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*cocks gun super srsly* Say ‘the cycle’ one more time! SAY IT!!
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smilerri · 24 days
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many thoughts about epic: the musical...
i am once again in the middle of essay writing but plautus is boring and my friend introduced me to this album so u already know I binged the entire thing
(quick warning for spoilers of homer's odyssey? if that's necessary?? man idk whatever)
first thoughts naturally concerned odysseus. i have hated this man with a burning passion ever since I started studying classics - i think he is irredeemably selfish, a liar masquerading as a 'resourceful hero,' and basically just a twat all around. that being said, i respect that epic is not an exact replica. in fact, i like that about it!
readings of odysseus as a loving husband and father, and a man who cares deeply for his crew and fellow warriors is one i would love to see reflected in the source text (though i admit i have only read two different translations so far, so this is subject to change depending on translators choice!), if only because it would be so so refreshing. and epic does that extremely well! i find epic's odysseus to be far more likeable, insofar as he is fueled not by greed for glory (kleos for the nerds out there) but rather the desire to return to his wife and son. (I personally would argue that, while homer's odysseus is indeed fueled by a desire for homecoming (nostos), it is not for the sake of penelope and telemachus, but rather concern over the security of his status and position within the household (oikos))
i also very much enjoy that the love he holds for his family is not an inherently positive trait. in the aeneid, and often in myth, it is achilles' son, neoptolemus/pyrrhus who kills the son of hector and andromache, astyanax by throwing him from the walls of troy - less common, it is odysseus (which i did not know until i googled it just now oops). homer's odysseus does not reject the gods. he is beloved by some, hated by others - he receives their boons and curses as they come. he revels in the attention of the divine, no matter positive or negative, for it is proof of his kleos. epic's odysseus is so much more... human. he doesn't vie for glory that reaches the skies. if anything, he rues it. in the horse and the infant he supplicates himself to (who i assume is) zeus - which is such a loaded act i am genuinely struggling to think of how to articulate it, but boy am I gonna try my darndest.
the act of supplication and guest-friendship (xenia) is a very key theme within the odyssey, and to a point in the iliad also - essentially, if a traveller were to arrive at your doorstep, you were obliged to let them in and provide food, drink, and lodgings to that traveller, no questions asked. in return (because reciprocity is VERY important in homer especially), the guest would provide entertainment, tales of their travels, etc, and would be respectful of their host. the patron of these travellers was zeus. any violation of these terms, on part of the guest or host, would be met with divine scorn. for odysseus to supplicate himself to zeus is therefore meta as hell, but I would instead bring attention to the echoing lyric "hes bringing you down to your knees." 'he,' assumedly, is astyanax. his father, hector, is dead; as is his grandfather, priam, and all of priam's other sons. at this point, one could assume that it is astyanax who is ruling troy, who is now the host of the city that odysseus, a traveller from another land, has entered and ransacked. zeus' 'prophecy' of astyanax growing old and seeking revenge (reciprocity! homeric greece had a 'revenge culture' - essentially 'an eye for an eye' as well as 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours,' though not always so clear-cut), therefore, would be odysseus' punishment for violating the terms of xenia.
supplication, however, is not limited to guest-friendship alone. for example, in odyssey 22, when odysseus slaughters the suitors occupying his home (is that spoilers?), their priest leodes supplicates himself at odysseus' feet, begging to be spared. odysseus takes his head from his neck in an instant. odysseus' kneeling before astyanax, therefore, is no simple act between a guest and his host - perhaps he is begging the infant for mercy, for forgiveness, or perhaps he is positioning himself for punishment; in killing astyanax, odysseus accepts his own death. perhaps this means his fate (which, in case of homeric epic, refers to the time and manner of one's death), or perhaps it is a part of him that has died. in just a man, odysseus asks "when does a man become a monster?" his killing astyanax prevents the boy from ever becoming a man, and spares him from a life fueled only by revenge and the need to regain his glorious birthright, and it turns him into a monster. just as he says he would, he trades in the world where he is 'just a man' for a world where he is a cruel beast, all for sake of his family.
