#sociopathic AND omnipotent

[lucky-clover-gazette]

okay i have THOUGHTS about this line

he didn’t have to say that to make his plan work. i mean yeah, being nice to the player definitely earns their favor and future assistance, but he could have just as easily gone the route of gaslighting them into feeling bad and like they caused the problem, eliciting a more shame-based and desperate and less uplifting and righteous kind of reliance. like if volo really hated the player, and was truly cruel, that’s what he would have done. the player would have still gotten the chain and felt indebted to him for the plate hunt, but they also would be miserable and feel lonely and hurt and confused. but volo doesn’t do that, he grounds the player and validates their feelings, which were hurt by the cruel townspeople more than the event volo caused to prompt that cruelty. like truly, it’s only volo’s fault that the player gets banished through the most like simple calculated logic—yes, if he hadn’t caused the rift, they wouldn’t have been banished, or brought here at all. but kamado CHOSE to banish them based on his own paranoia and disdain for outsiders, and the others enabled it by choice. volo didn’t make that happen, just how he didn’t make or even want arceus to get the player involved in the first place.

i don’t think volo hates the player, personally, at all. or at least, i think that he hates them and cares for them just as much as he hates and cares for himself. i know this isn’t groundbreaking volo theorizing material, but he’s absolutely projecting his disdain for society based on his vague past experiences here. he dislikes the outsider because his plan demands it, but he dislikes everyone else because he personally thinks they’re terrible. it’s kinda neat how he “fake” compliments the player’s loyalty to him as a merchant so often, bc i think loyalty is something he actually takes very seriously. and he probably saw how loyal the player was to the galaxy team, and then the way they kicked them out, and was genuinely pissed and hurt on the player’s behalf.

the things he says at the end of the game are said in extreme distress and defeat, and while they are not NOT reflective of his character and motives, i’m shocked by how many pokemon fans regard volo like he’s a nihilistic and amoral sociopath. passion and compassion are behind nearly everything volo does, for better or for worse. they’re behind moments like this, and moments like his ranting at spear pillar. he is a person who constantly grapples to align his personal moral code and lofty ideals, which live in this weird space between the manmade and divine, with the flawed reality of existence. his entire mentality is full of contradictions, because he is a man who thinks he should be god, but in reality could never be a good god, because he is still very much a man. it’s the emotion, idealism, and intellectual curiosity of humanity that drive him, not the impartiality, absolutism, and complacency of an omnipotent all-knowing deity.

so like, with this line. he specifically mentions that the galaxy team has treated the player poorly. not that the galaxy team’s choice was illogical, not that the player just needs to try harder to get them to accept him. he is emphatically rejecting the premise that the player did anything to deserve blame, even though he has no intention to actually explain why this really happened or volunteer himself to take the blame. because ultimately, volo is not the person to blame for the galaxy team’s cruelty, and he knows it. and he also knows that it’s the cruelty that has hurt the player, more than the sky problem itself, because he has been treated like an outsider too. and he can’t DO anything about that. even if he told the truth, the damage has already been done. the player knows how their supposed allies would react in this situation, regardless of the logic or truth. and volo can’t fix that. he does not believe he can make people kinder or the world a better place, which is exactly why he wants so badly to remake it. for himself, bc clearly he’s been through some shit too, for people like the outsider, and for anyone else whose loyalty and dedication have been met with rejection and apathy. which is so deeply tragic and ironic, because by being the only person to care for the player in this moment, he is making the world a better place for them.

volo is, at his core, a hypocrite. he’s like if you put the ingredients for a hero into a blender, but accidentally used the “tragic hypocrite” setting so he came out a janky villain instead. to volo, concepts like loyalty and self-righteousness are driving forces, much moreso than simple black and white morality or consequentialism. this makes him a hypocrite because he believes a perfect world is possible as long as his moral code is strictly followed, and his evil plan is to prove it. but in his efforts to do so, he proves over and over again that a perfect world isn’t possible, and certainly would not be possible under his control.

like, okay—if someone suggested that the means of pain and suffering in the world justified the ends (the world), volo would disagree and claim that arceus is responsible for the pain and suffering, and therefore does not deserve the power to create/rule worlds. but then, following that very same logic, if volo needed to get a random person banished and betrayed in order to create his better world, then those means wouldn’t justify his ends either. which is WHY we see him subconsciously draw a line here, between the things he’s not responsible for (other people being cruel, arceus transporting the player) and the things he is directly responsible for (the way he treats the player in these circumstances, either with derision or support). and wouldn’t you know, in this instance where it truly is up to him what the means are to his ends, he chooses kindness where he could have been cruel. because while arceus sending the hero and the town banishing them weren’t really Volo’s means to Volo’s ends, this conversation sure as hell could be. And he doesn’t want his better world built on a foundation of suffering and pain.

by saying this one line and treating the player as he does here, i think volo accidentally exposes something deeply true and good about himself. this man could say “i’m a villain and i don’t care about the player” and fully believe it, but at the same time demonstrably possess the morals and compassion of a hero, which he uses to actively care for the player. he is a delusional hypocrite, but he’s definitely not heartless. and i just think that’s neat.

alternatively, volo is completely heartless, knows that people are endeared to people who want to protect them, and methodically uses that knowledge here for his convenience. that very well could have been the intention, and it makes sense too—but i personally enjoy entertaining the notion of depth where i see potential for it. so yeah.

[embrose]

SPOILERS FOR DNDADDIES SEASON 2 (Around episode 13 or 14 onward, I think)

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Istg every time Scary agrees with Willy or they in any way get along I get the willies (hehe, get it?)

But seriously tho fuck this guy he tried to kill Ron and the other dads so many times and for me to like or trust this sociopathic narcissist bastard he's gonna need one hell of a redemption arc, lemme tell you. And I doubt that's happening, the guy literally admitted he wants to absorb the Doodler's power and become immortal and omnipotent, doesn't sound like he regrets anything that matters. He just regrets he didn't succeed and got caught

[robbyrobinson]

The Sociopath: King Magnifico (Potential Spoilers for Wish)

So, Wish, is probably underwhelming and a bit of a mess for Disney. For the last few months, the company has taken the L with flop after flop and overinflating the budgets of their movies leading them to lose more money than they are getting.

There are many arguments as to why that is, but with me, specifically what had made them decline is their habit of playing things safe rather than branching out. That, and rushing their projects instead of taking their time to fine tune their films. Heck, Walt Disney himself was known to delay films he personally worked on when they did not match his vision.

For something meant to be a celebration of Disney's hundredth year, Wish is formulaic and generic and plays by the book with its Easter eggs there not being enough to save the script. But that aside, one plus we have is that we finally have an actual Disney Villain this time. So.

King Magnifico is the founder and the oh so loved king of the Kingdom of Rosas who has the ability to grant wishes. So, in a ceremonial event where a subject has their 18th birthday, they get a chance to have Magnifico take their wish so they would one day hope that their wish is granted. But, not all wishes can come true, right? After all, some may be unattainable and dear Magnifico is looking out for his royal subjects, right?

Except not really.

In truth, Magnifico is a paranoid tyrant who declines wishes that could prove to be a threat to his authority or, more specifically, could drive attention away from him. This is who the "beloved" king really is: a narcissistic sociopath who cannot stand to have anything take the spotlight from him because his ego is so fragile.

He lavishes himself in praise and believes that he is entitled to have his subjects' undivided attention. After all, he has genes from outer space, and he is the one who puts the "I" in omnipotence. Surely, he deserves all the love and praise because, come on, he granted 14 wishes last year! That is a lot of work... picking and choosing which wish to grant out of the hundreds of thousands if they benefitted him in any meaningful way.

But despite all the praise and his wife Amaya loving him, that is still not enough for him to glut himself on. Magnifico is a man willing to keep his people ignorant of their true desires and is not hesitant to harm them to get his way. For you see, their "wish" comes with a part of their soul which he can bring them despair by crushing them or uses them to act as a battery. Despite all the claims of doing all this for his people, Magnifico only values them for what they can do for him rather than acting like the benevolent king he paints himself to be.

