#unprompted rant

[emptyjunior]

Enough random notes that have a written story on them as environmental storytelling, explore the space, get crazier with it.

You move into a house and aw cute, it has the kids height on the walls but you notice there's a three foot difference in height between measurements, you check the date, they're a month apart. The final measurement is on the ceiling. It's dated two days ago.

You're part of a recovery team that have finally found a stranded ship, they were found too late and have all passed a long time ago. They all died of starvation. You enter their storeroom, it's filled with food. In the dining hall you find the tables laden with perfectly fine looking breads, cakes, cured meats, jams, candies. Your medic says all the people sitting at the table didn't eat a Thing.

You wake up in an apocalypse. You can't find anyone at all as you wander the streets but you do hear faint music playing from somewhere. You stumble into a supermarket, to see all the aisles still full, except for the shelf that was full of ear plugs, which look to be the only thing that was looted.

Like there's light, sound, props. Having a street where every house is decimated except for One. Landing on a planet known for having No Water and a plant is growing and you don't know where it could have possibly gotten moisture from but you can't find the citizens Anywhere.

I'm sorry, I'm just kinda over the "graffiti on the wall to show the bad guy is around". That's not environmental storytelling that's just normal story. Show me I'm in the villains territory by the rain suddenly cutting out above me as I'm driving, even though it's meant to be raining all night. I park the car and step out, and realise the constellations are Wrong, until I see they're Not constellations, they're the blinking lights of a massive ship-

I Will stop now because everytime I go to write a sentence it devolves into another prompt but I'm just saying we have a Lot of senses, engage them, show me the Environment in environmental storytelling.

[lesbiradshaw]

lovers’ quarrel <3

[localclownbaby]

the way ciel would just straight up die without Sebastian is so delicious. is he manipulated in his vulnerable state of desperation? yeah for sure. did he really have a choice if he wanted to live? nah not really. he would be tortured some more and then discarded like some trash. so maybe living in luxury and some semblance of normality for N years before the end is actually nicer than the alternative, just a thought.

Also i don't want ciel getting rid of the contract in Canon bc I think it's ridiculous and goes against his character and wishes. if he wanted to, he would try his fucking hardest to find a way out once he realised the full scope of what he has agreed to.

he's not a damsel in distress, he's not being used in a stereotypical way, he's not being lied to (bc Sebastian can't).

I just feel like sometimes I see people here acting like ciel is a babywaybe and sebastian is big bad wolf. if that was true, the story would not have been such a huge success.

[rivkae-winters]

Zack Fair, Violence, and Tragedy

Over the last month or two I’ve seen several posts about the nature of Zack Fair’s tragedy and his seeming heel-toe-turn and thought I’d chime in. 

Also like last time: this is only my interpretation of canon, there is no one true analysis to take as gospel. If you disagree/differ in opinion/even just want to talk please reblog or dm! I enjoy talking to other people about this sort of thing, fandom is all about discussion after all!

While I agree with the sentiment I’ve seen going around that Zack’s relationship to violence plays a role there are other nuances and factors at play here. I’d argue that it’s more accurate to say that Zack is becoming more aware of personal and professional culture outside of SOLDIER and outside of both ShinRa’s constraining grip and Angeal’s attempts at protection. Even then it takes great personal tragedy caused by the inherent contradictions of ShinRa’s reality for him to realize that he has functionally been on the wrong side.  

Sure he’s not callous like Cloud is in the beginning of original and Remake, but he certainly isn’t horrified at his actions just because there is violence. I’d argue the violence of his actions isn’t the main horror to him in isolation. I’d argue that even the death that results from violence isn’t what the core of the issue is either. 

Zack’s hinging point is more his loyalty and his pride. What he does for other people and what he believes in and of himself. Specifically these things in conjunction with his desire to be a good person. 

The language of Pride, the non-localized direct translation of the word hokori or 誇り(JP CC Script), is what’s going to be used here rather than Honor. 

誇り | Hokori - To take pride in; To boast of

Definition Sources: 1, 2, 3

Just keep in mind that I’ve written this from as neutral a point of view as possible on the matter of pride since the Western perception definitively does not apply. To be proud is not a crime and it is not foolish it simply is. 