(quick detour but i really like how odysseus' focus is primarily on penelope rather than telemachus. [insert deadbeat dad joke here], but in reality, he doesn't even know the boy. penelope he chose to marry and fall in love with - it's no question that he loves telemachus, but after ten years, it is only natural that he would miss his beautiful, tricky wife with more fervour than the child he never had the chance to love. it shows he is imperfect, even illogical - the son is the father's entire legacy. just as odysseus is 'son of laertes', so will telemachus be 'son of odysseus', the protector of his immortal heroic legacy. yet it is penelope whom odysseus yearns for.)
(another detour but "i'm just a man" is such a juicy lyric, because the entire message of homer's odyssey is that odysseus is not any man - he is a man that the muses deem worthy to inspire great poets to compose epic poems that persist through thousands of years and a million different voices - a hero. but epic's odysseus is not that hero. he is a man, trying to go home, craving comfort and the warmth of the hearth. these 'flaws' humanise him more than homer's odysseus could ever imagine.)
skipping over to polyphemus, odysseus violates xenia once again by killing polyphemus' sheep, albeit unwittingly. homer makes this violation very obvious - odysseus and crew eat polyphemus' cheese and wine while polyphemus tends to his sheep, knowing that the cave is obviously inhabited, and they even wait for polyphemus to return to ask for more. it is worth noting as well that, at this point, odysseus and crew are still jubilant about their victory, and unlike in epic, these 'detours' are purposeful, specifically so that odysseus can scope out the islands for anything of interest he can snatch and add to his spoils of war, adding to his kleos by means of physical wealth (timē) - which makes odysseus' offer of treasure to appease polyphemus all the more baffling in epic. this odysseus is a leader who prioritises the lives of his men over his own kleos, which makes the final lines - "you shall be the final man to die" // "what?" // "watch out!" - all the more heartbreaking. he wants to protect his men, so that they too may return to their families back on ithaca; the prospect of watching them die before his eyes after he already witnessed so many lose their lives in battle must be so utterly terrifying.
polyphemus is so excellently creepy as well! i loved him in the odyssey - this was where I really started to dislike odysseus, actually. he's a cyclops, obviously inhuman, yet he rears sheep and makes cheese and wine and weaves wicker baskets to keep them in, trying to play at humanity. i really did sympathise with him from the first time I read it. epic's polyphemus is similar, so very calm in his anger yet ruthless all the same, and demonstrates great restraint in comparison to his counterpart in the odyssey, who gets filthy drunk after mashing six men dead and allows odysseus+co. to fashion a stake with which to blind him. much of the violence against polyphemus, as well as the violation of xenia in homer's odyssey is 'excused' by the fact that polyphemus is a 'barbarian', to whom concepts of civilised people do not belong.
(very quick detour but polyphemus' first admonishment of odysseus - "you killed my sheep" up to "take from you like you took from me" - makes such heartbreaking parallels to astyanax's murder and the sack of troy. it almost provides a visualisation of the guilt that odysseus must still be battling. i would have loved to have been in his brain when he heard polyphemus say that.)
the mercy odysseus shows polyphemus is particularly interesting - homer's odysseus leaves him alive and tells him his name purely so that his name will spread and his kleos will grow. but epic's odysseus, despite his conviction to kill in survive and to avenge is fallen comrades in remember them, spares him. in part, this is to assure them an escape, so that the cyclops' giant body does not block their exit - but athena's interruption makes clear that this is not all. she criticises him, remarks "he is still a threat until he's dead." no doubt this calls back to zeus' warnings about astyanax, hence his refusal (or inability?) to commit to slaughter. for a homeric greek hero to allow a foe to live on after his allies had been slaughtered is a grave failure of reciprocity, casting shame on both the hero and their enemy. homer's odysseus escapes this with his reputation intact, since as a result polyphemus curses him to face poseidon's wrath - as I mentioned, for a hero, even negative attention from the gods is a good thing as it proves that their reputation/glory is known all over, even in olympus. but, as we have established, epic's odysseus cares not for kleos. the decision to tell polyphemus his name is entirely impulsive and irrational, grieving his comrades, hence athena's outrage.
