch. Here we are given an everyman who wanted to rise to his calling and dedicate himself to the greater good, who was so driven by ideals and politics that he bravely gave his life for the cause he believed was right, but just before he meets his end, it's revealed to him that what he really wanted was a life with the girl he only just realized he loved. I think that one moment tragically encapsulated the main message of the story; we are here simply to enjoy life and enjoy each other.

Gabi: Again, people might hate me for this, but I liked Gabi. I think she did a good job of being a mirror of what Eren could have been had he been born in Marley, and/or if he had learned to sympathize enough with the enemy to have given up on his revenge plan. She went through a lot of horrors to get the growth she did, and I don't really understand the vitriol some fans have for her, even considering the fact she killed Sasha since killing Sasha and then learning that doing that was a bad thing through the kindness of Sasha's family was kind of the point. Also, as if Eren wouldn't have done the same thing in her shoes. She's a brainwashed child soldier, come on.

Falco: It was a breath of fresh air to have, like, one genuinely nice good kid for once. He's a necessary addition to Gabi's arc I think, since he's the one that keeps her grounded and helps her realize that the Paradis Eldians are not evil. His Jaw/Beast Titan powers are OP though.

Zeke: Hated him throughout all of Season 3 besides only knowing him as the Beast Titan. Season 4 rolled around and I did start to sympathize with him given his upbringing and the way his brother Eren used him after thinking he finally had a family he could be close with. I still didn't feel all that bad when bad things happened to him though, given the things he's willing to do to impose a sterilization "solution" to his own people.

Pieck: Getting into "they're fine but don't add much to the story" territory here. She's smart and has a sleepy-girl charm about her, I guess. She also has that one cool moment where she points to Eren as the enemy, but as far as her relationship with the main characters goes, she basically has none, which makes it hard for me to get invested in her.

Onyankopon, Yelena, Magath, and Kiyomi: Lumping all these characters together as the notable non-Eldians with their own agendas. I had no strong opinion on any of them. Onyankopon was cool, but I thought Magath changed his stance on Paradis too easily in the end, and Yelena and Kiyomi barely contributed anything that couldn't have been done by some other character. Their true purpose was really just to establish that there were different cultures outside of Paradis.

Floch: Saved the best for last. And by best, I mean worst. He's the anti-Jean, if you will; the everyman who, when faced with dire circumstances, turns to brutality and strength rather than humanity and compassion. It's fitting, I think, that he's the one who not only advocates saving Erwin, Jean's ideological opposite ("We need a devil!") but he's also the one who tempts Jean into a character regression since he's a representation of what Jean could have become if he stayed what he was like early Season 1. Other than that, he's a cupcake-head fascist whose dumb face I got tired of looking at even before he become a fascist. I just fucking hate Floch, man.

Every other character I either don't have anything much to say about, like Grisha, Shaddis, Pixis, Rod Reiss, and Hitch, or they died too early for me to say much about, like Porco, Petra, and Marco (although I did love Marco and I was incredibly sad when he died).

Conclusion (and why Jean is the best character you can't change my mind)

So, to take my thesis-length thoughts and distill them into one coherent sentence, my overall feeling on Attack on Titan is this: it's a well-paced, well-constructed story that is consistently engaging and thought-provoking about real-world issues, but is ultimately held back by its final act where the scale and allegory become too big and clunky for the story to properly handle. Many things that were so well set up in the previous three seasons sadly unravel at the finish line. That said, that doesn't mean there is no meaningful or worthwhile conclusion to be had in Attack on Titan; I think it still had a stronger finish than, say, HBO's Game of Thrones. I connected with it in a deep way that I haven't connected to any other piece of media lately besides maybe when I played Dragon Age last year, another story that raised thought-provoking themes about real-world issues but with admittedly clunky allegory. Most notably, though, I think my enjoyment of Attack on Titan was highly dependent on one character in particular, a character who acted as a reliable anchor point to come back to whenever the bigger ideas got away from the story.

Here's where Jean comes in. While Eren, Mikasa, and Armin are essentially mouthpieces and figureheads for the much-too-big themes they represent and are somewhat washed out as characters because of it, Jean delivers on all his themes perfectly while maintaining his believability as a character. In this world, he is basically just some guy; despite being talented, he's not as driven as Eren, he's not as strong as Mikasa, and he's not as idealistic as Armin. Jean himself recognizes all these things, but he also recognizes how their strengths also come with weaknesses that he can make up for. He sees Eren as cool but also suicidally reckless, he sees Mikasa as capable but also overly-dependent, he sees Armin as brilliant but also in need of a backbone. He then steps up to fill those deficiencies; to answer Eren's recklessness, he does everything he can to preserve his own life so that he can continue to serve others; to answer Mikasa's dependency on Eren, he makes his own decisions and creates strategies to get everyone out of trouble, not just Eren; to answer Armin's cowardice, he steps up and relays Armin's genius plans but with a stronger sense of leadership and authority.

But he wasn't always like this, and that's the most important part; Jean started as a selfish, cowardly, and entitled asshole. Floch says this outright. The only thing early Season 1 Jean cared about was securing his place in the top 10 and choosing a position among the Miltary Police where he could live the rest of his life in peace and luxury, the rest of the cadets be damned. I think this is a pitfall a lot of people in the real world can fall into: in a highly competitive and individualistic society, people have little incentive not to step on others in order to achieve a better life for themselves, and this is the very pitfall Jean nearly falls into. It's a relatable flaw, as little as people might want to admit it.

Yet, among all of Jean's negative pre-Trost qualities, he has two that can be seen as positive: his keen perception and his blunt honesty. Marco tells him as much. After the first battle in Trost, Jean, despite his reluctance to take up responsibility, sees opportunities to get his fellow cadets to safety and uses his insight into their strengths and weaknesses to guide as many of them as he can since he's the only one at the time who can take up leadership. Afterward, Marco tells him he makes a good leader not because he's strong, but because he knows what it means to be weak. He is able to lead because he doesn't delude himself with false hopes or illusions of grandeur; he knows exactly what is at stake and what hurdles everyone needs to overcome in order to have a chance at both winning and surviving. Jean is humbled and inspired by this, realizing that he would better serve in a field where he could potentially save lives instead of wasting his talents in the Military Police where he would have nothing to apply himself for.

But his real call to action is Marco's death. After losing his one true friend, Jean resolves to give up his dream of the Military Police and dedicate himself to the Scouts, where he can live up to the potential Marco always saw in him. If we are to take the theme of "true freedom is the ability to give up a long-held dream" to heart, then Jean is actually one of the first characters to achieve true freedom in this story. That doesn't mean it was easy. Freedom comes with the burden of responsibility, and his decision to join the Scouts isn't framed as triumphant or inspiring but instead as terrifying and traumatic. But that's another aspect of real life I think is captured by Jean's character: the decision to become a better person is not always easy, and it often requires a continual and conscious effort to push comfort zones, overcome bad habits, and step into the terrifying unknown, but you still have to do it.