Zack initially places his pride in SOLDIER- in what being a SOLDIER means to him. In how being a SOLDIER is his and that they are his people and thus he lets ShinRa policies define how he frames his morality. Thus ShinRa defines good in Zack Fair’s life. 

Zack wants to be a hero. He wants to help people. He is trusting and kind and respectful to people consistently outside of the conflict of the mass desertion. Zack genuinely wants to be a good person and help other people, good or otherwise. He is led to believe by ShinRa propaganda that the best way to help people or to be anything meaningful in this world is through them. This is a baited trap that he falls into, Zack is prime prey this trap was intended to catch. 

He is angry at Genesis and horrified by Angeal, especially at the beginning, not for cruelty or violence or even really death… He is angry at them for their betrayal. Sure he is violent and angry in the instance he thinks Angeal has murdered his own mother, as with Genesis and his parents, but that does not define his antagonism, his hatred, his regret, his sense of justice with them at all. 

 Zack does not raise his sword at Genesis for the people of Banora, he raises his sword for SOLDIER. 

Zack understandably feels, and has been, betrayed. 

He is hurt and angry and alone in a way he’s never been since he got into the SOLDIER program. He falls deeper into the illusions of ShinRa for that reason, angry and hurting and grieving the life he had with people in it who will never return. There is a deep sense of nostalgia throughout Crisis Core in the sense of the word’s initial meaning: the pain of missing home. Specifically the homes we find in people.

Even as he believes in ShinRa's twisted reality Zack wants to help. He wants to protect those he cares for. Zack wants to be good. Unfortunately in Zack Fair’s life the undisputed definition of good is now written by the ShinRa Electric Power Corporation alone.

Then he meets Aerith. 

Suddenly ShinRa’s version of right and wrong have opposition but the control that ShinRa has over his life, total and complete as it is, prevents that from sinking in. Zack is perceptive though, around Aerith he is her version of good and then he has to go back to what equates to his phase of reality. A sanctuary is not safe, not truly, when watchers are peering in through the back door ready to drag you out by your feet if you misstep. 

Zack wants to be a man Aerith or anyone won’t be scared of. He wants to do that not because he is suddenly horrified at his own violence but rather in consideration of others. Zack is highly empathetic after all once he can see someone else’s perspective. He wants to be what Aerith wants, even if he doesn’t really and truly understand it yet, because he cares about her and cares about her opinion. He cares about her comfort. Zack still puts most of his pride within SOLDIER though. That means that Aerith’s morals cannot sink through his skin to his center, not like Angeal’s had. She makes him think but she is not shaping his mind, he is left to do that himself.

 Zack spends a lot of time questioning Angeal and being upset at and about him off screen even more than on screen. We don’t get a front row seat for all of it. The big takeaway is that Zack doesn’t shed Angeal’s morals that he’s taken on himself. He can’t after all, not with ShinRa only just seeming tarnished. ShinRa would need to rust and crumble fully before he actually can let them go. Before he can be free in his own mind.

ShinRa chips and rusts in an instant under Sephiroth’s hand. The last holdout crumbled in the fight of two victims of ShinRa and someone who will become one soon. ShinRa is no longer the defined of good, not after what Zack sees is the response to the Nibelheim Incident.

ShinRa not being good, worse even ShinRa being bad breaks the entire morality system. The illusions crack and Zack is forced to examine himself, his actions, and his biases in ways Aerith made him want to but that he couldn’t afford to truly indulge in. Even more that he was scared of self introspection in a sense, of the paradigm of his reality shifting even further. 

He eventually truly reframes his actions and has to reckon with them (and himself) at the end of the game, chapter 9 and onwards. It is only then that he actually LOOKS and is fully horrified by what he sees of himself. That horror only progresses as he fights for both his and Cloud’s lives. That horror only builds as he realizes he’s exactly the person who his girlfriend SHOULD be terrified of despite his best attempts- that he’s everything she was talking about. He’s everything she was talking about even after trying to change the way he acts around her. 

