#still processing most of the episode

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

I was reading sea glass gardens for like the 8th time in a row (listen I was praying to the gods for a fic focuses on Megumi & Yuuta, for a fic that shows Megs dynamic with the Zenins more, and for a fun little gojo adopts the fushiguro siblings and forced his friends to play aunt and uncle. You checked all my boxes. I am in debt to you now.) and its the way I'm still seeing the little details that should've been so fucking obvious to me —

Megumi and Tsumiki fucking around and adopting some of Gojo’s habits and sayings? I know he was so proud that his children is becoming mini versions of him. Toji is crying in the depths of hell while Mamaguro is happy as hell in the pearly gates.

“It’s a garden” it took so long for me to peep that this was his domain. Like tfw when your domain is fucking you up. I pray that Gege shows us his completed domain. Actually I PRAY GEGE LET MEGUMI SHOW OFF HIS FUCKING POTENTIAL. But alas Gege is a coward.

THE NICOTINE PATCH? Oh Shoko my beloved. I get her. I fucking hate cancer sticks but if I had to spend time with corpses, being forced to converse with the higher ups, and having to be friends with Gojo and Geto AND witness their divorce. Well. I would’ve smoked something too. Like goddamn these bitches should’ve been at the club.

The little callbacks to the playbooks? How petty the sorcerer world gotta be for them to have cheat sheets on their enemies. Is that not crazy? Is this who they are? Petty bastards.

toji pulling up to get married in sweats. megumi killing curses at such a young age for his sister? toji giving megumi shit to get him to stfu? oh megumi you dodged a bullet with toji.

BUT WHAT I REALLT WANTED TO WAS THE BATHHOUSE. Megumi needs to go feral as a threat cause imagine how humiliating that must’ve been. A bunch of assholes & such watching you like some fucking cult. I really hope that Megumi and Gojo have some type of reassuring talk about his time at the Zenins.

(Yaga and Gojo going at it while Panda in the room is so funny to be but…it’s also kind of sad. Like imagine seeing your dad figure basically be okay, well not okay but not willing to fight back, about the higher ups and everything.)

Obsessed with the fact that I can toss up what seems to me to be a random niche interest and find a community of people who wanted exactly that. I’m thrilled I checked off your boxes.

The bathhouse was designed to be humiliating by nature. I talked about it more on another post (but fuck if I know where it is), but the point of including that whole bit was that I really couldnt think of any better way to emphasize that megumi wasn’t a person to them.

On its face, the private bathhouse with servants tending to it could be a sign of status. It’s kind of an old world nobility thing to have? Which fits with the Zenin, who are very traditional and value Megumi as their most treasured person to be born to the clan in centuries. He would be presumptive heir if Gojo hadn’t intervened. So they’d easily be able to cast this in their own minds as a good thing, as a way they’re taking care of him. He’s not subjected to the communal bathhouses or small private bathrooms like the majority of the clan—they’ve given him his own private facilities and servants to care for him in it.

However, once you take away Megumi’s consent, it becomes an absolutely humiliating and degrading experience that only happens for the Zenin’s comfort and not his own.

I spoke about this in the other post in more detail, but I tried to imply that this wasn’t the first time the Zenin had done this to him. And there’s two points that kind of implicate that—when Maki’s talking to Yuuta about how it used to be when Megumi was a kid, she says the first thing that they would do when he arrived in the clan was hand him over to the servants to make him presentable. She also talks about how viciously he hated the way they’d make him look in the clan, including stomping the clothes they’d make him wear in the mud. When Megumi himself is talking about the bathhouse, he says he was given over to the servants like when he was a kid. This wasn’t a new experience for him. They weren’t doing this to him for the first time. They did this to him when he was a kid, and he’s reliving all of that trauma anew.

In my mind, it was a product of how selfish the Zenin’s love for megumi is.

He’s their favorite doll. He’s a possession. They want him to look and act exactly the way they expect from him, and they despise any divergence from what they want the ten shadows to be. And they hate it when they’re reminded of how Gojo took him from them.

