#it seems there was no hope either way

[unclefungusthegoat]

.

[iirulancorrino]

The Green brothers are doing effective altruism better than maybe 95% of people who identify online as effective altruists.

[michelle-jacksons-art-blog]

To be loved is to be changed.

[nebulous-rain]

HAPPY LATE HOLIDAYS @ruebeary !!!!!!!!!!!!

you want lewis ur gonna GET it babeyyyyy. but i didn't wanna leave everyone else out so i kinda sprinkled them all over :) HOPE U ENJOY !!!

(thank you sm to @msaholidayspirits for hosting !!!)

[littlebittyhollowbugs]

Time to think about how alone the pale king was when he died. He had lost everything. His kingdom yes, but even his closest relationships.

His trusted friends, who became dreamers, gave up their lives and all for a hopeless cause. His wife was driven away by her guilt and her grief. His child who he had learned to love, he sacrificed for nothing.

Almost every character that we know of who had a personal relationship with PK had either been sacrificed or had left him.

And of course all of it was his own doing. (At least largely his own doing.)

Still he sat completely alone in that throne room when he died there.

[ingravinoveritas]

I personally think its disgusting of what she posted yet again its all about her and she the reason why micheal keeps trending 4th day oh please he was trending for days before she came in the picture. And for someone who has no career and basically living off her parter who works so hard and been ill with virus the last few days and haven't been able to perform and she post this. Taking the credit for something that has nothing to do with her. He very grateful that she keep him grounded what that suppose to mean ? He was doing better before she came in the picture since he been with her his career have been slowed a little and she probably the reason for it

What do u say ?

Oh, boy. I saw this a little while ago, and all I could think was that the bar is so low at this point--like halfway between the fourth and fifth circles of Hell--and this still somehow falls short.

I know there has been a lot of talk about the t-shirt Anna is wearing (which was a gift from a fan at the stage door of Nye), but for me, the t-shirt is the least concerning part of all this. It's a reference to a quote from Staged (it's the title of a season 1 episode, in fact), and I am sure Michael found it funny. The only problem is that without the context of why it's a joke, it actually just isn't that funny. And it sets the stage for everything else that is happening.

Which brings me to the caption she wrote, which was what primarily caught my attention. The reason Michael is currently trending on Twitter (X, whatever we're calling it) is because of the overwhelmingly positive response to The Assembly, which aired last Friday night. He is receiving a tremendous amount of praise for being on the show, how he spoke to the interviewers, and the respectful and joyous atmosphere that was cultivated on the show. And rather than allude to any of that--not to mention Michael being sick recently, or the trip they went on to Disneyland Paris--Anna made Michael trending on Twitter about her.

That is what stands out to me the most. The idea of "keeping him grounded" that is coming across more like kicking someone when he is already down. That he somehow needs that, and that she would have us believe he is "grateful" to her for, what...comparing him to a loud bird? Repeatedly making fun of his looks and interests without a shred of respect or affection behind it? I'm also confused by the implication (and the irony) that Michael somehow has a large ego that needs to be kept in check when she is the one coming across as self-involved in this Insta story. So, yes. I'm at a bit of loss here.

I just keep thinking of the things she could have said instead. How she could have uplifted Michael, wished him well on returning to the stage tonight after several days' absence, said how she was glad to have spent time with him or taken care of him while he was ill. Just something that would give him a reason to hold his head high. But I guess it might just be easier to convince herself/everyone else that he is smiling if his head is hanging down instead.

I am just glad Michael is out performing again tonight and getting to be on stage and do the thing he truly loves to do. But those are my thoughts, and I'd be glad to hear from my followers about what you think, regardless of whether you agree or disagree...

[fandom-geek]

vaguely fascinated by osana sov's naming choices. she chose for her daughter a name that can mean "bitter (strength)" or "lady" in two ancient languages (hebrew and aramaic) and for her son a name that means "old friend" in another ancient language (old english)

like every other golden age character has a name that's pretty normal by our standards, which tbh includes mara, then osana just names her other kid uldwyn. then again, even osana's name is either a variant of the hebrew hosanna or after an obscure and possibly fictitious old english princess-saint whose name means something along the lines of "godly solitude", so i suppose mara might be considered the odd one out

[butter1knife]

DAY 5: FURRY AU

@alt-zadr-b1tch3z

Not sorry for how late I post this, I was party rocking!!

