#people have differing beliefs and perspectives on things which are CANONICALLY CONFIRMED to be clear situations with lots of info about it

[cluescorner]

Some people: Kaeya’s bio father is an abusive monster who abandoned his son in order to achieve his own selfish goals. He is an evil man who deserves everything awful that might happen to him. 

Other people: Kaeya’s bio father did the right thing and leaving Kaeya in Mondstadt was the only way to give him a halfway-decent life. He is a better father than he is given credit for and should not be as hated as he is. 

Me: Kaeya’s bio father is integral to the general ‘war is hell and bad choices can reverberate across time’ thing that Genshin seems to be going for. He made unethical choices, but mostly because the ONLY OPTIONS HE HAD WERE UNETHICAL. If our understanding of the Alberich’s role in Khaenri’ah is accurate, General Alberich (my name for him until stated otherwise) was suddenly in charge of a hopeless and dead kingdom which begged to be saved. Assuming that there was a reason Kaeya specifically was chosen for this mission, General Alberich was forced into a position where he needed to choose between the lives/future of every Khaenri’an vs the life and future of his young son. Abandoning either is an awful thing to do and a horrible decision, but the bad decisions of Celestia and Rhinedottir have led to a scenario where General Alberich can only make bad decisions. In the end, he chose to prioritize his people and made his young son into a spy. We do not know the process for this, but knowing how much Hoyoverse loves to torment people (especially Khaenri’ans) we can assume that this process was horrific for Kaeya and could definitely be considered abuse. General Alberich is effectively making his son into a child soldier for a war that the majority of people never wanted or asked for, and one Kaeya was likely far too young to understand. At least, until he was forced to grow up far too quickly in order to fulfill his duty. General Alberich likely loathed everything about what was happening and even in his last moments with his son he asks for forgiveness. He knows that what he is doing is wrong, but to turn back now is to both abandon his subjects and make everything that happened to Kaeya in order to turn him into a child spy be for nothing. So yeah, General Alberich is a terrible person who made horrible choices. But war and the bad actions of others have created a situation where he has nothing BUT horrible choices and where being a terrible person is the only thing he can be. And that’s without considering how the curse/abyssal corruption could impact the scenario. 

#idk #I just think that Kaeya's father is kinda an Asgore situation #where the only decisions he could possibly make were awful and unethical ones but choosing neither would create an even worse outcome #also I want to clarify that both of the other interpretations that I parroted before giving my own thoughts are valid #because we are working with such limited information and yeah no shit people are gonna have differing thoughts #people have differing beliefs and perspectives on things which are CANONICALLY CONFIRMED to be clear situations with lots of info about it #so of course people are going to go in like 80 different directions with his character #BECAUSE WE HAVE NEXT TO NOTHING TO GO OFF OF #and basically every interpretation of him I've seen is pretty reasonable #Like yeah man's son is a child spy who was abandoned in a far away country for the purpose of being a spy for Khaenri'ah's interests #thinking that he was an abusive asshole isn't exactly unreasonable #nor is it unreasonable to believe that he was actually a decent man who left his son in Mondstadt as the 'only hope' of Khaenri'ah #because he just wanted Kaeya to live on and have a life outside of the Abyss #and Kaeya was mistaken when he thought he was simply being left behind as a pawn #Genshin is no stranger to unreliable narrators and this wouldn't be the first time a character story wildly mischaracterizes something #so like...both of those interpretations are valid #and pretty fair ones as well #But I think that it really is like an Asgore situation where yeah this guy sucks and he is an awful person who made so many bad choices #But also was left with nothing BUT bad choices through war and grief and other factors that were genuinely outside of his control #Sacrifice your son's childhood and happiness by forcing him to be a child spy and abandoning him in the middle of a deadly storm #or let your people (including yourself) rot away into nothingness while facing a fate worse than death while they all but scream to be saved #there are no good options #kaeya's father #don't take this too seriously I just really liked Undertale when I was younger and I'm getting Asgore vibes from General Alberich

[iwanthermidnightz]

I don’t know if you want to post this long explanation and train of thought, but thought it might be worth sending my thoughts.

I’m on gaylor twitter as much as I’m on Tumblr these days, and I watched the rise of the term LSK. Where it came from was after Taylor seemed to make it clear that Karlie betrayed her (post-folklore and through the release of ITTG and Closure, her explanation of MTR at long pond, and during the confirmation of Karlie’s first pregnancy,) kaylor as a fandom essentially died. 99% of people believed they broke up, and it was ugly. Kaylor was already on life support after the masters thing, but this period essentially killed it. Even those who were willing to consider they were still together stopped posting about it because there was no point and we got a lot of hate. It was seen as embarrassing to still believe they were together. Why would anyone want to participate in something that brings no joy? A few like you and 9wift stuck around, but I know that even you took a step back for a while.

But starting around early 2022, a few people started admitting out loud that there were a lot of clues that maybe they were together. Because the evidence for them having broken up was so strong, still very few people would entertain the idea that they never actually broke up. But it started to become clear enough that there was something going on. And eventually enough accounts on twitter who made good points (and do so in a funny, joyful way, unlike the toxicity of tumblr at the time) it became relatively popular, and more and more people became convinced. These people needed a term to separate themselves from “kaylors” who believed they never broke up, at the time were very small in numbers, and had a very bad reputation because of some personalities, particularly on tumblr. They chose Late Stage as their term. It probably was already a term used in other fandoms, but I’m not sure. In the past, we used to describe swiftgron in terms if versions (1.0, 2.0, etc) so I look at LSK as similar to this. They see LSK as a sort of kaylor 2.0. A post-breakup reconciliation.

As is the case with all other subgroups, there are various beliefs about how and when LSK happened, and some of them even go back and forth about maybe they never actually totally broke up. But even those still call themselves LSKs as a way to distinguish themselves as a new generation (who look at things differently.) One of the most obvious ways they look at things differently is they are less concerned with josh. They see him as Karlie’s gay bestie rather than calling him names and thinking he is the devil, both Karlie and Taylor hate him and he’s blackmailing them and he’s a war criminal. All that became canon on tumblr over the years (and also among the meaner parts of Gaylor twitter, much of which was born on tumblr and The Lchat and migrated to twitter.) Most LSKs don’t like josh as a person, but they don’t believe Karlie hates him. This allows them to approach kaylor with fun and joy rather than being miserable all the time like a lot of the old tumblr kaylors. I think a fair amount of this is that there is some separation at this stage from the trump presidency and some of the most controversial kushner stuff and they are young and often not Americans, so it is easier for them to not know or overlook this part of things. Also over time as joshlie continue to be married and have children and look happy together, it becomes harder to see disdain. Another part of this is that they don’t know the lore. There are some advantages to this. While they might not understand all the stuff we understand and sometimes they say incredibly dumb things, they also aren’t weighed down with the baggage that we have that is so hard to let go off. And they can look at things from different perspectives, which also can be hard for those of us who made decisions on how we feel about things years ago, and therefore developed biases that can cloud our thinking. Again, there are pros and cons and neither perspective is necessarily better. But I tend to lean toward a way for people to enjoy their experience in this fandom rather than giving in to misery and anger. I don’t understand why anyone would want to spend a lot of time on something that made them unhappy. I would simply find another hobby. So the fun of LSK on twitter is one of the reasons it gained traction and a lot of the obvious clues that have been thrown at us, especially over the last year, were caught and popularized. That’s not to say they don’t still get hate from gaylors (and swifties of course) who can’t see it, but there are enough LSKs now who support each other to cancel out some of that negativity.