Not even Amaya is safe from his toxic narcissism. She only exists to love and go along with whatever he desired. If not, she was as useless to him as anyone else who stood in the way of fluffing his ego.

[madis-marvelous-blog]

Death Note (eps. 1, 2, 5, 10, 11)

This show is incredible, and honestly it's been the first one that I almost continued watching after finishing the assigned episodes. It's also chock full of discussion topics.

To start, the overarching theme of justice. This one is obvious. Light gets the supernatural ability to kill anyone from anywhere for any reason and in any way. Light uses it to get rid of people he believes are plaguing the world. This begs the question though, who gets to decide who plagues the world? From the perspective of many criminals sure, they know they are doing something wrong. But others believe that they are doing something for the good of the public. Most of the social change we have had throughout history has occurred because someone broke a few laws. The saying 'rules are meant to be broken' exists for a reason. Breaking rules challenges their authority, and forces people to think about whether that rule is fair or not, and whether it should continue to exist. With Light killing people who break rules ruins this entire idea. It silences the people who question the justice system in the most extreme way possible.

Another issue with Light killing these criminals is that many of them, as one of the people in the convention points out, are already on their way to execution. So, whats the point of killing them? They're already going to die anyway, Light is just quickening the justice that will eventually ensure. He is eliminating the bureaucracy that makes executions take so long. However, there have been plenty of instances where someone sentenced to death was later found innocent. Had they been executed on the spot, the justice system would have murdered an innocent civilian. These bureaucratic systems are in place for a reason. They allow for due process and time to correct mistakes that could have terrible consequences. The entire point of the justice system is not to kill those who are guilty, its to ensure that everyone receives fair treatment and that society flows smoothly. As we can see in Death Note, Light's killings do everything but keep society flowing smoothly. Everything halts for a while. Everyone is afraid that they might be next. And while this might seem like a good thing, as people try to be the best, most upstanding version of themselves, it goes back to the idea of social change. Social change can only occur by challenging the current issue. If people are too scared to do so, society stagnates. Breaking laws is necessary for progress. Every day previous legal precedents are challenged. The circumstances surrounding previous rulings are not absolute. But if we can't challenge those rulings because we'll be murdered by some omnipotent character who decides we are guilty, nothing changes. Those unfair rulings stay in place and we deteriorate as a society.

Death Note also plays with blame. Like Light himself says as he's describing human behavior to Ryuk, humans tend to keep their most controversial opinions to themselves. That is, unless there's a way to share those opinions anonymously. This parallels what Light does with the Death Note. Had Light been handed a gun and told he could ask for anyone to be set before him so he could execute them, I doubt he would have killed so many people. The mask of the Death Note allows him to kill whoever he wants by quite literally lifting a pen. He doesn't have to watch them die. He doesn't have to directly accept blame from anyone. In fact, we see how he goes almost sociopathic with power after the fake L comes on the news broadcast, laughing a crazy laugh and putting on a psychotic smile. This is someone who has done nothing wrong. On the contrary, he has presumably helped the world's police organizations capture some of the most dangers criminals. Despite this, Light wants to kill him immediately, without a second of hesitation. This is the power of anonymity, and this is exactly what this anime is demonstrating.

[skelegun]

Warning: really long meandering post about the Persona series. Also spoilers.

So I’ve been playing a shitload of Atlas games the last like month or two for some reason, and I just recently beat both Persona 5 Royal, and Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aegis. Kinda general spoilers ahead, but it’s really interesting the similarities and differences between the two, when I say P5R I specifically mean the new semester that was added for Royal.

So like they are both continuation of their main game’s story, and they both are about how we deal with grief. This is a logical choice of subject matter for P3 because that game was all about themes of death and loss. For Persona 5 it feels like a weird direction to take the story since that game was more about themes of rebellion and injustice.

Say what you will about Episode Aigis/The Answer, whatever you want to call it, atleast what sparse story content there was tonally consistent with its parent game. In it you play as the android Aegis who developed emotions just in time for her first love to die in her arms. Understandably she is plagued with emotions she can’t understand and in her grief she finds herself trapped in The Abyss of Time.

In Dr.Maruki’s wild ride in P5R, Joker wakes up on New Years Day and discovers that a bunch of a formally dead people are alive again and Morgana is now a human, upon investigating it turns out that when they shot God in the face it some how made Dr.Maruki the new God but he’s more like Bruce Almighty in that he can grant wishes and shit but he’s not omnipotent. Goro Akechi, who isn’t dead anymore contacts you and is like “we need to stop Dr.Maruki because he’s just making people happy by giving them what they want, that’s cheating!” Unlike Aegis though, Joker is just blank slate protagonist so the best arguement Dr.Maruki can give to Joker is that if you stop him Goro Akechi will die again… But Goro Akechi is a deranged sociopathic murderer who flat out tells you he cares more about stopping Dr.Maruki than living.

What about the other party members? In Episode Aegis your party gets fractured by the question of whether they should live in the present or go to back and try to change the past. Ultimately you come to blows over this decision and the team ends up learning that Makoto sacrificed himself for a reason and trying to go back and change that would be folly, so together they decide to honor his legacy.

In P5R everyone except Joker (and I guess Akechi’s) get’s their wishes granted, which mostly takes the form of a dead loved one being brought back to life, and these aren’t like secretly evil Pet Sematary versions or someshit, Dr. Maruki altered the timeline so that they just never died. So you just kinda like walk up to people and do like a friendlier version of the FFTA “it’s escapism” bit, and then like entirely off screen (except Morgana) they all just sort of say “huh I guess he’s right” with like zero resistance. They missed a great opportunity to have some drama and division in the party. We don’t even get to see a scene where anyone of these characters say goodbye to their revived loved ones or anything, they just sorta killed them off screen.

Then when you confront Dr.Maruki about why what he’s doing is evil it’s like kinda just dumb arguments about how he’s robbing people of their agency or whatever which like in a normal scenario is true but the whole idea of the Phantom Thieves is that they go into people’s minds and rob them of their agency so it’s just like whatever.

This is an aside but honestly the Dr.Maruki shit makes little sense mechanically, his powers have like “Jojo final boss Stand” vibes where it’s basically just he can do whatever he wants but somehow he still loses to a bunch of teenagers with punch ghosts.

Persona 5 was my first Persona game and I played it back 2017, and I remember really liking it back then. After replaying it for the first time with all the new content Royal added in, I’m surprised how much I hated the writing. The only mainline persona game I haven’t played is the first one, and while I will say 5/R has the best gameplay and dungeons, it also has the worst writing and least interesting characters.

I do also want to say though that Episode Aegis sucks to play. What little story there is in the experience is all at the beginning and end. Everything in between is a grueling slog of clearing out floor after floor of boring dungeons, and recycled boss fight after recycled boss after, with a few extremely short flashback sequences peppered in.

Oh also the icing on the cake is that at the end of Royal it basically loops back in time to a slightly modified version of the original ending of the vanilla game, and in the canonical sequel, Persona 5 Strikers, none of the new shit from Royal is ever mentioned. So it basically doesn’t matter.

I’m currently play Soul Hackers 2. It’s fun. It’s not a masterpiece, but i like the story and characters so far.

[planet-never-ever]

Character Tropes

Faun

Adorable Abomination: An ancient entity from the stars who wields magic beyond anything else in the galaxy… and he looks like a kid wearing a onesie.

Ambiguously Human: No one, not even Faun himself, knows what he really is.

Ambiguous Innocence: Faun is an eternal child, and Kids Are Cruel, so naturally, he can be quite cruel himself.

Cosmic Entity: A child of an unknown species neither human nor god, though he is godlike.

Cosmic Power: He's a celestial being from the cosmos with powerful magic that can alter reality. This is how he was able to create Planet Never-Ever.