They don’t want him dressed in modern clothes. They don’t want his hair styled in a manner similar to Gojo’s. They want him to look like the Ten Shadows they always wanted, and one surefire way of controlling that is to simply do it themselves, whether or not megumi is on board.

And the thing is? It is such a fundamentally minor thing to let someone bathe and dress themselves. It would have cost the Zenin so so little to let Megumi do it. Even if they were still dictating what clothes he wore and how he styled his hair (which would still rob him of his autonomy on its own, they could have at least let him do the actual act of bathing and dressing himself. They could have violated him a little bit less than they already were. The biggest inconvenience it would have risked to them would be him doing something not to their exact standards and losing a few minutes to making him redo it. But on Megumi’s end, it symbolizes a huge source of autonomy and comfort. Letting Megumi bathe himself really does impact so little for them, but for Megumi, it could have saved him from lasting trauma.

The Zenin do it to him anyway because they value their minor conveniences over his very bodily autonomy. They don’t even recognize that as a genuine concern. He’s a possession to them. An object. They don’t actually love him, and the love they think they have is actively dangerous to him. They will violate him in a very fundamental way just so they can make sure he looks how the ten shadows is supposed to look, and they won’t care.

Being forcibly bathed against your will is just humiliating, especially at Megumi’s age, and it’s one of the things that hurt him the worst out of everything the Zenin just did to him. I think Megumi takes physical pain better than he does humiliation. Having to be exposed and vulnerable the way he was with other people watching was a more effective torture than locking him in a room with curses for days.

But there’s extra layers to it if you consider 1) this is something the Zenin have done to him before and 2) this is something that he could have stopped.

When Megumi was six, he was definitely at the age where he was already bathing himself. Some parenting books say parents should still be helping at that age, but his parents were completely checked out well before then. He had already been handling all his hygiene needs on his own. Having strange adults force him to let them do it for him was a traumatizing and infantilizing experience that represented one of the many ways the Zenin robbed him of all control over his own life when they had him.

But now it’s happening again.

And megumi probably didn’t think the Zenin would do that to him again, walking into this. He probably explained it away as them doing that to him because he was still a little kid at the time. He told himself it happened because he was six, and he’s not six anymore.

Having it all happen again was a very visceral reminder of how helpless his abusers used to make him, and immediately kicked him back down to that level with a very potent reminder. It’s trauma reawakening trauma. He felt like he was six again. He probably told himself for a long time that it would never happen again and it still did.

The other thing is that he’s a lot more capable in a fight than a six year old. He’s a grade two jujutsu sorcerer. He’s a fighter. And he’s being manhandled by servants who don’t have a lot of cursed energy, if they’re even sorcerers at all, and aren’t meant to be combatants. These are people he should be able to defend himself against easily. He should be able to stop them from doing this to him again.

For whatever reason, he couldn’t.

Maybe Gojos theory about them having something on him was right. Or maybe he was too worn down and broken from the cursed spirits. Maybe it was something else. Whatever the reason, this is something that he would have told himself he was strong enough to stop, and then he wasn’t. He either had to let it happen or couldn’t stop it even if he tried. It’s a new level of helplessness and humiliation that it made him experience.

In short, megumi does deserve to go feral over the bathhouse, and probably needs to. He’s really not okay over it. It would probably be cathartic.

[academyofbrokenhearts]

They told me that Nevertheless featured a toxic romance, and instead I got a story about two kids who are confused as fuck and have zero ability to properly express their wishes.

[laneaconite]

Looking for Progress

When I'm home alone, you'll hear my whistle echoing along the white-washed walls. Or in the garden, handrake turning soil singing along to songs invented in my head. A poem can be a song if only one sings along instead.

My sister used to want to be a singer, we’d twirl back and forth together, making up what we thought were melodies, but our brother, he’d hear us and scream: "You sound like you’re skinning cats alive!"

Quick stab to the gut, good twist of the knife, scarred with stale blood still roiling beneath. He’d call it a joke but we’d call it a wound, That’s three against one!

We danced and sang for our amusement, for his, he cannibalized our dreams.

