#idk just Thoughts TM

[canirim]

I hate people that go "oh but what if this is all a simulation" and decide that they must be the only "real" person bc

Yeah, what if? Why is that suddently a reason for you to be a jerk to the """"""NPCs"""""", be selfish and cruel?

Why is your first instinct when questioning reality "how does it benefit ME?"

[hinamie]

alongside someone like you

[lunealys]

which character in obm do you think is the most yandere for mc and why?

CRACKS KNUCKLES OKAY (there will be spoilers from nightbringer so just a heads up)

In my opinion it's definitely a tie between Mammon, Leviathan and Belphegor. Mammon In the OG it's been stated that Mammom oversees all forms of greed, and we know how he is head over heels for the MC as well as possessive. (well the rest of the boys have possessive tendencies towards the mc so lol) In Nightbringer we actually see him go super possessive over the MC to the point his brothers struggled trying to get him under control. Although it's been resolved, I still wonder if he'll be able to go that crazy like that again @ the MC. He is the Avatar of Greed after all, he makes it known to everyone that the MC belongs to him only and that he was their "first." Leviathan Avatar of Envy, enough said. I do remember in the OG (whether it was in one of the pop quiz events or the main story, I'll have to dig later) he did say that the MC is his. Either way I do believe he can be the most yandere for the MC. This jealous serpent??? Obviously. The MC is his idol, his angel, his player 2. I genuinely think he can be a terrifying yandere too. Iirc apparently he was supposed to be a canon yandere but they scrapped it? Correct me if I'm wrong but that's pretty much all I can say about him for now, It's not much so sorry. u __ u Maybe I'll edit and add more later. Belphegor He's a canon yandere (mmNNFF YUMMY). In Nightbringer his yandere side is shown more in Lesson 33-14 , Where he tried to keep the MC from going back to the human world (in MC's case, back to the future) by putting a spell on them so they feel tired. He's so wants the MC is to stay and to keep for himself and it shows, not just in nightbringer but pretty much anywhere. Dude got jealous/angry in Lesson 55-18(OG) where if you choose the option "I'm worried about Lord Diavolo." Belphie responds with "sO yOu cArE mOrE aBoUt lORd dIaVoLO tHaN mE?" What a spoiled, bratty, yandere bitch baby. Also a scary yandere. Tbh I can't really choose but it's between these three. Sorry for any typos btw. Honorable mentions: Lucifer , Barbatos , Diavolo

[the-meme-monarch]

a bit of mostly jevil :] it’s a jevil kinda day

my solitaire queen design came from this post !

and seam uses they/them ok

[insufferablemod]

top 10 worst celebrities ever

[worstloki]

Fortesa Latifi, We Were Young

[blaiddraws]

HAPPY ZISU ZUNDAY FOLKS have a VAMPIRE ZISU. of which i am being VERY NORMAL ABOUT (i am not)

[good-beansdraws]

Massive Milgramsona art/info dump as a treat to myself!! Alas, my fatal flaw is being unable to shut up about anything even while simultaneously embarrassed/nervous to share, so here's literally all the info I have on her 😅

Profile:

Name: For the sake of posting online I’ll call her Rose!

Number: 012

Color: #E7355B

Age: She’d be 20 when Milgram started

Status: Milgram Staff, Machine Technician

Song genre: Pop/theater (a mix of Mahiru and Kazui's vibes)

Backstory: She is studying abroad in Japan to work on technology related to the mv machine when she stumbles into top secret info about the trials. Horrified at the lack of prior testing, she demands to be included in the experiment to make sure the brand new tech runs smoothly and doesn't harm anyone in the process. To prevent her leaking info to the public and deciding an extra participant wouldn't hurt, Milgram agrees.

Role: Rose performs routine maintenance and updates on the extraction machine, and checks in with prisoners' health to make sure it's not having any adverse effects. She listens in on the interrogations, ringing the bell to signal Es when the machine is ready for use (re: my theory on how it works >:3). She then watches the mvs after Es to make sure there are no glitches.

