#which i find interesting

[frecklystars]

I wonder why Ryan made the choice for Sebastian to always wear his wristwatch on his right wrist instead of the left. The rest of his characters (and Ryan himself) always wear the watch on the left wrist. Why did he consciously decide the right? Especially when Ryan has the barcode tattoo on his left. He's always covering that tattoo up with a watch with his other characters, you'd think he'd make the same decision for La La Land. Sebastian is the only character to wear his watch on the right, as far as I'm aware

Not to mention the makeup covering Ryan's (Seb's?) tattoos seems to be inconsistent... sometimes they're covered, sometimes they're not? Like here you can see his barcode tattoo is completely covered with makeup in his scene with Laura, but when he's talking to Mia, you can see the barcode tattoo on his left wrist quite a bit.

You can also see Ryan's monster hand/bloody heart tattoo on his arm in the scene where he's retrieving Mia's keys. But in other scenes, you can see the makeup is... only... sort of covering it? but not entirely?

Since we're on this topic, I want to mention Ryan's barcode tattoo can be seen on Driver during the "whose money do I have" scene, but in other scenes it's completely covered bc he's always wearing so many layers + the watch. Ken had the barcode tattoo briefly as well (though you don't see that at all in the Barbie movie, in this scene his hands are folded so there was no need to cover it up)

Sometimes I wonder if leaving Ryan's tattoo uncensored in Drive and sometimes in La La Land is intentional, or if it's just... too time consuming to have to constantly put makeup over it, and they don't bother to cover it if they think nobody is going to notice.

[witchspeka]

I do think Shou genuinely doesn't know Mob's name, like why would he?? He never properly introduced himself, their only "proper" interaction was Mob saving him and one (1) singular line of dialogue at the end of S1

But if Shou were to pick up on anybody's naming convention it would be Ritsus... who doesn't really call Mob by name anyway...

So this was just a long winded way to say that one day Shou will slip up and accidentally call Mob "nii-san" the way you accidentally call your teacher "mom"

[godekubo]

now that i'm thinking about it. like. what is supposed to be the appeal about making ekurei just 2 conventional hot guys doing conventional stuff. idk it just feels so boring to me?

[i-spilled-my-soup]

new interest is misguided selfish nico. yeah he’s real keen on self-sacrifice but he considers/attempts it in self-interest. maybe he wanted to trade his soul for bianca’s so instead of being liable for her death he’d be her savior, thus absolving him of personal guilt, allowing him to die thinking he’d done something good. maybe he was willing to transport the athena parthenos bc he didn’t fear dying while trying, failing to consider if he killed reyna and hedge during the process, or how his life might be more useful to saving others besides being a sublimation-style taxi service. dude wants to help people but his self esteem is so low that he can’t recognize the benefits of staying alive

[magioftheseas]

That's another factor that makes me really like it. I mean yes there's a similar dynamic with Hajime. But Mahiru seems to more overtly reject the obsession Hope's Peak has with Ultimates. And would probably want to help Nagito break out of such an unhealthy and self-harming mindset. It could even potentially connect to her past with Sato and Natsumi. And like you say, in turn Nagito's the kind of person who could genuinely see the artistic merit in the kinds of photos she takes.

The thing is that while Komaeda's mindset is unhealthy and self-harming, it's not like he's WRONG in asserting that societally speaking, Ultimates are put on a different level. It's important that he realizes how arbitrary that shit actually is and how it's a toxic system, but I think it's also important for the Ultimates to like, recognize how this system elevates them at everyone else's expense...and even their own best interests. I think Mahiru is a good character to explore that aspect because she's the most grounded and probably, like, the most empathetic of the cast.

Mind you, she has difficulty extending that empathy to men as she has a hard time recognizing their vulnerability and insecurities and I think similar to how Mahiru can challenge Komaeda's toxic (but socially-conditioned) mindset about talented people, I think Komaeda can challenge Mahiru's toxic (but understandable, given her experiences) mindset about men. So like, I think they both can help one another grow by being counters to their worldview.

Just saying! There's potential!!!

[icyfox17]

can you imagine smpearth!phil meeting dsmp!phil, osmp!phil, and qsmp!phil? 😭 i think he would collapse when they all told him that they’re fathers in his other lives. he’d probably turn to dust when qsmp!phil turns and says “yeah, i’m a father of like, six” LMAOOOO

LMAODJFKG OHMUGOF HE SO WOULD THOUGH BRO 😭😭😭

At least him and dsmp phil would shake hands on anarchy, dsmp!phil would tell him about doomsday and hed go ayooo

OUHGHDJFKF IMAGINE HIM FINDING OUT ABOUT WIKBUR THOUGH LMAOO HED JUST BE LIKE "the kid i used psychological warfare against and made him think his dog was dead IS UR SON?"

