#i'm so miffed

[terpia]

I'm so mad. I just got to the end of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery and Other Stories' and I didn't realise until the second to last story that the name 'Harris' isn't just a recurring name by accident, but that 'Jim Harris' was in fact the central, titular character of the second short story in the collection ('The Daemon Lover') and that all the other Jim Harrises in the book are probably thematically connected to him (or maybe even the same character??). All the symbolism I misseeeeeeed

[electricfied-wolf]

THEY'RE JUST KIDS. THEY'RE JUST LITTLE FELLAS. I LOVE THEM ALL 💖💖💖

[tritoch]

i know a lot of people (very understandably) dislike the paladin job quests in ffxiv, particularly HW, but i do think it's fun that, now that the pre-ShB MSQ revamp is complete, paladins now have a very cool and thematic in-game storyline that happens without a word being spoken: the development of passage of arms.

none of the below is directly stated in the script, but imo it's a fairly obvious gloss on what the game presents, if you assume a paladin warrior of light. spoilers for all expansions through the end of 6.X.

in the new version of steps of faith, as vishap breaks through each ward protecting ishgard from attack, lucia mounts a final desperate effort to hold him back, with a very familiar looking animation:

but even lucia can't hold back vishap's flame alone, so the temple knights surge forward to assist her. their efforts make the shield visually more powerful and larger. the temple knights here band together in defense of ishgard, and their knightly resolve to protect their home is the difference between victory and defeat.

lucia and the knights do ultimately succeed in defending the last ward, as you have to defeat vishap before their shield falls or you lose.

later in heavensward, obviously, we will get ffxiv's most famous (failed) attempt at blocking something with a shield.

this moment can be read as fairly impactful on the warrior of light's development; as i've noted elsewhere, after the trauma of watching haurchefant bleed out in their arms at level 57, at level 58 paladins learn to channel their magic into healing (and it's called "clemency," or mercy. mercy for whom? who was guilty?), and as someone pointed out on that post, at level 58 dark knights used to get "sole survivor", letting them heal in response to a marked target's death.

for a time, you literally carry haurchefant's shield with you, and 3.3 very much literalizes in genre fashion the idea that even when you are standing alone, your fallen friends stand with you. you don't need to call any allies to stand at your side and raise their shields with you because they are already there, in spirit.

stormblood marks a pretty important turning point in the warrior of light as a combatant, in my opinion, and the text makes this clear in several ways. first, in pretty much all your jobs, you've now far exceeded your trainers and are pioneering new techniques. this is no less true of paladin, which for 60-70 abandons any trainers at all for you to show off your peerless skills in a tournament.

second, stormblood is straight up a story about you getting stronger. at level 61, zenos kicks your ass. at level 70, you kick his ass. why? because you fought and got stronger and developed incredible new techniques and became a one-man army.

for a lot of classes, this story lines up nicely with the big rotation changes or flashy new finishers on the way from 60 to 70. SMN is now busting out bahamut and casting akh morn; RDM gets verflare and verholy; DRG starts harnessing nidhogg's power directly through dragon sight and nastrond.

the tanks are divided in two: warriors and gunbreakers get huge damaging upgrades at 70 in the form of inner release and continuation, each of which lets them hit the same button many times for lots of damage and satisfying animations. paladin and dark knight get more protective abilities; dark knight gets the blackest night, and there's been plenty said about that already by pretty much everyone.

paladins get passage of arms. instead of a relentless new attack (and you get requiescat at 68, which is a way bigger deal for your dps rotation), your big reveal at 70 for zenos in your fight in ala mhigo is a superior way to protect your party, a shield that lets you stand for your allies so they never have to fall for you again. it's lucia's same shield, except you need no allies' shields to reinforce you, proof of your martial prowess and your ability to transcend limits, and perhaps in truth a reminder that you never really stand alone.

in many respects passage of arms should really feel like a paladin signature move to you now if you are playing it at this point, because you should be popping it in pretty much every fight (you are using your mits, right...?). basically every FFXIV fight has at least one big AOE with downtime that warrants passage of arms usage, usually after the mid-fight add phase with slowly filling bar. since that AOE usually drops during downtime, there's no reason not to pop passage of arms (which otherwise restricts your movement and actions), and even on normal, sometimes every little bit counts on a damage check even if it means dropping DPS (thinking here of harrowing hell P10N on release, which was...less consistent for a lot of roulette parties than you might hope).

