#unstructured ramblings

[thahxa]

.

ive always thought of myself as a painfully mediocre person who got really lucky

now of course, not /that/ lucky, not good enough to do anything real just to be decent but like. good enough

and while its not like /technically/ true, trying to get somewhere Real it really does feel that way that somehow im just inadequate for the real world(tm) outside of the little bubble im in

like i can get a job, but i can't get the /best/ job, i can go to school but not the best one. just entirely "decent but not good"

and idk. is it me speaking from a place of privilege? yeah. but fundamentally i still feel the anxiety. still /need/ to feel the anxiety of not being Good Enough

and like fundamentally i think this anxiety is good! after all the worst thing to ever happen to anyone is to just accept being ok and then stopping being ambitious, right?

[writeblood]

unpopular opinion but I don't think Sebastian should be seen as a bad guy for being coerced into casting the cruciatus curse.

idk man, some fics portray it as a more neutral 'shit happens' situation, while other fics portray it as a 'how could sebastian do such a malicious act?' situation and I'm just...

girl, he was justified

also, the cruciatus curse cast by sebastian/MC doesn't seem to be that bad

firstly, all three of the gang walked into the situation blind, not having any hint of knowledge beforehand that casting the curse would be required. There was no premeditation.

all three of them chose to search for the scriptorium. Ignoring gameplay quest progression, MC made the choice to attempt to convince Ominis, Ominis made the choice to reveal info about the script, Sebastian made the choice to search for the script. Whatever culpability there is for being in that situation, it spreads equally on all three.

once they walked into that room, there were two choices: cast the curse or die. Sebastian had every right to believe there was no other way out. the entire time, he was smelling the decaying stench of an older, more experienced dead witch who had likely done everything she could to get out without casting the curse, to no results.

was the only moral option for all 3 of them to die? MC was the only one who could stop ranrok, so letting them die would have doomed the wizarding world. ominis was sebastian's best friend and sebastian clearly is the type to not want his loved ones to die. not only would anne's chance of a cure be gone with sebastian's death, she would have spent the rest of her isolated life not knowing what happened to her twin. she had given up on her own life, but the scraps of her hopes were placed on wanting sebastian to move on and live his life. to live the rest of her short life with the idea that her twin was dead but never truly knowing what happened would have broken her more than her curse ever did.

through anne, sebastian already had the experience of watching someone he loves slowly wither away. he would have done anything to not have his two friends die of starvation in a small, dark room next to a rotting body. anything, including experiencing the most unbearable pain himself, because...

sebastian was fully willing to be acted upon (have the curse cast on him) as he was willing to act (cast the curse). He was ready to have mc cast the cruciatus curse on him, he was likely ready to have ominis cast the curse on him. Sebastian, while not having personal experience with the curse, knew how deeply it affected people who were victimized by it and he was still willing to be a recipient to it. in his research, he's likely to have read up on many other accounts of the cruciatus and with that knowledge that under a cruel person's wand, the victim to be driven to madness, Sebastian gave MC the choice to cast it on him

someone was going to have to suffer in that room and he was not above considering himself fit for the role

Now, from both a game and a lore perspective, the cruciatus curse isn't actually that bad*. canonically, the pain of the curse has varying degrees of intensity. We know this because Harry Potter used the cruciatus curse twice and while he hurt his victims, he did not drive them to madness. I'm sure that the curse cast by sebastian/MC would have been painful, but considering that MC/sebastian was able to walk off the curse, it was an extremely weak version.

anyways, I think that since we all understand ominis was pressured (through torture) to use the cruciatus curse and was a victim to the situation, we should also realize that sebastian was also pressured (through death) to use the curse and he had to do the only available option in order to survive

[sloaaaa]

i enjoy toxic yuri mafuena as much as the next person but sometimes i wish people would focus more on how ena takes care of mafuyu. like when ena held her hand in one of the guiding a list child card stories. or when she was telling mafuyu to move when the light turned green in that one area conversation. they complement each other in so many different ways that's so fucking good and idk how to put it into words and i want to explode

[winnie-wine]

Minish cap thoughts part 10

i played this game before a link to the past so i didn't realize, but this dungeon is an homage to ALTTP. the hole in the floor, the shocky ball enemy going along the perimeter of the room, the skulls which took the place of pots in ALTTP's dark world, the dungeon kind of having several distinct entrances/parts like the desert temple and skull woods ones... it's a cute callback! Although, part of it is that the shading in this dungeon is... just less, a bit, especially compared to how the barrel in Deepwood looked.