[glacierruler]

Me: advertises my kofi

People: visit

Me: Who tf is visiting my kofi?! (/spooked /pos)

[eat-applez]

I have a Discord server that is full of people that all speak Polish, Spanish, and English pretty well. When we message each other, we usually talk in this weird, mutated version of all three languages that we call “Englipañopolsku” (patent pending /hj) which leads to interesting sentences such as

-“Cries en polsku”

-“Necesito you to żebyście to zebrali”

-“K*RWA MÍ TOE”

-“Do you ever miej marzenie un sueño….(I’m not writing the whole thing)”

-“According to all known laws of Aviation, nie ma możliwości, by pszczoła mogła latać, sus alas son demasiado pequeñas para su pequeño y gordo cuerpo del suelo, the bee, por supuesto, muchy i tak”

[pocchi-poket]

You know, I feel like we're not talking enough about the fact that Alastor has in his room a full reproduction (?) of a swamp-forest that's highly likely very similar to the one where he was killed. Talk about being morbid.

Edit: someone pointed out in the comments that the swamp-forest is called bayou. It's a kind of ecosystem in Louisiana.

[whisperofthewaves]

steam is really testing my resolve. when God of War was on 15-20% sale, I said no. when God of War was on ~30% sale, I still said no.

now God of War is on 40% sale, and I say n-no...

[twelvedaysinaugust]

Shame holivia are still stunting but I guess he's sticking with what he knows, like Louis does. The less people know about their closets, the more comfortable they feel. The larries theory that "everyone knows" is wrong.

Everyone does not know.

[notemaker]

The ringmaster and the amphitheater. The chessboard and the player. Round and round they go.

[centaurianthropology]

One thing that I think a lot of Disco Elysium meta misses (likely because a lot of it is very clearly written by young Americans writing from an intensely American-centric cultural perspective without even really realizing it) is that one of the singular and central themes of the game is massive-scale generational trauma in a home that is economically collapsing as its resources and people are being drained by an occupation.  People have noted that no one tries to help Harry, despite the fact his mental illness is incredibly obvious to everyone around him.  He tells Kim that he completely lost his memory, and Kim politely asks him to focus on the work.  He tells Gottlieb that he had a heart attack, and Gottlieb tells him that if he’s still alive it couldn’t have been that bad.  That he’ll drop dead sooner or later, but then so does everyone.

And that’s the most important thing: so does everyone.  Look at Martinaise.  Look at the world in which Harry lives.  It is not our own, but it is adjacent to ours.  More specifically, it is clearly adjacent to the states of the Eastern Bloc: overtaken and occupied by a faraway government that clearly doesn’t care about Revachol or its people.  And that is obvious in every tired face, every defeated citizen, everyone trying to eke out a little happiness or meaning in spite of the overwhelming trauma and damage around them.  The buildings are still half-destroyed.  The bullet holes are still in the walls.  The revolution was decades before, but it still feels to the people there like a fresh wound.  The number of men of Harry’s generation who are not alcoholic or otherwise deeply fucked up are very few.  Some, like Kim, hide it better, but the deeper you dig into his history, the more you realize how damaged Kim is.  He’s more than a little trigger happy, and hates that about himself, but he is a product of his environment: Kim’s entire life is seeing people he cared about shot and killed, so his instinct now is to shoot first himself, to protect those few people left who still matter to him.

Harry is not unique in his trauma.  He is a distillation of an entire culture of people who tried to rise up and make something beautiful, and were instead routed and occupied.  He is trapped between the occupation and the people on the ground, along with all the rest of the RCM.  Their authority comes from the occupying government, but it is implied that they were formed out of the remnants of the citizens militia which sprung up from Revachol itself as a way to try to mitigate some of the horrors being committed on its streets.  The Moralintern sure as hell wasn’t going to get their hands dirty, so they happily conscripted (and therefore could better control) this group, who are only recognized in certain places, and whose authority mostly amounts to giving out fines.  The RCM is corrupt, but it is corrupt in the same way its culture is.  Bribes are considered standard with them, not a moral failing, but a necessity, so long as those bribes are correctly logged as ‘donations’.  It’s how the RCM stays afloat, and the rest of Revachol completely understands that.  Everyone would take a bribe if it meant they kept eating.  Everyone would take a little under-the-table money if it meant keeping a roof over their heads.  The officersof the RCM certainly don’t make enough to see a doctor.  They have an in-house lazarus, and if he can’t fix them they just die.  Mental health care?  What mental health care?  Harry doesn’t get it for the same reason no one else does: it doesn’t really seem to exist.  There are no counselors, no psychologists, no psychiatrists.  How would they even start?  If the world is what is broken, if everyone is suffering a similar catastrophic amount, it makes sense that Harry’s trauma would simply get rolled up with all the rest.  Kim asks him to get on with the job because Harry’s suffering is not remarkable in Revachol.  He is one of an entire generation who have an astronomical number of orphans from the revolution, and so many younger people are left more or less orphans as their parents drink themselves into oblivion like Cuno’s father.  So Harry’s truly unique attribute is embodying all that trauma, having it all inside of him, filling him to bursting.