While Jean does change for the better because of this decision (a change even his fellow cadets take notice of), his battle to grow as a person is never over. When faced with life-or-death situations as a Scout, he overcomes his cowardice to leap into action and save others whenever he knows he can. When faced with the selfishness of the Military Police, he is reassured by the knowledge that his decision not to join them saved him from that ignorant mindset. When faced with the consequences of "the greater good," he questions what it means for humanity if serving a grand purpose means they should turn a blind eye to the innocent. When faced with the prospect of having to kill other humans, he grapples with the morality of murder and what it means if he can't pull the trigger to save his friends. When faced with the crowning of Historia, he voices his concern against authority that they're forcing her into another role after she had just fought to reclaim her own identity from her father. When faced with the temptation to regress, ignore genocide, and settle for the easy life he always wanted in his youth, he resists the urge to fall back onto his dream and continues fighting even when it's the hardest thing he could ever do. When faced with the revelation that Reiner killed his friend Marco, he briefly gives into his resentment and anger but later works past it and admits there are more similarities between them than there are differences. When faced with no other choice but to stop the Rumbling, he's the first to bring Mikasa to the painful but necessary realization that they must kill their friend Eren in order to save countless innocent lives, as much as he doesn't want to do that.

Over and over again, Jean is presented with a moral dilemma, and over and over again, Jean chooses to come out of it as a better person despite it all. Because he achieved the freedom to choose who he wants to be so early in the story, the rest of his arc is a revelation that such freedom comes with constant and painful doubt. Yet, Jean never shies away from exploring the moral ambiguity of his world and the actions it makes him take. Because he is perceptive and honest, he's quick to question everything that is presented to him and never takes any one person's perspective as the only undeniable truth. Questioning life at every turn isn't easy either; it takes effort and courage and vigilance, and even when that way of life wears away at Jean, he does it anyway. If he doesn't, he'll end up just like the pitiful and ignorant Military Police he could have easily become. To me, that arc is so much more relatable than any other arc presented in this story. This is the very real struggle of a regular guy navigating a complicated world of war, eugenics, nationalism, and genocide, and is just trying to make it out as a decent person in the middle of it all. Really, isn't that all any of us are?

I think it's also telling that Floch tempts Jean to join the Yeagerists not with the argument that Eren and his plan for genocide is right, because deep down I think he knows Jean would have never agreed with that. Instead, he tempts him with the promise of comfort and a life free of resistance. I think that's the most revealing truth of all: Jean, the representation of humanity and its struggle with its own morality would never have gone along with genocide just for the sake of it. I think most people are too decent to think genocide is in any way justified when it's framed that way. Instead, Jean is only tempted by how the decision to join the Yeagerists and turn a blind eye would affect him and his own life, reframing the problem as a self-preserving one and retroactively justifying the Rumbling not as what is right but as what is futile for any one person to try to stop. That, I think, reflects the true struggle of humanity, the struggle to sacrifice your own self-interest whenever it conflicts with the need to help others.

While other characters like Mikasa, Eren, and Armin are more or less the same character at the end of the story as they are in the beginning, Jean is in a perpetual state of change, which means he also acts as a terrific mirror and foil for so many characters throughout the story depending on what stage of character development he's in. He starts as a foil to Eren, someone who harbors just as much hot-headed ego as Jean, but unlike Jean has all the conviction to back it up. As Jean grows, he continues to foil Eren by proving conviction can not only be gained but can be reigned in and redirected to be used as a force to do good instead of a force for destructive revenge. He then mirrors Armin, a character who is just as thoughtful and questioning as Jean but isn't as weighed down by selfish desires, but neither does that give much weight to Armin's moral dilemmas when he chooses to do the less moral thing than Jean does in his shoes. Jean and Armin eventually learn to work together, combining their respective strengths and weaknesses to become effective leaders in tandem. Interestingly, I learned that Armin and Jean were originally written to be the same character but were separated to reflect two different sides of humanity, perhaps to illustrate humanity's desire to reach outside the walls through Armin and humanity's struggle to resist the comfort of the walls through Jean. While I think that it was a good decision to separate them in the end, I also think that it robbed Armin of Jean's character development and robbed Jean of Armin's plot relevance. Then, of course, there's Jean's mirror for Floch, but I already touched on that in Floch's character summary so I won't retread it here.

But perhaps my favorite foil of Jean's is Reiner. More than Eren or Armin, Jean is inherently connected to Reiner through the death of Marco. While Reiner is positioned in Season 4 to also be a mirror for Eren, I think Reiner's similar loss of his friend Marcel (a friend who, unlike what Marco did for Jean, did the opposite of inspire Reiner by admitting that Reiner was never actually good enough for the role he got and only earned it by Marcel's intervention to protect his brother) positions Reiner as a more apt foil to Jean instead. Reiner is sent on a trajectory where he only clings harder to his dreams of becoming a hero for Marley, winning the affection of his mother and father, and proving himself worthy of his role, never willing to let those dreams go in the face of Marcel's death unlike Jean had done after losing Marco. Because he clings to this dream so dearly, he kills many innocent people to achieve it, again displaying the polar opposite mindset of Jean who fights instead to save innocent lives. But Reiner isn't without a heart, and eventually, the weight of his sins burdens him. How does he deal with it? Not by questioning or confronting reality like Jean does, but by compartmentalizing himself and rationalizing his actions through the use of multiple personas, essentially denying responsibility for his sins and avoiding the painful self-reflection he must undergo to accept accountability for what he's done.

Reiner is only able to truly self-reflect when he returns to Marley, where the reconciliation of who he is catches up with him and drives him to become suicidal, but neither is he deluded by the dream he once clung to anymore. Now that he's accepted responsibility, he joins up with Jean's group, admits he killed Marco, and accepts the brutal punishment Jean has for him. It's only after this moment that Jean makes the realization that they're the same because they are now. They've both undergone a change and while it took them in many different directions, in the end, they've come to the same point; despite their respective sins or lack thereof, they're both fighting to become better people than who they once were. And in the finale, it is Jean who reassures Reiner that he is and will always be a Scout because he's fighting to save humanity, just like they had sworn to do as youths. Jean never forgot what it was they were fighting for, and because of that, I think Jean earns his place as the true moral compass of the series.

Wow, this really got away from me; Do you love the color of the Attack on Titan thoughts post? Anyways, if you managed to read all of this, I'm flattered you stuck around to entertain all my ramblings on a series that is basically over after a decade-long run that I was too late to jump on. With all my thoughts out of the way, I'm going to go reblog some Jean posts now, because he's the best character and no, you can't change my mind.

[luckycaricature]

It's kinda taking me a while to finish all the stuff I'm working on for YouTube, so I made a quick thing so that I could post something for Friday the 13th (although I'm cutting it a bit late LOL RIP)

WIPs for the other stuff I'm working on under the cut for anybody curious:

This was just supposed to be a practice picture so I could do the REAL Redrun speedpaint, but this design makes me so so sleepy tbh, I'm thinking about switching the fight scene thing to a 3D model render =~= There's just... *gestures vaguely* so much going on with this armor lmao

Also, because of the tags people left on the [eeveelution poll], I'd already started animating a couple things... but since Espeon won, I feel like I should give them a chaos animation too LOL

On top of this, I have some Blender projects I told a friend I'd start next week, and I have a couple more videos along the line of the ["NO! BAD!!"] short that I posted... all-in-all, I'm giving myself too many things that take a little while to finish so I'm making myself tired haha

I even thought about making a 2nd channel for Let's Plays since I never did the Pesterquest playthrough... I need to scale back I think lmao

Anyway, I'm tired. Gonna go to bed now LOL

HAPPY FRIDAY THE 13TH! x,D

[anachronistic-falsehood]