Fantasy Aliens: He's a child from the stars with magical abilities that make him godlike compared to the magical creatures on Never-Ever, acting as a sort of Fantasy-twist on Clarke's Third Law applied to most Science Fiction aliens.

Goo-Goo-Godlike: While he is a Time Abyss, Faun is still a young child. His clothes also bear a similarity to a onesie just to reinforce that childishness.

Immortal Immaturity: Faun will never be able to mature.

In the Hood: His onesie includes a hood.

Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's often a lousy friend, but he's also often a true friend. He is a little boy, after all.

Kids Are Cruel: He often comes across as a Sociopathic Hero; he's utterly self-centered, he often lacks empathy and he thinks dangerous situations are great fun — but he's not malicious, he's immature and has an immature sense of right and wrong.

Lack of Empathy: While not actively malicious, Faun's childlike mentality means that he doesn't really grasp the concept that other people have feelings or wellbeing that matter. He's not interested in harming people for his own sake, but he's unconcerned with how parents must feel upon having their children seemingly disappear.

Mysterious Past: Not much is known about his past.

The Omnipotent: Faun has unlimited powers, including creating and terraforming an entire planet to be a haven for children.

Really 700 Years Old: He's been a child for countless centuries, and will be a child forever.

Youthful Freckles: Has these in the shape of stars.

Bebe

The Baby of the Bunch: Compared to the other permanent inhabitants of Never-Ever, Bebe is the one who more or less acts like a coddled 9 to 10-year-old.

Girlish Pigtails: She ties her hair into pigtails to emphasize her childishness.

Kiddie Kid: She's seen as hyperactive, childish and immature even for a perpetual ten-year-old.

Sweet Tooth: Apropos for her childish nature; in the Land of Sweets she stuffs an entire slice of cake whole into her mouth.

Little Sammi

Living Toys: A doll who acts more like a small child.

Womanchild: Looks like an eighteen-year-old, yet acts like a little kid. Justified since she's a living doll.

The Queen of Sweets

Food-Based Superpowers: She has magical control over candy.

Joisey: Despite being the ruler of a realm made of candy, she has a blatant New Jersey accent.

Mad Artist: The Queen writes her own songs and is a decent singer and keyboard player.

The Ringmaster King

Benevolent Boss: He treats the performers rather well.

Bunny-Ears Lawyer: For all of his eccentricities, he is genuinely capable of inventing engaging acts.

Classy Cane: His sports a gold top to show his status as the ringmaster.

Cloudcuckoolander: He is quite… out there to say the least, being Fun Personified pushed to the absolute extreme.

Fun Personified: He's as much of the jovial, wacky, fun-loving kid he makes himself out to be.

Large Ham: He's got a whole circus to chew through.

The Mermaid Princess

Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Mermaid Princess is gigantic in comparison to the regular-sized merkids. Subverted in that, while she is a formidable force to be reckoned with, she's a genuinely good friend.

BFS: The Princess's weapon is an enormous sword which only she can lift.

Boyish Short Hair: She has short blue hair, befitting her tomboyish personality.

Curtains Match the Window: Blue hair, eyes and tail!

Healing Hands: Has this ability.

Innocent Blue Eyes: They reflect her childlike innocence. She has a traditional "Warrior Heroine" mindset, and she admires Faun as the ideal role model.

Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Although she can be rather brash and temperamental, the Mermaid Princess is a charismatic and friendly person who is fun to be around, and deeply cares about her friends, even warming toward the Gloomkeeper.

Meaningful Name: The Princess's real name is Celia von Tchaikovsky, after the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Our Mermaids Are Different: The Princess and the other merkids live around Merfolk Island, being beautiful for their young age. The Princess also wears armor made from giant clamshells, with her sword also bringing into mind the image of Melusines.

Plucky Girl: She is an upbeat and positive young mermaid.

Swashbuckler: Her sword, her armor, habitat and her disposition all invoke this image.

Symbol Motif Clothing: The Princess wears a heart-shaped high collar and the fin of her mermaid tail is also shaped like a heart.

Third Eye: On her knight's helmet. Appropriately enough for a merkid, it makes the helmet look more like a deep-sea diving helm than a typical armor helmet.

The Fairies

Our Fairies Are Different: They're Winged Humanoids who have their own separate language, their speech sounding like the chirping of crickets to normal humans.

The Imaginary Friends

Not-So-Imaginary Friend: They were imaginary until their creators outgrew them, at which point they became tuplas on Never-Ever, now living in the Garden of Dreams.

The Dream Birds

Amplified Animal Aptitude: They are pretty smart for birds, and know how to identify nightmares.

Beware the Silly Ones: The Dream Birds look like goofy-looking colorful lanky birds, but they're smarter than they look and aren't afraid to attack and devour nightmares.

Cute, but Cacophonic: They sound like something awful's happening to a parrot.

Gentle Giant: If you're a child, imaginary friend or natural inhabitant of the planet, played straight. If you're a nightmare, averted.

Esmeralda

Cool Big Sis: To the younger kids, as she loves to tell them stories and is willing to give them advice.

Plucky Girl: She's certainly optimistic.

The Gloomkeeper

Ambiguously Human: Like Faun, nobody knows whether or not she's even human. If the Gloomkeeper knows what she herself is, she's not telling.

The Captain: Commands over the mutant toys and the bottled ship they live in.

Glasgow Grin: Subverted. She has markings at the corners of her mouth, giving the illusion of this.

Icy Blue Eyes: Has these, which really accentuate her pupils.

Monster Clown: The apparent theme of her appearance. Her face also has markings on her mouth in the shape of a smile.

Mythical Motifs: Unicorns. The Gloomkeeper wears a unicorn horn on her head, and she has a pair of porcelain hooves she walks around on.

Non-Standard Character Design: Most residents of Never-Ever do not often come off as quadrupedal like the Gloomkeeper does.

Space Pirates: She runs a crew of cobbled-together toys in a giant ship in a bottle.

Vocal Dissonance: For a girl with such a monstrous appearance, she's got a soft voice.

The Mockingwyrm

Animal Nemesis: To the Gloomkeeper, being content to simply pull some absurd moves to mess with her.

Ridiculously Cute Critter: She is adorable.

Voice Changeling: Can only speak in copied voices, but prefers a slightly more immature version of the Gloomkeeper's voice.

Pete Patchwerk

The Fool: Pete isn't very bright. In fact, in a strange way he seems to have an Ambiguous Innocence about him; sure, he'll happily join in on the debauchery of his crewmates, but he treats it all as being in good fun.

Friend to All Children: He's easygoing, good-natured, and well-liked among the planet's community.

Sycophantic Servant: He has nothing but reverence and praise for the Gloomkeeper in public and private, though not without some snarky bits.

The Children of Never-Ever

Abusive Parents: The reason why some kids chose to never return to Earth.

Adorkable: Nicky is this.

Adorably Precocious Child: Some kids are this.

Circus Brat: Those who get recruited by the Ringmaster King to join the Amazing Soaring Circus.

Class Clown: What some of them were before Never-Ever.

Conveniently an Orphan: Some of the children are this, hence their decision to stay permanently.

Deadpan Snarker: Some kids, like Sara and Fisk, show shades of this.

Free-Range Children: It is a planet that only allows children, after all.

Heartwarming Orphan: Many kids who chose to stay there are orphaned.

Identical Twin ID Tag: Hugo and Herman's eye colors. Hugo has orange eyes and Herman has blue.

Innocent Blue Eyes: Some of the kids have these.

It's All About Me: Duncan tends to be a bit self centered sometimes.

I Warned You: A common refrain on Mina's part.

Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sara's bossy, she's egotistical, she's short-tempered, and she'll always come through for her friends.

Hugo and Herman are also known for causing trouble, but they will always be loyal to those who are in need.

Keet: Most of them, especially Bruno and Ben, are excitable and full of energy.

Lonely Rich Kid: Mina, more so when she first arrived on Never-Ever before the other kids got to know her.

