#but this isn't about that either necessarily. its just. i want to keep this somewhere bc i feel i can't tell anyone

[lovelornnobodyknows]

.

[aesethewitch]

Hello!

I've been reading some of your kofi posts on spirits, and since you seem quite knowledgeable on the topic I have a question for you:)

Do you know of any fast ways to check for a spirit and get them to (if they want) move with you someplace else?

Bit of backstory: There was a spirit in our old house (pretty sure she was a house spirit) and I'd like to see if she's still there and if she is, to maybe get her to move with me back home. It was a while ago now, so I'm not sure if she even would anymore, but I "fed" her all the time as a kid and then later would get her little gifts. Thing is, one of the people living there is absolute trash so I'd like to keep my visits to a minimum. Could I ask her to move without being there somehow, so I just need to go and pick her up? I've heard of the method to ask and leave a box overnight when moving, but I can't really do that since I can only come for max 30min and very rarely:/

Hope it's okay to ask you this, otherwise feel free to ignore!

Hello! (:

I do know various ways to both check for a particular spirit's presence and to invite them along with you -- the thirty minute time limit is definitely a challenge. Unless you already have a set of signs or are able to make instant, psychic contact with spirits, it'll likely be tough to do both of those things within such a short period of time.

However! It isn't totally impossible. What I would do is bank on the spirit being there, creating a vessel in advance, bringing it with you, and working to make contact while you're there either passively or actively -- both to see if you can reach it and to invite it into the vessel.

Since you're under a time crunch, the easiest way to do this is going to be creating a temporary spirit house ahead of time to bring with you. It can really be anything -- a jar, a bowl, a clay doll, a piece of jewelry, a photo, anything at all. It's smart to choose something you think the spirit would be attracted to. This post and this post by @windvexer are excellent 101 guides for creating a spirit house/vessel and inviting spirits into them! You can either make a strictly temporary one for easy transport or make one that'll be the spirit's permanent home, whichever you prefer.

In particular, I would put something in the vessel to attract the spirit and convince it to enter/come home with you. Placing a message inside stating your goal might also be a good idea.

Prepare an area in your home for the vessel to sit. Again, if it's temporary, you won't necessarily have to keep it around forever. But either way, it's important to put it somewhere it won't really be disturbed or have to be moved around constantly. Once the spirit has officially moved in, you can make adjustments as needed or as requested by the spirit.

Bring the vessel with you, along with a coin of some sort. A die will also work if you can't find a coin. This is going to be your simple method of communication while at the house.

Essentially, what you'll want to do is:

If possible, set the vessel out so that it can be seen/accessed by the spirit. If not possible, find an opportunity to let the spirit know that the vessel exists. (If you're certain that you aren't going to be able to let the spirit know about the vessel, verbally or otherwise, add energy to the vessel ahead of time to make it welcoming. Like a lighthouse or a beacon, designed to draw the spirit's attention.)

While you allow the vessel to do its work, begin the process of checking for the spirit. You'll do this by asking yes/no questions and flipping the coin (or rolling the die). Make it clear that heads is yes, tails is no (or evens/odds are yes/no).

Keep your senses open. If you're able to sense energy, try to recall what that spirit felt like all those years ago. Some spirits prefer particular rooms or areas in a house; you may have to check multiple. If you feel the spirit at any point, pause to ask a few questions -- the standard "Are you here?" but also "Would you like to come home with me?" or "Do you remember me?" would also be solid questions to ask.

Depending on the answers/responses you get, the spirit may decline to come with you. However, just because you get no direct answer doesn't mean that the spirit hasn't agreed!

Once you arrive home, place the vessel in the prepared location. Lay down whatever house rules you want to have in place, including where and when the spirit is welcome to roam. Give a little offering as a welcome gift for good measure. (I like to do biscuits, coffee, and a little candle, personally.)

Check to ensure the spirit has actually followed you home. You can use your other spirit communication methods now that you're without a time crunch. (Sorry for the ko-fi link, I'm just. not finding the tumblr version of that post jhfksdfgjdfg) Remember that you might not get a clear response right away.

If you're 100% sure the spirit hasn't followed you home, you can try again with a different vessel or approach. It's possible the spirit didn't get the memo or just didn't like the house you offered up, but it's also possible that it'd rather stay where it is.

If you perform any kind of astral travel, you might be able to reach out directly to talk about the move ahead of time. And you may be able to communicate at long range, but success varies from spirit to spirit. It really depends on the Type of spirit you're dealing with.

In my experience, I've had the best success making contact in the place the spirit is Most Present. For example, a Spirit Of Place is easiest to contact At That Place; a guardian of a person is easiest to contact when in that person's presence; deities are easiest to contact at an altar dedicated to them or in presence of their devotee; etc., etc., etc.

Hopefully this helps!! Good luck with your spirit (:

[eluxcastar]

*Nudges you* May we have Papa Pierro doing Papa Pierro things part three? 🥺

Even more Papa Pierro doing even more Papa Pierro things

── ୨୧：pierro & reader

୨୧﹑synopsis :: baby is a little older now (and still sufficiently causing trouble) but tbh Pierro loves that gremlin

୨୧﹑content :: gn reader, child reader, possible mild child endangerment (it's natural)

୨୧﹑words :: 912

listen there's only so much I can do for child reader before I age them up and we're on part FOUR of Pierro papaing I have got to age baby up and I'm sorry but it must be done. not too much they're still not an adult but they're not quite so baby anymore think like thirteen or fourteen now

when I said I would post Tuesday this isn't the Tuesday I meant, but, well, there's a reason I chose family fluff. I'm also probably gonna make a masterpost for these cause I can't be bothered to link these all in every post, I'll update the link as soon as I make it

all papa pierro posts

A little older and a lot more independent, you tend to spend a little less time around your beloved Papa, now having several responsibilities of your own and an ever-busy Father doing his best to provide for you but having dedicated so much time to keeping you safe in your early childhood you have to cut him a little slack. That's not to say he doesn't keep you safe now; he regularly finds himself making mental checklists for you before you go out, all of which are some of the most outlandish things you've heard possibly going wrong.

Some things make sense, like remembering to wear your coat when you go out, but other things not so much.

He's still using his old scare tactics too, but thankfully you definitely don't doubt that Dottore would be more than glad to amputate your fingers and toes for you to do precisely as you're told the second that leaves his mouth. Don't go into his lab under any circumstances is also still quite common to hear.

Now that you've got a little more sense to you, Pierro allows you to wander as you please and see who you see fit, though he doesn't necessarily enjoy the things you get your hands on as a result of doing so. Each time you stick your nose somewhere you know you shouldn't be, obviously endangering yourself, you receive a harsh scolding for your antics the second he finds out, and he always finds out.

He won't be entertaining a single one of your thoughts about 'when' you join the Fatui, insisting that you will, in fact, not be doing so, for as loyal as he may be to the Tsaritsa, he was not bound by any deal to her to give up his firstborn child to her like a horror of mythic folklore and, as a result, will not be doing so. As his only child, you can forget about joining the Fatui as it's far too dangerous, and there are plenty of ways for you to be helpful without being directly involved if you truly wish.

That's such a horrifying thought that he didn't even half-heartedly encourage it when you were younger.

Pierro will pretend not to notice that you sneak out to persuade Tartaglia - who easily turns to mush at your request - to teach you something of the many weapons he has learned, just as long as you don't get hurt in the process. Thankfully, you picked a kinder teacher, as he wouldn't want you to think you should try to learn from Capitano or Arlecchino, whose ideas of teaching are far too hands-on for you to handle.

The most he intervenes is asking Columbina, of all people, to keep an eye on you in these times, as he knows that, inevitably, you'll find your way to her in pursuit of what you really want - something which even Childe cannot teach you - the skills required of a mage. Admittedly, it's not her most substantial hand either, but in the obvious absence of your own Father as an immediate candidate, she will at least provide you with the basics. He will only teach you what he wants you to know when you come to him.

Khaenri'ah had its own unique ways of magic, all of which you should know, being descended from the place. It's important to him that even if he won't allow you to do the one thing he's tried to get you to shut up about for years now and which Pierro absolutely has the power to stop you from doing, he at least imparts the very thing you would be using in that situation just in case you manage to get around him. Knowing how much of your life you've spent doing that, he has no doubt that at some point in your adulthood, you'll double-cross him and join the Fatui anyway. Pierro is simply lying to himself that you won't.

However, teaching you magic is a way of bonding with you. No one else in your life can, so he takes up upon himself to make sure that you learn from him, as he wants you to know as much about your homeland as possible. If not for the fact it had been destroyed, you would have grown up there, but in its absence, Pierro is raising you as something of a fish out of water. Many things left to the Gods were not commonplace in Khaenri'ah, so even though you seem to need to understand their importance, he teaches you much about creating life through alchemy. However, you can't do it yourself, nor does he particularly want you to.

It's too slow for your liking, but as far as you know, your only other option is to ask Dottore, who created his segments that way, or Scaramouche, who was created that way. One of those choices doesn't know or discuss the details of his creation with nosey little kids, and the other will get you in trouble with just about everyone involved.

You just have to accept that you must be patient - probably a part of your lesson - and wait for your Father to get to the exciting things you want.

You're still very set on joining the Fatui even with the bit of leniency he allows you and his most incredible efforts will not shut you up, even if you pretend they will.

[littlesparklight]

Was the Myth of Ganymede invented to justify pederasty?

No matter what Plato tries to claim in the Laws 636c about how the Cretans definitely invented it exactly because of that reason... That's just not something we can know haha.

Like, trying to claim we know the reason any given myth at all was "invented" is kind of ridiculous in general!

When it comes to the Ganymede myth, our oldest surviving version is in the Iliad. Which, as any academic will tell you, doesn't have any overt sexual dimension. They usually like to assert that this means that in the Iliad's time of formation, Ganymede's abduction didn't have any sexual/pederastic dimension yet. (In the Iliad, it isn't even Zeus himself/alone to takes Ganymede, but "all the gods".)

Which might very well be true! In which case a sexual/pederastic dimension was added sometime maybe after somewhere 700 BC.

However, I'd also like to point out that the Iliad likes to angle quite a lot of its myths in various ways, and doesn't necessarily tell us everything (it especially likes to strip out as much of the fantastic as it can, even with still having the gods as characters and actors). So, I don't think that necessarily means we could categorically say there might not have been any sexual (and thus pederastic) angle to the Ganymede myth at this point.

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (probably at least Archaic in date) jumps to having Zeus be the agent who takes Ganymede (but again, all the gods are delighting in his presence!). I've still read academics wanting to say there is yet no sexual dimension here. Perhaps there isn't. But I'm not sure I (personal, unprofessional opinion as it is lol) would agree, considering the context Ganymede and Zeus is being brought up, both in terms of the hymn itself dealing with a sexual relationship, and the company it keeps (Eos-Tithonos).

I think at best one might be able to say that if Ganymede's myth didn't have a sexual dimension between him and Zeus "from the start" (whenever that would be, whether or not formal pederasty as such or something similar was a thing yet), then the sexual dimension might have been added in response to (changing) social developments, that is, pederasty.

But, we don't know. We can't know. And either way I don't think it was in any way invented to justify such a thing. At most, it could be reflecting it.

(Especially since formal paiderasteia is something very specific and the myth of Ganymede probably/definitely is older than said formal institution, sexual dimensions or no, depending on how old one would consider the formal institution to be.)

[alex51324]

Very important & informative article about developments in the Middle East peace process.

