#but they are LITERALLY on the other side of the frame

[ponderingmoonlight]

Imagine Gojo and Sukuna fighting over you on the battlefield.

“You already gave me 99 reasons to kill you. But trying so steal my girl…”

Sukuna’s grip around your waist tightens. How did you end up in this situation? Gojo, who apparently came to your rescue and Sukuna…

He’s so close you’re literally able to taste him, the way his arm is wrapped around you completely making your knees go weak. The truth is, you never settled for Gojo. Isn’t he just a flirt, a guy who hooks up with random girls on a regular basis? You never payed that much attention to all the compliments he showered you with, how he always made sure to hold the door for you, to get you something to eat. After all, he’s acting like that towards every woman, right?

Apparently not. The unpromising gleam in his bright blue orbs tells you more than urgently that this is serious. Satoru came here to get you back.

Sukuna, on the other hand…

“Is she your girl, though? Why would someone like (y/n) waste her time with someone like you?”, Sukuna bites back in amusement.

“She chose me”, Satoru clarifies.

“And now give her back.”

Your heart almost beats out of your throat. That look on Satoru’s face, the way Sukuna presses you even tighter against his muscular frame…How are you supposed to collect a single thought when you’re surrounded by the two strongest individuals in this word, especially when you are the reason for their fight?

“Is she?”

“I bet she’d look good by my side as my queen. What do you have to offer?”

“I offer you my fucking fist.”

Satoru takes a step forward. Suddenly his usual so goofy and tender side has vanished into thin air, all that’s left being that cold glare in his eyes and his hands balled into tight fists.

Fuck, this means nothing but trouble. Your mind starts racing back and forth. If they fight right here, they’ll leave an unimaginable trail of chaos behind with no one who’s able to stop them. If you don’t do something right now…

“Stop. Both of you.”

With a swift motion, you free yourself from Sukuna’s grip and stand your ground between them, arms raised in a lousy attempt to stop the fuming men.

“Aren’t both of you old enough to act like grown men? Are you really about to start a fight over a woman?”

“You.”

Your gaze drifts towards Gojo.

“You are nothing but a flirt. We were never serious with each other, why are you calling me ‘your girl’? Maybe start acting a little more stern if that’s what you want.”

“But (y/n)-“

“And you.”

Suddenly your eyes are fixated on Sukuna.

“Are you out of your fucking mind? You almost killed all of my friends with your behaviour and don’t get me started on Yuji. I don’t wanna be the queen to someone who acts so reckless and selfish.”

“Did you…really just say that?”

“And to top it all of: How childish of both of you to fight over me like a piece of meat. I’m a person, I can decide on my own, y’know? Treating me like this definitely turns me off. And now excuse me, I promised to grab a coffee with Choso.”

Without saying another word, you turn on your heels and let both men stand in the rain.

“Did she just…”

“This can’t be happening right now”, Gojo mutters.

“She really left you standing in the rain”, Sukuna comments dryly.

“ME!? You’re talking about yourself”

“She’d never reject me-“

“ME EITHER!”

[fumifooms]

I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after

The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually

Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-

He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.

And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he gets across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt and be on your guard and shit and.

When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings

"Man they really know what you hate huh". Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.

It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmares, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)

"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species

[raayllum]

ALRIGHT, time to talk about the poster in lovely HD.

First things first, I want to talk about these two ladies (?). The upper one closer to the moon looks more like an elf, and is gazing down at the second, closer woman. I've seen people speculate Ziard due to the hair, but none of this usual clothing appendages are there, so I lean towards a new character, and possibly being the human Aaravos had a special connection to. We see what looks like the arches of the Moon Nexus framed behind them, which was the case both when Rayla went through the portal in TTM and when Lujanne used historia viventum to show Callum the way things looked before. Souls of hate and love, maybe?

We see other Moon symbols throughout the posture sure as archangel lunarises, which seek out Moon magic (1x01) and can be used in illusion spells (2x03, 3x09). We also see the enchanted lotuses from 3x03, though for what purpose is unclear (more on that later).