the relationship between athena and odysseus is founded entirely on the principles they share, described in warrior of the mind (if anyone can lmk whereabouts this song fits in the timeline I will be so grateful, I'm stupid unfortunately :/). they value wisdom, reason, and rationality over brute strength and bloodlust. epic's athena becomes odysseus' patron goddess with the goal to "make a greater tomorrow" and "change the world" - aspirations that are entirely foreign to any homeric god. gods in homer do not care about the wellbeing of humans unless they are directly related to them, and they certainly don't care about the wellness of humanity as a whole. humans are toys and tools of the gods. the amount that athena cares for odysseus, even in the odyssey, is unusual, demonstrative of how much she cares for him, yet epic makes their comradery more obvious, even going as far as to (tentatively) call them friends. my goodbye frames athena's anger as disappointment at an experiment failed - calling back to warrior of the mind, where she claims to have "designed" him - but odysseus' replies to her makes clear that it is far more personal. perhaps, to her, odysseus acting so irrationally is even a betrayal; odysseus is abandoning the principles of reason they both once held and thus is forsaking all that they once shared and that she, as the goddess of wisdom, stands for.
ive always considered athena to be a very interesting goddess. she is a patron of both war, which in homer is only carried out by men, and weaving, the traditional work of women within the household - her very nature is a contradiction of masculine and feminine. although it is ares who is considered the 'black sheep' of the olympians for his brutality in war, epic's portrayal of athena through odysseus' lens paints her as lonely and ostracised - "since you claim you're so much wiser // why's your life spent all alone? // you're alone." It is clear that odysseus here does not view her as his patron at all, rather as a friend - and to that she takes offence, because she is a goddess, eternal and all-powerful. she does not need friendship or comradery; those are mortal concerns alone. personally, I see epic's athena as incredibly insecure. she cuts odysseus off because she cannot bare that a mortal has been able to read her so clearly, to see all the ugly parts of herself that she keeps hidden to retain the facade of the perfect goddess. she knows the paradox within herself - warrior and woman, immortal and alone - and rues that odysseus was able to see it as well. the cruellest part, the most ironic, is that his being able to figure out the true, imperfect nature of a god shows that he has not abandoned the path of the warrior of the mind. in fact, his wisdom extends beyond mortality into the realm of the divine. but athena is blinded by her anger and insecurity, and she says her goodbyes. she disappears from there, only to appear again to try to warn odysseus of his crew opening the bag of winds given to him by aeolus in keep your friends close, once again demonstrating her care for him, despite her anger.
the amount that odysseus cares for his crew is demonstrated time and again throughout the album, yet in the end, he still slowly loses their trust. aeolus' winds are the first sign. his crew betrays his orders upon the first whisper on the wind that he might be keeping treasure from them. the next sign, in puppeteer, is eurylochus' confession upon arrival to aeaea (circe's island), which odysseus brushes off, much as he brushed off eurylochus' concerns in luck runs out. then, in a matter of moments, 600 men are reduced to forty by the wrath of poseidon - which in itself is a significant change. while odysseus in epic is explicitly blamed for failing to kill polyphemus, homer's odysseus takes no responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of his men. it happens when they arrive at telepylos, which, unbeknownst to them, is home to the laestrygonians, a race of cannibalistic giants. odysseus, apparently sensing something off (who tf does he think he is, spiderman?), allows his entire fleet to enter the bay of telepylos while his ship alone remains outside - and when those ships are attacked and trapped, he alone takes his single ship and escapes, allowing twelve ships of men to be ripped apart and eaten by cannibals. an act which he shows no remorse for.