The key takeaway is that Saudi Arabia is close to being ready to offer Israel something they've wanted for a long time--normalization of relations between the two countries--in return for "meaningful steps toward a Palestinian state."

If you're in the US and thinking about the November elections, a key takeaway here is that Biden's strategy of trying to stay on Netanyahu's good side is still yielding some progress.

And it's absolutely vital to remember that it is a strategy: you can disagree about whether it's the right strategy, but he isn't just doing nothing. Biden has a lot of experience in middle-east diplomacy, and he thinks he'll get more results with soft power than with saber-rattling. I frequently have my doubts, but I certainly know a great deal less about it than he does, and every so often something like this story filters up into public knowledge, and shows that he is getting somewhere and isn't necessarily crazy to remain committed to this strategy--even though saber-rattling would get him some cheap publicity.

For everyone in general, who is trying to keep up with this topic, in all its complexity, what's under discussion here is the two-state solution, which both international experts and Palestinians who are not extremists generally agree is the most realistic path to peace.

"From the river to the sea" is not going to happen--it just isn't; there are whole books about how and why it isn't going to happen--but there could be an internationally-recognized country of Palestine, probably small, but completely separate from Israel. The US would presumably be involved, with some kind of agreement to enforce the agreed-upon borders: that is, if either country tries to grab more territory, the US will take the other one's side.

The two-state solution has seemed close before; what usually happens is that extremists on one side or another throw a fit and derail the process. With the US and Saudi Arabia involved, there are actually four separate countries whose extremists might decide that peace in the middle east would be bad for their personal brand--so, watch for that to happen, and pay close attention to who started it, if it does.

[goodluckclove]

I'm writing a new thing!! I don't really need advice I'm just excited about starting it. They're gay and one of them's a shapeshifter the other has a culturally engrained fear of shapeshifters given that as defenders of the wilderness/ basically very local gods they tend to fuck up anyone who's in their space. I also dong know how to start books which is an issue my beginnings are always weak. How do I start a book. Do I describe the sheep? He's a shepherd btw which I think is fun because the shapeshifter often takes the form of a wolf or coyote. It's also set in a relatively high fantasy setting (no elves and shit just weird magic and a different landscape) that vaguely corresponds to the late 17 or 1800s (they've got some guns i think, they ride horses and trains might exist). How do I start a book. What do I start with. Where do I start. There's no real solid beginning I've got in mind, just a dude trying to take his sheep over a large area on his own. Help please I do actually need advice

Well you see, Ghostie, everyone knows that the first sentence of a novel is the most important part of the entire story. It has to contain the main character's name - in fact, it has to contain the names of every character in your cast - and it has to provoke intrigue and resolve it in a satisfying way without being a too long and jesus christ i can no longer keep up this bit.

I'm annoyed by people who say you need to have a super profound first line. I mean, they're good when they happen. If you can think of one that's great. But if you can't you aren't fucked right off the gate. If your first line isn't something people will get calligraphed onto canvases to hang on the walls of their boring houses (Is this a thing? Did I just make up a type of person to hate?), it doesn't mean your beginning won't be good.

You want to hook the reader. That's what all the guides say, right? They describe a person picking your book off the proverbial shelf and leafing through the first page to see if it's something they'd be interested in. That's solid, but then some go on to make it seem like you have maybe ten words before they either buy the book or toss it across the room in disgust. I'm not saying this is never true. I'm just saying that, personally, that type of person is probably not someone who'd be interested in me or my stories to begin with.

Usually when I'm considering a new book I'll skim the first few pages and then a bit throughout the middle, just to see if I like the prose. I do not put that much weight in the beginning, but it's always a good sign when the general scene feels purposeful. It doesn't have to be a car chase/diamond heist/sex scene/murder. I read someone somewhere saying that you have to start with something exciting and it took like an hour off my life I was so angry.

Here's one out of a billion angles to tackle this puzzle from - where does the story start for you? What is the inciting incident to the inciting incident? This feels like something easy to answer, but oftentimes what you come up with might feel a little inconsequential.

A beginning scene - like, for instance, a prologue centered around only sheep and coyotes - does not necessarily sound interesting on its own. But in a world where shapeshifters usually take on those forms it both sets up the world and establishes a mood. You can play with how much information you give people in the world.

Using my book as an example because I've been watching my editor @hoard-sweet-hoard react to it in real time, at one point he commented that he didn't know if the Eddie in my initial prologue is the same guy as the Edgar in Chapter One. And I was like yeah man that's the whole goddamned point of the book you tiny little king of fools. I wasn't at all that mean. I made a really good sandwich for dinner so I'm feeling extra rowdy. But the point is that I focused less on the action and more on the feeling it would create in the reader.

With that mindset the action doesn't really matter. If it's mundane it can be comforting, or tiring, or numbing, or eerie, or unnerving. If it's far removed from the world we know it can be fantastical and whimsical and sexy, maybe? I don't know. God that sandwich was good. I'm getting really into bagels lately.

Also, from purely the perspective of a writer, you might think of a better beginning midway into the draft. So you can also go back and make a weak start much stronger. You can skip the beginning entirely if it's really fucking with your life. Come back to it later. Who will stop you? Me? I don't even know how to find you. And if I did, you could easily kill me. You have that vibe and I am very clumsy.

Also also start posting excerpts when you get going because that shit sounds rad as fuck.

My bagel had egg and bacon and a hash brown patty and caramelized onion. Man has done a lot of sin, but it is almost neutralized by the insight we once had to caramelize onions. They have a unique flavor that I can only describe as eating the house of a beloved grandmother? Or maybe just the way that house makes you feel?

Yum.

[agent-troi]

If you wanted to write a Conduit fic, I would read it sooooo fast! ("Don't let your dreams just be dreams. DO IT.") ;)))))))

Lol I've actually been writing it in my head ever since l made that first post and here it is! Ask and ye shall receive🤗

Faith, Hope, and Love

Word count: 926 | Rating: Gen | AO3 link | @today-in-fic

Summary: Mulder looks for answers in Scully's faith; a continuation of the scene at the end of Conduit and a window into Mulder's thoughts.

----------

Contrary to the persona he chose to exhibit, belief did not come easily to Fox Mulder. He had never had much faith in faith; after all, if prayer worked, Samantha would have long since been returned to him. His belief that the truth was out there was not so much a certainty as it was a desperate plea for order in the universe; the heart-wrenching need to know that somewhere, anywhere, there was an answer to the questions that tormented him.

He didn’t know quite what to make of Scully’s worldview. She claimed to put her faith in science and that the answers to life’s mysteries were not to be found in the stars, but rather in books, logic, and reason; and yet she wore that little cross around her neck, almost small enough to miss if you weren’t looking for it, but its presence alone spoke volumes.

He had studied his new partner extensively before she even walked into the office, so he knew she had gone to Catholic school. Of course, the fact that one attended Catholic school didn’t necessarily mean they had faith themselves; it just meant their parents did, and they wanted their children to have the same. Scully’s remarkable achievements in the sciences since leaving home should have been a repudiation of her faith-based upbringing.

And yet, she still wore that damn little cross. There must be some reason, something it gives her that her science doesn’t.

So now here he was, sitting in the pew staring at a worn, faded photograph of Samantha, wondering why a building that was designed to make you feel like you were in the presence of some awesome, benevolent force made him feel so small and alone.

“Mulder?”

Scully’s voice distracted him from wallowing in his misery. He looked up to see his redheaded partner standing at the entrance to his pew. She looked at him curiously. “What are you doing here?”

Mulder shrugged and gestured vaguely at their surroundings. “Trying to understand what you get out of all this.” He frowned. “How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t.” Scully entered the pew and sat down next to him. “I was thinking about you and Samantha, and I decided to come here and light a candle for her.”

She rested a comforting hand on his shoulder and they sat together in silence for a long moment. They bowed their heads; Scully in heartfelt prayer, Mulder in an earnest yet ultimately fruitless effort to seek solace in a faith that wasn’t his.

At length Scully spoke again. “I don’t know if aliens had anything to do with it, but something happened to your sister. Someone knows what happened to her, and the answer is out there somewhere. We just have to figure out where to look.”

“We?” Mulder snorted. “This isn't your quest, it’s mine. You don’t have to follow me down this rabbit hole.”

“Yes, I do, Mulder.” Scully insisted. “I’m your partner.” 

She removed her hand from his shoulder to take his hand in hers and squeeze it gently. “You’re not alone, Mulder. Try to remember that.”

Tears pricked at Mulder’s eyes. “You– you don’t make any sense,” he stammered, as he tried to keep his voice from breaking. “You think I’m crazy, just like everyone else does, but you’re here. With me. Why?”

Scully smiled. “I can’t explain it either. But some things don’t have to be explained. Some things just are.”

“What, like God?”

“Something like that, yes.” Scully regarded him curiously. “I take it God is the one thing you don’t believe in?”

Mulder shrugged. “Let’s just say my life hasn’t given me much reason to believe there is one.” His gaze turned inward. “My family was Jewish although we didn’t practice, but after Samantha disappeared plenty of people in the neighborhood offered to pray for her. At first I spent most of my time making posters with her face on them and hanging them up around the island, but after a while I got desperate enough to join some of those prayers.” 

He clenched his knuckles, crinkling the photograph slightly. “They turned out to be even less helpful than the posters. It was all just meaningless platitudes, well-intentioned pleas made to a higher being who probably didn’t even exist, let alone if he was even listening.”

He snorted again, but it came out as a sniffle. “There was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could do, either when it happened or afterwards. I thought the almighty, all-powerful God was supposed to help the helpless?”

Scully shuffled closer to wrap her arms around Mulder’s shoulders and pull him a little closer. “My faith in God hasn’t always been absolute, Mulder. I’ve seen evil, real evil, in the world, and I’ve often wondered how He can allow it to exist. But I have to believe that for all of the evil that’s out there, the good is stronger. You could say… I want to believe.” She chuckled, and Mulder’s lips twitched, although he didn’t smile. “Don’t give up hope, Mulder. The truth is out there, and we’re going to find it. Together.”

Mulder allowed his head to fall against Scully’s shoulder as she spoke, somehow finding more comfort in her words than he had in his meager attempts at prayer. 

He and Scully might take drastically different approaches, but ultimately they shared the same goal. 

Together, they would find the truth, even if all they had was faith and hope.

I– we– will find you, Samantha, he vowed. I promise.

----------

“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

–1 Corinthians 13

[aspiringsophrosyne]

The Legend of Vox Machina: Season One and Two Post Mortem

So, season 1 and 2 of The Legend of Vox Machina are now out.

Let's do a post mortem on them.

One caveat: the CRew has said in interviews and behind the scenes videos that they wanted to take future events into account when writing early seasons. This means some things in the first twenty-four episodes aren't meant to pay off until later, or won't make sense except in hindsight. Especially if the story's significantly changed from the stream.

However, keeping that in mind, I think we can still look at what the episodes we've seen so far have done right and wrong on their own.

So, let's get to it!!

Episodes 1-2: The Terror of Tal'dorei

Given that the kickstarter for this series was only meant to pay for a thirty minute special that grew to an hour long season opening, I had certain expectations going in.

Basically, pilot energy.

And I was not disappointed. That isn't necessarily bad, but you could detect an extra hard push in this series' beginning. A push to prove itself, establish that this was a capital 'A' adult animation, and that it had somewhere to go from season one. Again not bad....except that some of that energy may have overstayed its welcome at this point.

But we'll get there.

First, let's talk about the good.