Um I am NOT used in drawing furries at ALL so this was a good challenge, DIB IS A BEAR AND ZIM IS A PRAYING MANTIS BTW, UM, I LIKE THE ANIMALS I PAIR THEM AS

[yourqueenb]

As a continuation of this ask that I responded to, all the things I mentioned are just parts of the overall issue I have with Blades…. which is that, in the grand scheme of things, I feel like MC is simply a plot device for the other characters rather than a fully developed character who has a fully developed and satisfying arc herself. It’s clear that Nia’s is the story the writers really wanted to tell considering how intertwined her characterization/development and the overall world building are. They basically even admitted as much.

So my question is why not just make her the MC if that’s really what you wanted on the not so down low? They still could’ve incorporated the skill mechanic. Why create a whole player character just to have us running to solve everyone else’s problems/support them while acting like everything that happens to us exists inside of a vacuum in the meantime? So far, all we’ve really been doing in this book is reporting where the group needs to go, telling them what to do, having heart to hearts with them when they need help moving to the next stage of their development, and then being spoonfed information through the lore tablets, which are apparently more for the players’ benefit than MC’s since they barely affect how we respond in game anyway. I’m fine with being the leader or the glue that holds everyone together, but to me it’s unsatisfying that that’s all we are as the main character.

We somehow become more competent due to the skill mechanic but no less clueless at the same time. We have all this terrible shit happen to us, but are only offered a few lines’ description of how that’s affected us. And then the rest of the attention goes to setting up the light vs. shadow conflict and our friends, who get to have personal and compelling conflicts of their own. I mean I feel like MC is more of an emotional support animal to them than an actual person with dreams, feelings, and a (minimal) background. Imo the only character who’s getting shafted almost as much as us is Imtura.

And all of this might make it sound like I hate Blades, but it’s quite the contrary actually. It’s still one of my favorite series and has a lot of fun moments and lovable characters. But I think at this point, its flaws have become too large for me to ignore. So that’s still affecting my enjoyment a bit and probably the reason why I’m so upset with how certain things are being handled. Of course I’m aware that Blades isn’t the only book that has some of these issues though. I think it’s just a little more disappointing because I expected more

[makotonaegiunderstander]

going to tear my room apart thinking about how Makoto Naegi genuinely is a normal guy. Even more so in the games where he doesn’t quite have the same explosion he does in the anime adaption— he made up his mind before the trial even started that he wasn’t going to give up no matter what happened to him because his friends had given their last trying to live, and he had to survive for them. He didn’t see surviving but choosing despair as surviving, he wanted to do what they entered the room prepared to do, he wanted to fulfill the declaration he made when he survived his execution: as long as he was alive, as long as he was breathing, he wasn’t going to give up. He saw Junko, he saw everything she presented, and he’d already felt that utter despair. He had the chance to give in as early as Mukuro’s first trial, where he could have chosen to suspect Kirigiri. But he refused to be manipulated anymore, he refused to play the game, even if it meant everything he had, and that’s where he changed from hiding to fighting. When he made the decision to hide Kirigiri’s lie (he did NOT know he was going to die, actually!!! He thought they’d be able to work out the trap bc there was never a time limit before that trial!! That said it’s still incredible that he refused to break even when he realized it would cost him his life.) that was when he broke from his fear completely. That was when he officially bowed out of the game. He wouldn’t be subject to the game’s demands anymore, he was going to win no matter what. He chose to have reckless faith in his friends no matter what, he chose to pursue a truth that would end the game for good. It’s not entirely normal for anyone to do, for sure, but that doesn’t mean he was the only one capable. I’ve said that before in a previous post, that Makoto didn’t do anything that was impossible for any other person. Just like despair was innate in every person and everyone was capable of it, so was hope. That’s what Makoto brought out. But even he stumbled. Even he needed his friends there. And the other survivors are the ones that took Makoto’s prompt and used it to break free of Junko’s influence, Makoto didn’t force them to. He didn’t brainwash them or manipulate them or do anything to influence their thoughts any more than reminding them hope was still there for them, that it wasn’t over yet. They did the rest themselves.