Wow. Thank you for explaining it like that. This is mostly a very accurate account of things. I don’t think that term (lsk) is accurate for us in these parts but it’s interesting to hear how it came about. Personally, I think the twitter gaylors are cute, but theres a gap in beliefs in some cases for sure.

First, I think a lot of us here never felt from the songs that Karlie actually betrayed Taylor. That’s where a lot of the disconnect is. Songs deserve nuance and the situation is of course delicate. It’s obvious there have been some real hardships and tests and breaks as normal relationships have, but nothing absolutely permanent. Who knows the period of time when this all truly takes place. She may have put it out on folklore, but that doesn’t mean it was recent events. I think she dug deep/went back time for a lot of those songs. MTR for example screams Scott. I wont get into song analysis but if one wanted to apply it to Karlie sure, they could. I can see why others would come to the conclusion that they were done forever. But it’s never that simple. Maybe the point was to kill kaylor if you get what I’m trying to say.

The series of events that happened during this time were intense. There were splits in the fandom, weird, crazy and toxic rumors going around etc. To be honest, I’ve pushed a lot of this period of time back in my conscious because it was traumatic to say the least. The amount of hate and toxicity here completely changed the way I and others went about posting for sure. The threats, the hate, the gaslighting, the daily harassment… getting blamed for certain things I had nothing to do with. Yeah. I stepped back for a while and was terrified to say what I wanted. A few people caught on. Even saying this gives me anxiety. If it weren’t for few close mutuals it would have been much harder.

But still there was evidence even through quarantine that things were fact not over between them. And you’re right, it was not popular to say so at the time. It was kind of like walking around with a letter A or K on your chest… the Hester Prynne’s of the fandom if you will. So a lot of us took our thoughts underground, but were still around. There’s some delicate things I still rather not talk about, except for privately.

I think whatever people want to call themselves is fine… and that most of us have the same idea in mind as to how things may turn out. I get there’s varying opinions and thats fine too. There are bigger things to worry about as long as it’s respectful.

And tbh, my opinions on certain things have changed. Or at least how I’m willing to talk about it i.e. jk. I really don’t want to talk about him. Personally, ignoring him/making stupid silly comments about situations has done wonders for me. That does’t mean I like the dude. But to hold that much animosity continuously isn’t good for ones mental health. I don’t want to keep reliving one of the worst periods in history.

That said, we’ve all been through a lot. Like you mentioned, theres a lot of baggage. But for me, taking a different approach and making an effort to be both positive and realistic at the same time has really helped. It’s not being naive. It’s choosing what’s best for you. I don’t want to be that person spewing negativity all the time. I refuse to. I’m so thankful for the people here who choose to see the light through dark times. Sending an extra hug to everyone around 🤍

#hope this answers some questions i know some of you have #memories feel like weapons #wont be answering anything else on this tonight i’m exhausted this took a lot out of me lol #Pisces being Pisces

[onebizarrekai]

ok NOW I have time to talk about the v3 ending for a second and why the popular belief that the audition tapes were real is one of the most baffling things to me. don’t get me wrong, ‘pregame’ has the capacity to be an interesting au if done correctly, and there’s fun to be had with it, but the writing in the game does not actually encourage you to believe in its existence and it’s so odd to me that it’s taken as hard fast canon.

I mean, actually, you technically can check. I think this is the writing deliberately encouraging the player to revisit the prologue and see that the way tsumugi described it happening in the trial is not actually what happened.

number two, they claim that the prologue of the story began after they got their costume changes, which is also obviously not true. it started when they came out of the lockers in their ordinary school uniforms. (seems like tsumugi is indirectly trying to divert attention away from that point that the player has access to, claiming that it is not part of the story.)

shuichi specifically flashbacks to this moment. they go on for like three minutes talking about how everything tsumugi said could’ve been bs.

they literally end on that note of shuichi refusing to believe they auditioned, and very ambiguously too. they didn’t actually give anyone any incentive to believe what happened during the trial–in fact, they encouraged otherwise.

amidst all the ambiguity, the only lead the game really gives you is the one that tells you to replay the prologue to confirm where the characters can’t. the attention drawn to this particular inconsistency between the prologue and the final trial feels very purposeful, not to mention shuichi’s lack of belief towards it. the difference is glaringly apparent. like I said, it draws attention.

of course, they don’t resolve it at all and the whole game ends on a big maybe, but again, the only lead they give the player is revisiting the prologue. they want you to see how it’s inconsistent. the truth is not supposed to be set in stone.

there were a couple other things I wanted to mention.

one, prior to being refitted as ultimates in the prologue, all of the characters remembered being kidnapped. if they had willingly signed up for the killing game, why in the world would they need to be kidnapped? why would all of them seem so confused about what’s happening if they had knowingly auditioned for danganronpa? if they’d already had their memories wiped at that point to prepare them for new memories, why let them remember that they were kidnapped? it seems very convenient for tsumugi that nobody remembers anything from before they transformed into ultimates… but the player does.

even tsumugi’s explanation of the prologue flashback makes very little logical sense. if all of them really were fans of danganronpa in some regard, they would probably know right away that they were going to appear on the show; there wouldn’t be any room for confusion. if tsumugi’s account was even accurate in the slightest, and there was somehow some dialogue that was obstructed from the player during the prologue, it seems infeasible that it would take them so long to realize what was happening because they would have suspected it the moment they woke up in a dark, mysterious school and were asked to gather at the gym.

not to mention, why the heck would they show kaede and kaito’s audition tapes and not maki and himiko’s–y’know–the two other people that were actually there? it’s like this “evidence” was handpicked for the protagonist… oh wait.

two, ever since I noticed the implication that maki is not affected by flashback lights, it puts a whole new perspective on every story she tells in the game and even her placement and purpose in the killing game itself. I feel like this theory speaks for itself, especially when you take into account maki’s story about going to a convention (tsumugi in her natural habitat) to kill a target, and failing.

three, kinda.

all three of their school uniforms in their audition tapes are distinctly inconsistent with their sprites.

after I noticed shuichi’s, I was about to pass this off as another dumb artistic mistake, but then I checked kaede’s and kaito’s and found the same exact thing.

let me point them out if you can’t see them very well: shuichi has 3 buttons on his uniform, not 2, kaede has 1 stripe on her uniform and not 2, and kaito’s buttons are black on his shirt in his sprite and rather ordinary in the audition tape. also, shuichi’s shoes look light brown, even though they kinda match his hair on the sprite. the inside of kaito’s jacket collar is also white on the sprite, while it isn’t in the tape.

… I really wish I could say this is a striking observation and all, and possibly even intended to be proof that the tapes were fake, but also… I’ve made a post about the art inconsistencies in this game before. I failed to notice this one at the time, but v3 is not known for the quality and consistency of its art. a couple of kaede’s prologue cgs show her with two stripes as well. heck, the one of her being kidnapped up there is one of them. when I realized that all three of the audition tapes had inconsistencies with the official character designs, I got my hopes up a little… but we can’t win ‘em all, huh.

anyway, long story short, the epilogue implies one thing: it’s that 1) the prologue is different from how tsumugi explained it, 2) the player has the power to revisit it to confirm this, and 3) the game wants you to revisit it to confirm this, deliberately drawing attention to the incongruity of the two tales. the version of the prologue that the players see is not part of tsumugi’s grand story. last of all… it’s just my own theory about the game itself, but I think tsumugi was full of shit and the players were never supposed to take what she said as the simple truth to begin with, especially due to the narrative encouragement to distrust it.

it’s clear that the game planned for ambiguity and multiple interpretations and reception, thanks to all the ‘maybes’ it ends on… but isn’t it so strange that fans seem more willing to trust tsumugi’s contradictory account rather than the distrust of the main characters that has so much attention drawn to it? nobody knows what’s in the outside world… and that’s the point.