AO3 WRAPPED NUMBER 29 but i want u to give me ur top 3. or top 5 if u have a lot

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

MAC MY FRIEND MAC GHOSTIEZONE!!! my top fav passages i've written this year.... this is gonna take a while to answer i have so so many to choose from omg.... i'm gonna put this under a cut bc it is going 2 be Long (also i am going 2 tag u because idk if u have seen it yet and i v much want u to see the dstuck passage i'm posting it's got wilbur in it :3 @stuck-in-the-ghost-zone )

3: this one is from my ctubbo oneshot titled Harlequin that i wrote on impulse in early september. mac idk if u have read it but u should i think u would like it :3 the style of it is v experimental in a lot of places but i had SOOOOO MUCH FUN writing it and it's kinda angsty but the ending is sweet and i reread it and was like ;-; this fic was very much me projecting onto ctubbo OK HERE'S A QUICK PASSAGE :3

Tommy is your brother, you think, but not in the way he and Wilbur are brothers. They’re brothers in general, two different souls who experienced such different walks of life and stick together regardless, who follow each other to the ends of the earth no matter how wrong or bad one of them thinks the other is.

You and Tommy are more like... kindred spirits. Brothers in war, allies in politics, victims of abuse who pull each other up by your boot straps and lean on each other so you can keep going side by side.

It’s never just Tommy, or just Tubbo. It’s always Tommy and Tubbo.

Like one name.

TommyandTubbo. TubboandTommy. T+T.

Brothers in experience. Partners in life. Two sides of the same coin. Inseparable.

But that’s just the thing, isn’t it? You’re part of the same coin, but people look at you and see two heads, one on each side, no tails. Nothing at all to differentiate the two.

You could draw horns on one side and a white streak on the other, but at the end of the day they always see two copies.

When people run into you, they ask “Where’s Tommy?” “Do you know where Tommy’s been lately?” “What’s Tommy up to?”

You can’t always answer that.

For as much as you’re inseparable, sometimes you’re both alone for a bit. You always come back around like two magnets drawn to each other until something or someone yank you apart again.

You don’t like being a copy.

You don’t even know if Tommy realizes that’s what you are.

Tommy and Tubbo.

The main character and his sidekick.

He called you the main character once, during the Disc Confrontation, and himself the sidekick, and hearing that

it

actually made you

relieved.

Even if everyone else sees you as a second quieter Tommy, he doesn’t.

That counts for something.

2: MY VASHWOOD FIC Just As Beautiful As The Day I Lost You MY BELOVED <3 ughhhh writing this was so sad i genuinely cried doing it. the moment wolfwood remembers vash is what gets me. ik you've read it already but here's that one little passage here for u just for funzies <3 NOW CRY!!!!!!

The video stops.

Vash snaps his gaze to Rosewood. He’s trembling like a wet cat, hand poised over the spacebar. His breath hitches once, twice. He turns to Vash, slowly, just as tears begin to spill down his cheeks.

“What the hell, Needle Noggin,” he whispers. “What the fuck are you doing to me?”

Uncertainty is the only thing Vash can respond with. He steps closer, hand hovering over Rosewood’s shoulder. “I... don’t...”

Rosewood pushes the chair back, wooden legs scraping across the floor, doubles over, and buries his face in his hands. Vash takes that as a signal to do something, so he rests his hand on Rosewood’s back. After the comfort Rosewood gave him last night, it’s the least he can do, really.

Rosewood chokes back a sob. “I shouldn’t know these people,” he says, voice thick with tears. “How... do I know them? How do I know you?”

Vash’s heart leaps into his throat. He kneels in front of the chair so he’s level with Rosewood. “Do... Do you...”

Rosewood looks up, an angry furrow in his brow, even he wipes tears from his eyes. The expression is so incredibly Wolfwood that Vash doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“This past week has been fucking torture, Spikey. You—I saw you leave church last Sunday, and I didn’t even see any of this,” he gestures to Vash in general, the spikey hair, the glasses, the scars, “but you just—you stuck in my head and I couldn’t explain why. I... I still can’t.” He gives a wet laugh. “Humanoid Typhoon my ass. You’re more like a parasite.”

A lump forms in Vash’s throat, alongside something so bright and hopeful he feels dizzy with it. Hands shaking, unsteady like they’ve never been before, he reaches out, fingers brushing over Rosewood’s jaw. He wipes away a stray tear, stubble sharp beneath his thumb.

Rosewood sniffles, shakes his head. “Don’t look at me like that, Needle Noggin. I can’t take it when you smile like that.”

Vash swallows. As quiet as can be, barely any breath behind his voice, he says

“Wolfwood?”

A sob rips itself from the throat of the man in front of him. Vash catches him as he lunges from his chair and into Vash’s arms, heaving cries pressed into his shirt. Vash holds him tight, hands clenched in his jacket. The black poncho remains on Vash’s lap, pressed between them. A stray tear soaks into the fabric. It takes Vash a moment to realize it fell from his own face.

He's never been so uncertain in his life.

But whatever this is, whatever he’s awakened in the priest in his arms, whether it’s real or a delusion, he wants to keep it.

He tucks his face into the crook between a neck and a shoulder, and he cries.

1: i think my fav thing i've written this year would be the tntduo chapter of dstuck that i sent you a while ago BUT since u have already read that and it's wayyyy too long to put in one post i am going to choose a different dstuck thing. most of the passages i wanna put here would involve MAJOR SPOILERS but i have one chatlog between wilbur and one of the cherubs i'm putting in there to kind of sort of replace cdream (i don't like ccdrm but his character is Important so i basically split him in two as a cherub and changed his name). honestly it was kind of a hard decision to change his name bc he's such an iconic villain but i think i did ok with still capturing his Evilness and his shitty asshole vibes ANYWAY this is one of my fav parts of this chapter i love writing chatlogs <3 tw for ummm some brief suicidal ideation bc it's cwilbur that's how it goes

hi wilbur! IO: Ah fuck, what do you want? can’t i just say hi and see how you’re doing? IO: I mean, I can’t stop you, I guess. you’re getting closer and closer to entering this game. isn’t that exciting? IO: Sure. you don’t sound excited. :( IO: What do you mean? This is the picture of excitement. IO: Look at me, I’m jumping up and down with joy at the prospect. liar. IO: Fuck you. hey, now don’t be rude! we’re friends, aren’t we wilbur? IO: We were, yeah. IO: When I was like, twelve. IO: But you started bad mouthing my bro and the rebellion and being all shitty and manipulative, and I literally tried to kms whben I was fourteen because of the shit you’ve said so like IO: No I wouldn’t say we;re friends. but we’re past that! i’ve changed, wilbur. IO: Yeah yeah so you keep fucking saying. if we’re not friends, why do you keep responding? IO: Because you’ll keep fucking bothering me until I do it's just because i want to talk to you. is that really so wrong? IO: Yeah IO: I know the shit that you did to my bro and I don’t fucking much appreciate it that was ages ago! come on, wilbur. you’ll get me out of here, won’t you? IO: If I could kill you I would. man, tough crowd. i think you’ll come around eventually. and even when i do get out of here without your help, your bro is the first one i’ll go for. i’m sure you know this, because it happened in your past. and then i’ll go for the little one. your pen pal. :) he is your bro, after all, and yeah, maybe the older one will slip through my fingers, but your pen pal? he's still young. your bro will get away from me when we’re both older, but your pen pal won’t defeat me while he’s just a kid, and i’m a GOD. :)

The chatlog closes on its own.