The Good

The VAs of the main cast are of course spot the fuck on, which was a given. They are all talented professionals who made these characters, after all. But it was still a thrill hearing them voice VM again after they'd been playing as the Nein and the Hells for so long.

The guests are no slouch either: David Tenant is in turn affably and menacingly Scottish, Indira Varma and Stephanie Beatriz are perfect as Allura and Kima, and Khary Payton, in very little time, portrays Uriel as a regal and noble ruler. Tony Hale makes for a great red herring, and Sunil Malhotra brings a warm, playful yet sincere portrayal of Shaun Gilmore to absolute life. As much passion and verve as Matt poured into the character, I'm glad he handed the role off to someone who's taking such good care of it.

Emon is beautiful. No notes whatsoever. The palace, the city, Gilmore's Glorious Goods....all of it is like a dream come to life. Art team is killing it.

Character design? For these characters? Pretty spot on. Everyone has great, economical designs that are still very recognizable as the Vox Machina we know and love.

Neil's music is sweeping and gorgeous. He brings such a grandiose sense of scale to the world; a scale which Exandria deserved, but I wasn't sure she would be able to get. His use of Your Turn to Role in the soundtrack is always fun to pick out. And last but not least, the themes of the Iron Storm fights in particular serve to get the blood pumping.

Said fights are also a blast. The second one obviously wins out just by nature of it being more of a contested battle, but both have just the right amount of a struggle to make the survival and eventual victory of Vox Machina feel earned. Everyone building on each other's efforts, one after another, in order to bring down Brimscythe once and for all is just perfection. That was the moment it really felt like Vox Machina had truly come alive in this new medium. It's still so much fun to look back on.

One thing the show devotes itself to frequently (sometimes very well and sometimes quite ham-fistedly) is set up for future events. In this instance, I think this was done quite well in the décor of Krieg's abode, and in the orbs (that, according to the cast, were straight out of the home game) that tie the rest of the Conclave to Vox Machina, and specifically Keyleth to Raishan, for future conflicts.

Alright, so? On to the shitty bits.

The Shitty Bits.

In all honesty, there's not much to write here if only because the two parter that starts things off is such a short, self-contained story. Most of my complaints here are nitpicky and come down to personal preference. My bigger problems are things that have carried over into the series at large, and, as of my writing this, either have not gotten better or have gotten better only a negligible amount. These I'll be addressing in full later, so I won't waste time on them here.

Nitpick: Allura's line about capturing the creature is a little awkward. I would switch it around.

From:

"With all due respect Sir Fince, we don't even know what the creature is. Demon? Elemental? And how do you propose we capture it?"

To:

"And how do you propose we capture it? With all due respect Sir Fince, we don't even know what the creature is. Demon? Elemental?"

And of course the "dumbass" remains unsaid, because Allura, in every iteration, is classy like that.

Nitpick: I'm disappointed that when Vax was accused of being "Too weak to tickle [his] own pickle." Pike didn't pipe up from the other side of the bar with: "No he's not!"

Nitpick: The bit with the sandwich feels very contrived in order to get Vax a toothpick and ruin said sandwich. Just saying, could've done it in a way that felt more natural. Or done something else entirely.

A couple of times in Season One Grog get's knocked out of the fight early. This could be an example of the Worf Effect, where a threat is made to look particularly dangerous if it takes out the big/strong/especially skilled guy in the group. However, if you want to pull this but you don't give the character a chance to prove how strong they are in a challenging battle before you do, it's not going to be incredibly effective. (We only had the tavern brawl before this, and just about everyone had a good showing there.) And even if you do give the character that chance, depending on how you use this trope, it can come off as cheap.

This comes up again later, so I'm just pointing it out now.

This next bit is one that'll come up again as well, so I feel like I need to bring this up here before getting into it again later; Scanlan is the first to declare they're killing the dragon. It's not unlikely that he's just reading the room and realizes that everybody else is turning to the idea already.....but he doesn't try to dissuade them or try to get out of it himself.

This is important for season 2.

That's it for now. On to episode 3: The Feast of Realms.

[zackbuildit]

Hey! So I saw you reblogging a post from spyret-the-shitposter saying "Fictive and introject describe headmates and the traits they formed with, rather than interests gained as someone grows up".

Do you think it's possible for fictives and introjects to be tied to someone's interests? Imma not diagnosed with anything but I do suspect I have some kind of a dissociative disorder. A lot of parts of "myself" I experience as being fictional characters, usually from shows or games that I'm currently into. They behave like alters though, being pretty much their own person and really only based on someone else and not actually them.

Ik you're not a professional but I wanted to hear your opinion in this anyway! Ofc you don't have to give one and I understand why you wouldn't

Essay in 3,

2,

1

They very much do correlate! Though, less because of the interest, and more because of the focus on the topic and the time spent interacting with it. It makes sense from a psychological standpoint, if a brain is making an introject then it not only needs to somehow get the information resources needed to introject them, but also it needs reason to expect that who or whatever is being introjected is the easiest or most convenient way to get the results it expects for the system as a whole. Think of the process of formation being like the brain filling out a character sheet. Introjection, in this way, is like using knowledge or inspiration from somewhere or someone else as a way to make filling in the gaps of the sheet more easily. But, of course, to fill in the gaps you need information about the source in the first place.

This is why most systems that get introjects are getting an introject from a source they have a lot of knowledge and memories about or with, because it gives the brain a lot more to work with. Plus, with introjecting vs with original formation, the brain can sometimes better predict what effect they'll have on the rest of the system. Forming a new headmate is inherently unpredictable, since once they form, they become almost completely out of control of whatever force in the brain forms them. This is why brains almost always have at least most of the stuff in every headmate be existing knowledge, beliefs, thoughts, or personality traits from before they formed, it makes them less uncertain. Introjection is just the extreme of that "ensuring intended thing happens" property of formation.

Anyway with all that said, there's also something else relevant. We don't know what the brain did to form a headmate, and we don't know how or why it did that. This is the point of the "introject and fictive are descriptions of headmates" thing. It's almost impossible to know whether a brain intentionally made the headmate similar to a character, or planned to make them feel very connected to a source, because we can't ask a brain to find its motivations.

As for why you feel like parts of yourself are literally certain characters, plurality isn't the only possibility! There's also mirroring, which is common for people with autism, BPD, and a few other mental health conditions. It's where someone unconsciously or unintentionally copies and/or adopts certain personality traits from others or from media. Not saying either one is more likely in your case, the only relevance is it's important to keep in mind there's multiple different possibilities, and even if you completely rule out one or two, it doesn't necessarily confirm or deny something else, make sense?

[merakiui]

What do you think of the concept of yan!xiao, childe venti trapping their darling in a teapot?

I feel like they would be less restrictive since the darling wouldn't necessarily be able to escape most likely, so they wouldn't worry about restraint much. Esp in Ventis case...he is the God of freedom so while his darling isn't exactly 'free' they're still kinda free in a way that they have their own world to be free in?

Xiao would probably be somewhat restricted, but only just keep them in the house because he probably wouldn't trust them to be by themselves yet--he figures they may try to run off and hide from him or something

Childe would probably let them try to "escape" on purpose and would be absolutely amused when his darling finds out they wouldn't be able to leave

(cw: yandere, captivity, unhealthy behaviors/relationship, mention of children and implied stockholm syndrome for childe’s part)

Venti doesn't exactly lie to you, but he does trick you. He's aware that it's not the nicest thing to do and that it's not exactly captivity if you're living in a world that resembles the one outside. Only this pocket-sized world is nicer and happier and there aren't any people to get in the way. He tells you about it when you're vulnerable. Maybe you're drunk or you're crying your eyes out because something horrible happened. Either way, you're not in the right state of mind when you make the comment: "I wish I could live in my own ideal world for just one day." And this is great news for Venti because it makes relocation so much easier.

He shows you the teapot and explains it briefly, leaving out certain details. It's better if you don't know everything about how the teapot works. After all, ignorance is bliss. Venti tells you how to get in, but he doesn't tell you how to get out. And the way he describes it makes it sound so tempting—as if living inside this teapot for a bit will cure whatever's bothering you. You decide it wouldn't hurt to spend a day or two inside the teapot to see the little world Venti holds in the palms of his hands.

It's a lot of fun at first. You and Venti glide from the top of the mountains in Emerald Peak, he sings melodious ballads as you look up at the sky, and the two of you play hide-and-seek inside of the house, playfully popping out of rooms and laughing when you’re caught. Eventually the charm wears off and you start to yearn for the outside world. It’s not the same in the teapot. As pretty and peaceful as it may be, it still feels so empty. And when you bring it up to Venti he finds small ways to change the subject. It probably plays out like this:

“Venti, I’d like to go home now.”

“But we were just about to play another round of hide-and-seek! Come on! Don’t be a spoilsport! One more round? Then we’ll leave.”

Or he’ll tell you that you’re already home. There’s always a big smile on his face when he says stuff like that. He’s happy that he gets to spend so much time with you and no one can interfere. But it does get annoying when you start to beg for the old world. Your pleas to leave will fall upon his deaf ears. Venti does feel a little bad when you start to sulk, but his sympathy is short-lived. Let’s not forget that you were the one who wanted this. You wanted to live in your ‘ideal world.’ And isn’t this ideal?

As an adeptus, Xiao is aware of Sub-Space Creation and the effort it takes to construct a presentable teapot. He’s been working hard on his ever since you came into his life. Before he knew you he didn’t have a reason to put effort into it because he stays at Wangshu Inn, but after he met you he started working a lot harder. He tries to make the teapot as comfortable as possible. You mentioned you like dogs or cats in passing? You can find a few in the teapot. You said you like berry bushes and flower fields? There’s a bunch in his teapot. He probably has a nearly perfect model of your room in there as well. Before he brings you into the teapot, he’ll often sit in that room and make sure everything replicates the original, down to the bed frame and the fabric used for the pillow case.

He’ll put some of your things in it just so it feels more personal. Xiao knows he’s stealing from you whenever he does this, but it’s not like you ever noticed anything was missing. Besides, it’s all going in the teapot anyways. You won’t even need your real room or mortal possessions anymore. Xiao is actually quite proud of the teapot and manages to fool himself into thinking you’ll like it, too. And you do (for the first few days, that is). He’s very forward with his question of whether or not you’d like to see his teapot. And you eagerly nod because the two of you are friends and Xiao wants to show you something he made and he looks a little…excited? There’s definitely light in his eyes when he gets your agreement to view the inside of his teapot.

Once you’re inside, you’re genuinely surprised. It’s far more beautiful than you could have ever imagined. The Floating Abode is a really gorgeous landscape. You’re so caught up in looking at the sunset and the flowers and the animals that roam the teapot that you aren’t aware of the horrors that lie just beyond. You’ll find the room that resembles yours in no time and it’s really creepy. As much as you try to tell yourself that Xiao means well and wouldn’t actually do something like this on purpose, it’s hard to ignore the fact that everything is practically identical to your room. It’s so, so strange. You want to ignore it, but you just can’t. It’s so obvious.

It’s definitely creepy, but you don’t have the heart to tell him.

You hold your tongue because you don’t want to hurt his feelings. You’re really the only close friend he has, so you’d feel bad if you insulted his interior decorating skills. Xiao’s pleased to hear that you like it so much. Praise falls from your lips like a waterfall and it gives him a sense of relief. He’s so happy that you like it and since you’re okay with it it’ll be fine if you live here. When he tells you that, your brain freezes and you’re not sure how to respond.

“Live here? Like…permanently?”

And to your shock he nods.