in my interpretation of homer's odyssey, it is this slowly slipping trust that eventually leads to his men ignoring his warnings and feasting on the cows of helios which leads to the deaths of all his remaining crew, including eurylochus and polites (spoilers? idk). so, once epic: the musical catches up to book 12 of the odyssey you WILL be seeing me again I hope ur excited.
there is definitely more i could say here, especially about the circe saga bcs ohhh my god I love circe and I love this circe especially (a female character with actual motive other than being a victim? homer could never) but unfortunately I'm running out of steam and I do in fact have 3 essays due this month (help) so I will probably return to this later !! hopefully its readable bcs I'm not going back to edit any of this ;)
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unsightlythinker · 1 month
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This is your daily reminder that ✨Hermes✨ is the God…of Gods.
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toonheartz · 3 months
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Poor quality picture but here, the moment he considers Mickey a brother
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Thank you!! Discourse aside, this moment is so sweet??
It's hard for me to explain (words hard moment) but there's just..something between the canon story and what really happened irl that blends together. like maybe i'm reading too far into it. but with canon you've got child favorism and with irl you've got like, almost like kids separated with their parents. and with both you've got this sort of. estrangement. oswald's the forgotten child while mickey's oh so funny and loveable and gets all the attention. and i've thought of retellings where the script is flipped and oswald instead admires him but it just doesn't feel the same?
oswald's emotions, from his fury to his spite to his depression, compares to that of a kid who had all the attention pulled from them the moment their sibling proved to "have more potential". who was left to grow up directionless. who tried over and over to go "look, look what i've made!" but was ignored and left to turn bitter.
so he HATES his brother. because in his eyes mickey took everything from him. even during the paint path it takes awhile for oswald to warm up to him, beginning to see mickey's appeal in one breath while still considering taking his heart - all that love that could've been his - for himself. he knows this. he knows it's wrong. and he realizes that it's something mickey wouldn't do, unlike him.
"Now I really DO see why he liked you."
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hollowtones · 1 year
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Oh, oh? You like cool and epic balls? Well do I have a creature for you! Bakugan. They are round except for when they aren’t! They have an absolutely banging game on the Nintendo™️ DS. You should play it sometime! You obtain the Devil!
No amount of guerilla advertising or funny bold and coloured text is going to make me give a shit about “BAKUGAN BATTLE BRAWLERS”. Sorry, bud.
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mastercrownmonday · 1 month
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you and who
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valdotpng · 10 months
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my sideblog just got randomly deleted 😭
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lesbianchemicalplant · 3 months
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“I am a feminist [that draws on] some radfem theory, but I am 100% trans inclusive” 🤪
also note the repetition of “reblogs are not endorsments of the entire blog or person”, a phrase which here means “I reblog from so many TERFs”
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I only even saw this blog because another Very Serious Feminist Blogger reblogged a post from me—a post specifically about how much I hate these stupid fucking radfem apologists—and this was listed on the side as one of the related blogs
scrolling down a little, feminist-ravings also reblogs directly from trans women who almost surely are not aware a radfem is trying to glom onto them
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t4thideduo · 1 year
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ok but what about 600 men (600 men!)
600 men with big mouths to feed?
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What gets me every time is Stede's sincerity. His honesty. The slightly cheesy and childish but sincere love confession only Stede could pull off. "You wear fine things well" and "What makes Ed happy?" and "I love everything about you" and "You make Stede happy". So sincere with his feelings, respecting Ed's boundaries, no ulterior motives. He just..loves everything about Ed. Ed wears fine things well. He wants to know what makes Ed happy. Ed makes Stede happy.
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criticallyobs · 2 months
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Apparently, we had a lot to say... I hope you'll enjoy Part 1 of Let's Talk Last Twilight...
Our podcast 'Safe House Crushes' dives into a Thai BL called Last Twilight starring Jimmy Jitaraphol & Sea Tawinan. We hope you enjoy part 1 of this special episode of Last Twilight, where we are lucky to have Kess aka kess-in-the-perthchimzone from Tumblr come and join us as we answer your questions and talk about our favourite moments from the show.