Nice Guy/Girl: Many kids on Never-Ever are this.

Nightmare Fetishists: Hugo and Herman enjoy scary movies.

Pajama-Clad Heroes: Some of the kids came to Never-Ever in their pajamas.

Parental Issues: Most of them have issues with one or both of their parents, driving them to run away to Never-Ever.

Parental Neglect: Another reason why some choose to stay permanently on Never-Ever.

Pink Means Feminine: Played straight with many girls, but subverted with Shona; While she does wear pink, she is quite tomboyish. Ginger could also count as a subversion, being a Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak.

The Runaway: Many (or technically, all) of the children count.

[rantsandboobies]

Solipsism

So, I do theoretical, unprofessional, unlicensed and uneducated self-psychoanalysis. One guess about human psychology (white straight male if that matters) of mine is - the reason solipsism is sometimes used when depressed is to convince self that the world is all one, one consciousness, and that consciousness is me, and thus, all is my creation, and I would never make anything or anyone who could destroy or harm me, or if I did, it's only to extract lessons from the pain, maturation, wisdom, and strength, and if the pain kills me literally - that's because I put out a hit for myself, I wanted death because going towards death is hardcore, the ultimate act of badass. Solipsism = safety. All is me, and I mean well to me, or unwell because...I deserve it, I'm entitled to bad, undesirable experiences and things and relationships. It's the very opposite of the deep end of depression where a person feels utterly powerless about reality, it's omnipotence. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/ If a lie acts like a psychological healing balm then it'll be accepted. A placebo, you could say. So, to further speculate, if you were to fully accept that absolutely nothing, including your own biology and psychology, is in your control permanently (someone could bust into your house and take everything from you for no reason other than convenience, your house was the least secure and nearest to the burglar) then you might just go on and commit sepuku (suicide) because life in this world is too scary so maybe the quantum field will teleport to a different world, dimension, universe, where you do yield control, over your own mind if nothing else. Like robotic, sociopathic levels of control. "This thought pattern has proven itself to be most beneficial, thus, I shall follow this one. There shall be no outside or inside event that will disuade me from this, for I have a steel will." Pay me for my rambles

[xtruss]

Human Recall Announcement

— By Evan Waite & River Clegg | July 25, 2024

A Humananatomy Drawing on an Old Canvas. Illustration From Getty Images

For Immediate Release

The Creator is announcing a recall of approximately 8.1 billion Homo sapiens because of health issues, safety concerns, and the annoying way some of them chew. These mammals were erroneously delivered to Earth with faulty brain wiring that makes them prone to violent outbursts, racially motivated hatred, and unjustifiably confident karaoke performances.

The defects go well beyond human minds, however. The Almighty admits that the recalled species has countless design flaws, including:

A big, dumb head.

Arms that hang down like sausage links.

Knees that resemble bruised grapefruits.

Genitals that make no sense at all.

Only two nostrils when a third would have been way cooler.

“I deeply regret the errors that went into the manufacturing of these bipeds,” the Supreme Being said. “We take pride in our work here at Heavenly Solutions, L.L.C., and vow to do better in the future.”

Humans have been a failure on virtually every level, according to the Divine One. Only eleven per cent of them trim their toenails with any regularity. Also, they accept easily disprovable information as long as it corresponds to their existing beliefs—especially if that information comes from a guy selling unregulated testosterone pills with a visibly aroused ox on the label.

As for the errors that went into the manufacture of these higher primates, the Almighty blames a cascading series of oversights. First off, there’s Frank. Frank is the quality-control angel whose job it is to weed out the sociopaths in each shipment. Unfortunately, Frank’s mother had shingles when humans were coming off the assembly line, so he was out that day.

But the fact that Frank’s mother got shingles in the first place caused several other angels to go on strike. Apparently, they thought that angels couldn’t get sick—a misguided belief that the Heavenly Father has deemed “wackadoo.” This angel strike led to the formation of a labor union whose legitimacy the Prime Mover still refuses to acknowledge, and now five Organism Development Plants have been shuttered, dashing any hope that Earth would soon see its first centaur.

While this recall should have come several hundred thousand years sooner—when the species discovered fire and instantly all became pyros—the Creator confesses that humans have turned out worse than even He anticipated. They invented nuclear weapons. They carried out mass deforestation. They left their stupid flag on the moon. “I now see that I should have trusted my first instinct,” the Omnipotent One admitted, “which was to pull the plug on the hominid project as soon as I realized that their ears should actually be on their chests so that they could hear forward.”

The Creator stresses that the recall only applies to humans, and that He fully stands behind all other life-forms, including newts, palm trees, gorillas, and those frogs which are also drugs. Furthermore, He is fully aware that this recall may cause confusion among other species, like lobsters, who may wonder why no one is trapping them or slapping butter on their backs. Nevertheless, the Great Deity maintains that this is what’s required to eradicate the clothed brutes who competitively chug liquid that makes them crash their cars.

The Absolute Being has issued strict instructions for how other species should react if they encounter a human before the recall takes effect. Bears should maul; eels should bite; hippos should stomp in as grisly a manner as possible. As a bonus, the Creator would like to note, expired humans can be returned to the Earth in exchange for nutrients that support more worthwhile beings. Worms, for instance. ♦

— Evan Waite is a co-executive producer on Fox’s “Family Guy.” His first humor book, “Life Wants You Dead,” will be published in April, 2024. — River Clegg is a contributor to McSweeney’s and the Onion, among other Publications.

[dontlookforme00]

Oh em gee guys look

It's Kim Dokja and his trustworthy constellation, Sun Wukong Great Sage Equal to Heaven! Wow would you believe it

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[theomnicode]

Imagine some people hating OPM manga purely on the basis that "it's not a direct copy of wc" and "we didn't get this and that thing happen", when the entire manga is built on the premise of "what if"-scenario contrasting wc, where the characters would develop due to social interconnectivity and engaging in their humane aspects, rather than stagnate like what Saitama does in WC. Because Saitama in WC probably can never get the self-actualization he needs without engaging in these aspects, the cactus allegory. In manga he does and the results are far-reaching, powerful and rewarding.

There's also probably good reasons why fights like Psykos got not only extended but recontextualized and also Psykos vs Fubuki got postphoned. So Psykos gets more limelight and importance. And people diss on Garou & Metal bat fighting Sage centipede like...so much but that also showcases some very important themes and the exemplification of interconnectivity. Also the very existence of Sage centipede, that is also kind of important, since it showed the creation of a monster by God.

Heck, God added as a character changed the entire manga. ONE's self insert of omnipotency going into action is a powerful force lol.

Someone has to shed some light how ONE's writing has supposedly gone down the drain, without making a comparison to his writing on WC when the Manga has different themes going on, so criticising the manga for it's lack of WC themes like entire S-class having more depth instead of being just pure sociopaths (and apparently having more depth is bad now) isn't gonna cut as a point of critique. There's still all those same themes people know and love from all of ONE's production at the core, but for added bonus we get it all in amazing battle manga format.

I aint saying the writing is perfect, ain't nobody perfect. But we've not finished the Garou story just yet and people already critique the lame ending... It hasn't even ended yet bro, we still got epilogue. If you critique the supposedly lame ending now, then you're just being disingenuous.

I think the one honest critique I can legitimately agree on is that MA arc is very long and it does not have enough Saitama in it. Because frankly, Saitama is the most beloved character in the manga and we just love to see him, that's all, so long stretches of not seeing Saitama in action hurt.

Yet giving more limelight to other characters serves a greater purpose in the end. Not developing any side characters is wasteful. It also makes the sparse appearances of his more meaningful.

Idk why he's not allowed to write slightly different story though, it's just a parallel timeline at this point in his massive multiverse of ONE writing work, which is a funny meta.

