theunimaginativebard-blog

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king cunt

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between doing a bunch of OC work lately and thinking very hard about mandragora and crownslayer and kal'tsit ive come to understand that my grand weakness in fiction is women with just absolutely rancid luck

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Why did Hypergryph breed Mostima and Goldenglow together

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I've been thinking recently about Theresa and the end of Ep14 and her creating Civilight Eterna, and the question of like: Was she aware of the consequences of her actions? That doing so would extremely fuck up her loved ones, Kal'tsit most of all? The more I think about it the more I come to think that the answer is "yes, but she did it anyway."

Her behavior at the end of EP14 is kind of insane because like, despite how willing she is personally to sacrifice herself for the good of the future and how she tells Kal'tsit "My dear Kal'tsit, since we're all clear about our respective endings, why should we go through sorrow yet again?", at the same time she's like not really willing to let go either. (Think about how the moment she is out of sight, she goes on a mad scramble throughout time itself because she needs so, so, so desperately to know, if she can't have anything else, that her loved ones are ok. She says one thing, but then does another.)

Despite the path that she had chosen and her determination and willingness to see it through, at the end of it all she still doesn't want to go, she is still the person who listened in wonder to Kal'tsit as she told her stories about Terra, the world outside of Kazdel that she wanted to but never got to see, she is still the one who wanted to be able to hold Amiya and read her bedtime stories and assuage her of her nightmares, she is still the one who wanted to be there for her loved ones, in whatever form she can.

And despite all her willingness to sacrifice, and the selflessness of almost all her deeds, she is still in many ways a selfish person (which she acknowledges herself). This is one of the central contradictions of her character, that despite her selflessness, she is characterized majorly by a few specific, extremely, extremely selfish choices of such enormity that they arguably outweigh all of her selflessness. She passed on the crown to a 10 year old child (and Theresa knew Amiya would accept, since she is like that, even though it's not a question that Amiya could given an actual, non-coerced answer to) because so believed she could carry on her ideals, she erased the Doctor's memories both to free them from the shackles of their past, but also to shape them into the person she wanted them to be to best carry out her ideals.

There is such a delightful hypocrisy to this. She, in some sense, wanted desperately, in that selfish core of hers, more than anything else, was to live a life where she was free from the burdens of the past and the shackles of fate, but she still forced that onto Amiya. At the end of Babel, she is walking toward her literal death, but she is still vaguely aware of how death works for the Sarkaz, that she will return to the Originium but still exist in some form, and so she is still hopeful about this: "it's time to say goodbye… we'll meet again in the future won't we… Kal'tsit�� Amiya… Doctor." But this time, it really is the end for her, after this there will be nothing left of her, it is a total and complete annihilation of the self. (Which, the thing about this is that like, she deleted the Doctor's identity and subjected them to this, but is unwilling and scared to go through it herself). Despite her virtues and her selflessness, despite what she tells Kal'tsit about partings and endings, she is scared.

The thing about Theresa is that she is a hypocrite, but she is a hypocrite in a highly specific and interesting way. If you pay attention to depictions of Theresa throughout the story, she is someone who believes that fate can be overcome, that the cycle of violence can be broken, except when it comes to specifically herself, for which she is incredibly, incredibly pessimistic, and believes that she's a failure and was unable to break free from her fate. ("To change a man is to make them believe, to make them believe is to destroy their faith, nothing can save such a lost soul.", "But yet, there is no antidote to loneliness, there is no end to nomadic wandering, there is no cure to a terminal illness..." etc.) This is why she's willing to do what she does in Ep14, intentionally choosing to perpetuate the cycle of violence and inflict suffering on other people for the ends of her (and her people) and this something that she fully acknowledges and is perfectly ok with doing in Ep14 even though she could have just like, not. She chooses to act against her ideals because she is a failure, a victim of fate, the sacrifice on top of which the future will be built, an obstacle that the true idealists must and will overcome. She is a hypocrite because she believes that Amiya/the Doctor/Kal'tsit are better people than her, that they are capable of doing what she isn't, and so she is willing to subject them to standards that she doesn't apply to herself.

She can't bear the idea that this is it, that there will be no more of her left, and is willing to do anything to assuage this, and so she makes CE, so she can linger and be there for her loved ones in whatever form possible. I think in this there is a conscious understanding that doing this will hurt her loved ones, and especially Kal'tsit most of all. It's not something she wants to do, but she thinks of Amiya/the Doctor/Kal'tsit as better people than her. She is deliberately doing something that will hurt them yes, but they are strong, and will get through this, like they always have. But herself? She is scared, she has nothing left and soon she will be nothing at all. And so (like she always has), she chooses to go out with one last moment of selfishness.

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I think about this Amiya I saw on lofter A Lot:

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“Chewbacca is… a Maoist. Hera Syndulla? A Trotskyist. Ahsoka Tano? A Social Democrat. Ezra Bridger? A Posadist. Lost! All of them, lost. I am the only one with clarity of purpose.”

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I like that Kiryu is such an absurd difficulty spike of a bossfight unless you specifically know that he doesn't hit women and his strongest rival in Yakuza 6 was Joon-gi Han.

And even then, EVEN THEN, I grinded 8 more levels on Ichiban and made his job class Enforcer, leveling it from 1 to 22 just so he had enough DEF that Kiryu couldn't just decide to end the entire fight in one tiger drop.

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spin this > wheel < of every arknights operator (CN/Crossover included, alters differentiated from originals) and tell me if you like the design. If you've got a nuanced answer just put whichever one aligns most with how youre feeling and complain at me in the tags.

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Dreamer, I just want you to know that seeing this inspired me to throw another 10-roll at the banner and I got another Ulpipi so thank you for that.

My animal instincts kicked in a told me to roll singles, now, five rolls later, The Second Ulpipi. Henryk… Even now, you…

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amiya has become funny to me. my oc is a bunny girl whose parents died in an australian mining accident and they were going to send me out into the wastes to die because I got crystals disease but I was saved and adopted by an alien-god from a dead civilization who brought me to a noah's ark analogue where I was raised by everyone including the messiah king of the world's demon people and i happened to be in the room while 2902392090 people slice and diced her to death and she stabbed me with her dark demon jesus sword to pass the crown of the demon people and i experienced all their 9000 years of suffering so i have to wear rings to inhibit my dark demon suffering powers and i became the leader of a paramilitary pharmaceutical group that branched off my messiah king mom's failed half of the civil war and at one point I took off my inhibitor ring and manifested a dark demon sword

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m

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I was born to carry love........

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I love these guys

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a star to guide us

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YES! That’s why when i did my name origins post for Kjerag i did a whole spiel on her Chinese name, because how she sees herself and its relation to her chosen name is lost when you go from a bar mace to a finesse based parrying dagger.

This is what I mean by the way about "the EN translation conflates degenbrechers and jian constantly". Degenbrecher's Chinese codename referred to the jian, which are swordbreaker maces and once you see them you realize that's the actual weapon she's using. But Jian would be kind of weird for a Leithanian born operator so they went with Degenbrecher instead, which now means the localization team either has to rewrite all of her lines that were written with the idea of her using jian (and also the Gendarmerie???), or you just accidentally conflate two different weapons together.

And result in me being VERY confused on what the fuck they were talking about.

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