#danganronpa #ndrv3 #drv3 #long post #drv3 spoilers #v3 spoilers #random stuff #god I went to town with this #analysis #I go into this mode every time I see someone confidently say that the characters auditioned in v3 #I'm thinking even the game doesn't want you to believe that

[ranboocore-moved]

Confrontation. Explanation and Analysis

to preface this, this essay was largely written within the @dsmpanalysis​ mod discord after some fellow mods voiced confusion surrounding Ranboo’s lore stream today (1/16/2021). it’s been tweaked to make more sense as a tumblr post and not a response to a collection of messages. If you were confused about Ranboo’s lore stream today, I’m going to explain it largely as I understood it. To summarize the stream to its core -- Ranboo confronts the Dream inside the panic room about his lost memories, and finds out that Ranboo himself has Cat. During the Festival/Doomsday Event, it was hinted at that Dream was really just a figment of Ranboo’s imagination -- he wasn’t real. Some people thought this could mean that Ranboo was possessed or that Dream had supernatural powers to manipulate him through his thoughts, among a few other similar things, while other’s figured that it really was just Ranboo’s figment of his imagination. It was just a psychological reaction to the stress and trauma he went through. It was heavily confirmed that that was the case today. Given that Ranboo is super active in fan spaces and likes to take notes, he probably noticed a lot of theories regarding this being a supernatural external thing, and hammered down on the concept that “Dream” was just a “manifestation of his catastrophizing” and anxiety. It was almost a little excessive, but this is improv and there was a point that needed to be made. Memory Ghost Dream also reveals to Ranboo that he has Cat (the disc). If you’re confused on how Ranboo got Cat, it’s honestly kind of subtle if you weren’t listening because it’s only given away in one sentence. Dream encourages and pokes at Ranboo to think harder, try to remember what he did after he crossed a nether portal. Ranboo begins to remember that he spoke to Dream (the real one) and that Dream told him to protect something. Ranboo CANNOT place it, so Memory Ghost Dream nudges him a little further by saying “You got it from Skeppy.” This is the only mention of how Ranboo obtained the disc. Dream didn’t give him the disc, Skeppy did. Dream, however, did KNOW about Ranboo having the disc and urged him to protect it and keep it safe. ”Wouldn’t we have seen Skeppy give Ranboo the disc?” No! It’s clear that this is an integral part of the plot and it was an event purposely kept hidden to maintain an element of surprise. It was a scripted interaction that didn’t need to be shown -- only implied. This essentially sums up my explanation -- however it doesn’t quite suffice as a summary. Honestly, I highly recommend everyone watch it as it is a short stream and is comprised of all lore. The whole stream is a lore stream, and also it’s extremely evident that Ranboo put a lot of work into the stream and its events. To further convince you, someone donated during the second stream today saying “I was crying by the end of the stream.” to which Ranboo says, “Don’t worry, I was too.” He clarified that he was totally okay -- he just gets really into character. So, like, if you’re not convinced then IDK.

Analysis Below The Cut (because this post is already pretty long)

The narrative implications surrounding a state of Ranboo aligning himself with Dream and harboring Mellohi setup a scenario which breaks up the monotony the SMP has filled itself up with regarding the discs. I’ve seen a lot of people voice how they are tired or unsatisfied with the discs persisting to be key plot points within the narrative, which is honestly a super valid opinion. The direction the Exile Arc and Festival/Doomsday Event felt... really tired, and just a poorly conducted rehashed version of the Festival prior. There were a lot of recycled concepts and it felt like the writers trying to grasp at what Wilbur had created before by chance. 

However, with the story that Ranboo is writing -- he’s utilizing the discs in a different way by throwing himself into the fray. It feels repetitive when the conflict surrounding the discs are “Tommy want disc. Dream have disc. Chaos.” or vice versa. However, by throwing Ranboo in-between the two of them, holding the disc, and being established as a character who is adamant he not take sides, he is effectively shaking up the conflict that has been rehashed 5 ways from Sunday. There’s still the conflict of Tommy wants the discs v.s Dream wanting the discs however it’s no longer the focal point of the story. The conflicts go from a stale and mostly two dimensional issue, to a more fleshed out morality crisis.

Tubbo and Ranboo are still friends in canon. They did a canon stream that wasn’t super lore heavy, and achieved what felt like mostly comic relief -- however the did reconcile what happened. They consider themselves to be friends with each other, or at least friendly. However, this raises the question:

How will Tommy react when he finds out that Ranboo has Cat? Where do the implications of one state of Ranboo being aligned with Dream and his desires lead?

While you still may not be convinced or tired of the plot devices being used, I would like to end on this note. If it were to end with Ranboo picking a side, more specifically Tommy’s, I would also be incredibly disappointed. I’d be a bit more joyful, though, if he were to side with Dream as it would still break up that monotony surrounding the discs. Dream only aligned himself with people during the beginning of the smp. However as the plot has literally thickened and became heavier and sturdier, Dream has solidified himself as someone to be alone -- therefore if Ranboo were to side with dream it would ultimately subvert our expectations. 

However, I’d still be a little bit disappointed if he did pick a side, because the core theme of his character in this arc has been to not pick side and is sturdy in the belief that choosing sides would always end up in disaster, no matter what. So, I’d either want him to keep the same theme up throughout the Arc, or Ranboo to have to grow as a character into a different perspective and understanding that sometimes sides have to be taken and ultimately picked upon by the greater good. It would be up to him to decide said greater good and what constitutes great or good, which is a whole other development of character and plot on its own. Anyways, I just think that if you’re being overtly critical of the story that Ranboo is writing, maybe you should look at it from a different perspective.

#ranboo #ranboolive #ranboo analysis #ranboolive analysis #dsmp #dream smp #dream smp analysis #dsmp analysis

[relaxxattack]

ayo! (wait this might be a bit of a jumpscare dishdks i apologize) i’m op of That Post and was wondering what your opinions were on the whole woobification thing? /gen

because it’s a Tiny Bit widespread within the dream apologists to sort of,, overdramatize stuff like l’manberg hurting him. like they’re not a 100% wrong but if you look at it subjectively you can see some sort of bias going into that sort of thing that makes the character’s mistreatment a bit more blatant and intentional which,, it really wasn’t? and there wasn’t That Much of it either. especially on twitter (tumblr is much better about it) people just jump to conclusions it seems and yeah. since you brought it up i was wondering if you wanted to write a bit about it from your perspective!

we’re kinda from different corners of the fandom but i still notice that once you are too attached to a character you start taking certain evidence and giving it more weight than it actually has. there’s a blurry line between “taking away a character’s humanity” and woobification and it’s extremely difficult to find a balance when said character shows pretty much nothing of his emotional life (e. g. putting up the intimidating villain act in front of only c!tommy, pretty much everything he does making rational sense with no emotional subtext) and a lot of the fandom instantly jumps to one side or the other while it’s like.