To really engage with the themes of the game, engaging first and foremost with the reality of Revachol is imperative.  Imposing our own reality onto Revachol, particularly if coming from an American perspective (which tend to have the habit of both viewing the world through an American lens and not realizing they’re doing it because they’ve never experienced a different lens), will always feel shallow to me because of this.

All that is to say, I would love to hear some more explicitly European meta about this game, and especially Eastern European meta.  If anyone can point me to some good, juicy essays from that perspective, I would be grateful!

[stellas-and-tonitruses]

Everything we know about Project Apple (and, by extension, Anya's past) thus far

thought i'd compile all of that now while endo's on break Just In Case the next chapter happens to start anya's backstory (i don't Think it will but endo likes surprising us LSDFKLFS)

important disclaimer that project apple and the organization in charge of anya's experiments have not been confirmed to be related! there's evidence that they have things in common, in particular employees, but that's our only real connection between the two thus far. still! worth looking into

more under the cut!

so, starting very strongly with the very first mention of anything related to the project: anya's introduction in chapter 1

despite her being a main character, we know very little about her past at the moment, and this little blurb at the beginning makes up a very big portion of what we know.

things to note here:

as an experiment, her name was "Test Subject 007". important to note that the notation differs between her and bond: she was Test Subject 007, bond was Subject 8, no zeroes in there;

she had been made thus by accident, the phrasing itself implying quite heavily that she was just a normal child before said accident (but this is the translation! i don't know japanese so i can't cross-reference with the raws to clarify if the phrasing changes anything, but the fanbook uses the word "gained" to describe her powers too);

because her mind-reading is an unintended consequence, that means the scientists were presumably not, at least initially, trying to achieve cognitive enhancements in humans, and were instead trying to achieve something else, whatever that might've been;

she escaped from the facility and then moved from institution to institution, looking for a family.

so, crucially, through this little introduction we learn that there is an organization, government-funded or otherwise, that is or was conducting human experiments for unknown purposes. we also learn that whatever family anya had prior to being involved in the experiments is more than likely unreachable, at least as far as she knows, and so she has settled for finding a new family to take care of her instead.

in terms of the facility itself, here we see they clearly drilled it into her that she can't ever reveal her secret (and the darn plush is there too -- in the anime it's even more emphasized, as you can see in the gif i made)

through her reminiscing though, we get our very first look at the scientists that were in charge of her! they're in the gif above but here they are in the manga too. it's so interesting that the anime actually shows their eyes behind the glasses though, fascinating choice.

the insistence on world peace is important, as it explains her own personal obsession with it and shows that it's not just because of twilight's own focus on preserving the peace. i also don't think twilight ever really talks about "world peace," only about "preserving the current peace between westalis and ostania" -- anya seems to be the only one talking about WORLD peace (even in the very first scene where either of them mention it in proximity to each other in ch 1, loid says "understanding the other party is the first step towards peace" and anya's interpretation is "understanding me makes world peace?") but take this with a grain of salt because i might be wrong! going through every single mention of peace in the story just to fact check this one little trivia fact is a bit much i think so i'm not doing it JSDFKLSD

but yes

remember mr hair strand and baldy, we'll see them again. not her though, ig she wasn't in charge of bond

now, fast-forwarding to chapter 19, we finally get a name and a premise for the experiments:

"but oana," you might say, "this is talking about animals only! how do we know it's the same project as anya's, which involved human experimentation?"

i don't think it is, is the thing! i think it's related to the experiments anya was a part of, which is evidenced by the same scientists being featured in project apple too, but there's more going on that we don't know about. there wouldn't be such adamancy on keeping the two separate in every official mention of them if they were just the same thing, imo!

back to the evidence, we learn that the project, conducted and funded by the previous ostanian regime (meaning donovan's related to it one way or another, since he was prime minister), was marked by franticness and desperation -- a prime place for accidents like anya's telepathy and bond's future vision.

we also learn that the project was sacked by the new administration and that the former test subjects ended up on the black market.