Moving down, we have a fully celestial, quite happy Aaravos. He's in full flourish and clearly using Moon magic for someone, as begetting the moon behind him, though whether he's constructing lotuses or channeling energy into his Key (perhaps making it able to sense Moon magic) is unknown. While the lotuses in 3x03 were occasionally different colours, the deep purple here makes me think of dark magic. If he is channeling his cube, perhaps he's taking moon energy from the lotuses (or moths) surrounding him to put inside.

I don't think I need to scream much further than I already have about the Moon rune glowing on his Key and having it displayed with his usual star symbol (rune cube foreshadowing symbolism my beloved). This bodes well for theories in which 1) Callum goes too far and does something knowingly risky to free the Moon fam for Rayla's sake or 2) does something risky to help Aaravos to protect Rayla's life, each subsequently to being possessed and/or playing into Aaravos' hands. Thank you goodnight.

Then we have the book, which is deeply fascinating. It seems like a very Moon book, the fragments framing it similar to the ones we see on the lotuses and possibly evoking one of the archangel lunaris' flying around. It wouldn't surprise me if the book contains a variant of Deep moon magic of some kind, whatever that would look like. The crescent curved moon is also similar to the symbol we see on Aaravos' poem page for the Midnight Star in show (2x08). I do wonder why each side of the book looks so different though, with no actual visible moon in sight besides the tiny gemstones and the crescent moon, the other side being entirely dark (which, to be fair, is pretty moon-y).

We also sort of but don't quite see Aaravos' famous chest piece, though it is a-glowing. Whether it glowed all the time pre-Fall we just don't know, as the only time we've seen it glow/be filled in is 2x09 when he's channeling magic through Viren, but who knows. It does mean that the cube is even older than his banishment and that if it does hold his chest piece, it was placed after (if it's tangible at all, which has always been one of the biggest questions).

This is perhaps the weirdest thing that I am the most interested in, as alongside his crown and bangles, this is the biggest design difference between Aaravos in-show and out. In show, both in his mirror and even 'pre-Fall' (aka the timeline for the 1x01 shot is probably a lie anyway), Aaravos' hip thingy is a lot more simplistic.

However, Aaravos does have all his flowery (and I mean that literally, it looks like petals) adornment in his concept art.

The fact they have a lotus flower flair to them always felt interesting but ultimately like a coincidence, but perhaps not. Either way as pictured below, it seems like he's either constructing or dismantling the lotuses, which is Eyes Emoji either way.

The most... surely metaphorical / abstract portion of the poster, though, is I'd imagine the very bottom. I hesitate to read into things too literally (one of the S5 posters had Finnegrin's ship being blasted with lightning and Domina watching the waves, and while she featured in the season and played a role in Finnegrin's aims, the scene itself as portrayed did not come fully to fruition) so I'm gonna go with a more symbolic read, just as as disclaimer.

Lastly we have these two figures. I'm assuming the one in white is an elf and betting on young Aaravos or Leola, though it could be someone else connected to the Moon arcanum (the elven daughter who vouched for exiling rather than eliminating humanity?). The red and black shadow figure feels far more sinister (blood and stardust, anyone) but if you lighten the shadows, you get something even more... interesting, shall we say.

Rather than standing up straight, this figure almost seems to swoop down with a draconic like claw and a face that reminds me the most of Sir Sparklepuff's features, honestly, perhaps boasting a similar kind of blood (Viren's) and star (Aaravos) and dark magic (the staff?). It is also clearly moving toward the more humanoid figure on the bottom right, which gives a "corruption is reaching / coming for / offering things to you" sort of vibe.

[cripplecharacters]

Do you have any thoughts on the intersection of disability and sexuality? I made a disabled OC who was designed as a tongue in cheek subversion of the "can't have sexual attraction as a disabled person" tropes-- she's pansexual and something of a disaster queer, by her own admission. Her type is guys with messy hair who are a little bit dorky, fem girls who are sweet and have long hair, and... pretty much a good portion of the cast at some point. But I wanted to get some more opinions, since I (known disabled person) am probably going to write a lot more disabled characters.