we don’t know by far enough to say “he’s traumatized” or “he isn’t traumatized” or “he was villainized and it hurt him” or “l’manberg didn’t affect him at all”

as a very analytical person people constantly jumping to conclusions grinds my gears, but that’s about it for my own view of the situation - sorry for the rambling.

in general i agree with you that both dehumanization and woobification is Bad and i really hope getting Actual Context sorts this out (e. g. him saying he was betrayed by his friends doesn’t mean it wasn’t partially his fault or that they were allowed to leave him, but it also shows that he did care about that happening. mentioning the cat doesn’t mean anything about what happened to c!tommy but it also shows that he did care about what happened to it. it’s just always interesting to get more information about the way he feels because he usually does a very good job at hiding it.) because man.

it’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place, especially if you also are attached to the character and are expected to automatically agree with everything the people on “your side” say. it just ends up with everyone being mad and the character being mischaracterised overall.

oh wow hello! i didnt expect the op of the post to find me you’re right lol

and yes i agree! you seem to have a lot of very good thoughts tbh.

and by woobification, i mean exactly what you’ve already pointed out— the people who will say l’manberg purposely villainized dream, the people who will say wilbur faked his mental illness to manipulate dream, the people who are pretty much always talking about how badly dream was treated by people who were acting only fairly for themselves, usually.

for example people who act like dream was a perfect peacemaker before tommy showed up, or that tommy started most conflict. these are just actual lies that are told by c!dream himself to justify his abuse of tommy, and people fall for them incredibly easily because not a lot of people watched early dsmp and know that truthfully it was chaotic even then, and that dream was chaotic too. not to mention wilbur soot tried very hard to secede peacefully with l’manberg and dream jumped directly into war with no warning. and then people say he was forced into their war when, no, he started it.

theres also people who will say like, dream and sapnap for example are such good friends. i’m sure they cared for each other, but dream on multiple occasions has done horrible things to sapnap with no regard for his feelings (like leading fundy to sapnaps pets during the petwar, leading tommy to sapnaps pets during the other petwar and encouraging him to kill them, handing mars over to tommy to use as leverage against sapnap, etc). george he’s been less awful too but he certainly spoke over him and ignored his feelings enough that george felt hurt. he had places in his hall of attachments for beckerson and mars. george and sapnap were right to walk away from being treated like that.

there’s also what you just said here — “dream puts on a villain persona for tommy”— but honestly he acts like that around quite a few people (example: eret) and it’s usually when he’s revealing crucial info, which leads me and many others to believe that ‘persona’ is actually a more truthful version of him.

there’s the fact that he really isn’t safe for people to be around (or at least he wasn't before the prison) because he was planning to come up with ways to control every single person by stealing and threatening their attachments (some of which were not items but were living animals, or a real breathing person).

and then people will say dream was doing exile to enforce rules, or to keep the peace— when it’s very clear in canon it was a deliberate plan to get tommy on his own and into the prison. (from the way he was framing tommy for multiple crimes, and having sam set up the prison, and kidnapping tommy instead of correctly exiling him, all at the same time).

not even going into how he wants to kill and revive people for fun or make tommy immortal.

it’s just— ignoring all these actual facts and saying “oh he misses his friends, let’s get him some friends now” reminds me of like. when people would put flower crowns on pictures of serial killers. and then, there’s hardly anyone on the server who wasn’t subject to dream’s plans, so there’s absolutely no one i would be okay with him interacting with.

just remembered about the torture thing, and wow i still hate it so much. it’s someone’s sick revenge fantasy twisted into a way to get a manipulative villain sympathy, and it’s just gross to me on every account. i do think dream is traumatized-- just not by l’manberg, which was a conflict he started on his own terms. i would think l’manberg did affect him, because he was scared of losing control.

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again— my ideal ending for dream would be for him to be sent far away from dsmp to an island full of therapy animals and super strong therapists who have never met him before. and for him to get a shit ton of therapy until he becomes a halfway normal person. and then eventually he could get integrated into society again; but a different one with new people. (although maybe dteam + bbh + puffy can visit him, they might still like him.)

none of the people on the server (who have all been affected by dream) should be burdened with befriending him or rehabilitating him— look how that turned out with sam! sam had a personal grudge towards dream and it ended with the poor dude being tortured every day; and sam himself falling into corruption and literally cutting off his boyfriends arm. like we can all see thats fucking awful right?

no one who was affected by dream should have to deal with him ever again. and contrary to popular belief, that includes a LOT more people then just tommy. dream isn’t just tommy’s antagonist, hes almost everybody’s.

the only person on the server who might also be able to stand to help dream is techno, and that’s from sheer lack of ability to give a shit. but techno is probably THE furthest thing from a good therapist there is lol, and dream needs better then that.

this kind of just ended up being a rant about my thoughts on c!dream, so im so sorry op. especially since it was probably negative for you. i hope you’re doing very well.

i guess in the end it’s true what you said— people will highlight or ignore things based on what characters they like, and it’s especially easy to do in this fandom, where half the content doesn’t even get watched and then we become a big echo chamber of half-truths.

considering dream has hurt so many of the characters i care about, i almost can’t understand how he could be someone’s favorite or comfort character— but he is nonetheless, and it would be unfair of me to be rude about that.

essentially it just bothers me to see someone who was a perpetrator of accurately portrayed abuse and manipulation (using both those words in their actual definitions, not just as random buzzwords lol) being given the flower crown edit effect. especially since he’s hurt the characters i care about a lot.

ANYWAY all of that being said (this got LONG im so sorry op) i am so so excited to get dream’s pov, because although i disagree with his actions strongly i actually find dream’s character very interesting and cool, and watching his POV is going to insanely fun. i cannot wait to see what theories get confirmed or denied

ALSO incase it wasn’t clear this is all /nm at you! you seem lovely and smart, and neither of us can help what characters we get attached to :]

#c!dream critical #dream meta #og post #hey guys i would actually like some feedback on this one since i worked hard on it #rbs are okay and encouraged :] #my meta

[mallowstep]

I just thought about this

Do you think the Clan cats might ever have some form of PTSD from eather witnessing another cats death in any form like in battle or another disaster or even killing another cat themselves

I really do want to expand on this

okay matthew from the end of this post here it turns out i have a lot of thoughts and talked for like, almost 2k words about this. sorry. there's a tldr at the end.

hmmmmm

my official answer is, "sure, anything is possible, especially if you want to explore that."

my more rambly answer is...kind of.

we're just going to jump straight in with serious cat talk here, but cats? those mofos are killing machines. they are highly efficient hunters. kind of like people and creating things.

on the other hand, cats are also huge cowards who don't like to fight. hence cat and mouse: the cat doesn't want to go in for the kill unless they're sure they can execute it.

i like to think of them as a very krav maga idea: "we don't fight unless we absolutely have to, but once we go in, we go all in."

so...on one hand, "do cats experience ptsd from killing each other?" feels kind of like asking, "do humans experience ptsd from making things?", and yet, that's clearly extremely reductive.

it's also worth talking about what ptsd is. it's easy to think of ptsd as equivalent to trauma, but it's not.

trauma is, well, traumatic events, ptsd is one possible response. most people who experience trauma do not develop ptsd.