I know the king's grave is a callback to the OG '86 Zelda. I will be getting pictures when I get there.

I wonder if the fire dungeon, the mines, was a callback to another game?

It is a slight shame imo because Deepwood is the most Minish cap a dungeon in this game feels, and i wonder if its because they have a really smaller roster of dungeons for Zelda (alttp and albw had about a dozen, '86 Zelda had like 8), and so since at least two of them are callbacks, they don't really. Have room to let the Minish Cap dungeon style shine.

Like, the mechanic is shrinking, and Deepwood you're shrunk the whole time, so everything is really new because you're small. The barrel is bigger than your house! That's fun and cool! But the extent that being minish sized in the other dungeons come into play is...using it to go through a minish-size tunnel. There's not really things to interact with when you're minish size, it's just traversal, that in another zelda game would be replaced with a hidden switch, or a mini puzzle to get a key.

idk. at least it's still better than botw's identical dungeons where it was like half variations of 'get ball to hole'.

[shiraishi--kanade]

Welcome back! It's an honour being your first ask!

Now onto business, hope you don't mind: I've seen some people around saying that Taiga never cared for An to begin with. Obviously, my first instinct was to say that An is Taiga's niece and he did care but... To what extent? His acts were only caused by grief as a sort of "necessary evil", but just how much did he care if he destroyed Vivid Street and vbs in such gruesome ways?

I couldn't pull any proof by myself so I wanted to ask you instead! What do you think?

Hoc you are my first follower twice now (thrice if you also count my main account), and I believe you've actually got to send the first ask twice as well - one of those asks was just shorter so I opted answering it before yours. It's actually hilarious.

As for the question... Very, very tough to answer this. This is also something I choose to believe we'll find out more about in An5, but for now I will say this: he did care. He just didn't care as much as others thought, we thought, and most importantly, as An thought. But he did care. He just cared about his own ideals and emotions more.

Here's why I think so, although bear in mind it practically borders on theory territory because of how little we actually know about Taiga's inner thoughts.

1) He knows singing is An's coping mechanism, and he urges her to use it.

This is something that we, of course, see with our own eyes for basically the entire An's storyline - at the very least, since An2. An also openly states it herself... In Vivid Old Tale second sidestory!

Quite fitting.

Those are nearly the first and only words Taiga directs to An after telling her the news. Sing it out. You know you want to.

This is vague, and it can be interpreted differently, but this is what I can see here, at least. He wants An to sing. He challenges everyone, but he wants An, An specifically, to fight him - with all that anger and distress she's got, and showed him a second ago. She blows up at Taiga and Taiga immediately says: redirect that into your singing.

And he is not wrong.

2) He knows exactly where An's roadblock lies, and pushes her to break through it (in the worst possible ways).

Since Resonant Town at least, we have a very consistent topic with An: she struggles with her singing, and she feels stuck as her teammates are moving forward. At the same time, her teammates are all going through... Discovering their feelings, as well. Kohane in Kick it Up a Notch, Touya with composing since Walk On and On but moreso in The First Concerto, and Akito in Burn My Soul; all of those have to do with feelings. And for all, ultimately, accepting and embracing those feelings, whatever they are, leads to a breakthrough.

An is the only one who has not done it yet. She is avoiding it, she's avoiding all of it as hard as she can, believing that singing more and more is the only solution to her problem - but she is stuck.

But in Resonant Town, we also see something interesting: An actually sings... Very differently when she allows her singing to speak through her song. That yearning, desperation, struggle - it colors her singing. Is it better? Up to debate, but I believe if Shiho has heard both that version of An and then her usual singing, controlled and devoid of those emotions, and found that something is lacking, and then L/N Miku echoed her sentiment as well... Then yes, I believe that An Shiraishi is An's true potential.

Then, there's this moment in Light Up the Fire; yet again, An tries to avoid confronting her feelings. The moment she tries to do that, she crumbles: Taiga then notices that and provokes her further. He says things that he knows will hurt, because he wants it to hurt; and he wants An to sing with that hurt, because that's what she should allow herself to do if she wants to have the power to surpass Rad Weekend.