(Though she is a personal milgramsona, her role in the story is supposed to reflect the audience's experience overall when it comes to how much info we know, emotions we experiencing regarding guilt/responsibility, and how much power over events we actually have given the voting system and trial breaks.)

Trial 1

Jackalope's comments during trial commencement: Oh, I almost forgot participant 012, Rose. We've never had more than one staff member before, so we figured that sort of numbering would be fine. Hey, don't look at me, it's not like it was our idea to include her. She's not a prisoner -- the only crime she's committed is sticking her nose where it didn't belong... You can ask her for the details, but she's just here for maintenance on our extraction machine. It's not easy keeping that thing running smoothly, you know? As part of her duties, she'll be privy to all the same information as you, but don't let her be any more of a busybody than she already is -- she has absolutely no authority when it comes to your verdict decisions, got it?

MV: Mic Check - “Can anyone hear me?”

VD: Positive Feedback

Cover: Pathological Facade - Ghost

Her album would release last in line. The VDs aren't interrogations since there's been no crime -- Es asks about her duties and observations of the prison. In them, she admits her predictions that she and Es will eventually be on trial for their involvement in the prisoner's fates.

Thus, her mvs are focused on her emotions towards the prisoners, her pride in helping bring justice, and her guilt at providing Milgram a means to pass judgement on people she cared about. I'm going to Goncharov the actual mvs/songs, but Mic Check is generally an introduction to her job behind the scenes prepping the equipment that will allow the prisoners' songs to be heard, as well kick off symbolism of her as a performer herself. She'll make a comment about how the experiment is leading to tragedy, "as if someone said Macbeth" (then covers her mouth, as she's standing in a theater herself).

I kept getting tripped up looking for Deco*27 songs that worked and weren't already taken, so I decided to go with some favorites and vibe-matching songs from other artists!

Comments during trial closing: It's good to hear you weren't a pushover when Rose gave her thoughts on the verdicts -- you guys disagreed on quite a few of them, eh? Ah... so she's not the type to pick fights, is that it? I guess that explains how she's managed to get along with everyone. (sigh) Even you knew better than to get attached like that. Well, at least she's kept our machine up and running the whole time.

Trial 2

Commencement: Now I need to wake Rose. We're going to need some extra upgrades to our machine if we want to get the most out of this round of extractions. I've got a sneaking suspicion that she and her bleeding heart are going to try and sway you during this trial. Her duty is specifically to look out for the prisoners' safety, but yours is only to judge them. Don't forget that.

MV: Changement - “Don’t say ‘break a leg,’ if it might just break.”

VD: Control Variable

Cover: TOXY - Kujiragi

I did my best to write out the title pronunciation out in katakana since I wanted it as the name of the dance move, not a direct translation of meaning. I went with シャジェモ "sha-je-mo" as the closest I could get to the "shanj-mou" sound, but feel free to correct me if there's a better way to write it. The door is based off of various set designs for Clara's home in The Nutcracker. (There's no deep meaning that this is the only one not opening -- I realized too late all the others are cracked open and my art app doesn't have the tools to easily fix that so I'm sticking with it 😭)

A changement is a small jump in ballet -- I thought it was fun to combine that (which means "to change") with Control Variable (refering to the variable in an experiment that never changes). The video shows conflicting emotions as her decisions/inaction caused so much to happen between trials, yet at the same time she feels like there's so much she'll be unable to change even if she really wants to intervene. Her mvs show the prisoners pretty regularly (since they are her crime, she's realized), and the teaser line is paired with references to Mahiru's broken leg.

The thumbnail combines different areas of study -- mechanical, medical, musical, mathematical (theater spotlight, muscles, Weakness notes, motion formulas). I think it's super cool how many areas of expertise are passed around the fanbase when discussing the characters. I've picked up new facts about plants, food, anatomy, geography, music, animals language, (sigh. color theory.), hobbies, professions, mythology, etc from fans with different fields of knowledge. While that's one of my favorite aspects of the project from the outside, I think it would be super intimidating to someone on the inside trying to tackle so much information at once.