-Lane Aconite

December 29, 2023

[kunikiiida-kuuun]

Kunikida's scream ohmygod....I just internally died 😭😭😭😭😭

[notthemindprobe]

people using the new episode as an excuse to have one last dunk on 13/chibnall's era is kinda bumming me out :/

[odenly]

Dear miraculous writing team:

Thank you, I'm finally dead because of Jubilation. You ripped my heart in little pieces and then ripped apart those little pieces too.

Lots of love, me

[k3ithsk0gane]

now while me in the present moment doesn’t agree with murdering humans to get rid of curses, if I was in Getou’s position dealing with all the crap jujutsu sorcerers deal with and being forced to watch friends and those close to me die and suffer I’d probably be thinking and feeling like he did too when he made his final decision. I would also probably think killing humans to get rid of curses would be best course of action.

[llycaons]

tags on that last rb are probably very vague and confusing but for context I was listening to a podcast criticizing x media for very poorly handling SA/dubious consent wrt drugs/alcohol and one of the hosts enthusiastically recommended mdzs as a BETTER choice for that topic because she thought scenes where love interests get drunk were written in a cuter/more romantic way and I had to turn off the podcast and stare into the distance for a while. this was months ago and it still bothers me. so that’s the context.

[larrythefloridaman]

maybe J0hn for the character bingo? owo

love this man ive been attached to him since he first showed up <3 dont have too much new i can think of to say about him though

[lordsardine]

.

[r0bee]

Sigh. Thinking about my no-Elemental-powers-Jay Jaya AU where Jay still lives/works at the junkyard and Nya goes there for Samurai X/vehicle/general mech supplies and they bond + get closer working on building/fixing things together. Also they are t4t lesbians

[slimeciclecock]

wait do we have qsmp later bc hc10 just dropped and-

[yuri-puppies]

Shape-shifters, face-blindness, and "paying attention to others"

The shapeshifter is one of my favourite "monster of the week" episodes because it showcases how differently Laios processes social information than the rest of the party. It reminds me a lot of the strategies I, faceblind name-forgetter and eye-contact avoider, use to recognize people and learn things about them.

We see Laios clearly fail at recognizing the doubles through "standard" social cues that are perceived as "easy to tell", such as their clothes. This makes the team (unfairly, but understandably) weary of his ability to tell the fakes apart and even worried that he'd prefer the monster versions* over them. Nonetheless, he gives it a try!

...And is immediately overwhelmed. His lack of attention to social cues works a bit in his favor, though, as it makes it harder for him to fall for stereotypes that fool the rest of the group.

Instead, he chooses to rely on his strengths and use his investigation and animal handling skills to distract the shapeshifters, lure out the monster, and roll the most insane balls-to-the-wall intimidation check of all time.

If it had ended there it still would have been a great episode that showcases Laios' strategic mind and his strengths as a leader. He doesn't have the social skills necessary for the task, but he is clever and creative enough to use the skills he does have proficiency in to solve the problem*.

However, what makes this episode so dear and near to my faceblind heart is the revelation that Laios was able to recognize the real party members after all.

Laios is fantastic representation of how special interests actually work for a monotropic interest system. Having a special interest is not just about how much you like it and the need to know everything about it, it's a way of processing and filtering information. Laios' special interest is monsters: his skills as a dungeoneer and party leader are acquired for and informed by his desire to interact with monsters, as is his interest in eating them. He actually brings this up himself when comparing his interest in cooking to Senshi's.

And in this episode, we see that this also extends to his friends. Laios hacks one of the most difficult types of information for him to process by routing it through the lens of the special interest. And, because it's not something most people would notice, it works. He knows that Chilchuck wouldn't let his guard down around a potential mimic, that Senshi values a balanced ecosystem, that (my favourite) Marcille just isn't as thoughtful about monsters as he is.

It might not be what was expected, but it did the trick! And what's more, the narrative validates his way of thinking (even if Chilchuck doesn't).