Once again, he is proven right. It's very likely that this is the direction An's arc will go to: accept that grief, anger, fury, everything, and sing with it, not despite it.

3) He does care about other members of the team, as well.

Some less, some more; I think he cares most about Arata both because he's given him advice twice and because he sees himself in Arata. The advice he's given to him is something that Taiga himself took to heart; something that he believes has made him strong.

But: the fact that the battle happened at all is a sign that Taiga at least isn't indifferent towards An, and the rest of them. He wants them to surpass RW, to follow through Nagi's wish; if he hadn't, he would've just stepped aside and let them struggle and ultimately fail. They needed this - this push - to understand what they were lacking.

It doesn't mean he is not an asshole. It also doesn't mean he isn't cruel. But ultimately, an answer to your question: Taiga cared.

It can be argued he's done that for Nagi's sake, too, and not his wish alone. It's a very solid opinion as well, and I think a truthful one. But Taiga is also someone who ultimately didn't care enough about what Nagi wanted, too: this is important. He wouldn't have done something just because of that - for Taiga to do something, he has to have at least some personal stake in the matter.

I think he got attached to VBS and their team, despite trying to be skeptical: that attachment led him to do things he did, but he also resented it, because he didn't want to believe that Nagi was right about future generations; he still wanted to achieve their dream by himself, not pass it over to some strangers. He believes that he alone deserves to carry it, and seeing them come so close they might actually reach out to it is the main source of his anger and cruelty - not his grief alone. Part of him wanted to kick VBS and the team down so hard they wouldn't recover, proving that desire to carry on by himself right; but a part of him... Well, a lot of inner battles going in that man's mind, I'm sure.

I didn't think he ever cared about An as much as Ken did, or as much as Nagi did; my controversial opinion is that he didn't have to. At the end of the day, An is not his child, and is not a child he is obligated to support in any way that is beyond basic civility to her. For Taiga, An is just a friend's kid and Nagi's niece, not really his. And I can't argue with that, honestly; he and An just had... Different perception about who's who in their lives. That's upsetting, but before Taiga did something that horrible, I couldn't blame him for that.

I don't know if there was genuine care in there, to be honest. But I think there was definitely attachment and a little bit of hope. But above all that, there was selfishness - and once again, this is the overarching theme of VBS - and that was the reason Taiga did what he did.

Thanks for the ask! :D

[roserefrain]

I am deciding to get weirder with my writing. I’ve been trying to wrangle pieces into something they’re not and That’s a big part of why I haven’t actually finished anything for months now

[bronzetomatoes]

One last thing because my alarm is set for 6 hours from now but like. I am 100% a 'hockey on the background' sorta fan, like I fear most of my involvement is normally having a game on the tv and looking up at it very occasionally (I do love live hockey but that's a whole other thing). But when I tell you I was COMPLETELY locked in for this game. I only touched my phone during commercial breaks and intermission. Somehow managed to sit up alert and cross legged on the edge of my seat on a recliner chair sort of locked in. Like dawg when I tell you I was TERRIFIED of missing something. The internal monologue was "God please don't let us lose please God we can't lose this Lord get us through" and I'm not even joking. Anywho. Unfortunately this has made me fucking hate brady tkachuk more than much else in the world and he is the captain of the Ottawa senators (my team 😞). So

[neurotypical-sonic]

guys I have good ideas I prommy and its all very coherent and structured in my head and Is Interesting wait where are you going just let me find some adhd meds that work and then you'll see please wai-

[sp1resong]

wow god public school really did traumatize me didn't it

[smallblueandloud]

i don't have any plans today so i'm choosing to frame this as my Rest Day. i'm doing my laundry and eventually i will do the dishes and read through the assignments i have due this week. and also maybe find a new pillowcase and computer mouse. maintenance day!

