#escape from the cycles..

[majosullivan]

Raine you don’t deserve this in the slightest but I can’t deny how funny I find this

[artgletic]

case study of the self-identified god

[mochii-derogatory]

ive been watching the dog motif show... why is no one talking about this guy. isaac lahey come home from france,,,, sweet boy,,,, we miss you,,,

[fumifooms]

What if we were both magic prodigies and it otherized us in different ways and we devoted ourselves to protecting a family member who has general other goals & priorities. What if we both did self-sacrifical devotion in opposite ways.

What if we were dark mirrors of each other and where I've grown overcontrolling you've grown complacent. What if, bought as a servant into a pretty loving home, ownership and control is what love looks like to me, and to you neglected and lonely growing up, love is gratefully taking any scraps of it you’re lent.

By belonging to someone, even if she comes back injured or fails at finding Delgal, she feels like she belongs and is cherished, by owning someone he feels safe in them not leaving him.

She’s what’s tethering him do you see… And he’s the only thing giving her direction and purpose in her state. She needs a compass and he needs a support.

They’re both so out of it 😭 It’s the weirdly intense and unearned mutual trust and reliance on each other?? They’re each other’s weird little comfort codependent teddy bear. Or at least they were headed towards that before SHE DIED THEN HE DIED THEN THEY BOTH FORGOT ABOUT EACH OTHER AND NEVER MET EVER AGAIN. Though she’s also the guard attack hound keeping him safe… And vice versa he heals her and can rewrite her very being with just one wave of his hand. They’re both so so mentally and physically vulnerable both but they cling onto each other. They can’t perceive things accurately but despite it all someway somehow they stumble into something closer to resembling companionship just before they both die. Falin is just that kind and Thistle is just that lonely. Overworked. We both haven’t lived for ourselves in a very long time, haven’t we.

They both have a similar devotion to the people they love but again the difference is that Thistle starts overtsepping while Falin is self-effacing. The other difference between them is that people care about Falin <3 People have given up on Thistle long ago, and he has given people reasons to, while people refuse to give up on Falin. Yaad has a mini arc about it dw about it it’s ok he’s not all alone in the end 😭😭 He reached out for Marcille’s hand but they already all wanted to help him, they just had to be given the chance to, Yaad just had to be given the chance to, it’s okay I’m okay

Hey what if we learned to get in touch with our own identity and the world around us and living in the present again through being in the worst codependent situationship ever.

Falin and Thistle sitting in a tree, sucking on flowers together because they’re h-u-n-g-r-y 💕💕💕

I bet he’s only ever thought of flowers as useless ornaments. Weak weeds. But she shows him they’re tasty and useful and good and pretty in their own right too and deserve existing without proving their worth and waaa <33 Thistles…... Did you know thistles taste sweet if you remove the thorns and eat them?

"Even as a chimera, her kind nature remains" you can’t suppress her in the way that matters. You can’t soothe him in the way that matters. It’s doomed. You’re doomed. It’s all doomed. Save me.

[a-s-levynn]

I have traveled far beyond the path of reason, take me back to Eden

edit: more context in the tags of the root post

[soath]

the fact that the archheart took selena because he loved her and wanted to give her peace, and in the process left her suspended in an eternal static torment because he doesn't understand how something as fragile as a mortal soul works feels like a summary of the good intentions/bad long term outcome situation with godly soul custody. it makes sense that the gods would end up keeping some of their special followers! the first mortals to get in tight with the gods probably asked for it! the ego death of proper reincarnation is terrifying compared to staying up late hanging out with your buddy pelor. asmodeus and the hells aren't being half as kind about it yet the core motive remains—that hoarding instinct to keep what you love(or hate) and never let it go.

but you and i aren’t meant to be eternal. the kryn use anamnesis to ensure the continuity of self through endless lifetimes and they’re still losing themselves to it. selena was turned into a nighmarish human-faced star because the god she made out of metal thought that they could understand each other and she hung there in his domain burning, her last wish forever repeating on her lips, for a thousand years until he could release her. mortals don’t want to fully die and gods don’t want to let them go but nobody can stay in their frozen crystalline palace of eternity forever. eventually everything in the Real gets to change.

