#with NO confronting the guy that did it?

[krems-chair]

Did Someone Say Running Back to Fiction to Cope??

It's probably safe to call this Me Losing My Mind over Veilguard 5/??

One of the things upsetting me the absolute most is no mention from the Inquisitor about Varric's death. Perhaps the most integral storytelling mechanism and all around champion of reluctant heroes has been taken away from us, and one of the people he was closest to doesn't feel even a little compelled to discuss him with his apprentice?

I'm still a little dumbfounded, clearly.

Even if we as fans didn't deserve better, Varric deserved better. I've always believed that the better the character, the better a death they deserve when it's their time to go.

So anyways. In my smooth pea brain, I can't reconcile a world in which Lavellan shows up with her unconditional love blazing without first confronting and resolving the fact that her love has led to the death of one of her closest friends. So it's back to the drawing (writing?) board to soothe my disappointed soul.

I saw a version of Varric's letter to a Solas-mancing Lavellan that was datamined and ran with it.

One: All the Words Unwritten

Charter,

Yes, the trail went cold, but we haven’t entirely lost it. Solas left us a little farewell note. So I’m not giving up just yet. Maybe it’s gullible of me, but I know the Inquisitor feels the same: Solas isn’t too far gone to save. And she’d never forgive me if I didn’t try. But I don’t think I’m wrong here. Solas didn’t have to warn me and Harding off the chase when he could’ve killed us like the others who came after him. I don’t think he wants to do this. So, I’m taking the chance. Tell the Inquisitor…tell her I’ll bring him back.

—Varric

Her first tear spatters onto the parchment. The final sentence becomes an ink-stained massacre, and she throws it far away before she can lose any more of the handwriting she’ll never again see waiting for her above the seal representing his best friend’s house. Her palms bite into the unsanded wood, welcoming the bite of pain as she shoves back from the recovered tree stump she’s been using as a desk.

“Inquisitor.”

Morrigan’s voice doesn’t register, hardly rises over the sound of blood rushing through her ears like an open wound. Gods, wrong comparison . But there it is, playing out against the darkness of her eyelids every time she blinks to try and stem the flow of more tears. The wound in Varric’s chest, gushing with no one to hold pressure over it, to ensure the rise and fall of his sternum until help could arrive, no one to watch his back because the woman who did it best is no longer able to. This too, is her fault, and there has hardly been a conversation in the years that followed where she hasn’t looked into Varric’s quieter, sadder eyes and wanted to beg him for a forgiveness she knows he’d have frowned at her for needing. 

It had been her job to keep him safe now, her promise to Hawke that the choice to become another martyred hero in Ferelden’s bloody history wasn’t in vain. And here was the proof at last that she was every inch the fantasy-addled fool bards wrote about when inspiration ran dry. Here was the proof that her hope was a mantle, weighing down everyone around her until there was nothing left but blurred ink and bloodstained pages in the famed Inquisitor Lavellan’s wake. 

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Being someone who read Under The Red Hood and came out with the firm belief that, for Jason, it's not about killing Joker, it's about Jason wanting proof Batman would choose him over the Joker (bc shelia chose the joker). Makes seeing any other media where it's all about just wanting the Joker dead is a teeny bit frustrating. to be honest

Jason could've killed the Joker himself, really, really easily. Jason kidnaps the Joker before the confrontation. I can't open my comic for a reference right now, but it felt like he had the Joker for quite a bit before the confrontation. He had him. He beat him up with a crowbar. He had every single opportunity to kill the Joker himself, but he didn't because that wasn't his goal. Make no mistake, he did plan for the Joker to be dead by the end of it, but do you see what im trying to say here

Edit: If I knew this post was gonna get 1000+ notes I would've tried to word it better or something, this was a rant I made on the way to the grocery store 😭

It's not about making Batman kill either. When Batman says he won't kill, Jason adjusts and goes, 'Let ME kill the Joker or kill me to stop me' instead. The test is all about Batman choosing him. The whole final confrontation is Jason's first death again. The parent, The Joker, and the explosives. It even ends with Jason unable to move as a bomb goes off right next to him again because the parent didn't choose Jason. And instead tried finding an option that'd benefit them and (consequencely) letting the Joker walk, again, lol, lmao <-in agony

[atoriv-art]

little student

[tartppola]

awakening

[beargregor]

wait i'm curious, what makes you say that gregor doesn't like everyone else (if i read that post right)? just curious since i've never seen anyone else say that

i don't necessarily think gregor dislikes everyone else at lcb but i do think that gregor is an incredibly petty person that isn't nearly as close to the rest of the sinners and even outright dislikes some of them cough cough rodya cough cough which a lot of people just Refuse to see because he's as much of a doormat as he is. there's several examples i could get into to try and prove my point however i'll just focus on what i personally think to be the biggest ones.

additionally, this is going to be kind of long, so i'm adding a read more. read more! read it. sorry for being so wordy. i have several diseases.