[catt-crossing]

I enjoyed the ending of fionna and cake thoguh i wish we had more episodes

okay i was originally like wow i have no thoughts rn and I said that in the tags and immediately after i had a few thoughts so there they are lol

[annabelle--cane]

"the magnus protocol had a whole ARG beforehand? what?"

yes! it did!

"oh so I need to have participated in this whole big thing to actually understand the podcast?"

not at all! from the official post-mortem put out by RQ, "while the ARG was not something that was necessary to participate in to understand the magnus protocol, it was designed to contain a wealth of background story and context that would enrich any player's listening experience."

"a wealth of background context that would enrich my listening experience 👀👀👀 how can I learn about this?"

SO glad you asked. sadly, many of the materials made for the arg have been taken down since the game ended 😔 (ex., the official OIAR, magnus institute, and bonzoland websites. (edit ii: I found partial wayback machine captures! see below) though @strangehauntsuk is still up!), so we're a bit low on primary sources, but in terms of learning about what happened:

for a starting point, I would really recommend this video by @pinkelotjeart

it's super accessible, it was made in real time as the game progressed and follows the solving and revelation of clues as they happened, it hits all the major points of the mystery and moments of community insanity while eliding some of the nitty gritty puzzle grinding, 10/10 would recommend.

here's the official summary put out by RQ, and I'd recommend reading through this once you've already gotten a basic handle on the flow of the story and the basic connections between major clues and events. it's got some fun behind-the-scenes info and lays out the thought process behind the puzzles in simple terms

here's the full masterdoc of all puzzles and resolutions put together in the statement remains discord server. masterdoc my absolute BELOVED, masterdoc my bethrothed, masterdoc my soul mate. I'd recommend this as a second port of call after the above video as it either contains all details about the puzzles or links to other expanded docs that do.

here's the narrative summary doc that lays out all the plot and lore discovered in three pages of plain prose. if you just want to get to the good bits as fast as you can and get blasted directly in the face by contextless lore bombs, this is the doc for you. if you don't want to start with the video, I'd say this is another good entry point.

once you've got the lay of the land, some of the game materials that I found particularly interesting include:

the in-universe east germany expat usenet forum, with all content translated into english. most of it is irrelevant space filler with occasional extremely sus lore, but I still found it fun to read through. love to soak in some fictional forum drama.

chdb.xlsx, the spreadsheet of the names of all the children the protocol 'verse magnus institute was studying/experimenting on. EDIT: here is a version of the sheet without any annotations and with all of the names in their original order, kudos to @theboombutton for catching that the commonly shared copy had the order swapped around.

klaus.xls, a (very corrupted) spreadsheet with what looks like the classifications of a bunch of old OIAR cases.

EDIT: have a few more saved materials from the game that I forgot to include.

an in-universe audio ad to apply to the OIAR that ran before archives episodes and kicked off the whole game.

an in-universe video ad to apply to the OIAR, this one is an official upload that's still up from the game itself. you can subscribe to the OIAR's official youtube channel today, if you so chose.

the robo-voicemail greeting from the OIAR's phone line.

EDIT II:

here is a wayback machine capture of the OIAR's official website.

here is a wayback machine capture of the bonzoland website.

(pretty sure both of the above captures just archived the home pages, though I haven't tried clicking all of the links. I'd say they're still worth looking at, the home pages give a good window into the vibes.)

once you start poking around in these documents, you'll find a bunch of links to others with further information, the materials I've included here just contain what I feel to be the most relevant details to getting a broad feel for the whole game. once again, huge shout out to the statement remains server, I was barely in there as the ARG was in progress and only ducked my head in every so often to find links like these. true mvps of the fandom.

[lecsainz]

A headcanon of Percy Jackson x reader daughter of Zeus, where he has been in love since the first day he saw her, and he had also recently arrived at the camp, please

˒ ⌕ SHE IS LIKE THUNDER

parings: percy jackson x zeus!reader

an:I know I disappeared, forgive me 🤧, but picture me writing this at 3 AM, dying of sleepiness after watching the last episode of PJO, AND ANNIE USED THE NICKNAME 😭 THIS EPISODE IS STILL TOO MUCH FOR ME TO PROCESS!!!!

summary: the one where you're a daughter of zeus, exploring your relationship with percy.