[dailyoyo]

ok. ok. so the thing with paradox!beat is like. he's gouji's son, born into rokkaku group etc. etc.. but by the time of the jsrp events happening he's so far out of that context that like he's already pretty much moved on from it completely.

and he figures it doesnt matter at all. and nobody's gonna ask and he's not gonna tell (it's EMBARRASSING to him). hes kind of just packed away any baggage associated with that like "who give a shit, that was someone else, i don't have a 'past' from before i was beat" (which in a way is similar to yoyo but beat only did it Once and with clarity of purpose, so while still a little bit maladaptive it isn't explicitly harmful).

but like no matter how much he detaches himself from his past self he actually fundamentally has NOT changed as much as he thinks. and there are like CONSEQUENCES going on for everyone else because of his decisions and he is either A. not connecting the dots because he is a guy who Does Not Think or B. willingly ignoring them. If it's that easy for HIM to move on and forget why hasnt everyone else huh. It should be easy. surely rokkaku group is targeting the ggs because theyre just assholes like that and not because hes basically painted a target on their backs just by being there Right???

[waterfall-ambience]

i hate the passage of time genuinely i feel sick thinking about my exams this week

[coffee-ouji]

When i wasnt as into Ace Attorney as now whenever I read SOJ i misread it as "Sons of Justice" instead of the intended "Spirits of Justice". Which, in my head, is a WAY more epic title than Spirits of Justice. Though i guess that would put Athena on the side which is unideal since she was introduced just a game ago

But also, Son(s) of Justice is a really interesting, heavy themed title which makes me wish this was the official title even though it's just a title I made up from memory bc the game is (supposedly) about Apollo and since we learn abt his past and stuff I thought it was a more fitting name for the game

[prokopetz]

Having had relatively little experience with short-form microblogging prior to Bluesky, one thing I will say is that having to format everything to fit into 300-character chunks makes it hard to spin a shaggy dog story without making it obvious that you're doing a bit. It's way easier to "get" people with long, unstructured rambling.

[duodipersponsh]

wow.. first of all, this is how i learned that john green is not only known for his YA books lol ("hey google how many john greens are there"). It's so fascinating to read about your religious search! My experience with religion is rather sad, though it's also the fault of conservatism and my childhood trauma and mad anxiety: a classmate towed me into orthodoxy when i was eight with kinda scary enthusiasm + i was totally confused because there are so many Rules and childhood me decided the most important one is You Shan't Do The Wrong Thing Or Else, which lead me straight to "there are so many things i'd like to clarify but i don't know the terminology and speaking with the wrong words is blasphemy i think so i won't speak at all" + i knew i was queer seven years ago and there were no local orthodox churches that'd accept queerness so i left religion altogether feeling disowned and wrong + i'm only now rediscovering all the positive experiences other people have, wolfythewitch's arts with smiling jesus, jesus playing with children, jesus with a rainbow flag etc and both their and your feelings are so interesting to share! i get the "able to have thoughts about religion that are my own and not dictated by others" part

i also thought all my life that baptists were the chillest christians? and i still don't know anything about episcopalians, wow, so much to learn.. the "hell doesn't exist" concept is amazing, like "i hope hell is empty"! and oh, the podcast sounds so, so nice and i hope you do get better and better and happier and happier, everyone deserves that✨

hey you mentioned john green and i did not understand a single other word in that sentence but am curious, why do you know/like/remember him?

🌱

hello!! i actually know john green primarily from his Hit Spotify Podcast Dear Hank & John (or Dear John & Hank, as it will be known in 3 years) but I think I'm really drawn to John Green because of a lot of reasons, the biggest being that he is so earnest. I'm pretty annoyed that I can't come up with the word I want to use here and it isn't earnest but earnest is pretty close to the right word.. he just cares about things very deeply and he says things he feels and he lets things be meaningful and significant and I love that.

I'm also deeply curious about John because he's a very happy Christian who finds deep meaning in God and in life and in relationships and I am a Christian who is in the middle of what the Green brothers might call a Journey of Meaning where I'm trying to learn how to redefine my relationship with God as an adult who's able to have thoughts about religion that are a more my own than my parents (although the impact of my family/culture/context is not lost on me) and I haven't figured it out yet. I've been thinking a lot about hell recently and John Green doesn't even believe in hell and I want what he has I guess? I need to read more Episcopalian literature but I'm not sure it will help me because my background is so almost cultishly Baptist I'm not sure I can separate the Biblical literalism I'm used to from the religion itself although he did say he doesn't think hell is evident in the gospels and I want to know more about that because it seems like Jesus talks about hell a lot and I'm not sure what he means.