Pt1. gregor is the type to try and get along at least decently with everyone, especially if he gets a good first impression from them.

this is less a point in favor of gregor's distance w/ the rest of the sinners and more just a contributing factor to it. once again there's several examples i could point to here but i think the most in your face one happened in canto I with yuri, as several people have pointed out. even before gregor comes clean about growing attached to her as quickly as he did because she reminds him of his sister, we get this interaction.

i'll go ahead and make the disclaimer now that i don't necessarily think gregor is the most reliable of narrators, especially when it comes to his feelings and interactions with most people, but from the way he acts when the topic of yuri comes up (and the way we still see him act even all the way up to c7, nearly a whole year after yuri's death) i don't see reason to question his sentiment here. gregor immediately got that aya and yuri were close, potentially even taking note of their traded belts, and went out of his way to get something nice for yuri despite hardly knowing her.

i feel like a lot of people have forgotten as much, especially since it's been so long since c1, but gregor actually spent a good bit of season 1 doing the exact same thing with the other sinners! gregor reads a connection between him and ishmael pretty quickly despite getting off to a rocky start

mostly because gregor can tell that ishmael is pretty sardonic in a very similar way to him. there's been multiple instances where ishmael and gregor have essentially expressed the same sentiment at different moments, most notably gregor's little argument after ishmael got shot with a decay ampule in c4

and ishmael's response to pilot talking about self-sacrifice in c5

i could go ahead and pull up more examples, but in general pm has gone out of their way to show us that gregor and ishmael are pretty similar, so it makes sense for gregor to assume that they're friends, right?

this will be pushpin 1. keep note of this for Later.

ishmael's only the first sinner we see gregor trying to do this with in s1, we also see him try it out with heathcliff, sinclair, and ryoushuu

he's tried to get along with charon, being one of very few sinners that we've seen actually try to establish a connection with her at all

even rodya, despite my insistence that gregor doesn't like her nearly as much as the fandom thinks he does

all of these seem pretty fine and dandy, right? sure it frequently leans towards self-degradation, micromanaging, and commiseration, but gregor can at least be pretty chummy with most of the sinners, can't he?

Pt2. hell's chicken was more than just comic relief guys please

i'm fully aware that this is quite the hot take, but i think hell's chicken deserves a lot more credit for character writing than the fandom gives it. hell's chicken gave us foreshadowing for several events, such as the donqui bloodfiend reveal

heathcliff's distortion in c6 (as well as hong lu's highly speculated distortion at some point in the future)

and ryoushuu and sinclair's continued connection by making him the odd one out on her team

which, hey! that implies something about gregor's odd one out, don quixote, too, doesn't it? yes. yes it does. that's pushpin 2. keep note of that for later.

speaking of pushpins, hey! that's pushpin 1!

splitting into teams is one of the major events in hell's chicken, and most of the sinner's choices are either motivated by very little, backhanded, or motivated primarily by not wanting to be on the opposite leader's side. i didn't include all of the picks, just because i feel like including most of them already gets this across, but i think gregor took one major thing from this: most of the sinners, when push comes to shove, will only side with gregor when they refuse to or can't take his opponent's side.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm fully aware that this is primarily intended to be comedic relief, but when gregor is being described as having his trust broken by ishmael or nearly crying because no one on his team properly sided with him for him, i feel like it's pretty fair to read into this.

something that i think is pretty important to remember in conjunction with this is that we know that gregor is the type to hold a grudge, both from his general attitude towards the G corp soldiers in c1 as well as his continued distaste for vergilius

even beyond the splitting into teams of hell's chicken, the sinners have given gregor plenty of reasons to feel bitter. i feel like this is something people have noticed but haven't really put a finger on, but it's kind of wild just how often the rest of the sinners make gregor the butt of the joke

and sure, we could argue that a fair few of these aren't really made with any ill intent. quite a bit of it could have been meant as harmless teasing, but with gregor being more sensitive than most, it coming from nearly all sides, and as often as it does? yeah, i think he's prone to taking it a bit personally.