To abuse the innate metaphors: Zack Fair goes to Nibelheim, a well trained attack dog, still seeing relatively little wrong with fulfilling ShinRa’s orders. Zack is only then on the cusp of figuring out that he does not want to be there, that he is the antagonist of the planet’s (and Aerith’s) story unwittingly. 

Zack Fair leaves Nibelheim beaten. He tries to go back to the safety of what was once his home prior to ShinRa only to be waylaid. 

Zack Fair leaves Banora free and irrevocably changed. 

He is free in the sense that the illusions he held himself too are crumbling even more with knowledge that his demons are men too. He is free through the knowledge that he is one of those demons. , that he has been shaped to be one, and that good intentions pave a terribly walkable path to hell. 

Zack leaves with the knowledge that he was the monster in the closet. The knowledge that his sword was not just the executioner’s blade but the enforcer’s. The sword kept clean in favor of bloody hands and higher risks is now drowning in pools of it. Zack leaves with the knowledge that he never would have been truly free. 

Yet he is in the sense that he can choose- actually choose- what he wants, what he values. He chooses Aerith and he chooses Cloud as he has each time before. He chooses violence. It is something he knows and among what he is good at. It is not all he is but it is a tool he can use. 

He chooses to pay the price of freedom. 

Crisis Core is a tragedy and Zack and Genesis both are tragic figures at its center. Zack’s arc is angled to the viewer for maximum effect but Genesis’s does mirror it in a way just on an offset path already initiated. Sephiroth is also a tragic character, undeniably so. However structure wise his role is more murky given the way he has the ability to be the god waiting in the machine, a guaranteed victory or unavoidable altered trajectory should he choose to act, for most of the story. 

And that’s a large part of why I love Zack as a character, aside from things I’ve said before about what makes him such a good narrator. Zack is the unlucky prodigy at the center of a story about wars, abusers, connections, and perspectives. He wants to be good, he wants to be a person that helps. 

He can’t, not really, not in the way he wants. 

Crisis Core is a cautionary tale about exactly that going wrong and how anyone can be taken advantage of. 

[assemblageofbirds]

I think it’s so weird that before I realized I was a supposed to be a woman, I just… didn’t have a gender role. Not a single aspiration of behavior or appearance. My actions were solely influenced by a self conceived moral standard. Everyone thought I was asexual solely because I was unable to structure my attraction in a vacuum. I didn’t unlock the skill tree of gender until midway through high school.

And it’s not like when I discovered this, it recontextualized my identity and was able to be my true self. It’s was more like for the first time, my being was inundated with an entirely new scale based on societal archetypes and ideals that affected my emotional state. I was able to gain genius happiness from something other than intersocial and academic success, whereas before I was at a strange emotionally deficient but equilibrious state.

As far as I’ve heard from other trans peoples experiences, this very much not standard. I’m pretty sure this is just a byproduct of my own mental character that just so happened to weirdly interact with my gender identity.

At this point, unnecessary complexity is my forte.

[burningcheese-merchant]

Okay, so I literally just thought about this after reading your eternal sugar wishlist (myth edition) a couple of hours ago. Anyway, if you are right on, the story taking some inspiration from Greek mythology of Persephone & Hades as well there being an ally cookie to help hollyberry. I can see said cookie possibly take some inspiration from Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft.

If you remember, Hecate was the one who guided Demeter through the underworld (and helped Persephone adjust to her new home).I can see this cookie guiding hollyberry onto the right path to her awakening. So the prophecy is fulfilled.(also sorry if this was already sent something happened with my Wi-Fi, and I am not sure if I 'm sending this again-)

It was already sent, yeah haha. I got confused for a split second when I first opened my inbox. "Why did you send me the same ask twice homie" lol