And then they left, and the title Ultimate Hope got away from them all, into a world ideologically influenced by Junko’s despair, and in its absence after her death, it latched into the next powerful force one to replace what it has lost, but it needed a figurehead. So Makoto was chosen, as the one that refused to submit in the face of Junko. He was viewed as an ultimate, elevated, the world placed on his shoulders, and the same wave that brought about the Tragedy turned towards Makoto. People may have needed something to hold onto that felt as powerful as what they’d been facing, but Makoto wasn’t the only one that fought, and he wasn’t possessing some inhuman ability to always resist despair or anguish. Makoto is both exceptional in his determination and stubbornness to keep moving forward and being optimistic, and also not in the slightest, because it isn’t a talent. It isn’t an ultimate ability, it isn’t something no one else can measure up to. His uniqueness comes from his ability to choose that even if he’s standing alone. But, like I said, he’s not immune, he’s not incapable of falling. He will just do everything in his power to resist up until the end, because that’s the decision he made.

It’s weird how he’s Schrödinger’s normal. He’s the most normal guy in the world, but his view of himself as such is also flawed. He isn’t nothing. In fact one could say it’s abnormal that he’s so normal. And he DOES have something that is unique about him, even he can’t deny that fact despite trying to downplay it. He’s optimistic. He’s chosen to try and be positive or at the very least choose to keep going forward in life. That IS abnormal to an extent, despite not being some ultimate, or something no one else is capable of. It is abnormal to never entertain the idea of slowing down, getting bored, or giving up. But at the same time, Makoto DID have moments like that in the game. The only time he really stopped doing that was in the final chapter, when he was pushed to his absolute limit and those parts of him exaggerated themselves so that he could feel like he could survive. He’s the weirdest normal guy alive, I guess.

Anyway I’m rambling and this probably doesn’t make sense bc I pulled an all nighter for the final class trial but I’m losing my mind over Makoto Naegi all the time

[mudstoneabyss]

actually. the specific phrasing that boy Kevin wants to kill older Kevin with "I must disassemble him, piece by piece, so that everything inside of the Old Kevin comes out. Only then can the New Kevin truly begin." is so incredibly the idea that to heal from trauma and "improve" you have to destroy every "wrong" part of yourself, that everything "tainted" by it has to somehow be replaced by something untouched (which isn't possible)

[fumifooms]

You’re the resident chilchuck expert, so I was wondering about it there’s any canon evidence that he did smoke or drink alcohol when the kids were younger. I always thought it was something he picked up due to the strain of long jobs, when the kids were already older, but you seem to think differently and I was wondering if there was anything in canon that made you think that way!

Now that you mention it I guess it’s true there’s no evidence he did. Smoking we literally only know he does at all because of one post-canon panel where he has a pipe, so no, maybe this stick-looking thing in the panel below too though, I’m not familiar with medieval blunts eh. We’ve only gotten one panel of him and his daughters interacting when he was younger so that’s not too insightful on that end, and every time we see him young and freckled it’s in a job context so again not really where we’d expect him to be drinking. The earliest proof (/heavy implication since we don’t see inside his cup I guess) is 3 years before canon when Laios hired him, where he’s at a bar, classily placed in front of all the bottles ✨

Yes alcohol is almost certainly a way through which he copes especially with stress, so if we go with the theory he started around when work got stressful, well… Chilchuck started working as a dungeon diver ~10 years ago so when he was ~19, making Mei, Fler and Puck ~6 and ~4 respectively, so from that draw the ‘stressful enough to start drinking’ line wherever. We don’t know what he did before that with any certainty, and it could be he did odd jobs, lived off mostly mutual aid and community work, or just focused on only raising the girls. Half-foots tend to be poor and I see a lot of that in Chilchuck specifically so I don’t think he could have afforded to not have some paying work though.