Xiao is far less lenient than Venti. With Venti everything feels like eternal, childish fun with the idea of freedom sprinkled in. But with Xiao it’s definitely a harsher form of captivity. You aren’t allowed outside because he’s worried you might fall off of the bridges that connect the floating islands or you might try to find your way out of the teapot. So you’re confined to the mansion. It’s got everything you could ever need and the interior design matches that of your home perfectly. Just treat it like it’s your own home and it won’t be so bad. You definitely try to see the good in this situation because you care about Xiao, but it’s so hard when he’s keeping you here like you’re just another addition to his teapot.

It’s miserable, but at least you can count on him to visit you every single day.

Childe is very receptive to the idea of owning his own little world in a small teapot. Maybe he was holding you captive before he came upon the teapot and while you’re sleeping he relocates you. You don’t expect to wake up in a new location, but you assume you’re still somewhere in Liyue. Childe finds it cute that you’re so startled, clearly confused with the change in scenery. And when you glance at the surroundings on the Cool Isle, it feels like you might have a chance. Childe seems to think so because he waves you off, telling you with the sincerest voice that you’re ‘free to go.’

You don’t need to be told twice and so you run because you’re invigorated. You can leave and he’s not coming after you. Childe doesn’t even raise his bow in warning. You’re actually leaving him and he’s letting you! But it feels too good to be true. A day passes and you learn that there’s no one else to help you. So you find an empty shack on the shoreline and you hide in it because survival is the only thing you know right now. And the day goes by, the night comes, and morning makes its arrival. You’re still safe. He hasn’t found you.

And it really feels like you can make it out of this. Even if there’s no one around, you can still find something to help you. You’d take anything at this point. By the end of the week, you’re losing sight of your goal and you really just want to head back to the mansion and nap on a comfortable bed. You’ve been catching the crabs and the fish and doing what you can to start a long-lasting fire. When Childe finds you, you’re so exhausted from running and hiding that you collapse into his arms. And he smiles so sweetly while he tells you something that shatters your entire world.

“You did well, comrade, but this isn’t Liyue. You have no need to run.”

It’s not even Teyvat. It’s another world entirely—one existing solely within a teapot. And everything comes crashing down when you realize just how impossible that makes any escape attempts. No human contact. No energy or life that comes from meeting with friends and seeing family. It truly does feel like you and he are the only people in this world.

Childe knows that you’ll adjust to this new world whether you like it or not. It was fun to toy with you in the beginning (and it still is) when you didn’t realize this was the world inside the teapot. But now he just wants to settle into a comfortable life. He takes every chance he has to visit you and eventually you’ll find yourself succumbing to the relaxing pleasures of domestic life. You learn how to cook delicious meals with Childe’s help, you collect seashells on the shore to cure your boredom, and you’ll take care of any chores or housework. It warms Childe’s heart to see you accepting this life.

Maybe the two of you can start a family. Maybe he should get a few pets to liven up the house. It’s not like you can get away from him while inside the teapot, so it’s a recipe for anything to happen. And you’ve come to learn that what happens in the teapot stays in the teapot.

[kendrixtermina]

Thanks for the response! I think the 5w4 I was talking about only gets like that in familial environments, keep in mind everyone in their family has a temper. They’ve mentioned its hard to be calm when they’re getting yelled at, so they either yell back or excuse themselves. About being accused, just to rule out 6(as a type&wing), last time they vented to me it, they got yelled at and accused of being inconvenienced and the source of their family member’s problems, they’re projecting a reaction into 5 that didn’t happened. they’re blaming everything on the 5. they and the 5 have almost next to zero communication outside of small talk. The 5 has been avoiding them by almost not leaving their room in three days. I read somewhere that the withdrawn triad gets annoyed at misinformation about themselves(not necessarily bothering to correct them), wouldn’t being accused of something thats pretty out there be a trigger? especially for a 5 with both lines to 7 and 8(assertive types)?

I wasn't per se doubting the typing, just giving a general answer since you didn't provide that much context.

Again, your description of this person is highly consistent with them being a withdrawn core (even more so with the additional details provided here)

I read somewhere that the withdrawn triad gets annoyed at misinformation about themselves

First time I'm hearing about that, I'd associate concern with reputation more with social instinct, and, as I said earlier, sensitivity to blame with 6.

But, it's not like anyone loves being slandered. It doesn't need to be a special "trigger" particular to the type for ppl to dislike it. 6s arent the only ones who hate it.

Especially since it sounds like your friend and their family really don't get along. Blaming them for all the family's problems borders on outright maltreatment or abuse if it happens regularly & not just in one individual bad argument.

There isn't anyone who would have no reaction to being treated that way, no matter what their type is.

For what it's worth, I'm 5w4 myself and the behavior you describe is extremely similar to how my teen self acted when I was forced to live under the same roof as my father. I'd make sure to leave my room only when strictly necessary if he was home, and I definitely did my share of yelling back if he wouldn't let me remove myself from the situation.

Something that's definitely been confirmed to me as being a common thing by various individuals is that the few times when they've really blown their top was when they wanted to get out/ be left in peace, and the other person wouldn't let them. if anything could be considered a trigger its probably being cornered/unable to retreat

Your friend does sound very cornered in that story, being stuck being yelled at and all that.

As a consequence, I haven't done very much raging since I've been an adult living on my own & hence generally able to leave whenever I please.

if anything could be considered a trigger its probably being cornered/unable to retreat

Your friend does sound very cornered in that story, being stuck being yelled at and all that.

One hopes they will be able to move out soon.

[tomwambsmilk]

“And has a tendency to want to be good in this world. And she can be pretty harsh on Tom and I think Greg’s gut would be like, “You know what, leave her you’ll be less tortured.” taking out the buzz worthy quotes, i don’t think morality always has to be an overall picture of the world. maybe it can just be that he wants to see his friend have better. i just feel like that is a valid theme for both tom and greg, they tend to be the most open and probably think with their hearts because they don’t have to be as guarded or are as traumatized as the roy siblings

So I didn't answer this right away because I wanted to roll it around my brain for a bit. I don't necessarily entirely agree, but at the same time, you are kind of getting at some interesting ideas so I want to break it down a little.

But first - I'm going to drop the screenshot just so we're clear on what Nich actually said in its full context. Because he did say Greg was "on the side of morality in the show”. We don't have to talk about it but that did come out of his mouth, and if we take it at face value I do think it's a questionable statement:

Nich Braun is really the one who brought morality into this particular conversation. Yes, we can absolutely analyze the end of season 3 and Greg's potential response to Tom's actions through other lenses, but the reason we're talking about morality is that Nich started talking about morality, and his explanation for why Greg would be supportive of Tom hinged on the idea that Greg "wants to be good in this world" which… is a position that implies that either Greg sees himself as a moral actor or Nich sees Greg as a moral actor, depending on whether we take this at face value or assume Nich was implicitly speaking from a “Greg headspace”. (I do think there’s some real ambiguity in that.) And that's a really fascinating statement given how rarely his actions seem to reflect that on the show, hence the other post I wrote breaking down what we can assume about Greg's understanding of morality and what it means to be good from this. I do think a lot of people are overly fixating on the “Greg is on the side of morality” and “Shiv can be a real bitch” without considering the wider context - but we also can’t discount that he said those things just bc they’re kind of uncomfortable.

(And now that you mention it and I've been chewing on it for a while, it's extra interesting that Nich decided to bring up morality when he clearly didn't need to... He could've just said "Tom is Greg's friend and he wants better for him" and that would've been true and valid. So his need to morally justify it - or his reading that there is a moral dimension to this - is extra fascinating. But I'm getting sidetracked.)

So. Depending on exactly what it is you mean by "I don't think morality always has to be an overall picture of the world" I'm not sure how much I agree with that. I do agree that morality isn't the only lens through which to analyze the Succession characters and their actions and motivations, although it is one I keep coming back to because it is interesting to me personally. That being said, I do think it is an omnipresent dimension, even if we aren't actively analyzing the show through that lens. Most actions do have a moral dimension to them, and that's especially true on Succession. It's not always a clear-cut dimension - there are a lot of nuances involved in the choices the characters make - but I do think the questions of "are these choices morally good? are they morally bad? are they somewhere in between? what does this say about the characters?" are inescapable. It's very valid to have a conversation about "was it morally justifiable for Tom to betray Shiv, and is it morally justifiable for Greg to support him in that", even if the characters themselves aren't using that as a decision-making framework, because there is a moral dimension to those decisions, even if the characters don't think of it that way. And that conversation is especially valid because it is a complex question, and while I do have my own opinions on the subject there are a lot of different viewpoints that I think have some degree of validity to them.

It's also perfectly valid to say "tbh I don't really care and that isn't a lens that's super interesting to me personally". Morality is only one of the issues Succession grapples with, and you aren't required to hold an equal interest in every single facet of the show.

I also want to touch very briefly on the end of your ask because the idea that Tom and Greg are "thinking with their hearts" is REALLY interesting to me. I think you probably aren't gonna like the rest of my answer, so I'll say upfront that I do think analyzing the end of Season 3 through the lens of Tom and Greg's particular relationship, and the ways in which their lesser degree of attachment to the Roys proper allows for a greater degree of openness and emotional intimacy is absolutely a valid take. That's a very real thread, and holding the two of them (and I think Tom in particular) up as a foil to the Roy siblings is certainly interesting. But... I do think you have to go a bit deeper because while that idea is true, it's definitely not quite as straightforward as all that, and I don't think it can be entirely divorced from the question of how you're approaching morality.

On the one hand, you're right that they aren't as guarded as the Roy siblings are... On the other hand, they are still very guarded. Tom isn't very guarded with Shiv in season 1, but he is pretty guarded with Greg - at least in terms of actually expressing affection for him, hence all the bullying (that and the power trip involved, of course). By season 3 this has flipped somewhat, and we see him being more guarded with Shiv and more open with Greg, which is a really fascinating development in the Tom-Greg power dynamic - by being more open with Greg, Tom is effectively giving him a degree of power over him. But it's not as simple as Tom being open so much as - a) Tom seems to have a greater capacity for openness than Shiv and the Roy siblings do, likely as a consequence of not being brought up in the Roy family, and b) who he is open with and when is contingent upon a myriad of different factors. (On top of that - I don't know that Tom is all that open with Shiv at the beginning. We see him eating his emotions quite a lot - in the fight with her at the beginning of 1.06, on their wedding night, Ternhaven - hell, most of Season 2. There's a selective openness there which could be a whole point of analysis on its own.)

And I think I actually would characterize Greg as being pretty guarded, but he's also desperate for connection and affection, and that desire is constantly at odds with his fear of vulnerability. He's anxious that he's going to get burned by Ken, but he gives Ken the papers anyways. Tom is his best friend but he still feels the need to have leverage over him. So yeah, comparatively speaking Tom and Greg are more open than the Roys are, but they are still in the same cutthroat world, and so they can't really be all that open and unguarded. But there is a very interesting arc in terms of how their relationship with each other evolves in this context.

The idea that they think with their hearts is interesting, and if you weren't on anon I'd probably DM you to get some clarification on what exactly it is you mean by that because there are a couple of possible interpretations that come to mind for me. On the one hand, if you're talking about being driven primarily by a desire for love rather than being strategy minded, you're absolutely right - but in that case, this definitely is a trait they share with the Roy siblings. Every single character on this show is primarily motivated by love, even if they aren't admitting that to themselves.