Pt3. yes i do still think gregor was the third most important character in canto VII you guys gotta hear me out okay

of course, all of this leads up to the bit of the story i highlighted, doesn't it? c7? i totally get why people haven't really picked up on all the gregor things i did in it, seeing as they were mostly not *directly* said about him or by him.

personally, i think that gregor's distaste for talking about himself on any serious level and thus leading to him getting sort of "sidelined" narratively (which i take issue with that claim, but still. it's effective for getting what i mean across atm) is supposed to lead players to take a deeper look at the times gregor gets held up to other characters and compare and contrast what's being said about them by the matchup. as i showed earlier with his immediate latching onto ishmael, i think this is something gregor himself is at least partially aware of too.

so, that begs the question, who was gregor compared to in canto VII that makes me think it's one of the most critical pieces in understanding his character?

really, i'd like to avoid getting too lost in the analysis of this canto specifically, since i'd like to do a proper post about this later, but i figure i can bury the lede a little before doing it properly.

c7 features several characters being made to perform in sansón's play, acting out the relevant backstory for this segment of the plot. a lot of these characters have rather direct, degrading reasons for playing the roles they do.

outis, a character with an inflated ego who wants her journey to have a purpose, is made to play an aimlessly wandering villager with a single line.

hong lu and ryoushuu, two characters for whom families and the expectations placed upon them are likely going to play a major role, are made to play bloodfiends.

rodya, a character who resents her lot in life and is constantly shown to be eager to leave her destitution behind her and become someone special, is made to play a helpless villager that's too poor to even offer any money to the hero that saves her.

heathcliff, a character that has spent most of his life getting dehumanized by comparing him to beastly animals, is made to play a literal bear whose sole purpose in the plot is to get beat up and then quickly left by the wayside.

sinclair, a character that has two opposed parties essentially treating him as a macguffin to procure for their side, is made to play the character who was arguably the catalyst for this entire canto, not to mention playing a decently major role in ruina.

our star don quixote is made to play her father, the first kindred, but there's someone by their side the entire time, isn't there? don quixote's dear, steadfastly loyal companion. a character which don quixote has tasked themself with getting to come out of their shell?

hello again, pushpin 2.

gregor has been made to play our unreachable star, sancho. someone had to, of course. you can't really tell a story without it's main character, now can you?

now, i should once again give a disclaimer. i am not trying to say that i think adapting what happens to donqui/sancho in c7 to gregor is the road pm is going to take here, not only would that toe a bit past the line of foreshadowing, but it'd also just amount to rehashing that plotline again, which i don't think would make for a particularly exciting story.

what i DO think is that we can take a lot of the things that are said to either directly be the case for sancho and use them to inform how we see gregor.

and god, does playing sancho have some fucking implications for our favorite ossan archetype.

starting off, the earliest moment we get to see of sancho is quite literally her just waiting for death to take her in a pile of ashes.

which, i should remind everyone, is actually pretty damn close to what happens to gregor's literary counterpart at the end of the metamorphosis. gregor samsa experiences one final breaking point that pushes him over the edge and makes him decide to just wait for starvation to take him.

gregor and sancho both consider themselves to no longer be human, something which sancho goes out of her way to highlight repeatedly throughout the canto and gregor is quick to get defensive on her behalf for when outis starts really tearing into her

sancho spends quite a lot of this story denying herself the joys of community and friendship, despite knowing that, even with the rest of the sinners frequently making jokes at her expense and outright insulting her, they were things that she desperately craved.

and, while this is getting into my "outis is a red herring meant to distract us from gregor's eventual betrayal" theorizing, i also think it's worth noting for this discussion that sancho's fellow kindreds, her family, all seem to be under the impression that she dislikes them and ultimately her departure was an act of betrayal

and that, despite gregor being one of LCB's resident mood makers and attempted conflict de-escalators, one of the sinners that's most prone to making appeals to the bonds they've all forged together, only him and faust remained silent during everyone's speech

so yeah, i think there's quite a lot of little details and hints building up to the reveal that gregor's not quite as fond of everyone as he presents himself to be. i do think a lot of this ultimately comes down to gregor getting in the way of his own happiness, similarly to donqui, particularly because he's been frequently portrayed as something of a self fulfilling prophecy, especially by giving him as many christ allegories as they have by way of priest and garden of thorns. gregor is convinced that the rest of the sinners don't like him because he's not convinced anyone could like him, so he convinces himself that he hates them because why should he care if someone that he hates hates him too?

a lot of this ultimately ties back to my personal interpretation of what happens in the metamorphosis as well as my own theories regarding all the times gregor has made weird callbacks and references to lobcorp and ruina, but yeah. i think about this guy and his deeper characterization a fairly normal amount, i think.

to end this off i'll highlight one of my favorite little "gregor is fucking seething and trying so hard to keep it cool" moments, in the credits CG for c7 we see rodya teasing him by drawing a little horse on his window and actively pointing and laughing at it, which gregor really doesn't seem all too pleased about.