Anyway I just find their podcast really nice and comforting. It's nice to know that he exists and is happy and it makes me feel like maybe I can exist and be happy too and it makes me feel like it's okay to take things seriously and be earnest

[sugardollcurse]

hi love! honestly i don’t at all remember what my last ask was—apologies if it was bad 💔 how would you feel about doing preferences of all the lads being with a hippie girl?

𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒍𝒆𝒔 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒂 𝒉𝒊𝒑𝒑𝒊𝒆 𝒈𝒊𝒓𝒍

꒰ pairing ꒱ paul mccartney x fem!reader, john lennon x fem!reader, george harrison x fem!reader, ringo starr x fem!reader

꒰ note ꒱ hi sweetpea! no worries at all, your asks are always lovely!!! truly, you never miss ♡♡ the term “hippie” didn’t come into popular use until around 1967 during the counterculture movement so this is like.. a bit after that!!

꒰ JOHN ꒱

"I’d rather wear flowers in my hair than a crown on my head."

John doesn’t just fall for you, he spirals.

It’s like you open a trapdoor in his head and suddenly he’s floating: freer, lighter, more curious than he’s felt in years.

You don’t laugh at his new spiritual phases or the way he talks in spirals about peace and revolution and love.

You add to the conversation and it drives him wild.

When you're lying on his floor painting murals in silence, barefoot and lost in thought, he watches you like you’re the only real thing in the room.

He was cynical about labels at first, “hippies, mods, it’s all just uniforms, innit?”

But with you, he saw past the surface.

You weren’t pretending. You meant it.

He wants to match the integrity you carry in your chest like fire.

You’re the only person who could calm his anger with a sentence.

Or set it alight in the right direction.

He writes songs about you that sound like dreams half-remembered.

You open up a softer version of John.

꒰ PAUL ꒱

“You’re like a daisy in a bloody thunderstorm, love.”

Paul is endlessly enchanted by your peacefulness.

You don’t push him; you let him come to you, like a bird to an open hand.

He jokes that you’re like a little woodland creature when he first sees you barefoot in the garden, talking to bees and naming trees.

He’s drawn to your unstructured days and spiritual mutterings, even if he doesn’t quite understand it.

You’re not trying to escape reality, you’re building a better one inside it.

You teach him to slow down, to notice the birdsong between takes, to value the sunrise as much as the spotlight.

He adores your style. The long skirts, beads, scarves tied in your hair, he’ll often “borrow” your accessories for photoshoots.

He’s the first to build you a little greenhouse or studio to “do your earthy things in.”

He draws flowers on your bare back with his fingertip while you lie in the grass.

When you turn around, he says, “I’ve got a whole garden growin’ in me chest just from lovin’ you.”

꒰ GEORGE ꒱

“You've got a better understanding of the divine than most priests, y’know.”

George got it. Immediately.

The incense, the barefoot grounding, the eastern philosophies, you were already living what he was studying.

He admired your gentleness. How you listened before you spoke. How you sat with pain and didn’t flinch.

He was always the most spiritually attuned of the boys, so your quiet reverence for nature and music and meaning strikes him like a tuning fork to the soul.

Your love isn’t loud. It’s built in glances, in hands grazing as you pass, in a shared breath after a long meditation.

You both believe in past lives, and George is absolutely convinced you’ve known each other before.

You don’t disagree.

He lives for your garden days, where he watches you tend to plants like they’re your children.

Sometimes he joins you, dirt under his nails, quiet smile on his face.

꒰ RINGO ꒱

"I like how you smell like grass and strange perfume. It’s nice."

Ringo is in awe of you.

He doesn't always understand your herbalism books or your cosmic ramblings, but he loves the way you light up when you talk about them.

You make flower crowns and plop them on his head mid-breakfast.

He loves it.

He brings you wildflowers from gas station stops like they’re diamonds.

“They were growin’ out of the carpark, thought of you.”

He never thought much about that counterculture stuff before you came along, but now he’s rearranging his flat so the light hits your dreamcatcher just right.

You like that he doesn’t try to be deep.

He is deep in his own way.

Ringo sees everything, even when he doesn’t talk about it.

You spend lazy afternoons painting each other's faces or lying in the garden naming clouds.

taglist: @sharksausages, @wavvytin, @wimpyvamps, @finallyforgotten, @lennongirlieee, @silly-lil-lee