(Another reason that's interesting to me is that I'd actually characterize Tom's arc as learning not to love, as becoming increasingly calloused and self-serving and strategic rather than prioritizing the people he loves. We see that death knell hit his marriage first - understandably, to be sure. I don't think it's going to stop at his marriage, though. I don't think Tom and Greg's relationship is coming out of this unscathed. I think Tom is increasingly starting to think like a Roy, and I think his new partnership with Logan is only going to enhance that, and I think that Greg has proven himself slimy and untrustworthy in the past and that he may end up as collateral damage because of this. But those are just my personal predictions, so who knows how it will actually play out.)

Anyways. To circle back, the one way Tom and Greg are different from the Roy sibs is Logan has spent the Roy kids' whole lives pitting them against each other. That means that in their pursuit of Logan's love, they have no choice but to go after each other. That's why they're only able to unite at the end of Season 3 after they've each individually despaired of receiving Logan's love and approval. They can either have Logan's love or they can have each other's, but not both.

Whereas Tom and Greg aren't stuck in that kind of dichotomy. Tom also wants to be loved, but his primary target is Shiv, and she isn't asking him to sacrifice any of his other relationships. She does ask him to sacrifice his career ambitions, which he does until he realizes it likely still will not result in the kind of marriage he wants. Greg wants to be loved by anybody, frankly, and Tom is the one who's most consistently validated him (as Nich pointed out), so by Season 3 Tom is the target of Greg's affections. And by the end of season 3, we get the sense that Tom does love Greg and will continue to do so even if Greg continues to try and fuck him over (although obviously, he'd prefer for that not to happen), if only because he doesn't hold Greg's momentary jaunt with Kendall against him. So yeah, in a sense both of them are able to pursue love more freely and openly because they don't have Logan pitting them against each other. (I do think this is likely to change at some point, but again, we're wading into my predictions here).

There's another dimension to the idea of them "thinking with their hearts" though, which is that it could also refer to the idea of them thinking with their desires. And this is where we circle back to the question of morality, I think, because... It sounds lovely and romantic to think with your heart, but if you want to be a good person you also need to think with your actual head. You kind of need both. Yes, I think a general state of willing the well-being of other people (which can be characterized as 'thinking with the heart') is important, but the thing is you also have to contend with the fact that your desires and your emotions can mislead you. In the course of your life, you will want things that do harm to others, or to yourself. This is part of being human. Your emotions, if not properly managed, will cause you to misread situations and react inappropriately. Desires and emotions are tools, important tools, but that can't be all you're running on because you will get into trouble.

And that's where I think you've kind of hit the nail on the head, albeit possibly accidentally if your end goal was to examine this through an amoral lens. I think it's one of the reasons why people struggle with the relatability of the Succession characters. They aren't good people, they keep doing things that are morally reprehensible, and yet... we find them compelling because we get it. We understand their desires and we recognize them in ourselves. We understand their emotions and we relate to them ourselves. What they're doing is wrong but we see how they got from point A to point B. The extent to which this is true for you personally for each character depends on your particular personality and traumas and issues, but I think it is true for everybody and that's part of why there's so much rancid discourse in the fandom. You see a character that's relatable and you either become a blind apologist for them, or you despise them because they remind you of what you hate in yourself. And I do think that instinct is there for everyone, even if you've learned to temper it, and if you don't think it's there for you that might be because you're lying to yourself just a bit. (Or maybe you're a normal well-adjusted person who finds all the characters abhorrent, but I think most people who are part of the Tumblr succession fandom don't fall into that category.)

To bring it back to Tom and Greg - yeah, I think they might actually be "thinking with their hearts", and I think that's part of the problem. They're being driven by their emotions and their desires, and they aren't thinking about the moral qualities of their actions, and that's why they keep making morally dubious choices, and it's why they're likely to continue making increasingly morally dubious choices. I think on some level that goes for all of the characters on the show, it's just that "thinking with their hearts" looks different for each of them.

(TBH there is a little more to it than just that, if we're going to analyze the moral dimension of these characters, but I'm saving that for a different post because that'll be the tangent to end all tangents.)

I imagine this is a manifestly unsatisfying response because it is basically the opposite of how you want to analyze the show. And at the end of the day - yeah, I do think "Tom is Greg's friend and he wants better for him" is an accurate assessment of the core of what's going on. Where the morality discussion comes in is a) Nich Braun positioning this as a morally good act, or at least a morally good act in Greg's mind, and b) the wider context of Tom betraying Shiv. Because it is possible to say that yes, Tom should leave Shiv, and yes, Shiv has been terrible to him, and no, betraying her like that was not a morally justifiable thing to do, depending on what your moral framework is (side note: personally I do think there is one convincing argument for it being justified, which I don't see laid out very often, but I am restraining myself from getting into it here). So the fact that either Nich or Greg (depending on what Nich Braun actually meant in the interview) thinks what Tom did is morally justified tells us a lot about Greg's moral framework (or possibly Nich's), and if, like me, you already spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about how the Succession characters approach the concept of morality than that is exceedingly fascinating.

[stillness-in-green]

Part 2 of the response to this ask:

Part 1 was about where I think Geten’s story is going, and if I think it’s likely that Dabi will kill him; it dealt mainly with how those characters are set up in canon. Part 2 is far more about the fandom, and the assumptions people make that lead them to theories like the one above--specifically, the assumption that the League was always planning on bailing on the PLF. Hit the jump below with me and I'll go over why I think the common arguments for that are misguided at best, and willfully misreading the text at worst.

WARNING: Contains some generalizations about parts of the fandom that I have mostly taken steps to avoid seeing on my dash, so some of my characterizations may be out of date. I’ve tried to desalinate this post as much as possible, but as an unapologetic fan of the MLA and of Spinner (who I do not bring up incidentally), this is a topic I feel particularly strongly about. Apologies, but I Have Seen Things.

DISCLAIMER: I like Geten better than Dabi. I don't think he's better developed; I don't think he's a better character--I just like him better. This is largely down to the fact that I find the MLA fascinating from a worldbuilding perspective and its members compelling personally, whereas I’m less interested in Dabi personally than I am the Todoroki Drama on the whole, and have been tired of Fanon Dabi for approximately 83 years. I’ll also be the first to admit that my take on Dabi is pretty mercenary--hardly the irredeemable psychopath the Hero Stans on Twitter see, but nothing close to Secretly Soft Big Brother Touya, either. If that’s not your bag, you may want to skip this one.

So, here's a bullet point list of the reasons I have personally seen on why the League was always planning to turn on the MLA:

Dabi and Toga mention "getting started early," and Shigaraki mentions a plan, suggesting that the League had a plan in place independent of the one they arranged as the PLF.

Shigaraki says he won't forgive the Liberation Army for messing with peoples' feelings, so he would never really mean it when he forges an alliance with them.

The MLA is quirk supremacist, like Endeavor, so Dabi would never work with them.

Dabi is just using Skeptic against Skeptic's will; it’s not a willing partnership.

Mr. Compress rejects the PLF moniker for Shigaraki, ergo Mr. Compress didn’t genuinely associate Shigaraki and the League with the PLF.

Toga hated Curious, so she wouldn't want to work with the MLA either.

Twice would never forgive them for what they did to Giran.

[Error: argument about Spinner's opinion on the PLF not found.]

So, let's go over those, shall we? Note that a lot of what I'm going to lay out below isn't conclusive. What I want to establish is simply that the canonical evidence isn't conclusive, certainly not as much so as the people who support this view espouse.

|| Dabi and Toga mention "getting started early," and Shigaraki mentions a plan, suggesting that the League had a plan in place independent of the one they arranged as the PLF.

In responses to my recent Overhaul post, I defended Viz’s official translation as an accurate rendering of the dialogue in question. In general, I feel like Caleb Cook is pretty reliable in his translations, if sometimes kind of stiff or dry in localization. However, there are times he makes assumptions about lines--as indeed a translator for a currently-running series will sometimes have to--and sometimes, those assumptions don’t pan out. This is one of those times.

Dabi's line, "Shall we get started early?" is based on an assumption Cook made about a line that doesn't have an actual subject. In the original dialogue--Hayame ni hajimaru ka--there is no “we,” not even in the form of some implicit collective in Dabi’s grammatical inflection, nor is there a question of "should." All Dabi’s doing is musing that the start (again, there’s no subject, and so no indication of the start of what, or the start as initiated by who) is happening early.

Toga's line communicates much the same, save that she does specify that the schedule/plan/arrangement is happening earlier than expected--which is totally true, since her line is in response to Dabi observing that Machia moving must mean Shigaraki's awake, and Shigaraki was supposed to be down for another month.

Shigaraki's line, like Dabi's, lacks a subject to describe what exactly is supposed to start as soon as Shigaraki wakes. He's saying something that would, in a more stilted way, be, "I wake up and then it's the start, right?"

None of these lines suggest that the characters are necessarily talking about any plan other than the one the PLF laid out. Yes, it looks somewhat damning that Shigaraki's first action (after getting himself a cape, anyway) is to have Machia bring him the League, but heck, maybe that was always the plan. Just because Shigaraki wants to rejoin his comrades doesn't mean the rest of the PLF didn't already have machinations that they were supposed to set into motion the moment Machia left. After all, the plan as Hawks understood it did involve simultaneous attacks on major cities--maybe the League was going to be spearheading one of those attacks. Further, Shigaraki knew something was wrong from the moment he regained consciousness, and we don’t know how that knowledge affected the call he made. Hell, maybe the original plan was for the League to be brought to meet him somewhere in a chartered limo; we don’t know.

It's telling that this idea that the League had a Secret Plan to screw over the MLA rarely seems to account for Mr. Compress and Spinner being confused over the suddenness of events. The response to questions about this seems to be that the "villain trio" knew about it, so the ignorance of the rest of the League can just be handwaved--the important members knew, and that's enough. This is ungenerous towards both Twice and Mr. Compress, but I have got particularly little time for Spinner, the narrator of MVA and guy who decided to devote his all to Shigaraki, being disrespected in this fashion. More on that later.

|| Shigaraki says he won't forgive the Liberation Army for messing with peoples' feelings, so he would never really mean it when he forges an alliance with them.

Shigaraki does say he won't forgive the MLA, but consider what he did to the MLA and its leader. He destroyed most of their stronghold, killed scores of them, is directly responsible for Re-Destro losing his legs, and saw that vaunted descendant of Destro about six inches shy of full forehead-on-the-ground dogeza. The League Shigaraki commands killed a great many more of them, including one of their inner circle. He commandeered the Liberation Army, its resources, and its grand cause. I think it’s safe to say he’s more than responded in kind!

I'm not saying Shigaraki feels for the MLA the same way he does about the League, far from it, but I do think he's practical enough after two hundred chapters of character development not to throw them away out of spite. In Chapter 246, he tells Ujiko explicitly, "When someone offers me something, I take it," and, "I'm done taking the heroes lightly. I'll use everything I've got to obliterate the dregs All Might left behind." From a purely practical standpoint, if he intends to throw everything he has at the heroes, he has no reason to throw the MLA under the bus, and 116,000 reasons to keep them around. I'm altogether sure that, so long as they stood to be useful to his plans, he would have kept them around.

|| The MLA is quirk supremacist, like Endeavor, so Dabi would never work with them. + || Dabi is just using Skeptic against Skeptic's will; it’s not a willing partnership.

I hadn’t seen the second point in the wild, but I suppose it must be how the “The League will betray the MLA” theorists are getting around Dabi and Skeptic’s clear collaboration and how that collaboration totally scuttles the first point, huh? Hilarious.