[entoman-created-by-the-tallgreys]

Human . Female

Giving women are extremely selfish with their emotions, to the point where I don't think they're able to understand what they do is Evil, I don't think the human female is able to understand they're acting like an asshole I don't think they're intellectually capable of comprehending bad behavior that means that they are in evolutionarily inferior to men.

Men know right from wrong women seem to not be able to understand that only on a selfish area they know right and wrong from them they can't understand right and wrong upon anyone else and they especially can't understand hurting someone and getting mad at someone and fighting someone or bad things they just get angry and then they go to the attack this is sociopathic mentality I have studied psychology for a while, real early in my existence I started studying this quite a while throughout my life Psychiatry is bullshit, Psychology is not !

And the one thing I studied is that there's something there's a great lack when coming with the female version of the human being there's a monumental shall we say decrease in human quality they lack a dramatic and portion of intelligence that the males do not lack.

Female lack the ability to understand and do a lot of things females lack physical strength females lack a lot of things but one thing females severely lack is the ability of self-control it's like women's are it's like a woman is a puppet of her emotions it's like she's not in control of her emotions her emotions are always in control of her she's not able to not let them go wild she's not able to not let them explode and go crazy she's not able to control them her emotions are absolutely omnipotent over, Her !

Just making women extremely dangerous they are very unintelligent they're very emotionally impulsive and they're extremely selfish being's, and the government knows that, the government knows what a big problem women are they know they understand that's where they give all the power it's an intention of Destruction.

This is another reason why there are so many men that are no longer with women because something fried the wires and the woman's brain something made them chaotically Wild

Something made them unnecessarily hyper aggressive something made them violent for no good Reason, it's almost like rabies

I don't understand why they become so violent I don't understand why they become so impulsive maybe that's always been the human female I don't know why the littlest things sets them off into the biggest of rages everything is a trigger to them everything is anger everything is fight everything is destruction everything is combat to them everything is war

Women have become like feral ghouls

They become like werewolves hyped up on adrenaline

. . .

Maybe someone poisoned their pussy with bad hormones I don't know

🤷🏻‍♂️

Hormones intensity play a major role in the female and I mean of everything of a female it even dictates their intelligence hormones intensely dictate everything about the woman so maybe they will maybe they're all poisoned I don't know I don't know I don't know I'm not saying they're completely lack of free will I don't understand how they I don't understand why they could be so bad and give so little care.

Because the human female literally tolerates fucking nothing often described as a bitch or a Karen the human female does not care in the slightest bit how much of a fucking asshole she is if she feels mad she's going to hurt someone if something doesn't go her way she's probably going to kill someone if she doesn't like something she's just going to do whatever the fuck she wants another cop comes up she's going to not throw a temperate, But, She's going to go on a rampage ?

? ? ?

This kind of stuff is Extremely confusing, and this is why so many men have left the women a big portion of them was because of they were no longer monogamous, and even bigger portion of the men or because of women which is completely uncontrollable assholes and they were dick head to them to the to the infinite degree

Other times they would just extremely stupid and extremely mean and not cooperative in the slightest bit

. . .

And another thing that's impossible to the human female is explaining things you cannot you cannot give the human female information or do that she does not do intelligence well when her brain has to learn things I've noticed women keep getting this is not a joke this is repeat this is not a joke when you try to explain things to a woman it just makes her angry so learning things just pisses her off I swear to God this shit whenever her brain has to learn something it just activates rage again ?

It's like a fucking virus ?

It's like they have a Rage virus ?

It's like they have a rage virus that makes them stupid it makes them aggressive like a zombie virus it's like the women have some kind of slow active zombie virus ?

Slowly making them a lot Dumber slowly making them more impulsive slowly making them more aggressive a slow zombification of them and to get if they get more unhealthy more crazy more controllable more aggressive they're acting like zombies I mean they act like fucking zombies ?

I'm not being funny we're made of DNA don't forget that shit

[robbyrobinson]

Villain Review: Emperor Belos (Contains SPOILERS)

Biography

This dark lord's life began roughly hundreds of years before the start of the series. On Earth, Belos was known as Philip Whittebane and lived in Gravesfield, Connecticut, the hometown of Luz Noceda during the 17th century. Around that time, witchcraft was greatly despised and reviled as evil.

Philip lived in a peaceful community alongside his brother until one-day tragedy struck: according to legend, the two brothers were led into the Demon Realm by a witch and were never seen again.

From there, we can speculate on Philip's life in the Demon Realm based on the events of "Hollow Mind" where Luz and Hunter end up going into Belos' mindscape. Going past the self-serving portraits of himself representing his "victory" over wild magic, Luz and Hunter discover his real mindscape.

Through a series of paintings, we have a story-within-a-story. Philip appears to become transformed into some monster resembling the manifestation of palismen souls that exist within his mindscape. His brother embraces him and it seems to cure him. If only for a few moments.

Next, his brother fell in love with a witch and was in the process of introducing her to him. But unbeknownst to him, Philip carried a dagger behind his back and a scuffle culminates in his brother lying lifeless on the ground with the dagger stained with his blood. From there, it could be insinuated that his lover cursed Philip as vengeance.

Philip would find himself alone for quite some time, but through what little that we know of his checkered past, he became aware of a potentially omnipotent being known as the Collector and was searching them out to accomplish his true goal: the complete destruction of all witches and demons that reside on the decaying Titan.

To accomplish this, he invited many witches and demons on his journeys and kept a document of his thoughts in his personal journal. But, surprise surprise. They would all end up dying under mysterious circumstances and he was always the sole survivor. We see him repeat the process again with Luz and Lilith when they use a pool to the past. After getting what he wanted, he has no qualms about leaving them to die, but he gets his nose broken rightfully so.

Making a deal with the Collector, Philip would create "The Day of Unity" as a means to mass genocide the witches of the Boiling Isles with the agreement that he would free the Collector who was trapped in the bones of the Titan.

But his xenophobic hatred of witches and magic would come back to bite him in the ass when the name of "Philip Whittebane" resulted in him being chased out of towns. So, what is a genocidal sociopath to do?

More paintings record his process of becoming Belos from his mask to him covering his ears with a bowl of flesh inside meaning that the bastard self-mutilated his own ears to further look like a witch.

He would then create replicas of his brother called grimwalkers and made them "the Golden Guards" all so he could create a better version of his brother: one who was blindly obedient to him. If not...he killed them and remade them again from scratch. He had done this around 18 times throughout the hundreds of years. He kept himself alive by consuming palismen souls which likely mutated him. Philip was the type of guy who would even carve glyphs into his own skin to allow himself to teleport.

From there, he staged attacks by wild witches, burning a town to the ground in one instance, so he could convince the villagers to join his coven systems claiming that he represented the Titan. When they were given their sigils, it was not as complete as it was now with horrid veins pulsating through their bodies and their eyes glazing over.

Personality

At first, Belos appears to be a calm and collected authoritative figure, but he is highly intolerant of failure as demonstrated with his threats to Lilith about what would happen to her should she fail to catch her sister again.

Despite this, Lilith tells the others that Belos has a heart: he cares for his nephew Hunter, the current Golden Guard, supposedly taking him in after wild magic destroyed their family. In some ways, Belos would seemingly be gentle with his nephew not wanting him to be put in situations that could compromise him. In return, Hunter was loyal to his uncle and would constantly sing his praises.

That was until what we learned in "Hollow Mind." There was never a great plan that the Titan had in store for Hunter: it was just rubbish that Belos would tell him to keep him in line. When Hunter learns the truth, Belos' gentleness with his "nephew" evaporates with him lamenting that he was the most perfect replica of an old friend of his that he'd have to kill for his "betrayal" expressing that Hunter was as expendable as the grimwalkers before him.

With what little we know of his backstory, even if Belos cared for his brother at some point, his "love" ended the moment his brother fell for a witch. If anything, Belos' love (if you can even apply that word) for his brother and the grimwalkers is toxic: he is constantly recreating his brother and killing him in inhumane ways like petrification, burial, and zapping out of existence all so he could make a perfect brother: one that would be completely obedient to him and would never stray from his control again.