(there's also c-ptsd, but i'm getting to that.)

ptsd is, basically, an overactive adrenaline response, basically. it can look similar to depression and anxiety, but it's not the same. things like flashbacks and triggers are not exclusive to ptsd, or even any specific mental illness. it's normal to experience ptsd-like symptoms after a traumatic event. that's a traumatic response.

ptsd is, instead, the unhealthy extension of that, in time, and possibly severity.

before i go any farther, i just want to say, this is not to say you need to have ptsd to have trauma, that you can't have ptsd/trauma if XYZ, etc., so please, give me the benefit of the doubt here. it's always tricky to word these things in a way that is both clear about what i mean and not harming people.

mental illness is always a tricky subject. trying to fit a sum of many symptoms into boxes will never work, but i am going to lean on it as a tool to categorize and discuss experiences in a general sense.

i also want to mention c-ptsd, or "complex post-traumatic stress disorder." this is a debated diagnosis, in that where it fits into mental illness boxes is argued and it's yet to be included in the dsm, but for now, it's sufficient to think of it as ptsd's fraternal twin.

c-ptsd develops when trauma is prolonged, and there's little/no chance of escape. think kidnappings and child abuse.

it shares a lot of symptoms with ptsd, but it has its own unique cluster of symptoms, especially surrounding relationship issues.

right. we can rule that off for things cats typically experience from battle. but i still want to talk about it.

but ptsd is in reference to human reactions to trauma, which is fine! all warrior cats are at least a little anthropomorphised, or it wouldn't be fun to read about.

okay, before i lose the thread, circling back to my point, the conditions for ptsd are a prolonged response to a traumatic event. i, personally, don't think that your everyday warrior is going to experience this. some amount of battle is normal for cats, yeah?

but i do think ptsd/ptsd-like conditions are quite possible. i'm going to move into a discussion of various characters, now, and i'll put that under a read more.

okay, let's examine a few different cats, starting with mudfur.

why mudfur? because he chooses to be a medicine cat specifically because the battles of being a warrior are too much for him. does this mean he's experiencing ptsd? no, i don't think so. we never see any indication of him having flashbacks or hypervigilance. mind, i have

okay sorry you uh

i took a break to read mothwing's secret

see i've been putting it off bc i knew it was going to make me feel things and lord it did

phew

well i was going to talk about mothwing but first, back to mudfur

i can now confirm that we don't see any evidence of ptsd in him. trauma, maybe, but not ptsd.

which...checks.

next cat, ivypool.

but my ivypool, not canon ivypool, because i gave ivypool ptsd.

if you haven't read it, hedera helix is my canon compliant ivypool series, and you can get the Deets there, but i think "fair is the night" is the piece to focus on here. specifically,

The dark is the same, and the heat, and the way she slinks through the shadows, trying not to take notice. The way every pawstep is echoingly loud, and how she can't catch her breath or find her thoughts over the noise. All that's missing is.

Him.

Maybe Ivypool does still dream.

She hisses, her belt bristling, tail lashing, and raises her paw, claws extended.

what's going on here is that she mistakes tigerheart for hawkfrost.

yes, she has ptsd.

she also has c-ptsd in my writing, but i don't want to talk about this at the moment, because ivypool is complex, and i don't feel like bringing dovewing into this. but no, this is her having ptsd from her (dark forest) mentor trying to kill her. a cat she, at least on some level, trusted turning on her and attempting to kill her.

so for ivypool, it's the unexpected that traumatizes her.

which i think makes sense: cats don't generally expect to be attacked by those they trust. which leads me into...

character three: bluestar.

now, bluestar is complex because of the dementia, but i think it's pretty easy to say: tigerclaw (a cat she trusts) betrays her, she gets hypervigilant and stops trusting people.

i'm deliberately going short on this because i'm at almost a thousand words and uh,, i just want to talk about mothwing.

mothwing. my baby. my beloved. my beautiful.

fuuuuck okay so i should not have read mothwing's secret because this is going to turn into me writing mostly about that, but i actually knew 90% of what was contained in it through moonkitti videos + doing research for various mothwing related projects.

i think the only thing i learned was the moonkitti scene about bees is actually completely canonical, as written, and that it was possible for me to love mothwing more than i already do.

usually, i'd want to also talk about willowshine, but i'm going to keep my focus on mothwing. willow my love is going to come up, but i'm keeping my focus tight.

mothwing! onto my purpose: mothwing and c-ptsd and religious trauma.

she will get her own essay i have a document titled "mothwing and religious trauma" but with trope-bingo i've been writing the essays less, so bear with me.

anyway. i'm not waffling, i'm just trying to set up a good starting point so i don't ramble past the purpose. and i think...the scene with mudfur and mothwing near the end is what i'm honing in on. (spoilers, duh, but also, you don't need to have read it.)

so mudfur comes to mothwing after the battle, and she turns him away. he doesn't understand, but i do.

religion has been used against mothwing her entire life. her clan used it (inadvertently) to keep her from her purpose, hawkfrost used it to maintain his control over her, and mistystar used it to again keep her from her purpose and passion. (and yes, i have strong feelings about what this does to willowshine, but i'm trying to stay on-topic.)

and then, the first tangible proof she has of starclan is the dark forest. and her brother. attacking the nursery. and her.

and then mudfur has the audacity to say, "yeah sorry we don't know anything! but like why are you still rejecting us?"

(makes me want to rewrite the ending of "if you love me any, let me know it now" actually, i'm angry. not going to, but i want to.)

adfskjl mothwing is my new purpose for existing. i may actually consider changing my blog title from "in this house we lovewing dovewing" to something mothwing themed. i love her. expect a mothwing focus sometime soon-ish.

right, so, i don't think mothwing's perspective needs to be explained here. but...she is very self-aware of her position. she struggles with it. she doesn't want to talk to willowshine about her beliefs — she's grateful when willowpaw just accepts it and doesn't discuss it with her.

mothwing as a character has always been appealing to me. but. again, trying to keep focused, her brother is manipulative and cruel.

(i'm not saying abusive because i don't know if he really is. i'd want to do a proper analysis for that, not just ramble in a blank document for a while. he's toxic, but i try to reserve abusive for abusive characters. i think he is, but i don't know how i would defend that, ergo, i'm avoiding it for now.)

just. her whole life.

she spends a long time trusting others, looking to starclan for answer and salvation, and it keeps letting her down, and others keep using it against her, like a weapon. there's a lot to mothwing, but i'm really trying to stay on topic.

before i get to my closing arguments, some honorable mentions for characters i didn't talk about, but could have:

squirrelflight

feathertail, stormfur, and mistyfoot

dovewing

briarlight. okay she's such a good honorable mention i just have to explore this for a second, but the scene in bramblestar's storm where she's afraid of falling trees is good. i don't know, she seems fairly functional, but she's definitely not "over it."

anyone captured by twolegs.

tawnypelt

bramblestar. before you gasp, he too trained in the dark forest and was manipulated by hawkfrost and tigerstar.

probably a lot more.

so anyway, if you hung around for nearly 2k words to listen to me talk about cat trauma, here's my closing statement:

i think ptsd in clan cats is definitely going to be a thing, but i think, more often than not, it's not going to come from the battle. we looked at several examples where the incident happened during a battle, but i think it's the betrayal that's more shocking than the actual fighting.

i didn't address ptsd from cats killing each other, other than mudfur, and that's...frankly that's because i don't know. it is very hard for me to sympathize with those characters long enough to think critically about it.

like, i can write villain pov, but i don't think i can actually say, "what if XYZ feels bad for killing someone?" even if i was going to write about like, firestar killing scourge, i don't think i could.