Hi!

In my opinion, there's a huge problem with disabled characters being completely desexualized, and it happens a lot. Especially for severely and/or developmentally disabled people. If you're interested in some real-life examples, I can't recommend Crip Camp (2020) enough! There's a fragment specifically about that intersectionality around the 50-minute mark, by Denise Sherer Jacobson.

However, there's also the other side of sexuality and disability, which is the fetishization. We talked about fetishization on this blog before, but it wasn't literal (at least most of the time). There are some specific disabilities that are more affected by this, the prime example being little people - or, people with dwarfism - which often get oversexualized and objectified. Here's a very relevant post about this by @a-little-revolution. You can see this on tumblr too, some tags (#amputee comes to mind) are basically unusable because it's all able-bodied fetishists. When doing your research I'd just urge you to avoid this kind of crowd for your own well-being.

In general, make sure that the narrative doesn't frame her exploring her sexuality as something "taboo" or "freaky". It could be good to have abled characters who are similar to her in that as well!

I think that your perspective as a disabled person will help you avoid many of the problems that could pop up. Remember to give your character(s) agency when it comes to their sexuality and if you decide to have multiple disabled characters, try to give them different views/experiences of it!

I hope this helps! :-)

mod Sasza

[cinnbar-bun]

How I Make Scrapbook Pages! (ft Kishibe Rohan)

This was requested by @rateater69 (so sorry for taking forever to make this), and here it is!

Just a notice, uh, I’m not a professional (lol) nor am I saying you have to do it like this. I will just say that I tend to do things on the fly and that scrapbooking should be messy and fun for you, not some anxiety inducing activity that makes you worry about being “perfect”. Before I began doing it myself, I saw a couple videos online on instagram, you can always check them out to get some inspiration.

With that being said, let’s begin! My “instructions” will be below the cut in a messy and scatterbrained manner as I make a scrapbook for Kishibe Rohan.

First off, you need your supplies! You can always, always, alwaaaaays use whatever random stuff is in your house, but I use a few things consistently.

A notebook (or paper, or whatever material you decide to do this on)

Craft tweezers, usually on the thinner with a curved edge.

That spatula thingy to smooth the edges and make sure there are no bumps

Double sided tape roller (truly one of the best things out there)

Scissors, obviously!

This is what I use but hey man, glue, regular tape, your own hand, and washi tape will get the job done just fine.

Now, I’m a recovering stationary hoarder (hence why I decided to make these pages so I can actually USE my things) so I have plenty of this stuff laying around. You can find this stuff easy on places like Amazon, Aliexpress, Five Below, your local craft stores, etc.- up to you where you get them you can find random stickers anywhere.

So the character I chose to make this page on is none other than my beloved Rohannie 💖 the brainworms got me so why not let it out with this.

I don’t have any stickers of him available so the next thing I do is print out photos I like and want to use. I limit it usually to 2-3 pics of varying size because my notebook is smaller.

(Yes the shirtless and wet Rohan pic was so necessary)

I begin by cutting them out and then playing around with where I think I’d want them. It’s not really an exact science or anything I just look and see how I feel.

I really wanted to incorporate the “book” part of Rohan’s abilities into this page and was considering using this old vintage letter sticker, BUT THEN I HAD A BRAIN BLAST.

I had this old freaking book lying around my room with nothing to do, so what better way than to put it in?

I was feeling ~romantical~ and decided to choose Shakespeare Sonnet 130 to go in it.

Skipping a few boring steps along, boom, I cut the page, lay out the photos of him, and some other stickers that catch my fancy. I’m vibing with the layout so I continue!

I first added another sticker underneath the painting and decided that I was pretty cool with how it looked.

Then I put a bit of washi tape there and then used the double sided tape to tape the book page to my notebook.

Okay accidentally missed a few steps but I chose some washi tape that intrigued me and smacked them on the page. Theres literally no rhyme or reason I just chose them in that way because it’s fun. I liked the circular ones for a bit more color and to match with the funky background of that smaller Rohan pic.