Alright, so then why do I think he did drink when the girls were younger?

I give a more complete rundown of the info we do have on his alcoholism & his family with panels and references + all the speculation I make from it here. But the most targeted and objective answer I can give is:

Of course there’s just very very little we know of Chilchuck’s life with his family, and I think that’s by design too. I think the details being up in the air is to allow more nuance of the topic, like, will trying to reconcile go well, is their relationship salvageable? We don’t know, because we don’t know. So the message of giving hope a chance even if it’s a long shot, that things could truly go either way, is more relevant, impactful and meta in that way. How long was he usually away for work travels into dungeons here and there? How did he act with them? All we can really do is "it’s likely that", it’s a game of which way we think it’s more implied. There’s no right and wrong answer, it’s all Marcille-like larping the events out.

My main reason for thinking he did is that his father died from overdrinking and Chilchuck is very aware of that. He mentions his death casually in the extra about their stance in alcohol and in his Adventurer’s Bible profile, etc. He acts towards the alcohol presumably the same way his father did: with abandon, uncaring for the health effects, probably happily too considering Chil says "dying doing something you love is a good way to go". Very nonchalant. So you see what I’m saying here right, wether he started early or late, his view of alcoholism is very influenced by what he saw of his father growing up, it’s something he’s always been aware of and saw in a mostly positive light, something that was inherited you could say. It’s something that was normalized to him from a young age. Regardless or where it goes from there I do think this part is pretty inarguable. If he views it positively and we know that in the present alcohol is his favorite food that he loveees, why would he have held out on it? Personally that all makes me think he started drinking very young, especially since I don’t think they limited alcohol to age as much as modern standards (and I mean, teen drinking is obviously still a thing). And here you could argue, maybe his father only started being more alcoholic later when Chilchuck moved out, or something! And to that there’s nothing I can say except I think that’s a strained theory, and that Chil might even have largely cut contact with his family after moving out (since he and siblings are listed as almost strangers and he doesn’t seem to have much emotional attachment to his parents, but also we know he rents out his place to "a relative"), but it’s true we have no evidence. "I’ve picked up the same unhealthy substance abuse as my father haha! No big deal right haha" repeated several times to me just reeks of intergenerational trauma, & the alcoholism gene as they call it. Like effortless sliding into drinking as if it’s second nature, it’s natural after all, it’s normal after all, it just makes sense, it makes you feel good and that’s what matters.

BUT from my interpretation then we have a whole other layer: Alcohol is of course not all bad always. I think he’s always liked alcohol and drank it on occasion and it brought him joy etc etc, but I think here the implication in the question is, how much effect did his drinking have on the family relations and how early? And that isn’t so much about when him drinking started but when the alcoholism started. Addiction is defined by a habitual need, that has negative effects from filling that need (physical, psychological, social, etc) and negative effects from withdrawal. If Chilchuck drinks to cope and he can’t not cope without it, that’s addiction, if it affects his relationships, if it’s a need he has, it’s addiction. Addiction can be very insidious or look very casual, and how much people around the person are affected by it is case by case. Cheerful drunks can be sooo annoying and uncomfortable though let me tell you. Drunks are drunks. And this sounds harsh, but even if people around them don’t mind drunks it’ll still have some effects here and there, living with one can be such a challenge, ily drunks good luck with everything much like Chilchuck you deserve good things 🫡　