not in this context, anyway.

similarly, i think a lot of what we'll see is trauma. cats are already extremely vigilant, and while it's possible to get hypervigilant cats, i'm not sure how often it's going to come out. cats are good at hiding physical pain, ipso facto, i imagine they're good at hiding emotional pain.

which isn't to say that they...you know what? you know what? if you want to come argue with me about human ptsd, you can do that on my main. but i'm talking about cats, and i say that they probably don't experience ptsd because they probably shove away a lot of the external symptoms, and that's mostly how we identify ptsd. this is not an end-all be-all, nor does it apply to people, but i don't know how to begin couching this, and i'm tired.

alright, well...

tl/dr: yes, trauma and maybe ptsd occur in clan cats, but i think it's more likely to be from betrayal than fighting.

dkjl this was a lot if u have follow up qs or just wanna discuss this my ask box is open! <3

#ask #anon #mine #essay #trauma #ptsd

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

You don't have to worry about me, thanks! I am DM'ing with a kataanger who gave me the tea. She says ya'll don't really like it but since you can't do shit about it you pretend not to care. She also said you and others would blacklist her if she expressed this publicly. Seriously? Someone expressing anger that a VA for her ship craves another, and you people would act like that to her? If Mae Whitman can have an opinion why can't this Kataanger, who thinks Mae is "kind of acting stupid"?

Hi anon!! I am super glad to hear you won’t be sending more of those asks - again, I know you didn’t mean anything negative by them, but it did a little bit give off the wrong impression. I’m also glad you’ve found the answers you were seeking! However, I have to point something out here. My friend, you are demonstrating a clear example of confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is “the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one's existing beliefs.” In other words, you were looking for someone upset that Whitman liked Zvtara as well as K@taang. And that’s totally fine! There are always people with different opinions in fandom, and you should not feel ashamed for wanting to hear those different perspectives.

However. Just because one person is upset about Whitman liking both ships does not mean every single K@taang shipper feels the same way. It is concerning that you would assume this one fan speaks for the entire fandom, yk? Like, I’ve gotten some nasty asks from Zvtara shippers, but I would never be so callous and uninformed to assume they spoke for the entire Zvtara fandom. Most Zvtara fans (as in, people that are not the rabid stans, who I have no doubt you try to distance yourself from, too!) are lovely people who are content with making and/or supporting fanworks. So why would you assume this one K@taang shipper, particularly after hearing from several others, is preaching the Gospel truth? Several people have said we don’t care about VAs, yet you think we’re all lying based on the word of this one person?

Trust me, anon. A lot of us do not care about Whitman’s thoughts one way or the other on the atla fandom. At the end of the day, she’s just a VA. She wasn’t in the writers’ room. And while it can be cool to hear what VAs think, they didn’t construct the narrative, yk? I love that VAs have fun in their roles and with their characters and hey, if that includes shipping, great for them! I have mad respect for Whitman for enjoying both pairings and successfully staying out of ship wars. I mean, that’s pretty legendary of her. But also… her opinions are irrelevant to me, at the end of the day. I will continue writing fanfic because I love atla, because I love the complexity of the narrative, because I love the friends I’ve made through this fandom. Why would a VA’s thoughts ever change that? Why would we get so angry about something out of our control, lmao?

I promise. Most of us don’t care.

Again, there are some who do, and that is totally fine! I’m not sure why the person you’re talking to thinks we’d blacklist them, lol - they’re simply presenting a different perspective than us. I mean,, that’s not a reason to blacklist someone fjskdljfasldksalks. Of course, I am totally comfortable with people using the block button liberally - curate your own online experience! But generally speaking, a slight difference in thoughts on VAs is not going to incite blacklisting.

So, to the K@taang shipper you’re speaking to - you’re not going to be blacklisted! It’s totally okay if you do care about Whitman’s thoughts. No big thing! However, I do take issue with the suggestion that you think the rest of us are lying when we say we don’t care about Whitman… Like, if you do care about Whitman, what’s so weird about the rest of us not caring about Whitman? Again, no one will blacklist you lmao. But consider not treating yourself as the voice of the K@taang fandom - all one individual can do is express their own opinion. You can’t speak for everyone else, yk?

Anyways. To sum everything up:

“ya'll don't really like it but since you can't do shit about it you pretend not to care”

Nope, we actually just don’t care! Whitman is free to have her own thoughts and feelings like any other fan of the show. Doesn’t impact our lives, lol!

“you and others would blacklist her if she expressed this publicly”

Also nope. In the grand scheme of fandom, this is a super minor difference in opinion. A majority of people are not going to hit the block button because of that, yk?

“Someone expressing anger that a VA for her ship craves another, and you people would act like that to her?”

Nope again! The K@taang fandom is honestly super chill. I think the person you’re talking to is just a little nervous about having an opinion that differs from the majority, which again, there’s no shame in! Fandom would be quite dull without such differences. Also, like I’ve said before, Whitman has expressed positive affections for both Zvtara and K@taang. Honestly, I’m a little confused why you’re so dead-set on the idea that she despises K@taang?? Why does it matter that she likes both??

(Hint: it doesn’t matter, which is what I’ve been saying all along, lol.)

“If Mae Whitman can have an opinion why can't this Kataanger, who thinks Mae is ‘kind of acting stupid’”

They are more than welcome to have their own opinion! In fact, we can all have our opinions. Allow me to list some examples:

1) Whitman likes Zvtara and K@taang.

2) You want Whitman to only like Zvtara (or so your asks have led me to believe).

3) The person you’re speaking to wants Whitman to only like K@taang (or so this ask had led me to believe).

4) I don’t care one way or the other what Whitman thinks! Doesn’t change anything about my personal fandom experience or the canon narrative of the show itself!

I hope this clears things up, anon! I don’t want there to be any further confusion in this matter. Like I said - my friends and I don’t care about Whitman. You and the person you’re speaking to do. It’s… not a huge deal that we disagree?

I guess, then, that maybe you should ask yourself these questions: Why are you so adamantly against recognizing that fans are capable of holding different opinions?

Why were you so desperate to find someone who supports your hypothesis that you sent the same ask over and over to several different people?

Why weren’t you willing to accept the answers you then received that some K@taang shippers don’t care what Whitman thinks?

I can’t answer these questions for you, anon. Right now, to the many people who have viewed the asks you’ve sent on this subject, it seems you were just looking for a fight (which I’m really, really hoping you weren’t!), and that’s not a fandom environment anyone wants to foster. But if you truly wanted to know…

Wouldn’t you have taken “I don’t care about VAs” as an answer?

#amy answers #anon #i really hope you weren't just trying to fight anon :( #like!! why can't we all just be more chill!! #whitman's thoughts do Not impact /any/ of us personally #let's all relax read some fics rb some art #we have the range babey 😎

[dahniwitchoflight]

Candy 37-End

Vriska isn’t wrong when she’s picturing Earth C’s Sky as being like Skaia, where you see in the cloud’s of the sky what is real and canon, which is exactly what’s happening here in this Sky of Earth C, because everything, even the visions in the clouds, are being bent unconsciously to John’s will.