I then laid the Rohan photo overtop with the double sided tape, then added a small stamp sticker!

Okay I missed a couple steps again but I laid the second picture, placing it down with the washi tape I chose. I then added a fun line of words that I felt matched him.

I put the frame around the shirtless Rohan pic (memorialized now in my notebook <3) and that made me "done" with the main pieces I had. I felt there was a lot of empty space so I chose to add a (what a coincidence-) a Shakespeare quote sticker and another stamp to finish it off.

This is the final product and I'm pretty proud of how it turned out! Again, scrapbooking is not something I go into fully with a plan, it's just something I 'feel' then 'do'. You may find different materials or ways to do this, and hey, whatever makes you happy and makes it easier for you is best practice. And since most of these are stickers and washi tape, you can easily peel them off if you make a mistake (which I did even in this page).

That's really all my 'instructions' on how I do this, but if you have any other questions, please feel free to ask!

[lover-of-mine]

Buck, Eddie and The lightning mirroring the well.

[remitro]

made this in one day possessed by autism and otherworldly motivation . i don’t even make animatics man what the hell cbeeduo is just that strong

[waywardsalt]

i think elden ring will always been my favorite game in terms of environment. every area is so impressive, even the copy-paste stuff manages to be impressive with atmosphere, and the amount of just. stunning-looking locations is wild especially with how natural even the most amazing looking shot you can find is.

just the fact that you unavoidably see this when you walk into leyndell is incredible. one of my favorite environment views in all of the games ive ever played

[ohtendril]

two of you. always in sync

[putonmyfavoriteshow]

I just rewatched a bunch of Supercorp fanvids and now my brain is rotting so hard from dormant feelings rising. I forgot how much they owned my heart. How did they inadvertently create the most heart-shattering, beautiful, romantic storyline featuring actors with the most palpable on screen chemistry I- 😭

[raayllum]

EXCUSE ME!!!

the way i screamed upon seeing the new header image up on your page 😭 ARE YOU TRYING TO HURT US???

you fucking know what you're doing dragons 😭

Honestly it's mostly a celebration bc at this point basically every piece of cube foreshadowing has already come full circle

"This is the game room. Cube should be in there." (1x04) → the arc 1 game motif that was mostly about said cube being switched to being Aaravos' most prominent motif next to light and dark

"It's a glow toy!" (1x05) → literally glows completely in the 4x04/5x08 pawn intros

"You found it?" + ocean rune on display (1x04) → the prison literally being underwater in s5

"You wait here, one minute, two minutes. However long it takes, I'll go find a key!" (1x04) → "It is hidden in a box of keys because it is known as the Key of Aaravos" (2x06)

"He said it was a key, but a key to what?" [Rayla walks out] "Are you practicing magic or are you losing to Bait at a game of rolly-cubes?" → Rayla being literally exchanged for Bait as bait in 5x08, Callum using two types of magic to save her, even if he knows by doing dark magic he's losing whatever game Aaravos is playing

EXCEPT FOR

*Rayla yanks the star and moon runes prominently into the frame before saying* "This doesn't end well for you" right after Callum was looking at the Star rune and then decided to 'mess' with the moon side of things

and the infamous "It's a toy, a piece from a children's game. I hope it was worth it to you, putting everyone's lives in danger" from 1x04 that has haunted me ever since

Like there are other shots/implications that ruin my life every time (the cube flipping from star and moon in 4x01, it being on Rayla's goddamn shoulder when she comes back, the book 2 novelization's "the rune cube Rayla had rescued [...] maybe now Rayla would listen to him, and he could figure out how to use the mysterious cube" like just kill me) but like. dialogue in show for now? this doesn't end well for you has been on repeat in my head since 2020, it's gonna be Glorious

[gammija]

i love s4, and im enjoying listening to it with the magaday, but i forgot it would also lead to the worst thing: seeing people interpret media differently than me on the internet OTL

[waitingforsecretsouls]

Catching up on Tower of God, and all these theories about how obviously Zahard is the one who did something to Traumerei’s memories and that’s the only reason he could possibly be loyal to him, and as soon as Bam or Gustang or whatever gives him back his memories he’s immediately gonna turn on Zahard are reeeaally weird to me, and diminishing to both Zahard and Traumerei as characters. 