Anyway, setting aside the fact that Dabi showed up to the one planning session we were shown when even Geten didn’t, there’s evidence in the canon that Dabi was working with Skeptic since even before the raid. Consider that Dabi’s video was filmed at the villa (the wall paneling and the style of the couch both match) and ask yourself where the camera he used came from. Once the filming was complete, where was the video stored such that Skeptic could access it from his laptop? If Dabi’d had it on an SD card and Skeptic was seeing it for the first time, why didn’t Spinner, Compress and Toga watch it alongside him? Surely Skeptic would need to watch it through at least once to know when to splice in the footage of Jin’s death for maximum dramatic impact? On that note, by far the most telling piece of evidence is this: if Dabi wasn't already working with Skeptic, then why was he wearing one of Skeptic's body cameras during his confrontation with Hawks?

Further, Skeptic's protest when he’s pulled onto Machia isn't that he doesn’t want to be with the League; it’s that he doesn’t want to leave Re-Destro behind. Once he's resigned that it's going to happen, though, he's cocky about his talents and complimentary of Dabi's big reveal, even if he is exasperated about the League's antics. It's ambiguous, I admit, but given that Dabi's wearing his cameras, he had to have known Dabi had a reason for them--and given that he is both abrasive and mouthy, I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have demanded to know what that reason was.

Hell, Dabi even thanks Skeptic for his editing work, which is more direct positive approval than he's ever shown anyone in the League (give or take the high-five with Twice, which, genuine or not, he would have known he was doing on camera). That much-vaunted panel of Spinner telling Toga to come back to the League? Dabi's grinning, which in isolation you could read as a certain rueful affection, but with the full context of the chapter, it becomes apparent that Dabi is grinning at Skeptic's laptop, seconds after telling Skeptic to "hurry up." Skeptic is, at that moment, probably gearing up the video to project nationwide, and Dabi’s more focused on that than he is Toga’s crisis, even when Compress directly appeals to him for aid. He tells Compress he doesn’t care, the same way he told Hawks he doesn't give a damn about the League.

Let me be clear here: I'm inclined to take Dabi at his word. I think Dabi hangs around the League because, for all that he says one man's conviction can shake the world, he also knows his own limits, and the League offers safety in numbers and an avenue to pursue his revenge. Maybe he finds them acceptable enough company, maybe he even does like them a bit despite himself, but I think any affection he might have for them is entirely incidental to his views on their usefulness. In the same way, while he's willing to bail on the MLA when the heroes attack, I don't think it was his plan to do so, especially not given his apparent immediate regard for Skeptic, as seen in the deleted scene here. Sure, he dislikes Geten, but ultimately, Geten is a stupid kid too tied up in his care for Re-Destro--who's now worshipping the ground Shigaraki walks on--to really be getting in Dabi's way.

Maybe if the MLA really were as quirk supremacist as Geten makes them out to be, Dabi would be actively looking for a way to see ‘em burn, but as I’ve said countless times before, Geten is not a reliable narrator vis a vis the MLA's doctrine. Now, obviously I don't expect Dabi to give them an unearned benefit of the doubt,(1) not after what he heard Geten say, but if Dabi has been working with Skeptic, it doesn't take a genius to realize that while Anthropomorph is a perfectly good quirk, it is categorically not what primarily defines Skeptic’s "worth" in the MLA societal microcosm.

Nothing that Skeptic does reflects the way Geten talks about "elevating one's ability" or "sheer strength" in the way that HeroAca fandom tends to understand as referring to flashy and offensive quirks. And yet, Skeptic is a ranked advisor warranting an introductory panel with RD's inner circle and Geten is not. Perhaps, just perhaps, this might have led Dabi to reevaluating his initial assessment just slightly?

|| Mr. Compress rejects the PLF moniker for Shigaraki, ergo Mr. Compress didn’t genuinely associate Shigaraki and the League with the PLF.

So, this one's pretty wild, because, in the same chapter that had people crowing about Mr. Compress's dialogue, Mr. Compress's actions show the exact opposite of the conclusion this theory would demand. Specifically, if it was always the League's plan to ditch the MLA, Mr. Compress would have darted right past Skeptic, ignoring the man's cries for help. He doesn't--he picks Skeptic up on the way past and (at least in the volume corrections) deposits him safe with Dabi in Spinner's scarf. Of course, Skeptic still stands to be useful, but if one acknowledges that Skeptic's usefulness is reason enough not to abandon him, then what exactly is the argument for leaving 116,000 perfectly useful warm bodies behind?

But let's set aside Compress rescuing Skeptic and focus on the actual point, because that point in itself is still flawed. Mr. Compress's thoughts on the PLF in the specific talk bubble in question are somewhat ambiguous. It's another case of the Viz translation making a couple of assumptions that are just that--assumptions.

Compress's words in the Japanese are as follows:

Chōjō Kaihō Sensen.… Viran rengo no Shigaraki Tomura ga…

Viz then renders the line like so:

The Paranormal Liberation Front's… No, the League of Villain's Shigaraki…

Note that in the Japanese, the possessive no is only included once, to indicate Shigaraki's association with the League. Further, the original doesn't indicate any negation in Compress's thoughts. Yes, he could be rejecting the PLF association for Shigaraki, but he could as easily be narrowing his scope to Shigaraki as the figure he represents to the League, rather than the figure he represents to the PLF--not rejecting wholesale, but rather becoming more specific. Compress might also be thinking first of the PLF as a general organization, then narrowing down to Shigaraki specifically.

Rather than reading this line as an indication that Compress regards the PLF as temporary, I was heartened by the fact that Compress thought about the PLF at all! If the League really had been planning to discard them this entire time, then there's no reason for Compress to have ever taken the Front seriously enough to have thought about them in that moment of crisis. You can carry this back further, too. In Chapter 258, when Twice is asking Hawks for help, he says that Spinner and Compress have been in meetings for days. Coupled with Compress's first thought about the entity that will carry out Harima's desired reformation being the Liberation Front (or possibly "the Liberation Front's Shigaraki"), this indicates to me that Compress was taking it seriously, not just gorging himself on sushi on the MLA's dime.

Indeed, back in Ujiko's lab, when it was just Shigaraki talking about his backstory and his dreams of destruction, Compress looks the opposite of impressed; we know from his narration in 294 that he liked the League because they didn't place any importance on one another’s pasts. Yet, at some point, his view shifted to believing that fulfilling his ancestor's ambition, his bloodline’s duty, really might be back on the table. We as readers don't quite know when that shift happened, but given, again, his initial mental invocation of the PLF, I think we can assume that it's tied to that alliance, those resources. And sure, when the moment of crisis happens and he's really defining who and what Shigaraki is to him, and where his values and priorities lie, it's with the League and Shigaraki as the leader of the League. But that doesn't mean he never had his hopes for the PLF at all, or was partaking in plans to ditch them.

Also too, this is a man who was lamenting the loss of their partnership with Overhaul, a man who personally maimed him, on top of killing a comrade. You're telling me the guy who shrugged off his animosity towards Overhaul would willingly allow the League to plot sabotage against even wealthier collaborators against whom he has even less reason to hold a grudge? Come on, guys.

|| Toga hated Curious, so she wouldn't want to work with the MLA either.

This one's easy: Toga pretty explicitly hated Curious, but she's even more explicit that she likes the MLA because she thinks the world they want to create is wonderful. She says this verbatim at the end of 225, after Curious has spent the entire chapter hounding her with explosions and intrusive questions. What turns her animosity on Curious is not some reveal that the MLA's world would be terrible after all, but Curious calling Toga's "normal" miserable and tragic. Essentially, she doesn't object to the world the MLA wants to bring about; she objects to being turned into a martyr for that world, especially when that martyrdom requires that the things that make Toga happy be characterized as horrific misfortunes.

Toga doesn't like Curious; she kills Curious. And then she comes into a position of leadership, and we don't know a lot about how that position takes her, but she seems delighted to be walking out onto the stage to be announced as such, and she makes active contributions to the discussion of the PLF's plans in Chapter 245. We are, again, given no indication that her lethal response to Curious means that she's planning to ditch the MLA on the whole.

Incidentally, Curious asserts what she does about Toga only in the context of the world as it stands. The world's rejection of Toga's normal, and the extremes that rejection drove Toga to, are what Curious considers tragic and miserable, not Toga's fascination with blood in and of itself. She clearly believes that, in the world the MLA envisions, Toga's life would not be so miserable because she would never have been oppressed to the degree that she snapped. And frankly, Curious isn't wrong. The only reason she is a villain in that scene is that she's willing to murder Toga to project that tragedy to the world. If she'd been willing to sit down and have a civil interview with Toga to print it in a relevant magazine, she would have been fine.

|| Twice would never forgive them for what they did to Giran.

You know, this is a totally fair point. It is, however, somewhat complicated by the fact that Giran himself never left the PLF. Now, there’s almost certainly something to be said about Giran’s whole information broker shtick being terminally compromised by his capture, his maiming, his client list being hacked, etc. He had a bunch of identifying items strewn all over the country that were covered in the national news, items that people who associated with him closely certainly would have recognized. Maybe he’s laying low for a while?

I don’t know why Giran was still around by the time of the raid. I can theorize about his pragmatism or what have you, but the canon really doesn’t give us anything to go on. Still, if he really hated the MLA all that much, as he would be totally justified in doing, it’s pretty bizarre that Horikoshi showed him twice in PLF crowd scenes post-Deika looking nothing worse than kind of confused and uneasy. Heck, you’d think he would at least have merited a better seat in the crowd for the big merger announcement.

Giran aside, the fact that Twice never does hit it off with anyone in his regiment is, I think, telling. If there’s anyone in the League that intentionally kept himself at a distance from the MLA because of hard feelings, it’s likely Twice. After all, if he had befriended anyone, he presumably wouldn’t have needed to go to Hawks for tutoring almost an entire month after Deika. That said, the fact that Twice does go running to Hawks for tutoring shows that he’s at least doing his best to act in accordance with what he thinks Shigaraki and the rest want. That doesn’t preclude the League having a secret plan that he’s either in on and playing along with, or hasn’t been told about because he might not be able to stop himself from vocalizing about it. Still, while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, obviously absence of evidence is not evidence of presence. So, lacking any sign that the rest of the League is planning treachery, I’m not inclined to assume Twice’s lack of forgiveness is indicative of anything other than his own feelings.

|| [Error: argument about Spinner's opinion on the PLF not found.]

:: INCOMING SALT WARNING :: INCOMING SALT WARNING ::

This is the one that really gets to me. I have never seen an argument that the League is planning to betray the PLF that convincingly explains the fact that Spinner, to all available evidence, threw himself wholeheartedly into trying to make the PLF succeed. To be more precise, I have seen one explanation, and that explanation is that the plan to ditch the MLA was a secret that only Shigaraki, Dabi and sometimes Toga knew about, and to reiterate, that is bullshit.

In my experience, this is an explanation proposed by people who care about Spinner only insofar as he can be a Soft Gaymer Boyfriend or score them rhetorical points, but have little to no interest in his ongoing--and, indeed, increasing--importance to the League generally and Shigaraki’s arc specifically. The dude who talked about how Twice’s home was the League, who got through to Toga while still respecting her choice when no one else could, the guy who recognized the hollowness within Shigaraki but also bonded with him over video games, the man who Mr. Compress said was Shigaraki’s most devoted follower(2)--this man did not do all of that for people in this fandom to say, “Oh, well, the others probably just kept it a secret from him because they thought he’d be bad at lying.”