He used to be nice, but you think it’s just because he wanted to be your friend. Or, at least, pretend to be your friend. He filled you in on a lot of information about your future and the game, about your upcoming journey as a Bard of Heart, how destructive the class is, how you’re fated to destroy everything you’ve ever held dear and harm the people you love, the nuances of your aspect, the role you’re meant to play in this game.

He called you a supernova in the making, a nuclear bomb waiting to go off, a personified Chernobyl in your own right. It sounded kind of cool at the time, but it placed this heavy weight on your shoulders, this expectation for destruction.

You’re pretty sure he lied about most of the stuff he’s told you, but you can never be sure. You’re set on relying on Phil’s foresight to tell you your role now, although he doesn’t have all the answers. Still, it’s better than running in blind with your only guidance being the ravings of a madman from the distant future. He used to be so kind, it was hard not to believe him.

He wasn’t so kind when you had a sword at your own chest.

[northwest-cryptid]

Friend Corp Session 1 went... interesting.

So to just quickly clear up any confusion as to how I'm documenting everything. I'm going to be recording every session I play of this and piecing together a whole documentary style playthrough video at the end, but each session I'm coming back to you guys with screenshots, updates, general questions as to which abnos we should be looking for, and overall just letting you know how things are going along the way. Come the final push to day 50 I might end up streaming it because as a vtuber I do occasionally stream (I've been garbage about my schedule lately lol) and I think it would be fun to actually let people come out and be there for the finale. I also quickly want to say that the name "Friend Corp" comes from Firebuug who left this comment on the post which was what prompted me to start calling it Friend Corp, so full credit for the name goes to our fellow friend Firebuug:

In other news, I just wrapped a 2 hour session that takes us through to the start of Security/Safety team and I thought I'd let you all in on the details.

Quick reminder: Nugget submissions are by no means cut off or stopped, the facility still needs your help!

Starting from the beginning we start Day 1 with our Friend Corp Communal Nugget OC reveal! Please welcome DIA!

So as you likely know, there is a list for Friend Corp that has all the currently enlisted nuggets along with their creators/owners. In a way the nuggets are there to represent the people who submitted them, and I totally understand if you don't have a nugget but don't want to be left out, so hey good news Dia is here as EVERYONE'S nugget. Dia represents the entire Friend Corp community. No single one of us own Dia, but rather we all collectively own Dia as a community so by all means feel free to project any sorta headcanons or whatever you want for them. Dia is our nugget comrade!

Day 1 goes by without a hitch and we're on to day 2!

Day 2 we hire our first Community Nugget: Marx [@something-soup-something]

The first abnormality we pick up (after One Sin of course) is Old Lady, not my favorite day 2 pick but she'll be useful to us both for ranged white damage and as a good early game Temperance trainer.

Thankfully Marx seems just fine handling the Old Lady

Despite being fresh off recruitment, Marx absolutely crushes it on day 2 gaining enough Temperance to be promoted to level 2 by the end of the day. Meanwhile Dia has picked up some new fashion having earned the EGO gift Penitence:

Day 3 is right around the corner, and while we pick up 1.76 MHz we also pick up a new friend in hiring Rain [@ordei]

Nothing too noteworthy happens this day outside of Dia being promoted to level 2.

Day 4 we pick up the Heart of Aspiration and it's business as usual!

Between Dia, Marx, and Rain the Control Department runs like a well oiled machine each swapping off with a different abnormality every so often to train each of the necessary early game stats. We want at least level 2 for Justice, Prudence and Fortitude and level 3 for Temperance but I was blown away by just how much these nuggets improved!

With Marx already moving up to Level 3 and Rain following close behind at Level 2 it was becoming clear to me that these nuggets were clearly tapping into the forbidden power, the power of Friend Corp.

Day 5 is an absolute breeze, no new recruits as at the time of this session these 3 were the only members of the Control Department but after the impressive display on Day 4 I was confident they had it in them to absolutely crush the new quota.

and just look at em go! These lads are professionals, we're producing energy outputs in the high 80 - 90% success rates consistently and due to how many Teths and how few Zayins we're working with stat progression is through the roof for early game.

The Old Lady decided to give her new friends Marx and Rain some glasses, which are very cute;

Though I did find it funny how despite having the Penitence EGO gift, Dia refused to wear it.

Dia really said "the giant floating skull gave me a crown of thorns, but I stay silly"

and after about exactly 15 minutes of grinding we end Day 5 with Marx hitting LEVEL 4?! Dia already reaching Level 3 and Rain bumping Justice from 2 > 3

Things really are looking up for Friend Corp!

Day 6 and we get to pick a new abno!

I was faced with a moral decision, remembering the ProjectMoon Abnormality Sexymonster Polls outcome I felt like I had to give this one to the Cherry Blossom squad since Fairy Festival beat em by a mere 3%!

But who will be in charge of the Cherry Blossom? Well none other than our resident Info team specialists: Yuri [@polyydeucess] (who's eyes might be wrong but don't worry we can go back and fix em if needed since I have no idea what they look like under the Judgement Bird bandages)

AND Julian [@firebuug]

I decided to hire 2 Agents on Day 6 since this is the first day we'll be dealing with Ordeals and I needed all the help I could get.

In retrospect I played this WAY too safe, the Friend Corp squad are no pushovers and backed by not only the Heart of Aspiration but two gunslingers with very high attack speed and the absolute mad lad Dia who will throw themself into danger without a second thought, the squad was more than capable of handling Doubt.

Day 6 wasn't quite as eventful as some of the others, and took nearly twice as long; but it was a fruitful day never the less.

Day 7 starts with us taking The Lady Facing The Wall because yes we DO need more White Damage Ranged Weapons we didn't have enough between Old Lady, AND Grave of Cherry Blossoms!

our first Panic goes to Julian! I couldn't stop laughing because everyone enters the hallway and calms Julian almost instantly, but the damn clerk who DARED to shoot at Julian must face consequences for their careless actions!

Despite being stabilized Julian delivers the final blow. That'll surely send a message to the rest of the clerks, this is Friend Corp if you partake in unfriendly behavior you will be put down. Shooting people isn't very friendly!

The rest of Day 7 goes smoothly with Rain being promoted to level 3, unfortunately both Julian and Yuri are really taking their time with the stat gains, which is fair given they have a single abno between them and are mostly assisting with security measures and responding to meltdowns.

On Day 8 we pick up Fragment of the Universe... and Julian panics again but thankfully Julian's good friend Rain is right there to lend a hand!

However this isn't before Julian makes a point to add 1 more to the kill count of Clerks who behaved in an unfriendly manner!

This frame right here kills me, JULIAN PUT THE GUN DOWN JULIAN NO RAIN IS A FRIEND!

By now the team has become strong, they've learned to fight together, to work as a team, to play to each others strengths and cover each others weaknesses.

Challenges and Ordeals that once seemed like a threat were now nothing to them. We may be understaffed, but the staff we do have sure knows how to pull out all the stops!

We did run into one small problem... but thankfully as a Veteran Manager I knew how to handle it.

By the end of Day 8 Dia and Rain both reached Level 4, and Yuri had made the advancement to Level 2!