First, I just want to gently correct you on some things you said here

Hecate did not lead Demeter through the Underworld to find Persephone/Kore. She took her to Helios, titan of the sun (and Apollo's predecessor, technically) to seek further information on her whereabouts, as his position as the "seeing-eye" that watches all the world from his place in the sky lent itself to the possibility that he saw who took her and where (which was correct. He did see what happened and told Demeter everything). It was Hermes that ventured through the Underworld (as ordered by Zeus, because by that point Demeter had long since caused an unending winter and basically slaughtering all life on earth through cold and starvation as retaliation for no one giving her her daughter back) to find Hades and Persephone and beg the former to PLEASE let the latter go home so Demeter would stop killing people. Demeter never once set foot down there. (It makes more sense for Hermes to go, anyway. He is known as the messenger of the gods and was the only non-chthonic god given unlimited free and safe passage through the Underworld as he also served as a guide for the dead, shepherding people's souls there after they passed on)

This isn't really a correction, I'm just not sure where you heard that Hecate comforted Persephone while she was down there? I don't remember that in any telling of the myth I read or was told. It's not in the original myth, I remember that much. I remember that she acted as a substitute ruler when Persephone was gone, basically holding down the fort until her return in the winter. But I don't remember any version of the story that has that part in it. Maybe it's a version I just missed, a good portion of Greek myth was oral tradition and different people had different ideas (also Ancient Greece was a collection of autonomous city-states with wildly different cultures and customs and that did not answer to one another. They would not be one unified nation for an extremely long time. The Greece we know today is VERY new). Many myths and legends are like that in general, that's why there are often so many versions of the same thing and people often bicker over which is the "real" one

All that aside, to actually talk about my Beast-Yeast hopes and wishes. Me acting like a wannabe oracle haha

I don't necessarily want the entire arc to take after the myth of Hades and Persephone. I don't really think the themes or vibe fit, you know? I just thought the consumption of a "weird" fruit as offered by the one holding Holly hostage in her weird little world would be a neat allusion to that story. Bonus if the pomegranate has some sort of toxin that puts Holly to sleep, enabling Eternal Sugar to do with her as she wishes, and keeping in line with "sloth"

Regardless, I'm not sure about any of it because I don't actually know if Holly will end up taking after Demeter at all. I sincerely hope she does. (At the very least I hope her awakened form doesn't have anything to do with Pitaya or dragons at all lol. I am legitimately tired of everyone always making Holly's life and character revolve around Pitaya (and vice versa. In fact it's 10x worse for Pitaya, I NEVER see anyone say anything about him other than in relation to Holly). Dark Cacao is already the dragon lord guy so hopefully that deters Devsis since they can't have 2 dragon-themed Ancients)

Also here is the original myth as told by Homer just because haha. It's actually titled "Hymn to Demeter" as it's really more about her and her struggles and journey than anyone else. It's quite long and extremely sad but worth the read. (It's actually also quite progressive, for the time it was written. While all versions of the myth, this one included, are meant to explain the cycle of seasons, this one in particular was also meant to serve as a commentary on Ancient Greek society and how it treated women and girls. Women had few rights and little freedom or agency, and seen more as property than people (yes social class could influence this a little but by and large women were treated horribly). When a woman was married off, it was common for her to never really see her family again (she's supposed to be with her husband now). The myth is special in that it showed reality for what it actually was - women having their lives and well-being toyed with by men, decisions made for them by men, being sent away from their homes and their loved ones to go live with and serve men until they die - instead of just kind of nodding along like everyone else did with these practices as they were the norm at the time and weren't seen as illegal or morally wrong. It was Homer expressing sympathy for all of those mothers that had their daughters taken from them to carry out others' wishes and demands at the cost of their own autonomy, because the same thing had already happened to them (fun fact, there are versions of Persephone's origin myth where she's a product of assault 🙃) and now they're just watching history repeat itself without any way to stop it. It's actually a pretty feminist story, all things considered)

[lecoindecachou]

You know, as someone living in France, I always feel like I should specify how I feel about women wearing the hijab since it's so controversial here so there goes the disclaimer: I don't give a fuck what people wear on their heads, how long their skirts are, and I especially don't care what kind of bathing suit they wear to the beach. Pls god let me have one fucking summer without having to hear about the fucking burkini. I wish the French government would spend even HALF as much time trying to solve homelessness at it does policing how Muslim women dress. There.