Really? “Bad at lying?” And that’s an adequate justification, is it, for Shigaraki letting Spinner toil for months under false pretenses? For lying to the man who adores him the most? Of course it isn’t, but the people who theorize this don’t really care about Spinner’s adoration for Shigaraki, or the fact that Shigaraki rewarding Spinner’s feelings by allowing him to dedicate himself unstintingly to something Shigaraki was planning to discard from the beginning would be a blatant abuse of Spinner’s trust.

I have never seen anyone try to argue that Spinner was in on a plan to betray the MLA all along. That’s because it’s patently obvious that Spinner--forthright, direct Spinner, who named the merged organization with Re-Destro, spends all his time in meetings, has a direct exchange with Re-Destro about the state of their plans, and is probably the reason RD started wearing polka dots--went all-in on the PLF. But for the people who propose the “the League was always going to bail” theory, Spinner and his labors are an afterthought.

Spinner is not an afterthought. Where Mr. Compress has been captured, Toga could hypothetically be peeled away from the League via Uraraka, and Dabi almost certainly will be peeled away via the Todoroki plot, Spinner’s driving motivation at this point is Shigaraki himself. He connected to Shigaraki’s nihilism, his hatred, but also his humanity--the humanity in Shigaraki Tomura, not in Shimura Tenko. His empathy didn’t spring from contrived psychic glimpses of crying 5-year-olds, but from long months of observation, doubt, and gradually deepening wonder. He’s the only person currently with Shigaraki that I can see caring enough about Shigaraki’s welfare that he might sacrifice his own goals and desires to help Deku save him.

Spinner is not an afterthought, and I refuse to build or entertain theories that treat him that way. So as to his opinions on the MLA? Despite having his own reasons to be leery of them based on how shabbily Trumpet treated him, he was obviously trying to make the Paranormal Liberation Front succeed, which means he must have believed that Shigaraki wanted it to succeed. Therefore, unless you’re prepared to assert that Shigaraki (and everyone else who was in on it!) was cruel enough to lie to Spinner about something he was devoting so much time and energy to, the inescapable conclusion is that Shigaraki also wanted the Front to succeed.

(Note: After letting a friend pre-read this, I have been informed that there is, in fact, one explanation offered for Spinner knowing the League was going to abandon the PLF but working his ass off on the venture anyway, and that explanation is, “Something something wants to prove himself because low self-esteem.” This is so ridiculous I can’t even bring myself to edit this post accordingly. Low self-esteem! Because nothing would alleviate Spinner's low self-esteem like toiling for months over something that holds no worth to the people he actually cares about, right? Right?? Bah. Humbug!)

And but so, to wrap all that up: I fundamentally disagree that the League viewed the Paranormal Liberation Front as a temporary arrangement, at least to the extent that they were actively planning to betray their newfound--new won--allies. The fact that I don't think the League intended to discard the MLA out of hand does, thus, influence my opinion that, whatever Geten's fate will be, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be, "He gets murdered in a way that resembles nothing so much as a sick revenge fantasy dozens of chapters after the last point when such a death would have been remotely tonally appropriate."

Thanks for the ask, anon! Sorry about-- *waves at all of this*

-------------------------------

(1) Not that Mr. “Burns Random Delinquents Alive For Not Measuring Up To His Standards For Villainy” has any moral standing to criticize others for how they determine the value of peoples’ lives, mind.

(2) Other translations for the verb in Mr. Compress’s Japanese line of, “You are the one who ____s Shigaraki the most,” include yearn for, long for, pine for, miss, love dearly, adore, idolize, and revere. “Most devoted follower” is accurate enough, but considerably less homo than some of the things we could have gotten there.

[shyrose57]

Thank you other anon for wishing me well!! That means a lot to me! 

He does but Raq doesn't actually know Rans backstory. So he doesn't know Ran has siblings. He just assumes his mom either died or abandoned him due to finding Ran completely alone and being a hybrid. Before Ran would just scream at Raq in Enderian, now both Raq and Ran scream at eachother in it. Jackie describes it as, "A screaming match to assert dominance." 

Yep, his body was already straining itself to fend off the posion and the teleporting ended up straining him more than he could handle. So as soon as he teleported them he collapsed and wasn't able to even stand. 

That just made me imagine them digging down only to look up and see Phil clambering down after them like a mole. 

After he made a scavenger hunt made out of everyone else's items. Phil found his axe in a destroyed tree trunk and Ran found his sword buried in the ground. While Sapnap found his bow hidden behind stones and Jackie was never able to find his particularly because Ranboo forgot where he hid it. 

Yes, although its very rough. 

Porkius is very very suprised and needs time to come to turns with them being there. While Porkius reacts well to Techno, Techno does not like Porkius and has threatened to punch him a few times and one time he followed through and punched him hard enough to make him fall to the ground. 

Definitely.

---------------------

Ranboo is still his ancestor! Ran feels mostly confused, startled, scared, and oddly a bit comfortable. Phil makes him feel comfortable because he reminds him so much of Watson who was a very close and comforting figure to him. But Techno kind of scares him cause while Porkius was kind to him he was also strict, so he's afraid Techno will be stricter and mean just due to how he looks. He also just kinda ignores Ranboo at first because he can't handle the fact he's looking at his now alive ancestor. 

Not really I'd say, even though they all have different enderman percentces, they have the same instincts. Though due to Ranboos memory problem, his memory of enderman culture is almost non-existent, and instead presents itself through his instincts. If any of that makes sense? 

Karl is terrified upon seeing Ran, as soon as he even hears he's here he immediately drops what he's doing and after a few questions runs off to find and confront him. Tubbo is incredibly fascinated by Ran and at first he respects Ran's boundaries and stays away from him, but as soon as Ran is walking around outside and exploring the surrounding environment, he sees that as the perfect opportunity to bombard Ran with questions. Eret (who I like to headcanon is like a medic and knows a lot more about medicine than most), doesnt comment at first and is instead focused on helping him, but after he learns more about Ran, he is fascinated by him but takes time to get to know Ran and work on making a friendship with him. No one else, not even Michael knows about Ran being there, though they do eventually find out. 

A multitude of reasons 1. He landed wrong and ended up breaking an arm and cracking two ribs due to the sudden stop. 2. He isn't used to traveling through time so time travel had the affect of making him very sick, including headaches and nausea. 3. When he was dragged into the timetravel a match in the Pit just ended and he had a few bruises and cuts that hadn't been taken care of yet, so the travel and harsh landing just aggravated them and re-opened some. 4. The harsh landing ended up also giving him a concussion. 

When Ran is finally consciousness enough he refuses to speak in anything other than Enderian. At first Phil and Techno are scared he can't speak nor understand their language. But Edward steps in and tells them he can both understand and speak it he just doesn't want to necessarily. So Edward does the communication with Ran on their behalf, he also takes the time to comfort and help him come to terms with him being there. Edward is also the one to gently push/convince Ran to actually speak to them. 

Agreed, uh, maybe From Future to Past? Idk. 

------------------------

I already have a name for this au thankfully, Tip of the Iceberg AU. (Also I wanna say real quick not every single character in the Dream SMP or Tales From The SMP will be featured in this au because it's just to many characters for me to keep track of, it'll mostly be characters I feel like I understand if that makes sense)

They end up everywhere, the Bandits end up in Las Nevadas and end up robbing the place before they bolt, running with no real direction in mind. Zack and Cletus end up just outside of Las Nevadas but they run off into the woods once they hear yelling inside the country. Isaac, Porkums, and Grievous end up in Kinoko Kingdom. Ran lands in Erets castle and accidentally breaks a window from his entrance. Jackie, Jon Jon, and Sheriff Sherman end up in Pogtopia but manage to get out (expect Jackie who is stuck and they can't get him out so they actually left for help). Benjamin lands into the ocean around the Guardian farm. Ranbob also lands near the Guardian farm but instead on land. Charles and Watson land somewhere nearby Foolish's summer home. Ranbulter and James get dropped onto Tommys Memorial Island. And Ash lands in Snowchester. (Note I believe these will be all the tales characters I'll be mostly using, but if any get added I'll probably mention where they also ended up). 

Something important though is that almost no one stayed where they landed, Ran ran off into the surrounding forest so he could focus on regathering himself and calm down without worrying about getting attacked, Benjamin just randomly picks a direction to go (North) and ends up picking up Ranbob to join him. John John and Sherman went different directions to look for help; the Kinoko Kingdom group argues before finally Porkums and Grievous head off together having elected to follow the oceans edge (they think the Kingdom is abandoned and think following the ocean will eventually lead them to a city or something), while Isaac calls them stupid and stays around the Kingdom, exploring and taking stuff; and Charles and Watson just kinda walk around though stay in the general area. Anyone I did not mention stays where they landed or is close to where they landed. SOMETHING IMPORTANT THOUGH IS THAT NONE OF THEM GET DIRECTLY SEEN BY ANY SMP MEMBERS RIGHT AWAY, its only found out what happened when Quackity accuses Fundy of stealing from him which he heavily declines. And instead says that he saw others riding out of the country so it must've been them (he saw them from a distance), and their descriptions are enough to unnerve Karl who then goes back to Kinoko Kingdom to look at his Tales from the SMP books where he runs directly into Isaac and realizes what he feared is true. 

Once Karl gets confirmation that people from both the past and future are here he immediately calls an emergency meeting and just tells everyone almost immediately that he's a time traveler so it doesn't become a problem later, they don't believe him but Isaac is kind enough to help convince them. Soon everyone is convinced and while everyone is included only a few are actually part of a active search party. Those people being Techno, Phil, Ranboo, Tubbo, Foolish, Quackity, Sam, Eret, Bad, and of course Karl. Everyone else is assigned to just keep a eye out. Not everyone is in the party because they didn't want to be or they had other stuff to be doing.

He explains the In-between and Other Side but other than that they never really interfere, if anything he gets dragged into both sides when sleeping and the two sides both push him to find everyone and fix it all.

Jackie, as per usual, is the funniest gremlin on the block.

Poor Ran!! At least he gets some rest?

Absolutely terrifying image, I pity the poor fool who witnesses it.

Pfft. Can you just imagine the chaos? Half the time it's probably just caused by his memory issues. Prank war a few weeks ago? Ranboo forgets the traps he put up, and everyone ends up with brightly colored hair, and a large amount of rabbits in their house, and he;s standing right there with them trying to figure out who did it.

It's something, so I'll take it!

Technoblade: Nearly starting wars since...uh, whenever he spawned in, I'm not really sure of the details there.

Good.

-----------------

So Ran is aware Ranboo is his ancestor? Does he have the same backstory as Brothers AU!Ran?

Does this mean Ranboo is working solely on instincts when around other Endermen or Ran? How does that work out?

And since Enderwalk has all his memories, what are Ran's encounters with him like? Is he aware of Enderwalk state, or was that lost to time? Where do their instincts lead them? Does Ranboo get a bit more hesitant towards Ran when he's leaning more on them? Or is he more open and welcoming? Can he tell Ran shares his blood?

Confrontation? Uh oh, how does that go? Especially considering Ran's possibly the only one to have a vague idea of Karl's hobby? Does it end up coming out?

How does Ran feel about having Tubbo constantly ask questions? Is Tubbo just curious, or is he trying to figure things out? Does this mean Ran ends up in Snowchester, or does Tubbo head to the Antarctic? Medic Eret?? What kind of relationship do they have with Techno and Phil to get called in and come to their aid? How do Eret, Karl, and Tubbo learn of him, if this is being kept hush-hush, and why is it being kept such?