Everything we’be been shown about Traumerei so far paints him as a huge cunt, by choice, who gets off on the suffering of others (which is why he’s a favourite, of course <3 ). When he’s not napping or dead inside he’s short-tempered, capricious and cruel.  A feature not a bug, if you will. While it’s true that we haven’t been shown the origin of his memory-and-emotion-discarding habit we have been shown occasions where he proactively chooses that course of action by himself-in the Yasratcha flashback, where he returned from the Nest to feed some more to Leviathan before dealing with Nen Nen and Wang Wang, and sometime after the incident, if you go by his distorted recollection of the event to Yasratcha. We know from Leviathan that Traumerei is the one who created him and kept feeding ‘filthy’ memories and emotions to him, in quite the amount from what it sounds like. These memories, going by what we know so far, would contain Traumerei at his worst, such as his punishment of Wang Wang, Nen Nen and Yasratcha for example, and likely be coloured by resentment and hatred rather than regret and sorrow (something soldified by Leviathans demeanour, imo) (meaning the current Traumerei is the ‘sanitized’ version).

That aside, how exactly would Zahard have found a way to force Traumerei to cut unwanted memories and emotions out of himself in a way that seems distinctly Traumerei (involving the creation of a Shinheu)? This is not the Hidden Floor, where they were simple data to manipulate and erase (without ill effects to their real/outside selves)! Why would Traumerei have kept up that coping mechanism over the millenia, if it was something forced upon him by Zahard? Why exactly would Zahard himself inquire after Traumerei’s memories, if a key piece of Traumerei’s loyalty to him was their erasure? Zahard himself is the one who brings them up in the first place! What seems like a realtively recent problem to boot, and in a way that seems more eager that he remember and out of worry for an old friend and comrade (’By the way, what kind of nightmares have you been having lately? Do you still not remember?’), (at the end of their strategy meeting, after the ‘business talk’ is already finished) than as some sort of insidious check-up to make sure that he doesn’t remember something from tens of thousands of years ago. It honestly feels like people projecting their dislike of Zahard onto Traumerei, when everything we’ve ever heard about him and are ever shown about him shows him as an ‘enthusiastic’ follower of Zahard and having an absolutely insane treshold of what counts as genuine loyalty. Heck, going by everything about him, it’s more likely that even if he had harboured resentment against Zahard, he would erase it himself to uphold the standard of loyalty he preaches!

In fact, I’d go so far as to say, in view of the Yasratcha flashback and obvious mirroring between him and Traumerei, that it’s far likelier that Traumerei came up with some weird revenge scheme as punishment for ‘abandoning’ him rather than simply being yoinked along by Zahard in something, and that, if he erased his memories because he found them unpleasant to deal with, it was not due to guilt or sorrow but anger and resentment (as we eg. see him exhibit in the flashback upon returning from a trip to the Nest, where he clearly has some leftover frustration).

A lot of fanon seems to view Traumerei as former emotionally softie of the group, who was a poor little meow-meow before he experienced a deep betrayal that emotionally hardened him. While I’m ready to concurr with the latter (and the general fact that the Great Warriors devolved into worse personalities with time) I’d like to point to the examples of what Traumerei perceives as ’betrayals’ in the story, and whether they seem reasonable and justified to feel betrayed by in the first place, or deserving of ‘punishment’, and then reflect upon the likelihood of Traumereis formative betrayal (assuming there is one, definitive one, or that it even involves the Great Warriors) being a cut and dry affair.