i personally think this ties into the other cruel part of sansón forcing gregor to play rocinante, which is the more literal "he's actually just straight up playing rocinante" side of things. gregor was quite literally made to play something less than human, less than even animal really, as he was reduced to nothing more than the shoes don quixote wore as she got to play the leading role. sansón directly makes jokes about gregor being nothing more than shoes in the play twice, which adds to this reading, i think.

this, imo, really plays into the adaptation of the metamorphosis! i've seen a lot of readings for the book that posit that, despite being the protagonist, gregor samsa can't really be considered the main character due to nearly everything he experiences in it being used to further his family's character development at his expense, which i think fits nicely with limbus gregor seemingly having the most said about him through indirect means by holding him up to other characters. also it's rodya carelessly making fun of His Big Major Insecurities™ again like she did in c1 which i always find fun. rodya i love you but god you're the worst.

[personalzombie-tv]

so As You All Know because I don't shut up about it I've been watching old hermitcraft seasons (as well as other things but that's less relevant). Not too long ago I got to season 3, specifically the episodes around when Mumbo turned 19. Now I'm watching Tango mostly but I had to go check Mumbo's episode for that cause Tango set up a little pranky prank for him.

The important part here being that Mumbo said he "couldn't believe he was 19" and "had a hard time thinking of himself as an adult". Normal things for a teenager realizing they're not gonna be a teenager the next year to be thinking y'know.

Mumbo's also been saying in other series about how weird it was that he's almost 30 especially whenever other people bring it up. He got downright defensive when Grian brought it up. And now his episode today talking about getting old and his solution being uploading himself into a chicken and living in season 10 forever.

Y'all I think our guy's having an existential crisis over turning 30

[epicfirestormer]

What I love about Hellboy and Abe Sapien's dynamic in the comics is that, if you came into this blind, you'd expect Abe to be the voice of reason or the straight man to Hellboy's impulsive and hotheaded personality. But no, Abe is more often than not the crazy one. Hellboy would deal with fighting evil monsters and bad guys by just sighing and getting it over with, while Abe is going rabid over tearing the creature apart when he does get into a fight. Hellboy acts like it's a 9-to-5 job and will reasonably talk things out with a guy that had nearly killed him before, Abe acts like a madman in a slaughter house and his first instinct is to shoot first kill second and ask third. They're both insane, but on completely different levels.

[gai-sucks-titties-in-my-basement]

Gai has plummeted from the sky exactly twice in canon, one was his fall after releasing the 8th gate. A serene acceptance of his own end. And the second was off the Tobisachimaru, where Kakashi caught him and they fell hand in hand. Kakashis Story (the book) opens up to Gai I think at his most honest, he is childish and selfish and desperate. He threatens Lee into getting him on a flying boat for absolutely no reason, other than to feel the importance of being one of the first Shinobi to be on it. He is striving for a significance the universe stole from him by allowing him to leave past his prime, his moment with Madara where he was no longer human; but God. Kakashi has spent the entire novel not scrutinizing, but pitying Gai for a lack of understanding of what they have left. But Kakashi, who has lived in the past for nearly his whole life, is met with a woman who lives in that same war; who’s leaking grief out onto Kakashi the entire novel. In a moment of her exposition, her; the embodiment of past, weeping before Kakashi, Gai is falling off the boat. A descent into oblivion; an oblivion he wants but was denied. And Kakashi cannot care about the war or the woman or the past, all he does is jump after Gai. And hold his hand. It is by outside, coincidental forces (Sai, on a bird.) that either survive. Kakashi refused Gai to descend into oblivion alone.

This novel is also the first instance of Kakashi being relevant with both of his eyes. I like to think it’s them falling together that Gai really understands that this is the first time he’s looked into Kakashi’s eyes since adolescence.

[vaguely-concerned]

some excellently good and wonderful to me personally ingellvar moments from the first jaunt into blackthorn manor with emmrich! I love the little touches included to really make it feel like mourn watch mage rook is also a necromancer, and that they and emmrich are colleagues. the 'ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to please put that death lantern full of murdered souls down and step back before someone gets hurt' energy... I must reiterate my point that ingellvar carries themselves like something between a cosmic janitor or plumber and a first responder arriving at the apocalypse.