so from 70 onward, passage of arms is in a sense a paladin warrior of light's signature move, and certainly the one a player gets to most actually enjoy (since if you're using it, you're by necessity not doing anything besides moving your camera and admiring your sick animation). it doesn't have any competition in terms of spectacle until confiteor, and those you're usually throwing out in the middle of movement.

it's such a signature, in fact, that the only other person shown using your one-person version of passage of arms is your greatest admirer, who studied your legend for over a century.

and it's when he fails (should've popped arm's length, bud) that the warrior of light decides they can't let their friends fall for them, and sends them away with the transporter beacon. this is all wrong: you were meant to die for them, not the other way around. yours is the shield that stands between your allies and defeat. it is you who will win this passage of arms and break your opponents lance. and you do.

and then later, when they need to quickly establish zero's domain as a place of fallen grandeur, the home of someone who once believed in heroes but is now a cool and cynical vampire hunter d, what do they use? a decayed statue of someone in the paladin endwalker gear doing the passage of arms animation, of course.

from a visible instantiation of knighthood as a joint effort to defend what is sacred, to a tribute to the fallen friends whose memories stand by you and animate you, to a symbol of the wol's power as emulated by their allies or darkly mirrored in other shards.

not bad for a mit button you hit once per fight and otherwise never think about!

[baravaggio]

think a lot of people online have not moved past parroting the high school sex-ed style of messaging they received about STI awareness, prevention, and treatment, and have not yet grasped that if they want to talk to adults about this stuff, adopting language and strategies designed to work on teenagers is not the move lol.

[greatgaspiads]

Somewhere Only We Know - The Finale The WIP

[invye]

Me, gasping awake: "Omg, I haven't thought about Rosinante in days!"

My brain: "No worries fam, here's a huge CoraHawk fake dating fix it AU."

Me: "Thank you :)"

*10 minutes later*

Me: "But you know we can't have Mihawk without Shanks, especially if this is set during their duelling times, and also I think Shanks and Rosinante would get on like a house on fire--"

My brain: "This is gonna be a polyamorous Rosinante/Mihawk/Shanks story before long, who do you think I am??"

[sealrock]

the four horsemen.

[tblsomedoodles]

Donnie's Visions (apocalypse Seer Twins comic) Part 5 (complete!)

Start - Previous

I should wait until tomorrow to post this so i can make sure i didn't miss anything. But i don't particularly want to wait. It's the last part and i just really want this to be fully complete (post and all.)

anyways, i hope you enjoyed this comic! I am very glad to get to check one thing off my to-do list.

[blacknovelist]

(one piece wano arc spoilers)

So like @guardianlioness and I were talking about one piece and thematic stuff and generally losing our minds and we were talking especially about like

How Zoro and Sanji and Luffy are a Trio but also how Zoro and Sanji are explicitly also painted to be a duo to Luffy, right, like. They're the "Wings of the Pirate King". Together, they protect and look after the crew, but also their captain. They are, effectively, equals in what they do, "official" roles IN the crew itself aside. Zoro, with his high physical power as their physical defense and Sanji, with his high empathy and compassion as an emotional bulwark

And

Like

Okay. Here's the thing. Here's the proverbial problem. Cause right now, as it stands, Oda's introduced an unbalance to the duo. We were specifically talking about how frustrating it kind of is that the imbalance exists.

Because Oda gave Zoro conqueror's haki. He and Luffy share this— but it leaves Sanji as an odd one out. Thematically, it makes no sense to end with this like... off kilter seesaw. Why would you build these two up to BE on even standing only to take that away from them? Don't get me wrong, Zoro having conqueror's haki is a delicious character choice that I think adds fascinating complexity to Zoro and his position in the crew. He's a powerhouse, he's exerting his will over reality, and he follows his Captain the future Pirate King without question. Haki. Love it. Brilliant. But it makes no sense in the overarching thematic line between him and Sanji in regards to Luffy.