As for painting Zahard as the instigator of his unpleasant personality, it reflects an unwillingness to let people other than him be fucked up even though we already know plenty of other family leaders who are, as well as lack of consideration that Zahard might care about some people, like his oldest comrades, and they care about him in turn. Zahard confiding in Traumerei with regards to his views and plans in the first place, Traumerei going above and beyond his assignment to try to turn Bam against Gustang if he proves useful, for example. ‘But the order concering the Poe Bideau family!’- Gustang is the one who stirs the pot in the first place, the one who stole an item whose sole purpose is to defeat Zahard, the one who basically declared if not war certainly conflict, and let it be known that it’s not like Zahard put out a hit on Gustang (which would arguable be pointless, but we do know people as powerful as Eurasia Enne Zahard are capable of getting imprisoned) but merely his family, Gustang’s major instrument for affecting the politics of the Tower.

As of now it seems far more plausible to me for whatever leftover memories that are haunting Traumerei as nightmares to be something done by him instead of to him.

I think that it’s been set up that Traumerei is gonna remember something at the least, and likely something big (maybe eventually prodded by Bam, whom Leviathan told of at least some memories fed to him), but when he does it’s not gonna lead to a sudden heel-turn and alliance, problem solved, but instead a Traumerei actually out for blood, instead of bored and dead inside (anyone remember Bam’s refusal to let Leviathan go free bc ‘if I let it out [...] I’d be committing a sin against the world’ (TOG #531)? That Shinheu formed out of all of Traumerei’s most negative memories and emotions he discarded? That would presumably bubble back up inside Traumerei himself when he remembers?)

To close with a Maschenny quote that summarizes my hopes for Traumerei:

“Has it really disappeared now? That rage of yours? [...] Even if you say that rage has hardened and sunk in your mind, I don’t understand how it could just fly away in the wind like that. It gets more intense and clings to you even more firmly as time passes and you recall those memories. That’s the kind of emotion that rage is. And as long as that rage lives-war can break out at any time.”

-Khun Maschenny Zahard, Tower of God #390

[chirpsythismorning]

(7/5)

Will does not (7/5)…

What have you done?

I’m missing collarbones, not eyes (12)

Does anybody know the dead dude’s name? (7/5)

What have you done?

[jennycalendar]

help me im a beauty and the beasts fan on top of being a dead man’s party fan. very worried about returning to s3 and having more unhinged takes

[honestlyvan]

In Xenoblade 3 Ouroboros can obtain one another's skills even outside their direct partner. Why do you think this is and do you think it has implications beyond that? Like for example, all of Ouroboros are mentally connected

That's a really good question. Off the top of my head, I can't actually remember any time outside of the cutscene that introduces the gameplay concept where they would use each other's skills in scripted scenes, and the next time the concept shows up is in the City to illustrate that it's not the "being Ouroboros" part that really makes them different, it's the "being free from a Flame Clock" part.

Honestly I kinda just took it as a functional metaphor -- it's meant to illustrate the way having that artificial shackle removed allows people to better take influences from their surroundings and grow in complexity. Exchanging classes is just where it starts, as a natural outgrowth of them already living in each other's heads. The way the classes start spreading, too, with someone in the gang learning a lesson and then that lesson propagating inside the group. Every class is a different sort of realisation, which the fact that the class inheritor is not always the best user of that class really demonstrate -- some lessons are more impactful for some people, even if they take longer to set in.

I also feel like Bladelore and consequently class are rigid as a more of a function of culture than the magic system. I haven't really posted about this outside of DW, but I think Keves has a technical complexity ceiling in the form of power frame maintenance that is a functional cap on how any given person's Blade can change over their lifetime, and Agnus has a martial culture that discourages individualism and tall poppy behaviour that functionally does the same. The kingdoms have anti-growth mindset imposed from without, and I feel like once removed from a Flame Clock, it's entirely plausible that the Heroes start picking up skills from each other and the Ouroboros, too.

The real mystery to me is how Irises facilitate this process, tbh, and that's mostly because we don't yet know how Irises interface with the Flame Clocks and Blades. We know Moebius use the kindoms' Irises heavily, but we don't know they were created by Moebius or if they're a part of the way Origin functions -- perhaps they're needed to inteface the body with the soul still stored in Origin, and becoming Ouroboros releases limiters placed on that process as a way to limit the imagination.