We a had a bunch to say, so we had to split this one up, stay tuned for Part 2 this time next week.
Be sure to join us on Twitter or Tumblr ⁠@criticallyobs⁠ and check out Kess at ⁠kess-in-the-perthchimzone⁠.
Special thanks to Kess for keeping us sane and adding to the fun.
Thanks for keeping us company - Z and M xoxo
Last Twilight Playlist
Cooking Crush Playlist
Dangerous Romance Playlist
Potential Obsessions Playlist
Come join our Telegram group chat Critical Obsessors, full of BL and other Obsession-based topics. Have fun meeting like-minded fans of these pretty men who make us laugh, cry, and pine, or just come and chat with us about the podcast. Everyone is welcome. If you've never used Telegram before don't let that stop you we're all just hanging out and learning together.
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georgeplantagenet · 2 months
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tapping the mic to say 🎤 when do u think the real shift in cesare and juans relationship happened and when did it begin to sour (or the audience could argue there were always notes of sourness and love mixed in together that just developed as time went on to be less fondness and more envy on both sides) bc lowkey ive been thinking the rift began when juan was chosen to go defend rome against king charles's army in s1 and cesare was desperate to don the armour and go and so when juan came back defeated, he was so ashamed with himself but cesare felt petty vindication and in this essay i will...[the audience cuts me off]
"He's not making excuses for what he is anymore, and what he wants to be. He ultimately feels that killing Juan was the right thing for himself. It's something that he focused on and I think he can control his mind into having no second thoughts. And that's the only way you can rule in that era, really." - Francois Arnaud
you're right! it's a mixture of sourness and love because, while cesare resented juan's weakness and naivety, but i think he still cared for him at first because he feels obligated to protect him since he was his family. but mainly, rodrigo's vicious cycle of ambitions tore them apart as he made cesare believe he was inadequate, despite loving, admiring, and relying on him. rodrigo's deliberate self-delusion (he is aware that cesare is the driven and more competent one) and self-loathing prevented him from embracing cesare's true self. appointing juan to a task desired by cesare fueled the hatred and envy as he started thinking juan was rodrigo's favorite. eventually, his frustration towards juan led him to murder him because this is where he becomes the cesare borgia we read about in machiavelli's 'the prince.' and like i said before, juan shaped the rest of cesare's story till the end. he was the one who drove him to finally become what he always meant to be and take the path he was always destined to. it's why juan's death is necessary to him because it was also a way for rodrigo to release him from his position as a cardinal. he claimed to rodrigo that he killed juan because he brought dishonor to the family, but cesare pretty much did contribute to bringing dishonor to the family by not wanting to warn juan about ludovico's army coming his way at forli after machiavelli informed him about it. cesare could have spared his family from another failure but decided not to because his priority was to humiliate juan just to prove a point to rodrigo, that he is the better son. he even gaslit juan about it by telling rodrigo that he wasn't aware of the attack, which makes cesare self-contradicting, just like how he went all "we're borgias, we never forgive" while killing juan because he was well aware juan struggled all his life questioning himself if he was truly rodrigo's son or not and desperately wanted to belong. cesare very decidedly excluded juan because he wanted to even emotionally hurt him in his final moment, then later was begging for "forgiveness" from rodrigo, a borgia, after the murder. also rodrigo feels a great deal of guilt (as he was hallucinating and dreaming of juan in s3) for making juan envied by cesare which led him to the decision to murder him, as that was the only way for cesare to gain his father's attention and the papal army. and when rodrigo finally forgives cesare for his sin of fratricide, rodrigo also forgives himself of the blame he's placed upon himself and the guilt he feels for letting his ambition destroy his family. they finally let go of the past and rodrigo can finally embrace cesare for the person he really is and has always loved deeply.