If John were a much more selfish person, willing to take and enjoy everything he ever wanted, this would be a paradise to him, thank god he’s not though, but still sucks to be him

Love the infinite character loop that is the character arc of “Vriska” that she just can’t seem to escape btw

“Asshole teenager does horrible things in the name of role model who she thinks is cool but is actually terrible and another version of herself from another life and its only once she falls into her own bullshit does she realize life could have been different, been better”

Maybe this would all be different if all these Baby Vriska’s didn’t choose asshole versions of themselves as a role model like some kind of terrible self fulfilling prophecy

I don’t messaging Terezi is gonna work, pretty sure she’s dead, but Vriska doesn’t know that, she skipped right past the latest conversation and went to the top didn’t she? yup

Good to see that, from Roxy’s point of view, she didn’t just stop existing, she did just naturally swerve into the kind of person John would like, but from John’s point of view and what he knows, it did make her feel like some kind of ingenuine puppet. Sad to see that once again, she just wanted John to be happy, but her attempts, since they were coming from her, would just be futile in his eyes due to the context of the situation they found themselves in

But hilariously ironic if it was literally just the normal relationship troubles of becoming estranged from him because he was becoming estranged from her because he stopped treating her like a real person because he felt like she wasn't real

when from your own perspective, yourself is always real. From Roxy’s perspective, she could be real while no one else isn’t, it kind of a side effect of reality feeling like it’s being warped, everything gets dilated and stretched to kind of orbit around only your own perspective and you get disconnected to everything else

and of course, you can’t help but think, is Roxy only acting real NOW because John and thus the narrative finally really wants her to be? It’s a circumstantial question without an answer, it really depends on which perspective is being written from and who you ask

but still, the one factor no one can really account for is the house juju, while they are all god tier players with ultimate selves, John has retcon power, and that IS an advantage over everyone else’s wills, whether anyone likes it or is aware of it or not

it just happens that due to John’s non interference policy as much as possible, the changes were more subtle and thus no matter how warped, it was “well written” is the only way to explain it

so even if Roxy is a puppet or a real person, she is indistinguishable from either one

But can’t forget that Skaia is not entirely neutral either, it contains an author with a narrative and an opinion, who may be doing his best to remove himself just like John but did it is still one version of events over others, Hussie himself

that’s the real seemingly inescapable canon that makes things feel right or wrong or real or fake, whatever Hussie thinks is so

and maybe because Hussie was their original creators, some part of their cores will always be tugged back to his vision in some way, that piece of narrative influence that gives an unfair sway to one thing over another

Just like the what the cursor does to John

like Roxy is 100% accurate in what she’s saying in Candy too, IF everything was equal in it’s influence, if Skaia was a pool of everyone’s wills and not the will of just one man doing his best to not be that

Once again, the biggest problem in the story is the plothole of the cursor, but that’s one Hussie can’t be the one to solve or else the problem of influence just continues on in his own work

So it makes sense to do what he’s done so far and give the reigns over in ways to others, have other people write the epilogues, have other people in the hand of creation for things like hiveswap and pesterquest

and yknow of course fandom and audience, but things that come from the audience won’t ever be real and canon, like fanfiction won’t solve this problem either, no one would ever really accept that

it has to be a scenario where the originator entrusts decisions to other people aka Hussie hires an official team to do something and then they take the reigns from there

WhatPumpkin, maybe without Hussie, has to be the one to solve the plothole of the cursor to everything to feel truly “right”

maybe not do everything themselves obviously, but that problem has to be solved by someone who isn’t Hussie, that’s what I feel

That’s what I think, that feels acceptable and satisfying to me

mood whiplash incoming:

OBAMA?? oh my god damn fucking fuck

this is how he shows up in the epilogues, goddammit

I’ll be honest, while this is hilarious as a joke, it’s actually very derailing to the narrative

It feels like something that should be happening in sweet bro and hella jeff, not Homestuck

Like I enjoy it, but I know it’s wrong here, not supposed to be happening

This is absolutely a test for the audience, basically a dare, how much are we willing to accept as “Canon”? outright challenging us to change the narrative now

because if we justify changing this, we can justify changing other things, and then that basically opens the floodgates

That’s honestly probably what a lot of the content in these epilogues was meant to be, each thing presenting more and more of a challenge to swallow as real, how much can we take before we decided enough is enough and start making it different?

I actually hit that a while ago with nearly every implied sexual escapade of Gamzee’s none of them are things I want to be in Homestuck proper straight up I can think of no good sexual relationship Gamzee has ever had in the history of Homestuck

I actually don’t like where this is going though, like it was shock but now it’s getting weird vibes

The fated place of this planet is to be a cherub nest for the big bad (and also Calliope)

Why is Obama so concerned about the fate of where it’s meant to end up at? Nowhere good is the answer. And also his speech is starting to sound vaguely Dirk like or at least Dirk justifying and I don’t like how it’s taking all of Dave’s attention like he’s getting a sudden pump of that Dirk withdrawal.

“OBAMA: Haven’t you been improved by the knowledge of what you grew up to be in my time? Can you really say you’d be what you are today without the memory of him?”

Which “Him”? because if you say Dirk I don’t trust like that

 All of this is such a lampshade though about the whole idea of the narrative, that’s so glaringly clear.

Obama was found by Adventuring Grandpa Jake as a kid??? I mean, sure, why not, I guess all of humanity is related to Jake technically just like the rest of the god tiers

Oh wow their just straight up making Obama another “Kid of Jake” story like Jade and Joey, “lonely kid lives on island, distantly related to an old man version of Jake English, turns out the Island holds some secret that unlocks the key to more knowledge.”

Also there making it pretty clear that the rest of the Earth Kids DO have SOME power to influence reality, since John wouldn’t think of this, I really don’t think he would, it’s just that when John is involved his everything outweighs everything

Even now it goes back to the shades John gave him over and over.

“OBAMA: I think Dirk would be proud if he could see how you turned out.

OBAMA: In fact, I know it.“

I DON’T TRUST LIKE THAT I DON’T TRUST LIKE THAT

I’m also really actually uncomfortable with how far this joke is going, like, Obama is a real person outside of homestuck, putting all this shit into his mouth just feels really in bad taste, like it’s taking the joke of how much Dave ironically likes Obama way waaay too far

“OBAMA: Believing is the key to understanding the truth underlying the words, the truth underlying the ideas they represent, and the truth underlying who we are as individuals.

OBAMA: The power of belief, the power of Hope, that’s what endows that which is intangible, ephemeral, or uncertain with a sense of reality.

OBAMA: It brings focus to the insubstantial, the mirages of the mind, the multiplicity of what is possible, of what could be, and isolates it—concentrates it—to turn it into that which is.OBAMA: And the result of that, Dave, is what we call truth.“

This is neat though, basically confirming Hope as a power of Reality has a direct ties to Canonical Truth

“The only thing he knows is he needs to listen carefully to every precious syllable. To listen with his ears, his heart, his entire being.“

Is the Ultimate Self of Dirk actually just extending to like, every person who potentially holds his DNA now??? Like, as one of the ecto progenitors of Mankind itself like how Grandpa Adventure Jake was implying??

Because that’s a terrifying thought

or maybe not, this Obama IS a constructed hologram, I forgot, pull back the reigns, Dirk could have easily constructed a robo-holo version of himself to look and act a fake story of Obama just for Dave’s sake

that makes more sense

“OBAMA: He taught me about many things. Combat, philosophy, life, love... “

Yup there is no way this isn’t some version of Dirk like a strange Obama-fied autoresponder

Okay, bad taste jokes aside about using Obama as a literary device going a bit to far

Dirk using that phrase as like, it seems to be confirmation that Dirk feels a need to “train” his romantic partners and people around him to be the people he wants them to be, servants for him and that’s so gross

“ The sliding panel reveals a recess, and in the recess stands a robot. It’s a gleaming, polished silver replica of Dave, but without shades. It stands totally still, unpowered. Dave struggles to make sense of what he’s looking at. “

IT’S A TRAP DON’T GO INTO THE ROBOT BODY THAT NEVER WORKS OUT FOR ANYONE.