+ as is tradition around these parts: some bonus emotional support lucanis coming along on mourn watch business and having the weirdest time of it that anyone has ever had. the sheer ben affleck smoking meme energy he manages to exude just. Standing there in the second johanna confrontation... he is everything to me you see. the things a man does for love. at least he gets to have the competency kink tingles whenever rye breaks out his Watcher Voice, that can get a person through a lot. a newly discovered realm of and after all this im still horny. the human spirit is unbreakable etc. to help him weather the horrors

[bumblingbabooshka]

Thinking about the headcanon of T'Pol as a transwoman and how that'd interact with her continually being confronted by biological children she didn't have a choice in making which die or disappear. Inspired by this post by @cmdrtpol [Patreon | Commissions]

[chicago-geniza]

Am on my way home and had one (1) drink at my local pub and ran into six (6) people who thought I died. Alcoholism is wild. The concept of "community" in an urban environment is wild. I sure am watching Edwardian Farm

[coquelicoq]

rewatching the first prince's intro is fun because the first time around you maybe don't realize that he falls for the princess two sentences into their conversation and has become a fan xian stan by the end of the encounter because you are understandably influenced by the ominous background music and menacing snorting of his warhorse et cetera. but in retrospect that guy has been fully won over, to the extent that he has already mentally scrubbed the arranged marriage escape plan he spent weeks setting up and is about to go to rancid vibes family brunch and try to convince the emperor to be nicer to the court gremlin, his new best friend fan xian. also the last thing he says to the princess is "i'll come pay you a visit in private later." okay sir keep it in your codpiece.

[deliriousblue]

@sunsetsover expanding on what i meant by akk "specifically committing crimes against the queer students of suppalo" on @akkpipitphattana's post here:

so part of it is that, yeah, the fact that the world remembers group are queer definitely isn’t an accident on a metanarrative level. the whole series is paralleling the rigidity of the school’s rules, and the harm that’s done in service of upholding them, with the lack of freedom and oppression imposed by homophobia. and so even though the defiance of the rules and the queerness are distinct they're so tightly wound with one another that i don't think you can entirely separate them.

at the same time. i think even outside of that it's akk looking at people who are Like Him and who are willing to be that way, unapologetically, in a way he cannot. of course he’s being brainwashed and manipulated into it. but i don’t think that manipulation would work nearly as well if akk weren’t being faced directly with the part of himself he’s desperately trying to suppress. and so even though akk himself didn’t single them out because they were queer, that queerness isn't irrelevant! it affects how he interacts with them and it affects his willingness to do everything he did.

like i want to be very clear here akk is one of my favorite characters in any piece of media. i have so much sympathy and love for him. but this is one of the reasons he (and the eclipse as a whole) affected me so deeply, is that it stares unblinking at the active harms that are done by chadok in his unwillingness to accept himself and by akk dragged along in his footsteps.

as far as the thua of it all goes. he really is a mirror of akk to me. thua is not targeted at first despite being queer because he's willing to play along, because he quietly accepts the bullying, because he's not disrupting the System. and eventually he decides he has to do something because if he doesn't nothing will change. his actions are wrong like akk's are but they're understandable just like akk's are too!

the show is addressing queerness and homophobia from many different angles simultaneously but one of them is the myriad ways that queer people themselves can contribute to it or fight against it, and the fact that akk is both queer and targeting the queer students of suppalo (the disruptive ones, the ones who aren't willing to just be quiet and accept it, the ones who won't just play along) is to me one of the crucial parts of the story.

[the-labyrinth-of-me]

Wait did both Alice and Zane record Alan when he was at his lowest point? Didn't Alice make her exhibition to show the world what she sees? To show Alan the truth about himself? That it never was Scratch visiting and terrorizing her, but Alan himself? Did she depict his "self" and Zane depicted his "persona"? The two sides of him that he wishes he can eliminate bc they brought him into trouble (Scratch representing anger and the fallouts with paparazzi and stuff, Zane representing his self-destructive behavior with alcohol and drugs and the party nights)? The both sides that caused his marriage to start falling apart? Was that the reason Zane made that video of Alan when they were on that booze and drug-fueled bender while working on the Return manuscript? Is this party video the companion piece?? Alan's downward spiral, same as Alice's photos? Do they fucking work together aasdffjfjfkfk

[droppedpears]

Back then space seemed endless. Now it's empty.

a sort of companion piece to my anya one; i just think they share more parallels than people realize

[dani-luminae]

His face during the meeting, the moment he first says "No." As he realizes what has just been said and decided, not just his dream being shattered right in front of him but also the chance they're taking away from all those kids just because Auradon is scared. The camera glosses right over it in the moment, but if you get a good look: he's reeling from it, literally backing away. The horror, frustration, and heartbreak is sinking in, and not even his own fiancée is on his side.

And the movie somehow wants me to believe he agreed with Mal and everyone else on this decision.