(this makes it very important, imo, to learn when anya escaped the facility vs. when the project was sacked. it's clearly no longer in function, but while we've heard nothing from them thus far, i'm willing to bet the shady dealings around the desmond group are NOT related to the war, as W.I.S.E. has been led to believe, but rather to reignite project apple. that is speculation however so i'm going to refrain from theorising much on why the desmond group is focused on acquiring pharmaceutical companies!!)

ok speculation tangent over, back on track

so, that's already a decent amount of info! but moving to chapter 22, when bond is finally home, and we finally see some familiar faces

behold! baldy and mr hair strand!

and 2 other guys we don't know but will see again in another bond flashback!

that's 2 out of the 3 scientists we've seen thus far from anya's own time as subject 007, confirming that there IS a connection between anya and bond's experiments, regardless of whatever the project anya was a part of might've been named.

this is also the chapter in which we learn that bond himself was subject 8 (or, if we take it from the fanbook, subject #8. still, diff notation from anya!)

in chapter 31, we learn an interesting tiny piece of trivia. we don't get any further info on it, but it IS mentioned as something that is known by W.I.S.E.:

ostania is rumoured to have done human experimentation! and W.I.S.E., and by extension loid, are aware of that.

do i know how them knowing may be important later? not really!

the next droplet of info we get is in chapter 40. we see that project apple had collaborators that are still functioning unhindered.

of course, born industries is only rumoured to have been involved with project apple, but regardless of whether or not they actually were, the rumour itself implies that the project likely pulled scientists from various other companies' R&D departments.

(this makes the desmond group's acquisition of glooman pharmaceuticals shadier, but anyway)

as a side note, twilight is emoting so much at just his wrong assumption that bond is seeking revenge against the scientists. imagine how he's going to react when he finds out about anya JKSDFKLFSD

and now aaaaall the way in chapter 58, we see the bald guy who anya also knows, the two scientists from bond's previous flashback, and one whole new guy!

and thus ends our current knowledge of it all!

the only other thing worth discussing is anya's knowledge of classical language

but plenty people have already discussed these scenes, especially recently, so here are some links: 1 | 2 | 3

the only thing i can add is that i'm fairly certain that classical language is a lot more likely to be latin than old english, because it's a very common language to learn in school (in europe at least, and ostania is based on east germany so it makes sense to me. i learned mandatory latin in school for a few good years too, even if i wasn't that good at it lol) and because one of the most common modern usages of latin are in medicine and science, it would make sense that she'd be better at it due to exposure.

a possibility is also that the scientists would think in latin to conceal their thoughts from her, and that's how she ended up learning so much. she's not fluent in latin, she's just well acquainted and that cicumstance would explain the how.

BUT THAT'S SPECULATIONNN

also i don't think "ANIA" is an acronym, nor do i think anya's been misspelling her own name out of lack of knowledge. "ania" is a polish diminutive of anna and an alternate transcription of Аня, so i think it's far more likely that anya isn't ostanian or westalian than it is that her name comes from an acronym.

now,

TL;DR!

what we know about project apple (and the "mysterious organization"):

project apple was funded and conducted by what appears to have been donovan's regime and, from what W.I.S.E. knows, aimed to create highly intelligent animals for military purposes;

W.I.S.E. is aware that ostania is at the very least rumoured to have dabbled in human experimentation;

the project is presumably no longer on-going, though it is likely there are efforts behind the scenes to revive it;

it is rumoured but not confirmed that project apple had collaborating companies that are still functioning perfectly fine;

the same scientists who were in charge of bond were also in charge of anya, signalling that there is a very significant connection between project apple and the "mysterious organization;"

based on what they were telling anya, they were/are very focused on "world peace";

their experimentation methods include but likely aren't limited to electrocution.

and what we (vaguely) know about anya that relates to this:

she is at the youngest, 4 years old, and at the oldest, 5 nearing 6. we don't know her real age, all we know is she definitely lied about being 6;

she is very fixated on specifically world peace while twilight is focused on peace between ostania and westalis. the scientists are the very first we see talking about this, so it's likely their fault;

she is unreasonably well acquainted with classical language;

she has escaped the facility at LEAST 1 year ago;

and, one tidbit from the fanbook (page 29): "Anya has been reading minds for as long as she can remember," implying that her memory of a life before the lab is muddy at best and absent at worst.

that's all we know that i know of!!

if you got this far, thank you for reading :D hope any of this was interesting or sparked any theories >:] have a good day!

[notsogoodangel]

Guess who made a QSMP AU about Martyn being on the Island?!

This is just some barfing I did while dealing with Carpal Tunnel, so if you see some of them and think, "Why is the lineart so bad here?" That's why. I developed Carpal Tunnel and refused to stop and/or remove my brace.

Anyway, I still have no idea how Martyn would have gotten to the island within the logic on the island, like I'm sure Doc sent him there, but I have no idea if he would have being already there or was sent on a boat by the island or what. I do know that they will probably contact him because of his experience dealing with Watchers as someone who seemed to break out of their grasp, and the Federation thinks what they have on their hand is a Watcher since, you know, tricked a bunch of people into a secluded area and forcing to kill each other for its entrainment is all very Watcher-y behavior.

What they didn't know is that he seems close to the notorious Federation hater and anarchist Philza, like, sure, they look similar, but you can't blame them! All white men look the same!