Ok so with the dad thing and the "ok well maybe he’s always drunk casually but it grew worse with time around when he started working as a dungeon diver" precision made, the other bit of info we have that can inform this is that Chilchuck is on a harsh diet and that alcohol is a hunger suppressant. We know Chilchuck "used to be fine not eating for two days", that literally on screen to quench his hunger so it doesn’t keep him awake he goes to drink water, drinking is his instinct to hunger. Again alcohol is a hunger suppressant and if you want info on that the internet has a lot of research and anecdotes about it. He diets to be light enough to not trigger traps, so it’s something he’d have started after dungeon diving most likely. Between the stress and the diet, yes it’s extremely likely he started going harder on alcohol after he started working in dungeons. There’s arguments on wether two days without eating is less bad for half-foots than humans, but apart from smaller portions there’s nothing that indicates half-foots should get less than 3 meals a day. They need less food but that’s because their bodies are smaller: the need is proportional to the body, not smaller than others’ races, the % of need is similar even if the kg amount of food isn’t. There’s also a popular headcanon with support basis that half-foots run hot and have a faster heartrate and whatnot, and that points towards a faster metabolism rather than a slower one: a bigger need for eating rather than a smaller one. He has the same bmi, 18, as Mickbell, but perhaps because Chil is much taller he’s less intensely visibly underweight with ribs showing than Mick during the bath extra, it’s most apparent when he becomes tallman.

Alcohol is something so important and omnipresent in his character that I have trouble believing it’s something that was part of only a small fraction of his life. It’s his immediate go-to, his no-brainer solution to a good time, I’ve sort of always assumed especially after looking at his family that it’s something he discovered decently young. Like he just acts like someone who’s always had alcohol to fall back on and started young idk. Alcohol is one of his 5 keywords. Alcoholism is very ingrained into his world view and life, his "it doesn’t matter" stance his ‘work hard play hard’ mentality his idea that the world is harsh so you get relief where you can, so it just makes sense to me that it’s always been in his life, if not actively then at least looming.

So yes, in summary, my take: Alcohol was always something he wholly enjoyed to an unwise level, but it could have been considered casual until he started working into dungeons and his need for it on a regular basis intensified. Alcohol has always had positive association to him as far as we see, so when it started being a problem he didn’t see it as such. To quote him, "I drink anytime I get the opportunity to". Why always? Approval of father’s alcoholism. Why alcoholism at all? Diet + stress & coping mechanism & emotional stunting + relationship issues, and she decided she had enough after they went out for drinks.

Conclusion

Chilchuck having drunk from a young age makes sense to me and it’s the strongest narrative angle I see on the table, but that’s objectively a me opinion, yes! There’s no evidence, moreso there’s canon basis and supporting info, but it’s all very left up to interpretation. I’ve made my own interpretations of things from the scraps we see, like everyone else making Chilwife and daughters content. Wether you have a stance on the topic or prefer to leave it vague in your takes, it’ll be a matter of what you think makes most sense, or what you’d rather believe I suppose (which is literally fine)

There’s a lot of subjectivity in even just setting up causal links like you probably noticed during this and I was careful with my word choices, because we’re just extrapolating from what we see and unless Kui states it explicitly from a reliable mouth all we can do is have informed opinions on most things. This particular interpretation is influenced by other details I’ve come to form about my interpretation of Chilchuck too, the more psychological and emotional sides of him and the timeline and how his marriage even happened, unplanned pregnancy imo. Like I hope you see what I mean, this wasn’t supposed to be a speculation post just a quick simple answer but there’s sort of just no other and concise but complete way with the subjectivity nuance to put "maybe it could be yes because of this but maybe it could be no because of this" haha

Edit: Wait the phrasing on this… Interesting. "In recent years"— This does imply that if not just his alcohol consumption increasing then the diversity and quality of it did, so either he indeed did start drinking more (not necessarily meaning he didn’t drink before) assumedly because of his wife leaving, or he started drinking other/more different kinds of alcohol maybe due to the union he formed + his experience gave him greater salary than he had previously (and no wife and family to provide money for), a mix of both perhaps.

[isp-annafer]

I'd like to give Polites from Epic the Musical a formal apology because when I first heard Open Arms, it was so cheerful and optimistic and soothing my first thought after finishing the song was, "Oh, he is so doomed by the narrative. He's gonna die."

(And, fool that I was, despite all the warning signs, he became my favorite.)

[thespineoftherighteous]

giggling a little at how for years the twins relationship is this complicated web of what it means to be brothers. and then Neil pulls up and he and Aaron's relationship immediately encompasses some of the finer aspects of genuine sibling behavior.

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Hmm...