Giving Sanji conqueror's naturally wouldn't fix the issue, because frankly that defeats the entire purpose OF the char building that's been established in whole cake island. Sanji rejected the line of noble, of royalty, of power. It makes no SENSE for sanji to have it, he's not someone looking TO conquer or overcome the way Zoro is, it doesn't FIT him. And saying the stuff with his raid suit and the Germa augmentation rearing its head is the balance point is nonsensical for the same reason. Sanji already rejected all of that power and what it means and reclaimed it in a new way. Explicitly, directly, he denounced these things, directly ASSOCIATES them with a loss of humanity and his very self, wants nothing more to DO with it. Not only does it not make sense, but going back on it would be a slap in the face to all the development Sanji's gone through up until now, even laying aside the fact that it doesn't parallel Luffy at all so the unbalance isn't really addressed in that case.

But you know. Conqueror's Haki isn't the only thing Luffy has to proverbially offer. Conqueror's Haki is the overt, the direct, the loud and forceful. There's a lot we don't understand, between the stuff we do. It bears down and exerts over reality, makes demands of it. It tells you to listen.

What do we know about The Voice Of All Things? Not a lot. We know it seems to enable one to hear not the words, but the intention, the truth of other living things and even in objects, especially those with will like the Poneglyphs. We know Roger had it, Zunesha has it, the Kozuki line seemed generally to have it. The Three Eyed tribe may be capable of awakening it in themselves. We don't know if it's purely something you're born with or not. We don't know what it means, if anything, except for this: to hear the voice is to listen to the world around you and understand its heart.

When Luffy enters Gear 5, the only one who can tell at first is Zunesha. Zunesha can hear his heartbeat, and conveys this through the Voice to Momonosuke.

The anime conveys it more clearly, but it's in the manga text, too. Immediately after Zunesha realizes this... Onigashima is shaking. No one quite knows yet what's going on, other than Kaido is here and the world around them is trembling. Those on the battlefield, they've got front row seats to witnessing the transformation, what comes next.

Zoro and Sanji have finished their fights. They're conked the fuck out post battle, like usual... or they should be. But here's the thing. Right after Zunesha calls for Joyboy, from a room distant to the fighting, offset from the war waging outside...

Sanji's part in the major battles is over by this point. If they wanted to emphasize a "the crew knows their captain" moment, why not showcase the other strawhats too? The ones not on ground zero? But it doesn't show anyone else. It focuses. on. him.

Sanji, who's a deeply compassionate and kind man. Sanji, who stopped and paid attention even to the biological relatives he couldn't stand when he could've walked free without a care. Sanji, with his skills in Observation, in already listening to and feeling out others' intentions...

Zoro having conqueror's haki doesn't make sense on its own. It unbalances the duality of the Wings of the Pirate King. But give Sanji the power to hear the Voice Of All Things or something damn well close... that's a pretty good parallel to each other and their roles to Luffy, don't you think?

[f1-birb]

no one will ever be as hard on Lando as he is on himself

[refinedstorage]

I aim to have a HOOOOGe library of assets so when I finally start building that city for my DX alt uni that'd be neat :D

[funishment-time]

kirumi insight from kodaka

auto-translation:

Why did Tojo-san decide to become a maid?

auto-translation:

I think that because she could do anything, she felt it was boring to use her power for herself and felt more comfortable serving others, and that is why she was so selfless.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

why is it that I find a physical copy of one CD by an incredibly popular band that I want to own and it turns out the disc was stolen but my sister can go to a different thrift store and come home with like 6 CDs including one by a decently obscure artist that we both happen to be into

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

I really do appreciate the textual analysis, discussions, artwork (official and fanart), and the ample quality meta 03 fans have shared/made over the years. Perusing old blogs, some abandoned and some still kicking, as well as people's tags, finding all kinds of cool posts in the process has been a lot of fun! For someone who has loved this show since the 2000s, yet avoided the online fandom post-2009 (to avoid Broho spoilers, which I put off watching until this year lol), it feels like I have a treasure trove of Good Shit to discover. All in spite of the 03 fandom being pretty quiet/dead.

[andy-clutterbuck]

SDCC | 2017

[dollelujah]

somebody asked my opinions on blythes and my immediate thought was "they're like helicopters. I don't think of them unless I'm looking at them."