Things were getting difficult, with so many Abnormalities that needed tending to and with so few employees to handle the meltdowns I was having to pick and choose which abnormalities to let meltdown (typically the non escape ones) and recovering the energy cost wherever I could.

But this is Lobotomy Corporation, where we face the fear and build the future; so rather than stop we press on to Day 9 picking up Skin Prophecy.

WE ALMOST LOSE MARX ON DAY 9

MARX WAS SO READY TO GO IN THERE THE DOOR WAS OPEN AND EVERYTHING. The dangers of playing on 3x speed constantly.

Thankfully no one was lost and we didn't have to restart the day, actually so far; we haven't had to reset at all which is amazing considering how stupid risky I'm playing.

Other than Marx almost getting eaten by a tree Day 9 goes fairly well, both Yuri and Julian get promotions to levels 2 and 3 respectively, couldn't be more proud of those lads.

Day 10 was no different than the last, just less near death encounters with trees. Rain began working more and more with Old Lady, Marx became our 1.76 MHz specialist, meanwhile Julian befriended the Fragment of the Universe while Yuri attempted to make sense of the Lady Facing The Wall. Everyone had a job and was getting better and better at it, obtaining new EGO gear, gifts, and weapons; becoming more and more honed to their craft; and at the end of the shift on Day 10 we achieved our first Level 5 agent with Marx hitting rank 5 Temperance and being Promoted to essentially being the emergency "please go work with [thing melting down] because I trust you won't immediately die" nugget. Congratulations Marx!

At the Dawn of Day 11 we pick up Fairy Festival as the other options were both HE level abnos we're in no way prepared for yet. However with the opening of the Security team and no one to tend to it's abnos we were back to the hiring process to pick up Reinhardt! [@branch-wdk53]

Day 11 was going so well, everyone was doing their silly little tasks and then I forgot that this was the first day we could encounter Noon Ordeals and well...

SO WE ENDED THE DAY THERE BECAUSE I WASN'T GONNA LET THE LAD DIE LIKE THAT.

The last Abno we pick up for the current session is Funeral, I figured since I know the reference image of Reinhardt I have shows them using the EGO I should probably pick it up at some point and we're going to need some manageable escape type abnos for the suppression missions.

Tumblr will only allow 30 images per post so I can't include the facility and bonus pictures of the nugget interactions in this post, but I will follow this post up with another shortly to include some extra little screenshots I grabbed for you guys to keep you up to date on everyone's current status.

[whatisthismandoinghere]

Finally got around to making a list for that Hogan’s Heroes/Taylor Swift prompt list I mentioned a while back, so welcome to Cruel Summer at Stalag 13!! (cannot for the life of me decide if I love or hate the event name, it’s real hard to make a combo of Hogan’s Heroes and Taylor Swift 😂) Lemme know what you think, I was considering coming up with some alternate prompts in case there were some that weren’t catching your eye, but it was hard enough to come up with the 31, so if there is a Taylor Swift song or some Taylor Swift lyrics that you would have liked to see, drop me a line and I’ll add them on! I’m gonna go ahead and set it up for the month of July so everyone can have plenty of time to get a start on their creations (or if you’re like me you can just wait till the last second 😂) I may or may not make a collection on ao3 but I'll keep yall posted on that

For starters I’m gonna go over some rules (though I don’t really like to call them that cuz there aren’t really any rules) but anywho

If you’re writing, these do not have to be song fics, these are just meant to be prompts to inspire whatever story, art, etc. you may have inside of you, no use of lyrics or any mention of music required, it doesn’t even really need to be related to the song as a whole in anyway, so no knowledge of Taylor Swift is required

All types of media are welcome!! This includes, but is not limited to, writing, artwork, gifsets, video edits. Whatever you can come up with, you are more than welcome to share!

Interpretation is completely up to you!! Whatever idea comes to your mind, just roll with it, there is no wrong way to do it

You can complete as many or as few prompts as you wish

If you choose to post your work, please tag it with #cruel summer at stalag 13

Please wait until the day of the prompt to post, and late submissions are always welcome!

And most importantly, have fun :D 

If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to reach out to me, I promise I don’t bite lol

Without further ado, prompts are below the cut! If the prompt is a lyric, I put the title of the song they’re from after it in parentheses. There’s also a picture after the text (and quick shout out to @annieslytherpuff21​ for some of these suggestions!)

A Place in This World

It’s a typical Tuesday night (You Belong With Me)

Dear John

I remember it all too well (All Too Well)

Hung my head as I lost the war / And the sky turned black like a perfect storm (Clean)

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Back when I was livin’ for the hope of it all (August)

Crescent moon, coast is clear (Ivy)

Sometimes I wonder which one’ll be your last lie (Vigilante Shit)

You put up walls and paint them all a shade of gray (Cold as You) 

I close my eyes and the flashback starts (Love Story)

Innocent

Now I’m lying on the cold hard ground (I Knew You Were Trouble)

Out of the Woods

New Year’s Day

It’s Nice to Have a Friend

Peace

Past the blood and bruise / Past the curses and cries (Happiness)

I should not be left to my own devices (Anti-Hero)

I’ve been a lot of lonely places / I’ve never been on the outside (The Outside) 

It’s hard to fight when the fight ain’t fair (Change)

Do you still feel like you know what you’re doing / Cause I don’t think you do (Better Than Revenge)

Starlight

It’s poker, he can’t see it in my face / But I’m about to play my ace (New Romantics) 

Don’t Blame Me 

Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes (Cruel Summer)

Epiphany

Tolerate It

Mastermind

All that bloodshed, crimson clover (The Great War)

[takingontheworldtogether]

my friends who don't know shit about taylor swift requested a pre-album explainer of wtf is going on so i wrote them a little newsletter... if you want something to send to your non-swiftie friends it's beneath the cut

Good morning team,

Why do we need a Swiftie newsletter?

I mean, no one really needs this. But she’s dropping a new album (“The Tortured Poets Department” or TTPD for short) in three days and I’m here to provide you with the information you need before the album comes out. I’ll be back with a post-album review letting you know 1) what juicy gossip was revealed on the album, 2) what tracks you should listen to, and 3) a few things you can say to your Swiftie friends to sound cultured.

What’s this album about?

Okay, I know this is ancient history, but cast your mind back to 2016. Kanye and Taylor Swift are beefing, and Kim Kardashian posts a clip of a phone call that makes Taylor look like a liar. Taylor gets canceled on social media and disappears for a year. 

While all this is going on, she meets her boyfriend, the British actor Joe Alwyn. I have no clue what movies he was in at the time, but since then he was in The Favorite and Harriet, and also Conversations with Friends (I think, I haven’t seen it because Normal People put me off Sally Rooney). Here’s a quick timeline:

Late 2017: Taylor comes back with “Look What You Made Me Do” and reputation. People think reputation is a bad bitch album, but it’s actually an album about finding love in a time of despair.

2019: She drops Lover, which is about many things but primarily about how she loves him and wants to spend the rest of her life with him. 

2020: Pandemic. Taylor writes two quarantine albums, folklore and evermore. These are primarily fictional, but there are a few love songs about him. He co-writes some of these songs pseudonymously.

2022: Midnights. This album becomes wildly successful. It occupies all of the top ten slots on the billboard hot 100 in the week it comes out. It breaks a bunch of sales records.