Poor Ran, he's really gotten the short end of the stick here. So time traveling can negatively effect those not used to it/built for it? Does Karl suffer similarly?

And Edward speaks Common, then? Also, Edward!! Is he still Techno's roommate here? Does he have a little nearby area? Or does he head back to the End when he's not hanging around? Has he been helping Ranboo as well?

Sounds good!

-------------------------

Gotcha, gotcha.

The fact that the bandits first instinct upon appearing in a strange new place with no prior warning is to rob it brings me great joy. How does that go for them? How far do they get, what do they steal?

Cletus & Zack: Dunno who you are or where I am, but I don't like the sound of that, so lets bolt.

Issac, Porkums, and Grievous actually don't sound like a chaotic combination, so they probably don't cause too much trouble.

Poor Eret. Imagine just trying to enjoy your day and coming back in to see your window broken.

Jon Jon and Sherman with Jackie just sounds really funny actually. The blatant contrast from time periods and all, and Jackie's pure chaotic energy...Also, they'd both be so much taller than him. Why was he stuck though? What happened?

Another question is, at what point was everyone tossed back? Long after Karl had left, before meeting him, in the middle? Is it different for some? How do those who've met him before react? Why does Isaac believe Karl, and how does he help convince the others?

Who's found first? What happens then? Is anyone hurt? What are both sides definition of 'fixing it all', and how does being dragged in between the two effect Karl?

[kingofthehilltoday]

My top hated/disliked episodes (in no particular order) before I start up, I wouldn't necessarily skip these episodes when watching, and these definitely are not all the episodes I have problems with. Some of them I definitely would skip though but each episode does have some good jokes thrown in even though I've listed them here. This was just requested like 5 times so im doing my best to recall episodes I've had issues with.

Blah My Nose: uncharacteristic of Hank Hill to care about his appearance so much, made up imperfection that was never seen before, made up rivalry that was never talked about nor mentioned prior to this episode despite Hank's broken ankle being a very important focal point in the past, transphobia within episode

Ms. Wakefield: uncharacteristic of almost everyone but the Hills, why are they all excusing this creepy stalker. Weird story, awful episode. (Already went into detail about this before)

Won't You Pimai Neighbor?: strange use of Buddhist monks despite the Soupanousinphone family being Laotian which do not use the title Lama or search for their reincarnated head monks in their branch of Buddhism. White savior trope (ish) and making up an important figure in a real religion.

The Honeymooners: Hank's mom suddenly married to a new man?? (I loved Gary wtf) and is depicted as having a strange drop of the hat do whatever she wants to despite being old streak. They talk about going skydiving, the same woman who dragged Hank to go shopping for glass minis is suddenly skydiving on her own choice? Yeah right.

Serves Me Right For Giving Gen George S. Patton the Bathroom Key: not actually necessarily a bad episode, wouldnt skip, but as long as King of the Hill had been going on at this point it made no sense, (long time followers will know of multiverse theory I made up but) while Peggy was recovering from her skydiving accident, Cotton was her recovery coach. She spent the episode not only recovering but helping Cotton get a plot of land in a veteran cemetery, but this episode dashes all of that and has him cremated instead (???)

Keeping Up With Our Joneses: I'm mostly going to leave season 1-2 episodes off this list, king of the hill was just starting and trying to figure out what it wanted. But this episode sucks. Even though this isn't who Hank would become, it was disgusting that he was once shown as a man who would force his own son to ingest that much cigarette smoke. Just not a fun episode either tbh.

Bad News Bill: Hank's lack of support for Bobby is shown as a good thing at the end of the episode, showing that Hank was right for not believing in Bobby when it came to baseball. Watching the episode it is clear that Bobby isn't good at it, but that doesnt mean he should just give up or not be encouraged to try. He was shown actively liking to play and trying, it was something he wanted to do and was receiving positive reinforcement for it. If Bobby had continued on, who knows? He may have gotten the hang of it. Everyone has to start from somewhere even if it is from less than 0.

Hank and the Great Glass Elevator: this one has a few issues but I wouldn't necessarily say its super bad. Bill's relationship with Ann Richards was genuine and I wish it had continued. It showed him at his best and worst in a relationship, his worst which I dont necessarily agree with. After all this time of not showing The Lenore that Bill has been crying himself to sleep over, she just so happens to show up when Bill finds a happy and stable relationship? And Bill is shown to succumb to her even after her breaking his heart like that? Okay I guess but, why is she there, how did she find out? Do they expect us to believe some magazine or something had the scoop on an ex governor having a boyfriend?? I doubt it. Lenore being here and Bill being unfaithful seem awfully stretchy to me. And then the extra nail in the coffin is at the end when Hank makes Peggy choose between "charcoal.... or me?" In reference to her preferring her meat grilled via charcoal vs propane. This was beyond manipulative of Hank and not something a good partner should ever say.

That's What she Said: this fucker.

I hate him so much. I absolutely skip this episode every other watch through, but sometimes you gotta just rewatch just for that sweet ending where Hank dishes out justice.

Business is Picking Up This Year: this is another episode that is pretty good until the end or so. Another case of Hank showing no support for Bobby and being shown as it being correct. Like cant you just be supportive Hank? Like Hank went out of his way to invent a scenario that could possibly happen to Bobby that ended up injuring the dude with the poop cleaning business just because he was afraid Bobby would get mocked for taking up the job. But like, in this same episode none of that was shown. Bobby went to several people advertising his service and the most negative reaction he got was someone not wanting to touch his hand. Hank, just be supportive of your son dangit.

[springsaladgaming]

i love the demo up to now but im getting very mind blind vibes from this (mysterious traumatizing childhood event which tore your family apart, determinable relationship with your brother, unapprochable older RO (ansel and ambrose), cold edgy RO where you have to be kinda rude to get their attention (teagan vs k), and just like, general vibes) and like this isn't a bad thing but i think it's important to keep in mind and make sure your story has its own remarkable distinguishing features

This story is loosely based off of a short story that I wrote when I was in University about a decade ago. The two stories don’t have anything in common in terms of plot anymore (especially since the short story was Postmodern realistic fiction and HEAVILY influenced by Chuck Palahniuk), but the entire family dynamic was based on the main character, then called Jamie, who was struggling with depression and suicidal ideation, and his family, who seem to be oblivious to what’s going on with him. Sun is a pretty close equivalent to the brother in that story, whose name was Graham. Graham was the successful older brother, the one who, in Jamie’s eyes, was everything his parents ever wanted out of a kid. He was also the only one in the family who seemed to notice what was going on with Jamie. The parents in Ninelives are also very similar to the parents in that story, only the family dynamic had to do with the mom giving the dad placebos for an imagined medical issue and lying about it for years. Jamie inadvertently discovers this and has to decide between exposing this or keeping it secret. (The two stories actually start in the same place; the bathroom. Only, in the original story, Jamie was in the bathroom after a failed suicide attempt, trying to OD on the very meds that his father took, which is how he discovered the placebo thing.) I was eventually planning on turning that short story into a novella with the main theme really touching on visibility of mental illness, but between all the writing I was doing for school and some personal issues in my own life, that short story got dusty in a digital folder on a USB drive I have somewhere. Can you believe those used to be a thing? But I digress.

I have read Mind Blind, and I’m not going to pretend that it (as well as other IFs I have read) didn’t influence me to start this project. So you aren’t totally incorrect. There are similarities, but the similarities don’t come from me basing my content off of Mind Blind. Rather, prior to deciding to try my hand at writing IFs, Mind Blind reminded me so much of this short story from college that I finally decided to revisit it, albeit reshape it into something new. And, hey, that’s Structuralism, baby.

So I can definitely understand feeling these similarities at first glance. That being said, it’s also quite early in the story still, and there is a lot the MC doesn’t know, even about their own brother.

So I guess what I ultimately want to say is, give it time. I don’t personally find the characters that similar, but I also have the advantage of knowing what’s going to happen in the story. It’s definitely my goal for this story to be its own unique beast, and I hope to live up to peoples’ expectations of that. The last thing I want is to rip off of someone else’s content. >.< It’s something I always try to keep in mind when I feel inspired by other works.

I want to touch on this subject more, and I love talking about my characters, but I don’t want to ruin anything for people who want to go in blind, so I’ll talk about the rest under this cut. No spoilers, just more background information.

Ansel is actually one of the most approachable characters in the story. If you’re referring to a specific scene that occurs with a specific choice, there is a reason that he is unapproachable in that situation, and it’s something you will get to talk about with him should you trip that flag. The thing about Ansel is, there’s enough going on with him already, even after a single day, that a player might choose to be suspicious of him. And for good reason. I want to say more on that, but honestly it’s hard to talk about what’s going on with him without touching on major spoilers, so I’ll just say that Ansel is probably the easiest character to get close to (besides maybe Rene), provided you don’t let your suspicion stop you.

Sun is in a similar boat as far as the “hard to talk about without spoilers” thing. There’s something more to his overprotectiveness besides just being a loving sibling. Ulterior movies is definitely a somewhat large focus of some of this plot, and this could become a conflict with more than one character, depending on what the player chooses to pursue. Can’t say more on Sun without heading into spoiler territory either, but your relationship with him could end up really terrible for completely justified reasons later, or you can keep it pretty great, or it can be a mix of the two. I wanted that to be determinable as well as fluctuating with him because sibling relationships are rarely ever one or the other, and I didn’t want to impose that choice on players, especially not since I was already imposing a bad relationship with the parents. I hate taking away player agency when creating their character, but there are some things I just have to do to railroad the plot in the right direction. I didn’t want Sun to be one of those things.

Teagan ultimately appears a little bit tropey. I would go so far as to say there is one of him in a LOT of interactive fictions out there. Tropes aren’t necessarily a bad thing - this is how we, as a society, have formed recognizable archetypes. But that’s something I want to work on with him. My goal is to give him his own flair. Once we start seeing Teagan interact with characters like Alex, Lucia, or Rene, he should start to show his true colors a lot more. One of my major goals with this story is giving the ROs significant opportunities for personal growth, and Teagan is one of the people who needs this the most. 

As an addendum to Teagan, he actually doesn’t respond well to people being rude to him, even though sometimes it might seem that way. 🤣 Poor guy is pretty socially inept and doesn’t have a very high emotional intelligence. Ansel also doesn’t challenge him to be better, which doesn’t help. If he smiles or smirks in response to a comment or a dialogue choice, it would be safer to err on the side of caution and make zero assumptions on what it means. There are a couple of smile/smirk scenes in there that are actually considered negatives for him. I’ve been having a little fun with this, because the choices that might seem like the “right” ones to increase relationship when we’re talking about other IFs or visual novels, for example, are often not the right ones with Teagan.

The good news here is that getting to know the characters and getting close to them in Ninelives is more about just spending time with them and learning about them than it is about making “wrong” choices. I play a lot of visual novels, and one of the things I’ve always disliked about them is how often a single wrong dialogue choice (one that usually seems arbitrary at the time) locks you out of certain routes or brings you to a game-over screen. I’ve really never like that. Between that and the fact that fully-released CSGs don’t have a save feature, one of the things I decided early on was to remove anything that resembled a game-over mechanic or a complete failure to achieve something. When applying that to character relationships, that means players are going to get ample opportunities to get to know the characters without locking themselves out of friendships or romances. This doesn’t mean there are no consequences to being an asshole to the characters all the time, but consistently failing to pick the "best” reactions with characters isn’t necessarily going to ruin your chances with them either.