Closing: As for Rose... (laughs) I thought she was dooming herself before--! Not only has she gotten hopelessly attached to everyone over the course of this trial, she's even started a relationship with one of the prisoners! And of all the people she could have chosen... Eh? Oh no, we have no policies against that for our staff. I mean, the whole point of Milgram is to explore human nature, the power of emotions, the complexities of connections, all that crap. I'm just grateful she shows a bit more common sense when she's operating the machine...

Trial 3

MV: Showstopper - “There won’t be applause, but I’ll take a bow, okay?”

VD: Please Exit Left

Cover: Ironina - Nilfruits

I don't know the album theme yet, but this is the tentative sprite and thumbnail design. The T2 sprite was kind of an "innocent" one, since at the beginning she still has faith in her role in the prison, excited to work with everyone there. (Plus, I joined the fandom a little after t2 started so that's peak excitement time lol). The T3 sprite has much more of a "guitly" feel to it because, at the end of T2 and after this hiatus, she'd harbor a lot more guilt about her position and fear about the experiment's conclusion. As a fun little detail, her pencil has been replaced with a more permanent utensil as final verdicts are locked in.

Now listen. My artist brain was constantly fighting my science brain when doing sprite designs -- I know gloves like that and nothing else isn't proper PPE. I know none of those are safety shoes (god forbid wearing just socks??? to the lab???). There should be no jewellery at all. The whole point of a lab coat is that you don't roll up the sleeves and expose your bare skin. However. It's anime character design. There can be compromise.

Referencing Rose's personal life as a performance and comparing Milgram's trials to one, I wanted the mv to play on "showstopper" as both a great show and a literal attempt to stop the project before it reaches its finale. There would be creepy comparisons in the mv between operating stage equipment and prison executions: curtain/set ropes and nooses, heavy duty lightswitches and electric chairs, etc.

Misc.

And lightening things up again -- birthday art and minigrams :3

Birth flower: Camellias. Pink camellias symbolize love but also longing. The fact that they bloom in winter, and have a quick death (the entire flower wilts at once, instead of individual petals falling off), have inspired different meanings in different cultures -- overcoming hard times, facing death in battle, inseparable lovers, and so on

Three minigrams featuring my own annoyance that her design is a bit close to Shidou's coat/gloves look, a mandatory short joke, and a pun that works so perfectly for my Put-In-Situations guy

[merlins-strawberriesandroses]

Freylin lovers… all four of you out there…. please talk to me abt them. I will love u forever

[aardvaark]

expanding on that post about sophie devereaux backstories, grift ones and real ones and the things in between:

a year or two after they meet, tara and sophie are somewhere near drunk in a hotel room after a con, high heels thrown against the wall, dresses unzipped and halfway off. tara asks for her Story. the Story. and maybe she wouldn’t have asked if she were sober or maybe tara is simply a little too bloody brave sometimes, a little too determined.

so sophie tells her about a father in the military, a mother who died young, a family that moved houses, towns, regions, countries, all the time growing up. about lying to impress kids at every new school. about desperately doing almost anything to fit in for the months or year she’d stay in that area. about sweet talking her way out of a few little crimes here and there, cash that she would certainly never steal from her rich friends’ parents’ wallets, some driving rules she broke when she was too young to even have a license, yet old enough for a cop to encourage her flirting. sophie tells tara that her father died when she was 19, and the grief had led to recklessness. she made a mistake on a too-ballsy grift. she would’ve gone to jail. instead, she faked her death (for the first of many times) and never looked back. it’s the only funeral of hers that she didn’t attend.

and then, tara told her an equally untrue Story in return.

when sophie is duchess charlotte prentiss, her husband william asks far too many questions about her past. of course, charlotte has a Story. all of her aliases have Stories, even the ones she only uses for a day - they all have birthdays, childhood pets, first kisses, people they love. so she tells him that her parents died in a car crash when she was 16 and instead of going into the foster system, the authorities figured she was old enough to become an emancipated minor. she tells him how it was difficult at times, incredible at others, and sad and exciting and embarrassing and bittersweet. she weaves a damn good tale about charlottes life, if she may say so herself - one that’s just painful enough for william to stop asking questions. it works perfectly. but when she tucks astrid into bed that night, and the little girl looks up at her with big round eyes and asks if ‘charlotte’ misses her mummy and daddy and says that she’s sad for ‘charlotte’ because she knows what it’s like to miss a mama… sophie freezes. there’s a lump in her throat and goosebumps on her skin. she blinks down the tears and recovers just enough to fake a smile and kiss astrid’s forehead as she leaves the room. lying has never hurt like this before. it takes all her strength to shut it down, shove the emotions in some tiny box in her head that she simply refuses to acknowledge. she decides, then, that she has to leave this house as soon as possible.