"he loves his errant son, does he not? More than he loves his dutiful one." - Cesare Borgia
cesare was proven wrong after all the time he was thinking juan was the favorite. he came to the realization that even though rodrigo saw so much of himself in him, he still planned from the beginning to make cesare his true heir. this brought relief and a sense of validation after years of feeling inadequate. rodrigo always intended for cesare to succeed him in the church, which was the only way that truly mattered to him. he made cesare a cardinal, a prince of the church, with the ultimate goal of cesare becoming the future pope and king. when rodrigo shared his dream of creating a papal bloodline to be passed down to cesare and his own son, cesare's perspective shifted. he began to heavily care about the perceptions of others, which not only fueled his power hunger but also led to him becoming classist. he even felt ashamed of his mother when she offered him counsel and to join him in war, rejecting her because of her former occupation as a "whore." it was a chilling development in cesare's character and honestly he became more interesting to me than he was in the first two seasons.
"One thing that I've always said about Juan is that every action that he does is heartfelt and genuine. When it was the war against the French, he was there and he was going to go to war, even though he knew he was going to die. He saw them getting ripped apart, but he was there and he was going to do it. I believe if Lucrezia hadn't come over, he would have led all his troops into death. I don't think there's anything that he's done which was through general cowardice. In terms of his survival, he died how he lived, and that's laudable, in itself." - David Oakes
rodrigo sending juan to war against the troops definitely (and rightfully) triggered cesare because juan has no idea what the hell he is doing and even though juan is incompetent, he never asked for the position he was given, but he tried his best to fulfill his responsibilities. like when he showed bravery by willingly risking his life against the french, even after his troops were torn apart in front of his eyes, insisting to lucrezia that he would never accept defeat and that he will keep fighting because he'll never let king charles of france destroy rome and get rid of their father, but only surrendered because the prospect of him dying would upset lucrezia, and lucrezia told him she already had a plan to prevent this.
"It’s interesting that Juan’s attempt at relieving pain is through closeness and hugging and love. When he forgives Cesare at the end saying how they’re brothers and wants to be together, I think that’s genuine. That’s the first time you realize what he’s always wanted." - David Oakes
juan felt deeply isolated because he never had a peer, and unfortunately, he was too weak and succumbed to his darkness, impulsiveness, and insecurities. he had a deep love for his family, but he lost himself in the pressure of the role and even committed heinous acts to prove himself, unaware that it would make his siblings hate him. all he wanted was to be included in their world. however, he struggled intensely in expressing his feelings, which led to him being shunned. it is tragic because ultimately he longed to feel like a 'true' borgia and have a close relationship with his family, especially with cesare. but the lack of moral guidance and the weight of expectations pushed him to behave inappropriately, resulting in everyone pushing him away and his death going unmourned except by his father, the one's responsible for his failure and feels guilty for it.
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sexy-sapphic-sorcerer · 2 months
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"But the reason why we retell the tales over and over is to create hope. We keep these themes and characters alive because we need them, because we need to make sense of what is happening and what needs to happen in our lives, and what better way to do that than with grand, tragic characters who already make sense to us? They explain the world to us and inspire us to keep going even though a happy ending may not be possible (Gilgamesh) and maybe because a happy ending may not be possible yet (Arthur).
“When Albion’s need is greatest,” Kilgharrah says in the last episode of Merlin, “Arthur will rise again.”
And he has risen when we needed him most. Multiple times. We were even the ones doing the resurrecting."
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machinthemachine · 2 months
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I think tumblr compression is going to murder me on this one, but here is my "finally dropping Prog 2" celebratory E7 meme dump! See if you can guess my favorite characters lmao(*cough* tenebria *cough*)
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lizardothesexylizard · 5 months
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This is a callout post. You ppl can't get away with it.
Especially @meegan420 and @krist-420! You guys are wonderful!
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meme-lorbius · 1 month
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Hey everyone! Happy Valentine's Day! No matter how you show your love (or even if love isn't your thing), everyone deserves to feel happy today. I hope everyone is able to be with the people they care about the most, just like Schmoochle!
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