( my last work || my last work for riodanverse || go to main masterlist )

You and Percy crossed paths during one of your training sessions. Luke was giving Percy a tour of the camp, and when Percy laid eyes on you, he halted abruptly, as if struck by lightning. For some inexplicable reason, he felt an urgent need to know who you were, as if the gods themselves demanded it.

Percy's eyes widened as he observed you from across the training grounds. "Who's that?" he asked, pointing a finger in your direction. Luke suppressed a chuckle, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Her? Oh, that's Y/N, daughter of Zeus." Percy squinted, trying to decipher your actions, as you accidentally summoned a small lightning bolt that fizzled out near your feet. His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Does that happen often?" Luke grinned. "Only when she's particularly excited, which, by the way, is most of the time. You should see her during thunderstorms!" Percy blinked, watching as you waved sheepishly, causing another faint spark to crackle in the air.

You and Percy found common ground in venting about the gods upon his arrival.

"Hey, little thunder, how's it going?" Percy grinned. "Don't call me that," you replied, trying to keep a straight face. "I'm good too, thanks for asking, Lightning Rod," Percy joked, emphasizing his newfound nickname for you.

Attempts at using your powers together proved futile, as water and electricity didn't exactly make for a harmonious combination.

According to Percy, Cabin 3 was way too big for just him, and assuming you felt the same way about Cabin 1, he started a tradition. At 12:00, he'd show up at your cabin, asking to share it, turning into a routine of hosting pajama parties in each other's cabins.

After you discovered that your half-sister, Thalia, had been turned into a pine tree to save her, Percy couldn't resist teasing you about it.

"Do you think your dad would turn you into, what, a fountain? Or maybe a cherry blossom tree would suit you?" Percy grinned, enjoying the opportunity to rib you. "Jackson, shut up," you retorted, rolling your eyes at his antics. Later, when Grover and Annabeth intervened, trying to keep you two from frying each other, Percy couldn't resist a parting shot. He had soaked you with water from a nearby forest stream during the mission, leaving you drenched and fueling your desire to electrocute him. "Next time you want to electrocute Percy, make sure I'm not around," Annabeth teased as they separated you, noticing your soaked state. Grover, being the peacekeeper, started singing the song of friendship, encouraging both of you to hug it out and apologize. Percy, however, observed that you were shivering from the cold as you walked. Realizing this, he handed you his jacket, concerned. "You'll catch a cold if you stay wet like this," he said, offering you warmth amidst the chilly aftermath of your water-based altercation.

Since neither you nor Percy admit to having feelings for each other, you find yourselves in constant teasing and banter.

During a mission, you two start a squabble because you want to lead everything, and he just wants to do his thing or isn't paying attention to what you're saying. Grover and Annabeth exchange glances, seeking a way to mediate.

It takes a long time before you muster the courage to admit you have feelings for the son of Poseidon. You decide to confess first because, knowing Percy, it would take ages if you waited for him.

"Percy, I need to talk in case we don't get out of here." "Spark Plug, we're getting out of here; trust me." "I like you, Seaweed Brain." He stands there in shock, mouth hanging open, unable to believe that you like him back.

After Percy managed to confess that he also liked you, you enjoyed teasing him about his stunned reaction. But deep down, you were terrified that he might have said he didn't like you back.

Percy becomes incredibly protective of you.

"Touch her, and you'll be dead."

You love stormy days and spend hours on the beach with Percy because he can control the water, ensuring you both stay dry.

"Isn't it beautiful?" "What, little storm?" You pause, gazing out at the tumultuous sea, the waves crashing against the shore. "It's like the ocean is in harmony with this storm. It's as if they understand each other, finding peace in the chaos." "Maybe," Percy finally responds, a soft smile playing on his lips. "Maybe storms and the sea have a way of finding peace in chaos because they understand that even in the wildest moments, there's a certain kind of order."

You appreciate the profound simplicity of his words, and in that moment, he wraps his arms around you from behind, resting his head on your shoulder. For the first time in a long while, you feel at home