the charlotte Story is one of many that hardison finds. it’s inevitable, when he has to cover all their tracks so thoroughly, that hardison would stumble upon various old aliases. he only learns about the charlotte one from the job in england - there’s no links between her and sophie, but he destroys a decent amount of excess duchess charlotte prentiss information just in case, and then looks for any other mysterious women who happened to pop up or vanish around that time. he notices that there are some things that all of sophie’s aliases share: their parents are dead, they have no siblings, and their life changed dramatically somehow in their mid-to-late teens (usually with those parents’ deaths, or gaining an inheritance, or moving far away). he knows that these are all pretty standard, convenient details for a fake identity. but he wonders, sometimes. couldn’t she have made up dead siblings? estranged but alive parents? a dramatic event in her early childhood or in her twenties? he doesn’t know if the consistent parts mean anything. he doesn’t ask for her Story - not outright, at least. though for the first couple months of knowing her, he does sometimes enquire about little things here and there. did she grow up with sisters, what was her high school like - that sort of stuff. information is his thing, sue him! sometimes sophie just smiles. sometimes she answers, and he eventually learns that her truths, at least, are very much relative. when he decides that she is family - which is pretty early on, to be honest - he also decides not to ask anymore. he destroys old aliases when necessary, but he never reads more than he has to. he loves sophie and that is enough.

eliot never asks anything about her life. not even the innocent, casual, unthinking questions that sophie is used to from other people: where’d you grow up? did you ever have any pets? i always had to share a room with my sister, what about you? eliot clearly avoids asking her any of it. she’s somewhat surprised by that. sure, he’s polite, but he’s also suspicious both by nature and due to certain unfortunate experiences, so she sort of expected him to interrogate her when they first met.

one night, they’re the last two left at nate’s apartment. even nate had gone to bed and left them there, long given up on shooing his team out at appropriate times. sophie’s been drinking tea and flipping through a latvian phrase book to refresh her memory for tomorrow’s grift, and apparently that 90-minute-a-day sleep schedule allows for eliot to be doing one-handed push ups in the living room at this ungodly hour. too tired to retain any more information, sophie studies eliot instead. he’s a straightforward guy. she decides to be straightforward too. she breaks the silence of the apartment and simply asks - is he ever curious about her Story? eliot pauses a moment. looks her in the eye, quiet. doesn’t brush her off gruffly like she thought he might. instead, he asks if she’s ever curious about What He’s Done. that is answer enough for the both of them. they don’t talk for the rest of the night, each going back to their own activities, but the silence isn’t uncomfortable. on the contrary - the mutual understanding ends up solidifying their relationship.

nate isn’t always so intensely careful about his questions like eliot. well, actually, there were many times back in his insurance days that he very much did ask her questions on purpose. and of course, for five years, he asks after her real name. sophie generally thinks of it as a fun game. she smiles at his useless determination and teases him when he comes back from jail. after a while, though, she realizes that the questions about her Story mostly stopped when leverage formed, and stop completely once he proposed. nate never hears any version of her Story. she’s here now, and that’s all he needs or wants to know - just like how sophie is her real name in any way that matters.

the moment that sophie realizes this is the moment she stops caring about the real Story, the burden of the secret and the guilt and shame of keeping it from her newfound family. in that moment, she understands that what happened back then is just a small drop in the ocean, irrelevant to the life she’s built and come to love. she never tells them the story, and she never needs to.