Belos' greatest characteristic is his narcissism. While it could be explained away that he became the way he was because of the anti-witchcraft sentiment of the 1600s, Belos is a totally narcissistic sociopath with few redeeming qualities.

Much like any self-righteous, holier than thou antagonists like Judge Claude Frollo, Belos is motivated by a strong conviction to freeing humanity from "evil" by becoming a self-professed witch hunter. His immense ego blinds him to the fact he cannot perceive that purging a race of beings is a bad thing.

But he is, unironically, the largest hypocrite of the series by far: he preaches against the use of wild magic, and it becomes apparent that he despises magic as a whole, but he had sustained himself for hundreds of years by consuming the magic from palismen and carved glyphs into his body to teleport wherever he wanted on the Isles. He creates the coven systems as a means of draining magic to achieve the Day of Unity which would undoubtedly kill the users of magic.

Abilities

As a human, Belos did not perform magic in methods similar to demons and witches who possessed magic bile sacs. Instead, Belos was a practitioner of artificial magic using the glyphs etched on his body to his advantage (but it also comes at the cost of giving him pain).

He is able to summon monsters during his fight with Luz; can use fleshy tendrils and morph them into arms; melt into the floor at demand among other amazing feats.

It should also be noted that he has great technological knowledge for someone who came from the 17th century.

Conclusion

At first, Belos is underwhelming. After all the mystique that came with his character, to have him just be a racist man from the 1600s who wants to kill all witches and demons because he thinks they are evil is disappointing. But at the same time, I feel it works for the show and its message: finding your place and being yourself i.e. accepting who you are. The constant is that people who are "misfits" or "outcasts" do not have to be alone and they have access to friend groups and family. The concept of family is even thrown on its head by showing several unconventional familial settings such as Eda caring for Luz and the latter making Eda her second maternal figure.

In that sense, Belos represents the toxicity of how hard-pressed such conservative beliefs can be. In contrast to accepting individuality and difference, Belos instead rules the Boiling Isles with an iron fist forcing conformity to achieve his self-serving agenda.

So in the end, who was Belos? Starting off as a xenophobic human who was whisked into the Demon Realm, Belos allowed his hatred for witches and all things magic to fuel his narcissistic belief that he is truly the hero of his own story and can even kill his own brother without batting an eye and resurrect him as a homunculus so many times until he is the perfect mindless slave that he desires.

For all his talk about ridding humanity of evil, Belos is ironically the very thing that he wants to destroy.

[newts-and-sharks]

I got 8 on the enneagram test.. tho I didnt wanna pay for it… so I could uh- read what the chart said T w T

i looked it up dw i gotchu-

type 8 personalities are self-confident, strong, assertive , protective, resourceful, straight-talking, and decisive (whoo, look at you go-!)

however, you can be ego-centric, domineering, confrontational, intimidating, and have problems with temper and letting themselves be vulnerable (that's ok, you still got all that up there ^)

basic fear: being harmed or controlled by others

basic desire: to protect themselves and to be in control of their life

key motivation: being self reliant, to prove their strengths and resist weakness, to be important to the world, and staying in control of the situation

type 8 is known as The Challenger! (that name is so cool tbh-)

now for the levels of development:

Healthy Levels

Level 1 (At Their Best): Become self-restrained and magnanimous, merciful and forbearing, mastering self through their self-surrender to a higher authority. Courageous, willing to put self in serious jeopardy to achieve their vision and have a lasting influence. May achieve true heroism and historical greatness.

Level 2: Self-assertive, self-confident, and strong: have learned to stand up for what they need and want. A resourceful, "can do" attitude and passionate inner drive.

Level 3: Decisive, authoritative, and commanding: the natural leader others look up to. Take initiative, make things happen: champion people, provider, protective, and honorable, carrying others with their strength.

Average Levels

Level 4: Self-sufficiency, financial independence, and having enough resources are important concerns: become enterprising, pragmatic, "rugged individualists," wheeler-dealers. Risk-taking, hardworking, denying own emotional needs.

Level 5: Begin to dominate their environment, including others: want to feel that others are behind them, supporting their efforts. Swaggering, boastful, forceful, and expansive: the "boss" whose word is law. Proud, egocentric, want to impose their will and vision on everything, not seeing others as equals or treating them with respect.

Level 6: Become highly combative and intimidating to get their way: confrontational, belligerent, creating adversarial relationships. Everything a test of wills, and they will not back down. Use threats and reprisals to get obedience from others, to keep others off balance and insecure. However, unjust treatment makes others fear and resent them, possibly also band together against them.

Unhealthy Levels

Level 7: Defying any attempt to control them, become completely ruthless, dictatorial, "might makes right." The criminal and outlaw, renegade, and con-artist. Hard-hearted, immoral and potentially violent.

Level 8: Develop delusional ideas about their power, invincibility, and ability to prevail: megalomania, feeling omnipotent, invulnerable. Recklessly over-extending self.

Level 9: If they get in danger, they may brutally destroy everything that has not conformed to their will rather than surrender to anyone else. Vengeful, barbaric, murderous. Sociopathic tendencies. Generally corresponds to the Antisocial Personality Disorder.

(I just copy and pasted that up there bc i didn't feel like typing it, oops-)

now for personal growth recommendations for 8s:

1: act with self restraint

2: learn to yield to others

3: remember that the world is not against you

4: learn to rely on others

fun fact: Martin Luther King was a type 8 personality, as well as Pablo Picasso, Aretha Franklin, and Dr. Phil!

[therealvinelle]

Hi! I was reading through your meta (which is reeeeally interesting) and noticed you said you don't like Eleazar? I was wondering why that was?

Tumblr ate this ask when I had almost finished it and I hate everything. Also, thanks for the compliment, I’m really glad you like my things.

Now to try and remember what I wrote about Eleazar…

I think Eleazar is a disagreeable person whose gift wasn’t useful enough to warrant a place in the Volturi guard, and Aro jumped on the Carmen-shaped excuse to give him an honorable discharge.

To start with the gift, we see him use it twice and neither time is particularly impressive.

Siobhan Siobhan has the power of reality manipulation. Her gift is noticeable enough that Carlisle is certain she has it, so when he gets Eleazar and Siobhan in a room together he pulls Eleazar over to see if he was right. Eleazar squints at Siobhan. And he squints. Finally he says, «I’ve got nothing.» Now, gifts are an iffy, complicated matter everyone has their own theories about, but I think that at the end of the day we can all agree it’s a binary, you’re gifted or you’re not. Some gifts may be weak, but those are still gifts. And maybe someone will touch the gray zone of «is it a gift or is Johnny the vampire just really good at juggling?», but Siobhan has the power to manipulate reality, and she must do it a lot for Carlisle to have come to suspect it in the first place. She has a definitive and powerful gift. And even if I’m wrong about gifts being binary, if Eleazar wants to be useful to Aro he should still be able to say: Yes, this person has a gift, or no, this person does not have a gift. Sadly, he is not. When brought before Siobhan he says «She could have a gift, she could also not have a gift.» This means he hasn’t detected her gift, which is bad enough by itself. Being able to tell if someone has a gift or not should be a dealbreaker. The way he answers, though, that she could very well have a gift he doesn’t know about, makes it clear that people having gifts he couldn’t detect has happened enough for him to be open to the possibility that the gift there, and he can’t see it. In other words, Eleazar isn’t reliable for detecting gifts and will give Aro false negatives.