2023: The Eras Tour starts! Two weeks in, they announce the break up. Taylor briefly dates Matty Healy of the 1975, who is by all accounts a total asshole. This appears to have been a shitty rebound. A bit later, she starts dating the football player Travis Kelce and everyone loses their minds about it. 

It looks like this album is going to be about the end of a relationship of six years and possibly rebounding/moving on. 

Okay, but like… why did they break up?

I mean, I don’t know any of these people, so all I can offer you are guesses based on song lyrics:

1 - He was really big into his privacy, which is kind of difficult if you’re dating Taylor Swift. 

2 - A lot of songs on Lover are about wanting to get married. There’s a song on Midnights that implies that she wanted to get married and he refused. Yikes. 

What’s the promo situation for this album?

The most notable thing to me (and what is this if not me rambling about my opinions) are some playlists curated by Taylor on Apple Music. Each playlist focuses on one of the five stages of grief in mourning a relationship, and they contain songs from her past albums. There are copycat playlists on Spotify, if you’re interested. My favorite is “am I allowed to cry?” which is the playlist for the bargaining stage. 

There’s also a wall in Chicago with a QR code that leads to a video of the words “Error 321 13” and a hidden message in her song lyrics that spells out “Hereby Conduct This,” which is presumably a message that will be finished by the time the album comes out. 

What do we already know about the album?

16 tracks with 4 bonus tracks. There’s a song with Post Malone (yes, really) and a song with Florence + The Machine. I agree, this is not an intuitive combination, but I’m excited. 

Two of the songs are over five minutes long. Two songs are entirely self-written, five are written with Aaron Dessner (from the National), and eight are written with Jack Antonoff (the producer who works with all the pop girlies). Her collaborations with Aaron Dessner are some of my favorite songs of hers, so this is good news to me. 

That’s my preamble to the Tortured Poets Department!

I hope this was informative, but I barely scratched the surface. You have no idea how deep this goes. Also, I need you all to know that I sat down and wrote this in one sitting without Googling anything, which probably means I know too much about this subject. 

In the meantime, I’ve been listening to “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter which is a very stupid song that is fun to listen to. I’ve also been listening to girl in red’s new album, I’m Doing It Again Baby! which is aggressively mid. If you want to listen to a song on it, I recommend “Pick Me.” 

See you in three days!

[stevenbasic]

GITJ Post 279: A Witches Halloween, p4

< go Camera 1 >

“Thanks, Jamie, for the weather report,” said Alicia Ray, filling in as anchor for Channel 5’s 11pm broadcast and looking into camera one, “I guess we need the rain. Sounds like a good  weekend to go catch a movie. Wouldn’t you say, Aly?”

“For sure!” said the blond co-anchor seated to her right. Aly Singleton smiled, feeling strangely giddy in the presence of her co-worker. 

“So, let’s get back to our top stories,” Alicia continued, turning to her left as the red light on camera 3 blinked to life. This was easy, this made her feel good. Thousands of eyeballs were now on her, she commanded the attention of all their late-night viewers, and she felt like she was exactly where she should be. She’d been given this job temporarily when Blake Rubens came down suddenly with that haha mysterious cough earlier in the week. It could be a stepping stone for her, she’d hoped, towards the morning lead anchor position. Mark Vallens, who currently ran the morning desk and had done so for nearly 20 years, was already talking retirement. Wow these treatments work quick! she’d marveled. She really wanted that job!. 

< go Camera 3 >

“Many reports of weird happenings in the city on this Halloween night,” the ex-pageant queen continued, meeting the gaze of camera 3 with confidence. Sit straight, tits up, she said silently, but could already feel herself settling naturally into her new role, the eyes of their wide viewership falling to her full chest. This next story, she’d been told, had to be handled properly. ‘Don’t get people too worried’, they’d told her over the phone, ‘stay casual’. She could do that, she could make it sound fun. Some women they were calling ‘witches’ were up to mischief, and it was her job to help with damage control. The people needed her, the movement needed her. She was important, and there were big plans for her.

“Earlier this evening the city was treated to a nice little...treat,” the busty news anchor began, as the image from one of Channel 5’s rooftop cameras appeared behind her and the teleprompter began to roll, “as you can see, the river apparently changed to a pretty shade of pink downtown. The new color lasted about twenty minutes before returning to normal. Authorities suspect a prank from one of the local colleges but the cause of the change is still unknown. As is why all the flowers in the park mysteriously blossomed this evening…”

 

“…Roses, flowering bushes, everything in the gardens treated the city to a springtime display in October. Park officials are baffled, and blame global warming.”

“That is so weird!” chirped Aly, to Alicia’s right, “But I love flowers, and the river did look pretty!”

“Haha I know, right?” Alicia laughed. 

“It’s too bad it didn’t last, the pink river,” Aly continued, “I have some cute heels and magenta lipstick that would’ve matched!” Gee Alicia’s perfume is really nice. I have to ask where she got it.

“Oh that would’ve been cute!” the shapely brunette answered as she stood from the news desk, treating her viewers to a shot of her body, “Moving on to our next story…”

<go Camera 2>

“Jesus…” whispered the cameraman to the sound guy, as he tracked Alicia’s broad hips in her tight pink dress rolling across the studio, “do you know how many guys are jerking off to her right now?” She’d put on a little weight recently, and damn did it go to the right places…

“This just in. Perhaps the strangest reports,” she continued, as she settled in front of the green screen, “are multiple unconfirmed sightings of three giant, ghostly women walking down Lancaster Boulevard downtown in - get this, Aly - Hooters uniforms! We hope to get some pictures or video soon from our viewers but eyewitnesses tell us the three women, which apparently seemed to be some type of hologram, were several stories tall and casually strolled down the street for five blocks before mysteriously disappearing.”“Wow!” Aly laughed, as the camera cut briefly to her, “New waitresses at the restaurant in Wellspring? They’ll be super popular!”

“Haha maybe!” Alicia agreed with a convivial smile, “No comments yet from the restaurant’s management, but officials suspect some sort of publicity stunt to celebrate the new change in ownership.”

<go Camera 2>

“And for our last Halloween-night story,” Alicia Ray continued, turning her shapely torso smoothly to her left, “This one is maybe the most disturbing - three teens in Northville have gone missing while out for some trick-or-treating…”

===============================================

Thx to Superfragon98 for the use of his giant hooters girls; check out his DeviantArt page for more cool collage work. And always, for more of the story please visit my Patreon.

[yourfellowhuman07]

Where Do We Go Now?

A She-ra: Princess of Power 2018 fanfiction

The war is finally over. Prime is dead, the hive mind is broken, and everyone is reunited with their loved ones. However, there are some questions left unanswered. What will be the fate of Catra and Hordak? What are these new memories Wrong Hordak has? What is Etheria's place in the wider universe? Where do we go now?

___________________

Hey everyone. Here is chapter 26, I hope you enjoy it.

Also, chapter 27 will be posted on both Tumblr and AO3 on Wednesday because I'll be going on vacation at the end of next week.

___________________

Chapter 26: Purchases

“So it is a game about an Italian plumber saving a princess from a giant fire-breathing turtle?” JD flipped the plastic case in his hand. The brothers had somehow found themselves in an electronic games store. Plastic cases lined the shelves. Video game memorabilia hung from the walls and filled the tables. Cardboard figures littered the floor. Consoles sat in glass cabinets behind the counter.