[mosspapi]

"Why does it bother you when people treat you extra nice because you're disabled, don't you want to be treated kindly?" No! I want to be treated like a human being! I don't need to be pitied and coddled and treated like some special fragile little creature just because I'm disabled, just like I don't need to be vilified and dehumanized and treated like some freakish revolting Other. I'm a fucking person. If you're an asshole, I deserve the right for you to treat me as such.

[pizzapasta23045]

The fact that Rhinedottir sees all her creations as her children...

The fact she got one of her sons to eat the other for no apparent fault of Rubedo's own sins, apparently simply because he was too defective.

The fact that she seems to act as if the deaths of all her children as simply a part of life, something that was always meant to happen.

The fact that Albedo also sees her as a sort-of mother and yet that he was abandoned by her with only a letter and a mission.

That's.... Idk, that's sad.

[cpmhew]

I love all the stuff between Quentin & Alice in 1x10. I think it really seems like they're both *trying* and that's sweet to watch, even with how messy things are. I love seeing how uncomfortable Alice is at home, and the way Quentin tries to ease that discomfort by supporting her in the ways she asks for, and by making little jokes about stuff when they're in her room as a way of showing that all this stuff she's so freaked out and embarrassed about isn't Huge and Awful to him. He validates how bad things have been but he shows her that it doesn't reflect badly on her. And Alice softens and accepts that from him, which I think is really hard for her!

The sex stuff makes me cringe but on this rewatch I actually also love it. They're such a mess and I get where both of them are coming from, but I think it's very sweet how they talk it through in the end, it's not perfect but they are both willing to be vulnerable and they both show that they want to make it work. The "I love you. And so as far as I'm concerned, you know, let's do this" / "Oh. Okay. Me too. You." really got to me this time around... I don't think they're good together but I am enjoying seeing them try to make it work.

[biracy]

I know this can be contentious (and even just mentioning this kind of analysis as a serious one makes a lot of people who don't understand what literary analysis is very angry) but I actually think it's pretty cool that people can draw both transfeminine and transmasculine reads of Jesse from hit TV show Jesse out of the text of the show. Something something shared experiences something something solidarity. You get the idea

[mae-i-scribble]

I've recently reread book 1 of the official english TGCF release in my efforts to slowly reread the entire series as to better break down what about it has had me in such a choke hold since discovering it almost 2 years ago. And in particular I want to focus on Hua Cheng bc I am one of those that does not particularly like how he is presented in the novel (please give him something significant other than xie lian. please i am not asking for much here just like something he does or has that is no in some way tied back to xie lian but I digress). However, I do also think that his character is misconstrued fairly often.

One thing I found of interest is in Xie Lian and Hua Cheng's second meeting, where we first meet San Lang. As they near the shrine, Hua Cheng is not the one who asks for a place to stay, in fact, he clearly says goodbye and is about to walk away when Xie Lian is the one who offers him a place to stay. Literally all Hua Cheng wanted was a brief moment, one little conversation, and that would have satisfied him. It's such a quiet thing but is the first instance of what will become a precedence; Xie Lian taking the first step in furthering their relationship. Hua Cheng never pushes, never demands, he leaves the choice in Xie Lian's hands- hell it's even in their first meeting, with Hua Cheng holding out his hand waiting to see if Xie Lian would accept it. Idk I don't have any big boy thoughts about it I just think its neat

[tls123]

i know wei wuxian is first pick as god/personification of death etc. etc. (duh, perfect choice, so sexy) but i would like to propose jiang cheng for the part. in the same way elizabeth swann is death from that one post about her kisses damning the men she loves

in the way everything he touches and everything he loves seems to be doomed (sect, parents, sister, brother)

wei wuxian as life!!! as god of life!!! coming back, unkillable. life giving (core transfer, wen ning, etc.)*

jin ling doesn't die because at the end of the story, at the guanyin temple, wei wuxian is there too. to protect him the same way he protected jiang cheng

and this is why he (wei wuxian) has to go back to being yunmeng jiang's head disciple, in this essay i will—

*i'm not saying he lives well, but he lives! he fucking claws and crawls and fights his way out of the burial mounds, he just doesn't fucking quit** you know what i mean

**until he does, but that's a choice he makes.