Bella This is an aside but as it’ll inevitably come up later in my blog I’ll just drop here that I think Bella’s gift is something more complex than a shield. She has prophetic dreams, hallucination!Edward, and there’s a weird inconsistency as to who is blocked by her and who isn’t. I think her gift is self-preservation, and the shield is one of its manifestations. Anyway, onto discrediting Eleazar. (I’ll be pretty closely paraphrasing what happens in chapter 31 of Breaking Dawn, but since the interaction goes on for several pages I’m not going to clutter this post by pasting all of it.) To his credit, he does notice Bella right away, and he identifies her as a shield based on the fact that he gets this sense of nothingness from her. This is all he can do, however, and I can’t stress that enough. He assumes that she can block Edward, but he’s shocked to learn that she can block Aro. He’s just as surprised that she can block Jane and Alec. He has to interview her to deduce exactly what her gift does, which again has nothing to do with his gift. Anyone could ask questions, in fact Aro found all this out two books ago, without the help of Eleazar. Eleazar then starts musing aloud about who-would-win in a Renata vs. Bella showdown (more on that later), which is as tactless as it is revealing. The guy genuinely doesn’t know, and it’s because he doesn’t understand their gifts well enough. Eleazar’s power means he can tell Bella that she has a gift, and he knows roughly what it is. He muses that usually he can’t even tell that much, which again is quite damning. He can’t tell her exactly what she does without a game of 20 questions first. She gives him more information than he gives her, which he then regurgitates back to her with slightly different wording, and everybody claps. «My god, Eleazar, you’ve done it again!» (No, really, this is pretty much what happens. Eleazar brought no new information to the table, yet he blew Bella and Edward’s minds.) It’s all fun and games to do this for Bella and Edward, as they for various reasons genuinely didn’t realize she had a gift. For Aro, who figured this one out on his own, one begins to wonder what Eleazar was bringing to the table.

Carlisle Bonus bullet point! I’ll make this one brief. I believe Carlisle in canon has a gift he’s unaware of (Yes, I have a post planned, but it will get ugly long so god knows when it’ll come), which makes him another one of Eleazar’s gift detection fails. In short, I think he’s extremely charismatic, able to win over anybody. To list a few examples - he has an extremely diverse set of friends who in Breaking Dawn are willing to lay down their lives for him, Jacob muses how his instinctive hostility around vampires doesn’t apply to Carlisle, and vampires are terrifying to humans (don’t be fooled by the movies, people) yet Carlisle is able to work as a successful doctor, meaning his patients don’t mind being exposed to a killing machine even when they’re at their most vulnerable. He’s able to keep his family of sociopaths in line. There’s not a single person in the Twilight ‘verse that dislikes him. (Billy and Caius excepted, but Billy has no direct exposure to him until late Eclipse, and Caius is responding to a coven that’s potentially threatening the Volturi) People are free to disagree with me on this one, but if I’m right (and I have a lot of book quotes as well as a theory on what gifts even are to back me up on this one. I’m right, damnit!) then Carlisle is another gifted vampire Eleazar failed to detect.

So. We’ve established that Eleazar’s gift will yield false negatives, and that he can’t tell you much about the gifts he does detect.

I think his power is to point out the obvious.

Which means that Aro’s eyelid was twitching slightly, but alright, Eleazar could still be useful.

Unfortunately, there is the matter of weighing up your pros with your cons.

The Volturi are, at the end of the day, a group of people who live in a commune together. Coven, guard, evil minions, call them what we like but they’re exposed to each other and some sense of agreeability is required. And Chelsea is not omnipotent.

More, I imagine that in a coven as large and old as the Volturi, they’ve developed a culture of their own. This means that newcomers will need social awareness and a willingness to fit in.

Eleazar, from what we see of him in Breaking Dawn, appears to lack both.

It’s in the way he speaks of the people he used to work with. It’s utterly impersonal. He tells us how their gifts work, no more and no less. When he speaks of Aro, he speaks only of actions Aro took and orders he gave, nothing about the man’s personality. Now, considering the context, he was speaking in a context where Jane’s thoughts and feelings were far from relevant, but it’s still notable.

Also notable is the fact that he has no issue contemplating a Renata vs. Bella scenario, even though this would mean the deaths of two people he worked with for years. Perhaps it’s a thought exercise, but it’s not a thought exercise I would have gotten into when it was days away from becoming reality. If Renata can’t deflect Bella’s power, she and Aro die.

I’ll put it this way - I don’t think he’d do a «who would win» like this involving Carmen.

At no point in the book does Eleazar show any concern for the eventuality that members of a guard he used to be a part of may get killed.

It seems he didn’t form personal relationships with the rest of the guard. I suspect he considered himself... if not quite above them, then still someone who could evaluate them. Their gifts is what he looked at in them. I also think it’s likely he asked Aro not to use Chelsea on him, which in turn would have made him stick out even more as there’s nothing making him and Volturi Guard Member X just click in the way I imagine Chelsea can be very helpful with. Which in turn means that the other guard members will feel close to one another in a way they’re not close to Eleazar.

Also… he’s just a douche. I’m sorry, but I don’t make the rules and the whole guy radiates douche. I can’t even point to a specific quote in the book, it’s just is.

I don’t think this guy never really fit into the Volturi guard, and his gift wasn’t useful enough to keep him. Aro was thrilled to have him at first, but as time went on and Eleazar proved to just not be all that, he eventually realized he had to get rid of him.

Because as others have pointed out before me, the Carmen excuse makes no sense. There would be no problem in one more vampire in the castle, yet Aro wouldn’t let her in and Eleazar had to choose.

It was a solution that sent Eleazar on his way with his ego intact, and no hard feelings towards the Volturi. More, Aro is on record doing this with it’s-not-you thing with at least one other vampire. Laurent wanted to join the Volturi, had nothing to bring to the table, and Aro used past association with the Romanians as an excuse for why Laurent couldn’t join rather than tell him to his face that he was useless. With Marcus, Aro, and Chelsea around, the Romanian connection isn’t a problem, meaning Aro was bullshitting.

TL;DR: Aro is the kind of person who’d lie and say his grandma died if he doesn’t want to go to your party, and Eleazar is the kind of person who’d say «My condolences».

[everything-laito]

damn the brain be out here going BRRRRRR here’s the Laito and Cordelia Analysis (with a little bit of Karl sprinkled in) Part III

wow my fingers are freezing but my brain sure isn't! 

aaaanyways, iiiiiit’s trauma time!!! Am I a productive member of society by writing these analyses? No. Do I gain anything by writing them? Kinda, my brain gets exercised and they’re fun to research for. But if you haven’t read the first part or the second part for some reason (I recommend reading them in order), there they are. 

Once again, trigger warnings still apply; mainly about trauma, isolation, etc 

I’m gonna talk about the trauma and effects it had on Laito and to attempt to extrapolate why he is the way he is. I have a lot of examples I want to go over and stuff to talk about, so I think the trauma part is going to be split between two (or maybe three) parts. I also have a little bit to say about Karlheinz.

As always, big ass rant under the cut! 

Section 6: Neuroplasticity and Trauma

Oh???? More science vernacular??? You BET! Ok, neuroplasticity. I know I’ve talked about it on this blog. But, I seriously doubt that there is a madlad who has read all of my analyses (speaking of which, I should update the master list lmao) and I don’t expect anyone to do that LOL! Anyways, this neurological concept is the ability of neurons to adapt to certain circumstances or stimuli by creating new neurological pathways (through synapses). This basically relates to memory and learning. It’s why we don’t stay the same person as we grow and develop. It’s responsible from mindset changes to response to traumatic events. It plays a huge part in trauma, which is why “repressed memories” occur as well. 

Trauma, taken from Psychology Today, is defined as: 

...the experience of severe psychological distress following any terrible or life-threatening event. Sufferers may develop emotional disturbances such as extreme anxiety, anger, sadness, survivor’s guilt, or PTSD.

It’s a basic definition. And although I’d assume people would know what trauma is already, but knowing the lexical definition of something can be good to know before going into it. 

Obviously, Laito has trauma, there’s literally no refuting that. But, the point I’m getting at, is the reason why he is the way he is today is because of neuroplasticity. As previously stated, we are going to assume the DL vampire brain works similarly or the same as a human brain. So, because of the stress put upon the brain (Cordelia’s actions and Laito’s general upbringing in a stress filled household), Laito’s brain was rewired (neuroplasticity). This section doesn’t really have much new information, but I wanted to give a baseline since there’s many people who don’t know what neuroplasticity is.