“Yeah, it looks really fun!” TD held a heavy box, scanning the words boasting about the console within.

“I thought we were supposed to be looking at clothes?” LD leaned on a wall near the entrance, indifferent to the colorful items in the store.

“How about you go shopping by yourself if you’re so bored.” ZD perused the cases lining the shelves. LD shot him a dirty look.

“No, we are staying together. I do not want to spend the better half of the day running around the Six Systems of Dryl rounding you five up. LD, once we have made our purchases here we will resume our pursuit of new articles of clothing. Then depending on how much time is left in the day we can look at some of the other shops.”

“Fine.” He rolled his eyes, folding his arms up against his chest.

To LD’s relief, the five brothers made their purchases. They made their way to a street lined with different clothing shops catering to every aesthetic in the book. Despite Hordak’s instructions, the brothers all split up and ran to the different stores.

TD and JJ went to a store will a large crowd of people with the line of thought if a lot of people like it, it must be good. It had bright lights and white walls decorated with images of models wearing the store’s clothes. In there they got sets of graphic shirts and sweaters with various colorful images and quotes. Then they acquired different cuts and styles of pants and shorts made out of denim and TD got a denim jacket to match.

ZD took the opposite route, going into a store with dim lighting and black walls with few people within. Many of the clothes were tighter fitting, so it took him a minute to sift through the selection. In the end, he came out with various sets of sweaters and sweatpants, graphic shirts, a pair of pants with a chain attached to the belt loops, and various studded accessories.

JD found a store that sold a fair amount of clothes, despite its branding as an athletics store. There he gained various athletic shirts and shorts. He then took his time to admire the athletic equipment the store had to offer and even climbed the rock wall.

Hordak and LD both opted for a store that sold more dressy clothes. LD made a beeline for the racks of colorful patterned button-ups. Hordak on the other hand when for the solid-colored button-ups in his usual blues and black with pops of red. LD, try as he may, failed at coercing Hordak into buying something more colorful. After acquiring some dresser sweaters the two sifted through the pants. LD bought multiple colors while Hordak got just plain black. Then Hordak made a quick stop to pick up half a dozen bottles of black eye paint while LD selected various shimmery pigments and colorful paints.

After a while, the six all met back up. Unfortunately, the hour had grown late so they all returned to Dryl after making one quick stop. Despite the varying styles they had picked out they could all agree on one thing: they were thankful they could find their size.

______________________________

Entrapta sat at a desk in her lab, finalizing the last of the paperwork involved with the new immigrants. Like her partner, she hated paperwork, but she knew it was necessary. She was so transfixed on getting it done that she only noticed someone was in her presence until something rough brushed the back of her neck. She looked up to see a pair of glowing green eyes framed with black paint softly gazing at her.

“Hello, Starlight.” Hordak purred, standing to her side, holding something behind his back.

“Hi, Hordak. I like your new outfit, and your eyeliner is back!” Before joining his beloved, Hordak had changed into a white button-up with black dress pants and black leather boots with small heels. Black eyeliner framed his eyes in the same pattern used during the Scorponi rebellion, and small metallic black earrings pierced his ears. He put the top layers of his curly hair in braids of different lengths and widths before tying them all together, leaving the bottom layers to cascade down his back. “Though I doubt it would be good for working in a lab.”

“Thank you, Princess. However, these clothes are for different activities.”

“Such as?” She raised her eyebrows.

“Taking you out for the evening.” Hordak got on one knee and pulled out a bouquet of pink roses, purple heliotropes, and baby breaths.

Entrapta’s eyes lit up, and a wide smile stretched across her face. She flung her arms around Hordak’s neck, kissing the left side of his face.

“You’re too sweet,” she mumbled into his skin.

“So is that a yes?” Hordak turned her body towards him.

“Of course, it is, silly. Where are we going? Wait don’t tell me! I’ll be right back I need to change!” She flung herself toward the nearest vent. “Meet me in the courtyard!”

_______________________

Hordak stood in the middle of the courtyard which had come back to life with people moving back from the war. Hordak fiddled with the bouquet in his hands, patiently waiting for his beloved.

He turned around at the sound of the Crypto Castle doors creaking open. There Entrapta stood wearing a long-sleeved white blouse tucked in a pair of plum high-waisted pants. White leather gloves enveloped her hands, shielding her from irritating textures. Her hair was gathered into a large ponytail and her choppy bangs framed her face. Hordak’s eyes were glued to her as she walked towards him. While she always looked radiant in his eyes, under the cool glow of the moonset she looked like an angel descended from on high. She was beautiful, and he would look at her forever if time allowed.

“Hi, Hordak.”

“Hello, Angel.” Entrapta blushed as Hordak handed her the bouquet. “Shall we be off?”

“Are we walking?”

“I am, but you are not.”

“What do you me-” Entrapta yelped when Hordak suddenly picked her up, her face turned bright pink causing Hordak to chuckle. He carried her out of the courtyard leaving behind a crowd of people whispering to one another.

[its-moopoint]

Spot the lies and imagine what they would have done with a wedding or domestic photo of C&T after seeing what they said and manipped since the day they decided to ship SC.

Anonymous asked:

If Caitriona put one photo of the happy family, she, Tony and the child, it would have put the end point, and part of the fans raised the white flag. But she doesn't !! Why does she not want to close this topic forever?!! 

odessa-2

Or even just a photo of her and Tony doing something domestic...a holiday snap, lounging on the sofa.....Just one photo. Even if its just his sideburns in the background. Nothing. Ever. That is not privacy. It's secrecy and deception. She's posted pics of her mum, dad, siblings, her cat, Sam but somehow Mr shy doesn't make the cut.

nanny-61

When I saw the photograph of Sam comforting Caitriona at her fathers funeral in the front row, it just confirmed everything we have thought from the beginning

nandan11

The only time T shows up in public is during promo.

shoutlandish 

IMO, she (they) have not been pushing the narrative much lately, so let’s avoid upset and let sleeping dogs lie by not challenging the narrative. We know the truth, so there’s no need to ask for proof that will never come.

tatili 

Photos with Cait's husband we have seen many, I mean with her real husband Sam, we are only missing the family photo of the Heughans because with what happened at the funeral the narrative definitely went down the drain.

ready4newyear 

Yep, same with never saying "my husband Tony".  That or the pic as mentioned would help end speculation but it doesn't happen.

outlander169 

The closest I 've seen is the video of the IFTA award she received. She stood up, kissed Tony and thanked him in her speech. I wanted to hurl thinking how must Sam feel with this pushed narrative. AND. She didn't say "husband" Tony. Just Tony.

wildfernflower 

@outlander169 She stood up and gave him a kiss that lasted a split second, and immediately ran onto the stage. That kiss was so quick and weird that it's hard to tell if she really kissed him, or just pretended her lips touched his face. That kiss was for show, not real and sincere, she made it as short and quick as possible and rushed onto the stage with relief. She must have felt uncomfortable pretending so clumsily to be intimate with him, because she never did it again afterwards. If I'm not wrong, she thanked him in her speech but she mentioned his name together with the names of her team members, not as if he was personally important to her.

pippa20191

She could stop it with one photo. And she doesn’t. That says it all to me.

They ask for things they don't want. Whenever they get pictures of Tait they claim that's staged or a manip or they refuse to say it's Tony or they hide the pictures.