[razberrypuck]

the cyclical nature of charlie slimecicle characters

[frittercrittern]

I am feeling entirely normal and nothing is going on at ALL in my brain about this triangle and his horrible awful dimension he is from

[kaurwreck]

I think Dazai, while young, became attached to Natsume when Natsume was lonely and so was he (which is why he calls him Sensei in the Dark Era, like the protagonist in Kokoro); that Natsume brought Dazai to Mori after Dazai attempted suicide (which is why Dazai never touches him in Bar Lupin, why Natsume follows him from the Port Mafia to his meeting with Taneda and then to the Agency, why Dazai knows Natsume well enough to allude to his history to Tanizaki and to recieve the jump drive Natsume brings him in the Cannibalism arc— Dazai knows him); and that Natsume performed a partial skill transfer similar to Kyouka's mother to ensure it could not come that close ever again (and that's why Dazai is one of the few if not only touch/contact-based skill users whose is involuntary).

I think No Longer Human isn't merely nullification, I think (similar to how Bram's skill reverses death but through the framework of vampirism and Atsushi's slices skills and regenerates in addition to his transformations), there is more to Dazai's skill such that it precludes him from dying (which is why he can stand in front of a hail of bullets and be thrown by Chuuya through several buildings in the Port Mafia, why he can't seem to commit suicide successfully, why Kunikida and Chuuya remark on his preternatural inability to die, why Dazai says to both Atsushi and Fyodor with such certainty "you can't kill me," and, cheekily, why Kunikida tells Dazai in 55 Minutes "You're no longer human! You've lost that right!" when Dazai says he finally managed to die, however briefly).

I think Natsume's skill bends reality in the shape of the narrative structure over which he had such mastery and he decided that whoever he failed to snatch from the cyclical jaws of misery and suicide before (again, borrowing from Kokoro), he would not let this boy die; and how cruel that must have felt at first (which is why Dazai hates pain— he's been denied the easiest escape from it that he knows), but how reality bent to weave a narrative such that Dazai could be saved again and again in such a way that might shatter Koroko's inescapable loneliness (this is why, in 55 Minutes, it's implied HG Wells might not have existed, might have been an apparition from an earlier era, as if reality itself rippled space and time to reconjure someone who made sense to protect Dazai when it seemed unlikely anyone else could; why Akutagawa happened to have business there; why Akutagawa and Atsushi happened to cross paths).

It's well known that the titular cat in I Am a Cat is a calico. But, the story was based on Natsume's IRL cat, who was a black, striped cat. And aren't Dazai's bandages a little like stripes?

[darkgifted]

obsessed with the fact that in most rpgs, the "good" companion endings usually involve you helping them get what they want

whereas in bg3 the good ending for characters usually means steering them away from what they want, because it isn't actually good for them, even at the cost of them never feeling the warmth of the sun again

[radicalcircuit]

They're marching in and mean business.

[butchladymaria]

Immortality, Motherhood, and Pain: A Closer Look at Annalise and the Doll

Finally revisiting this from ages ago, because the parallels between these two are just SO fascinating. Content warnings for discussions of misogyny, genocide, abuse, and pregnancy/childbirth.

This analysis will cover the parallels between Miss Doll and Queen Annalise through the lenses of the misery of immortality, the trauma of marginalization, and the liberation they find in motherhood. Both the Doll and Annalise are undying, both coded as mother figures, both marked by death, and both very, very alone.

Miss doll and Annalise are the only characters in the whole game who are undying. You can kill them, but not meaningfully - not in any way that matters - and they seem to know it. Neither will try to stop you, nor will they fight back, should you choose to attack them. They will come back, and your violent betrayal will have seemingly meant nothing to them. They both are very aware they will outlast whatever violence you may inflict upon them. It's evidenced in their dialogue:

If you attack, Annalise says:

“Enough. If only Our life was so easily forfeit… Grieve not, for Us.” “How sad this is. If only Our life was so easily forfeit…”

If you attack Miss Doll, she used to say:

“I must have displeased you. Go on, shut me down… Even so, this vessel will remain in your service… So have no fear."

I think this point of comparison highlights just how deeply they've both been desensitized to violence and abuse. They do not beg for mercy, they do not put up a struggle - they only remark on it with distant chagrin. They both seem keenly aware that their flesh need not be in one piece to fulfill its purpose.

But where Miss Doll was made to embody the Victorian patriarchal ideal of womanhood, Annalise wields womanhood as her last weapon against the dehumanization of the church’s genocide through her queendom. Upon being resurrected the next time you return to the dream, Miss Doll will act as though nothing had happened at all. However, if you bring her flesh to the Altar of Despair, Annalise will call you an arrant fool, and remind you that “Vileblood or no, forget not; We are thy Queen”. Miss Doll kneels to serve the hunter, while the hunter must kneel to serve Annalise. Miss Doll has been conditioned to passively accept dehumanization and submission, yet Annalise demands respect through your submission even in her dehumanized state. Miss Doll is subjugated by the trappings of womanhood, while Annalise is lifted from subjugation by her womanhood, in some ways.