Laito’s definitely different than what he was as a kid. He still kind of had his smarts, and might have been  but as we’ve deducted from the first part of this series, he might have been groomed. On top of that, the brain is easily moldable when you’re a child (which is why grooming makes sense for Laito’s case), and continues to snip brain cells off and form new connections. 

Section 7: Little intermission about Karlheinz 

I know I haven’t really talked about Karlheinz yet. So this will be the section that I do it in. I know this part is about Laito’s trauma, but it’s so hard to not just weave other characters into it. Nothing is stand-alone, which is why it was so hard for me to plan this out. I was debating about saving this for another analysis, but I feel like it fits. 

I referenced this in Part II, Section 5 of this analysis series. Basically, Karlheinz throws Laito into the dungeon and locks him up. Not Karlheinz personally, but he ordered someone to do it. We don’t explicitly know why, but there’s several implications. A huge one is that it was part of Karlheinz’ experiment. Before Dark Fate, I was like “wait, so did Karl find out about Laito/Cordelia? And got like jealous or was like ‘nah this shit fucked up no thanks’?” I was really scratching my head on that. But in Dark Fate, you find that Karlheinz knew about Cordelia and Laito, and even really wanted it to happen. Which is all sorts of fucked up. This really put Laito in for a loop. Here’s a scene from Dark Fate: 

Laito: That woman always, always believed in Karlheinz. Laito: She believed he married her because he loved her, wanted her. That’s why she was sure that one day... he will give his love only to her.  Laito: But she was tricked. She wasn’t loved from the start... Laito: -And I’m a victim of this unbelievable mistake... That’s how it is. Laito: I was treated as a vent for her feelings. Yui: ...Laito-kun... Laito: I’m sure he knew that something like this will happen... He is a god after all... Laito: I was hoping that... He just overlooked it up until now... Laito: But... I was naive.  Laito: I was only planned a scapegoat. 

God, when I played this, that just freaking struck me to my core. That’s so awful. Ironically... Karlheinz probably has some high level of emotional intelligence. I don’t believe he could be labeled as a sociopath, considering he has this high level understanding of pathos. He’s not god in a sense that he controls everyone individually himself. He’s so good at manipulation that he basically creates fate itself (whether you believe in it or not). He’s generally intelligent and cunning, and it also just helps with the fact that he’s immortal and can time travel. He knows cause and effect by now, and I believe Lost Eden said something about how he’s done so many different “timelines.” 

The definition of a god in a philosophical sense can be broken down into three words: omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. More wicked cool jargon! Yay! Here’s what they mean for extra clarification:

Omniscient: All knowing Omnipresent: All seeing Omnipotent: All doing

Sure Karlheinz doesn’t absolutely know everything, nor can see everything, and he definitely has limits to his power, but he has gained knowledge through living for so many years and time traveling; he has familiars which add to the whole “all seeing” part; and he has a lot of power. So basically, in the most semi-”realistic” sense, it would definitely be the closest being to any kind of god.

Karlheinz is probably the reason why Laito himself has such contempt towards religion, and the existence of a god in general. Sure, the boys are like “that shit’s made up by humans” in general, but it would make sense for Laito himself to have that specific hatred. It makes sense that these vampires would be like “oh that’s made up by humans” when they’ve been around forever and have seen multiple religions come and go. (I’m mainly talking about in DL’s lore case, not starting a religious argument; please don’t take it as such––just to clarify)

Section 8: Isolation

Originally, the previous part was going to be about Laito’s isolation being locked up. However, I went off the rails and it turned into that little intermission. This is going to be a shorter section, but I still wanted to talk about, and it will weave into the next section. 

There is no implications about how long Laito was locked up (and tortured) in the dungeon. There’s also no implications about why he was tortured. But torture and isolation puts such stress on the brain that there’s definitely going to be some kind of outcome if persisting for a good period of time. So let’s take a look at what that does to a person. 

Once again, taking this with a grain of salt. I imagine vampires don’t need to rely on social interaction as much as humans do, considering they live forever. But we don’t know. However, throwing Laito into a state of isolation implies that it would be some type of torture or harsh punishment for a vampire, which therefore implies that social interaction is a necessity for emotional function. It’s just sound, inductive logic. 

So now, as for isolation, I’m using this article as reference. It’s a pretty interesting one to read. Here’s another extensive article as well. Basically isolation can cause:

Depression/anxiety

Immune system deficiencies (basically more likely to get physically ill)

Sleep cycle changes (if put underground or with limited natural light)

Hallucinations

Paranoia

Issues with processing information and more susceptible to persuasion/manipulation

We have no clue if Laito’s experience fits all of these. Also, the second one can be crossed out because vampires in DL can’t get physically sick in the way we can. Also, unsure about the sleep cycle stuff considering they are used to being in the dark. Hallucinations and paranoia can’t be crossed off nor proven. 

Being isolated physically and mentally exhausts the mind, which is why it’s also a way of torture. Laito implies that he was tortured with physical devices, but regardless, it’s still stress on the mind. This type of stress definitely goes along with what was mentioned with neuroplasticity and trauma, which also supports the last bullet point: issues processing information and being more susceptible to persuasion/manipulation. Take this flashback from Maniac Prologue in HDB that I used in Part II section 5 (but here’s even more context):

Laito: ーー Let me go!! Let me out of here! Butler: I can’t, young lord. We’ve received strict orders from your father. I am deeply sorry, but please stay put for a while. Laito: What’s the point in having me chained up in here!? Butler: ーーI am very sorry. Laito: Hahahaha…You stupid old man! Do you think that this will make repent!? How foolish! That demon! Has his brain finally rotten from spending too much time with humans!? ー Cordelia appears Cordelia: ー Oh? Laito: …!? Have you come to save me? Cordelia: Oh dear. Ufufu…I’m sorry Laito, that isn’t it. Laito: Eh? Richter: ー Why are you here? Laito: …That’s my line. Cordelia: Okay, okay. No fighting! More importantly, Richter…Come here. Laito: …!? Cordelia: Nnn…Hey, Laito. You are a good boy. Laito: …!! Cordelia: Right, Laito? Laito: Yeah, that’s right. I’m…I’m a good boy after all.  ーー Besides, I’m the type of person who only get more aroused from this kind of thing.

Although I also use this to support the whole Stockholm syndrome point, this could also be supported with the trauma isolation also holds. His mind is being re-molded into the facade he holds. Also, note the whole “do you think this will make me repent?!” part. Just a very interesting thing. The word “repent” implies that there’s something to feel guilty about or the person knows that what they’ve done is bad. It just goes to show that Laito has some part of guilt or moral compass still in tact. 

You can also argue that this scene was when Laito just got locked up, or he’s been here for a while. Either way, he could have also been socially isolated before this too, just hanging around Cordelia like it’s implied when he was a child. Remember the whole not being in bed 9/10 times when he was a child? Yeah, controlled social isolation. We also rarely see Laito with other characters in his flashbacks. I don’t believe we see him with his brothers in any of his flashbacks from what I can recall; he’s usually with Cordelia. Just implies (to me) that he’s around her a lot. And being locked up is also a more extreme case of that, which would mold the brain even more. 

I know that was a LOT to process and read. I sure hope this still is cohesive for you all. I’m pretty bad at organizing this kind of stuff; it’s a bit difficult since it all just goes together. Which, kudos on the writers of DL, because that’s just good writing. I was going to put something about gaslighting in this part, but that might be too long, so I’m going to make that a separate part or include it in the next part. 

If you have any questions, feel free to just put it in the inbox. I’m planning on making the last part of this series answering all the Laito/Cordelia questions I’ve received, or just general questions pertaining to this analysis in general, whether it be tangential questions or clarifying questions. 

Hope you all are still enjoying this ride as much as I am!  -Corn