[ashroomy]

Everytime I see one of those vaguely smug "no don't make your oc like that, that's BAD, do it this way because I like it" posts, I get the urge to make the most irritating oc possible out of spite.

What's gonna happen if I make the most cringe generic and bland oc? Are the police going to come and throw tomatoes at me?

It's so silly to me that other people try to interject into someone else's personal creations, like, do what you want forever, be cringe and be free.

[loumandforyou]

I know I'm extra judgy and bitter lately, and I fully believe everyone should have their own interpretations, but good God, the lou..stat fans are testing me

Edit: from now on, I shall tag posts like that as "sofia rants" so you can blacklist it. If you don't... I love your patience

[orchid-merryweather]

I swear to GOD if I see one more fucking unnecessary ai "assistant" on an app that doesn't need one, I am going to SCREAM.

Why does messages need an AI assistant? Especially nowadays, when you can get shitty ai generated answers straight from google

And don't get me fucking STARTED on the Amazon ai assistant. Who is so fucking lazy that they can't just look at the reviews themselves?

[pigeonwit]

okay so the user who wrote like fifteen paragraphs on a reblog of my post where they incorrectly explained ai to me, implied i was a judgemental idiot, accused me of spreading misinformation and tagged my friend for some bizarre reason, is now reblogging posts making fun of people for using ai to create character backstories. after they admitted that they use ai to prompt their fics. but hey, it's exactly what they did when people accused them of antisemitism - they start insurance-posting and shouting all the woke buzzwords they can think of while never actually apologizing for the shitty thing they did. so are we really surprised?

every time this kid posts i always tell myself 'i will not get into public tumblr beef with a child. they are young. they don't have the life experience to realize the wider consequences of these issues. the kind thing to do is to let them learn instead of getting into a public screaming match on tumblr dot com'. but seeing someone dodging accountability like this time and time again genuinely makes me upset. and learning that they use ai - and are willing to insult and deride anyone who says 'actually i don't like people who use ai' even when said post was never aimed at them - really puts that in perspective to me.

when you use ai, you aren't just stealing from creatives or teaching ai how to better replace us (which, before another child tries to condescendingly explain ai to me, you absolutely are doing. it is a proven fact. ai scrapes the internet for images and written work and it does so without permission. this has been proven. literally what do YOU think the screen-writers guild meant when they said 'our work is being stolen and replaced by AI'.) - you're also robbing yourself of the ability to be better at something. you're putting on the facade of a skill that you have not earned. and when you do what this kid is doing now - pretending to agree with the points your cool mutuals are making while privately doing exactly what they stand against, pretending like you didn't just insult and harrass two people for no reason and acting like we're the bad guys for refusing to entertain your disrespect - you are robbing yourself of the ability to be a better person. you're putting on the facade of a person that you have proven you are not. ai users think that 'saying' equals 'doing', the same way they think 'ai-generated' equals 'personal skill', and it would be sad if it weren't so frustrating. you are the only one who can make you better at something. why are you settling for pretending to be better instead?

[suupersonic]

tags

[approximateknowledge]

the way cockatoos are all over australian cities is kind of hilarious to me

like imagine if pigeons were way smarter, better at communicating, had feet that are basically hands for all practical purposes, and also a boltcutter for a beak

absolutely unhinged

like the sulfurcrests and galahs are just out there causing problems on purpose and i fully support them

^on its way to break things and be loud

immaculate

[thedaythatwas]

still not over the fact that akechi’s idea of charming banter curated to gain akira’s trust included telling him about his dead mom and his desire to take revenge on his father while they were bathing together in a public bath. I mean logistically that works, but… really? you jumped there pretty quick man.

[xaeorian]

do u know how embarrassing it is when someone lets u rant about ur interests but you literally just developed sudden amnesia and cannot remember anything about ur literal favourite thing for the past few years.

[jamisonwritestf2trash]

Totally off topic, but the fact that people still use McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit as an example of a "frivolous lawsuit" instead of a blatant example of corporate greed and negleance boils my blood in ways I can't comprehend.