I find this fascinating, however, because while Miss Doll appears in every way as a pure, demure Victorian woman was meant to, they are also dehumanized through the denial of gender. To Gerhman, their creator, they are nothing more than another tool of the workshop. An object. Even the Doll themself uses neutral "I" pronouns to refer to themself in the original translation. I think it is pertinent to note that the only canonical reference to Miss Doll as a "woman" comes from Eileen. In the original Japanese text, she refers to the Doll with a term of endearment reserved for young girls. Miss Doll's appearance is the historical ideal of the subjugated woman - yet when Eileen confers upon her the status of "woman", she does so in an endearing and humanizing way. Therefore, for both Miss Doll and Queen Annalise, the status of womanhood is a rebuttal of their own dehumanizing subjugation: Annalise as "queen", and Miss Doll as "daughter".

Both characters are arguably seeking/find liberation through motherhood. Miss Doll gets "Childhood's Beginning": their creator and animator have both been put down, the hunt is finally over and they are no longer bound to serve its participants, nor must they watch their beheadings. They cradle the newly ascended hunter. It is a highly atypical “motherhood”. It exists in the performance of the role rather than the biology of childbirth. In the same way, the Doll possesses a highly atypical “womanhood” which exists in performance alone, rather than in biology or even identity — but nonetheless, it is real, and it is hers. I, perhaps too optimistically, choose read it as humanizing for them; because unlike their “womanhood”, Miss Doll is allowed to choose this for themself rather than having it imposed upon them.

In the same vein, Annalise seeks to birth a child of blood for a similar but perhaps more somber reason. She wants a child because she wants an heir — which is to say, because it is the only way she may once again have kin. Because it is the only way she may fulfill her duty as Queen. She witnessed everyone she ever knew or loved — surely her own family included — slaughtered before her eyes. Annalise seems to seek motherhood in order to be a homemaker - in the most literal sense possible. She wants to rebuild the community, the home, which was so brutally torn away from her. She wishes to restore honor to Cainhurst. For Annalise, having a child is an open act of rebellion against the genocidal eugenics-frenzied bloodthirst of the Church. I can't help but wonder if part of the reason Alfred is so hellbet on destroying her, why the Executioners imprisoned her the way they did, was to strip her of bodily autonomy so she couldn’t “reproduce”. Her desire for a child is her way of seeking liberation for her and her people.

In this sense, taking up the role of a mother, of "women's work", is what confers the agency upon both Annalise and Miss Doll which had been otherwise stripped from them. Annalise's by the genocidal eugenics of the Church, and Miss Doll by the pact of servitude she was seemingly born into.

[syn0vial]

also, thinking now about how boba’s relationship with mirta is practically the polar opposite of the one jango had with him him. like,

jango with boba: you are my heir, you are an extension of myself, you are everything i could have been, and i will do everything in my power to make you a perfect and uncompromising carrier of this legacy.

boba with mirta, gripping her shoulders: our bloodline is fucking cursed and i will do everything in my power, including literally actually dying, to prevent it from dragging you down with us

[chippuyon]

There’s something about Rei basically telling his father:

“YOU can stay miserable, I actually have a family who I love, peace✌️”

Like Rei is living his best life with his husband and daughter doing French Toast at the other side of Japan, while Suwa will stay miserable by his own volition lmaooo

For realll he's living the life.

You just reminded me I forgot to talk about THIS line which is genius??? This is the first and last time Rei calls him father as an adult. Aside from the literal reason that he's not Rei's "Boss" anymore since he's quitting the org, it's also his bittersweet way of acknowledging that the man before him did raise him to some extent. He's saying farewell to both the org and his biological ties to his father, without denying that either were a part of his history.

[mercymaker]

also, had an idea for a one-shot that would immediately get me called out canceled and excommunicated from the fandom but at the same time i have such a shitty relationship with writing that it's likely to stay in my noggin until it wears down the walls of my skull

[stewykablooey]

everyone on my ‘no kendall!!’ post tagging it with ‘kendall look at me this isnt you’ like. it very much is guys. this is the most kendall thing he’s done all season.