When C mentions T as her husband and states Rolando has known her husband since they started dating she's saying Rolando is a whole different separate person from her husband, but they do take this and choose to manipulate to keep their lie.

[septembersghost]

Lol, one time I saw a twitter post that made me think of your blog- here is another (different) video that brought that moment back (youtu.)be/JyW64K6Qcr0 It was because of the Jess & Dean names referenced- you post Dean pics a bit. I realized upon watching part of twitter clip that it was about Rory Gilmore’s Love triangle. (Coincidentally played by the guy who ends up as the brother of Dean Winchester on Supernatural after GG). Also some mention that the mom looks like an older, brunette TS.

bestie. in our many delightful pop culture conversations, i need you to know that, through no fault of your own, this message cut me to the quick (lightheartedly. mostly). i thought about it all day. i ran to @arthurwilde about it. i paced in circles. i lamented. i threw myself prostrate on the ground (figuratively).

you post Dean pics a bit.

i stared at that sentence for hours. i am haunted by it. it's so casual. so irreverent.

*dramatic miette-inspired voice*

a bit. i post. dean pics. a bit? oh i am wounded. i have failed in my duties if this can be addressed in such a calm manner. i have wholly lost my way, my identity. my blog has no path. who even am i? i am utterly destroyed if you think that the "jared played a character named dean on gilmore girls (a show i have watched all the way through multiple times) before he was on supernatural (a show i watched, without fail, through every horror and slight, through many dangers, toils, and snares, from premiere on my birthday september 13, 2005 to finale november 19, 2020) with a brother named dean" isn't like the most basic arcane lore in the arsenal. as if the last three episodes and the mass devastation and fallout that occurred isn't why this entire page exists (i started blogging on here right before the penultimate episode). i post...a whisper of dean? a small dash? a sprinkling? a smidgen of dean? my heart is torn asunder. i'm lost wandering the moors. dean. my dean? core of my blog? light in the dark, raft in the ocean, fire of my soul? dean, whom i love so tremendously, with such an abject and ardent love, that i have been publicly renounced and executed for it in the past. sent anon hate off and on for months. fought bloody battles. i post him. a bit??? dean who is my best friend love of my life visits my dreams real person to me (normal and sane response). lord have mercy. as if the way i loved you, in and of itself, is not me with dean versus me with any other fictional character i love. as if, in fact, a significant portion of her discography isn't simply dean coded to me. yeah. i've been FAR TOO RESTRAINED LATELY, IT WOULD SEEM. SEND HELP.

[ottspot]

My Journey With The Nintendo 3DS… Does It Still Hold Up?

Back in 2021, the Nintendo 3DS turned ten years old. It still boggles my mind that so much time has passed. I remember staying up late playing Mario Kart 7 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D on school nights. It was so much more different than my DS Lite and DSi systems, this was a system with some great console-quality games that I poured hours and hours into.

This post will focus on my story with the Nintendo 3DS system, from getting it for the first time, to the many games I played, to today's gaming environment. Let's go down memory lane and see if it's still a capable system in 2023!

My days with the Nintendo 3DS system unfortunately did not begin on launch day, March 27, 2011. I was so excited for it to get it that I made one out of paper! I asked for it as a present on Easter, for my birthday, but... nothing. Then again, I can see why my parents did not want to fork over $250 for just another DS, even if it was more than that to me at the time. But not even half a year later in July, the price was cut almost in half- to $170. All owners of systems from launch got special NES and Game Boy Advance games as an apology for the quick price cut.

However, that meant that others like me that got it after the price cut never got those games. A shame, but it was never really a big deal in the end. I got my system Christmas of 2011- a Flame Red colored system that came with a physical copy of Super Mario 3D Land. I couldn't find a lot on this bundle over a decade later, but Google results of a defunct Best Buy listing led me to believe that this was only $180, just $10 more than the system alone! Definitely a bargain.

This took quite a while to find, no archives of any webpages or anything... I honestly thought I wouldn't find any price at all.

Not only this, but I also got copies of Mario Kart 7 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D as well (as mentioned before, haha). My 3DS games collection was already off to a great start.

One downside that I soon discovered was that my internet was not new enough to be compatible with the 3DS system. I was unable to connect online on it for over 2 years in my own home!! That meant that I took the thing everywhere I went for that sweet free Wi-Fi goodness. Which brings me to one of the features I LOVED about the system!

StreetPass was something brand new and exclusive to the 3DS. It used a local wireless communication feature to trade certain information with other 3DS systems in the area. This could be user information, weapons, Mii characters, or anything else depending on the game! I always had my system with me and got excited whenever that green light came on. The SpotPass feature was a bit similar, but nowhere near as fun. It allowed you to receive similar things like StreetPass, but also downloaded the latest notifications from Nintendo.

It could also download videos onto the Nintendo Video app. This application had four slots for videos and refreshed weekly. You could view a 3D Kirby video, music videos, Dinosaur Office (rooooar!!), and select Channel Frederator videos (where I watched Bee and Puppycat for the first time). These videos differed between regions I believe, so that's what I experienced here in the United States.

Later in 2012, the Nintendo 3DS XL launched alongside New Super Mario Bros. 2, but I was still here with the original model. I wasn't complaining, though. I never felt like I needed a bigger model, so I just stuck with the one I had. I did happen to get that new Mario game when it came out, though. My mom told me she'd buy it for me if I didn't ever stop running during a 5K race, and I stuck to that. Guess it was a great motivator.

As the years went on, I got more and more games that I continue to love to this day. Kid Icarus Uprising, Pokémon X, Star Fox 64 3D, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Tomodachi Life, The Legend Of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and Majora's Mask 3D. But there's one that I definitely won't forget- Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS.

This was a pre-order present for my birthday. It launched October 3, 2014 while my birthday was one day earlier on the 2nd. We were also all going to be traveling on the 3rd too. So, after school I RAN to my dad's classroom (he was a high school teacher at the time), we left to pick up the game, we got home, and then left for our trip!! And then I unlocked all the fighters that night. It was amazing.

Not much else happened until Christmas of 2015, when I got the New Nintendo 3DS XL. It was a beefed up version of the system I knew, with an extra analog nub, bigger screens, more buttons, and amiibo functionality in the touch screen. I ended up getting two actually- the one in 2015 was a black one, and on Christmas of 2016 I got a family friend's golden Majora's Mask edition of the system. It was the first system I got multiple versions of in the same line.

Afterwards I just kept on playing games on my 3DS, not much else. But then the Nintendo Switch came along in March of 2017, and I was playing the system less and less, until I just played it only a few times a month- and not even that long too. Even after homebrewing the system it's not something I played much.

But of course, as you all know, I bought one more game for the system in late 2022, Fire Emblem Awakening, and I adored it. Then I got to playing a few more of my older games and was surprised with how well they all still played. It was like I was twelve years old again, almost.

It's honestly been really fun replaying some of the games of my younger years. I had really good taste, especially with Kid Icarus Uprising. Man, that was a great game. It saddens me that a lot of these games won't be brought back for the Switch, because I think they deserve another shot on it.

Even so, I enjoy playing on my 3DS whenever I can, and I absolutely think that it holds up today. Find one used, get some games (however you want), and have some fun with it!

Thanks for reading!! Loved revisiting this handheld, and I loved talking about the memories I shared with it.

Next up: What In The World Is Sonic Origins Plus?? My Predictions