IT IS *LITERALLY* CONSTRUCTING A VERSION OF ANOTHER PERSON TO WHATEVER IT IS YOU WANT THEM TO BE.

God, you never really get just how control freak and obsessive it is to literally want to remake every single cell of a person and program them obsessively so that they do whatever it is that you want while also seeming indistinguishable from themselves, perfectly programmed and perfectly written

I say this not without missing the irony that doing that is exactly what Hussie wants all of us to do as well, and even I think things could be better written but that’s still hubris too isn’t it?

Calling it a choice for Dave even now rings so entirely hollow, because Dave is being written here like he would never choose anything else, so really when did he ever have a choice?

The fact that Obama seems to actually have hope powers and the way that his backstory included that note about he was related to a version of Jake English though more just makes me think Dirk’s Ultimate self got a hold of Jake’s as well, and this holobama is more just Jake English twisted incomprehensibly into another being by Dirk Strider

"Dave’s eyes widen, his mouth opens as if to scream, but he doesn’t make a sound. Infinite experience flows through his consciousness, an unimpeded torrent of raw potentiality. He sees everything. The roads not taken, the lives not lived, the thoughts, desires, fears all unacted upon. The Doomed Daves, the Davesprites, the Davepetas, life with Jade, life with Karkat, life with both, life with neither. It’s like soaring through the clouds at supersonic speed, too quickly to make out the shape of any single puffy nimbus, like a breakneck jaunt through Skaia. Huge clouds rushing by, small ones, clouds with visions, empty clouds, white clouds, then a great dark one. And then, the briefest possible glimpses—most too fleeting to be noticed—of Dirk. “

You know I just realized something too, In it’s own Messed up Way, I can see how Dirk think’s what he’s doing might be good too

if the natural conclusion I came to is that all the characters themselves need to take a swill of that house cursor thing to all be on equal footing and decide together how they want the story to be

Dirk may think he’s technically doing the same thing by unlocking everyone’s ultimate selves and merging them into his

because then it is technically every version of all of his friends all making a decision together, not just his friends, all the aspects of reality itself

except their all strapped to his will and only his will

theyre not making decisions together, theyre making decisions together for Dirk how Dirk wants is to be

they all have to have equal footing and they all can’t decide how each other’s lives are going to be

If they all get canon imbibing power and want to remake homestuck, they have to only be able to only affect their own lives, nothing more, or we get this problem

and well, Dirk just got Dave’s Ultimate self now

“JADE: as it happens, this projection within me serves as a stable conceptual foothold from which i can sense and resist another growing threat which is determined to jeopardize the canonical plane of reality.”

So again if it hasn’t already been confirmed before, Dirk doesn’t want to uphold Homestuck’s “Canon” he wants to upend it for his own purposes.

Neither Meat or Candy is Canon, but both are affecting it.

Oh cool, Alltie is actually going into with Aradia how the narrative can be condensed in such a way that they can then be applied loosely in multiple different ways, just like how I was talking about before with how Vriska’s arc seems to loop around

haha I wonder if I can do the same thing

“A brat admires an asshole, becomes one, and regrets it.”

wait I can do better

“A brat imitates an asshole and regrets it.”

that was actually a neat little exercise in how entirely strip something of all of it’s context in order to broadly apply it to multiple scenarios. Stripping the cloth in order to create a narrative thread. 

“It’s a feather, burnt at the edges, flickering orange and green.”

Oh Ultimate Dirk’s definitely eaten Ultimate Jake

“JADE: consume his body.

JADE: absorb his essence.

JADE: and then using this host, i will generate enough power to move beyond the staggering pull of the event horizon encasing this world.

JADE: a prison of my own making, which can be escaped only through the supreme unification with my other half.

JADE: it is crucial to the cosmos that i succeed.

JADE: the prince of heart has to be stopped.“

Ah, Okay, now I understand that ending part of Meat, that was actually the end of Candy, so now I assume the ending of Meat is gonna happen here on the next page?

Also, Alltie, I dunno if merging with LE is exactly the thing you want to be doing here, unless you think you can win the battle of wills on the ultimate self scale, absorbing Dirk into you instead?

You probably can, I mean, even if Dirk is an especially manipulative human given godlike power to manifest his reality and put his will over countless other only humans so far

You are a Cherub who has a specific biological advantage on this field over overturning wills and you also have godlike cosmic power

Is that why our Callie is so afraid of you? Because your soul and will and ultimate self is just as much of an all consuming black hole as what you physically became? If she gets too close she’ll stop being her, pulled in by your inescapable will?

Alright, so this is Meat PostScript technically

Now I kinda wanna deconstruct the label of Post Script here though

If “Intermission” actually means “oops the story got to long, here’s a break.” but actually continues on with it’s own story not actually providing a break from long winded scripts but instead fighting with it for space and attention

If “Epilogue” actually means “oops, forgot some story, here’s some more.” not actually being an ending chapter but a tell of more to come, a bridge between stories

Does “Post Script” it’s its meaning of “After Story” an addition, a sequel coming after the original story

actually just mean “oops, I wrote the wrong story, here’s a different one”?

after all, a sequel to a story, is actually just writing a different story altogether, but one still related to the original

and why write a different story if the one you already wrote was enough?

so you think a sequel is going to be a sequel, because of the name, a different story, happening after the first, like were leaving what happened in Homestuck behind us

but in actuality it’s the same story, told in a different better way

I’m still harping on that Homestuck 2.0 is just gonna be the story of Homestuck but written differently this time, top to bottom front to end nice and neat using one elegant stroke the whole way through

Anyway one sec while I quickly reread the last actual chapter of meat before I read this postcript because I want it be fresh in my mind

Okay Dirk’s leaving at lightspeed in a spaceship with Rose and the rest of the gang are being directed by essentially a geiger counter/shield for Dirk’s presence in Jade’s body

Oh right, now I’m remembering bloody Jade tearing into flesh (LE’s flesh I guess) while Aradia watches and then her and Robot Dave and Aradia all rocket into that gaping hole, so I guess Robo-Dave might not be all that Dirk influenced? Or that Dirk sent him specifically to keep tabs on Alltie, subtly, they didn’t exactly greet eachother or interact at all or wait for him, so they don’t seem totally allied. 

Then following Dirk’s spaceship:

It looks like a shark? Interesting

Considering Void a great Ocean, Shark is fitting a predator of that Ocean

Like how the end of Meat had someone tearing into Meat viciously

and now the end of Candy has someone daintily mowing down on a bowl of Candy, very sour candy it seems

Rose doesn’t seem to happy in a robo-body. It’s pretty clear she’s struggling to hold on to any sort of humanity or normalcy, which is interesting, if she’s so unhappy and doesn’t consider herself Dirk’s servant, why is she still with him?

So something important is needed for her flesh body, something that will have something to do with canon I suppose. Tiara imagery never bodes well, so I’m guessing it’s not just moving her consciousness over its probably also controlling it somehow

It sure makes princess imagery ominous anyway, Rose is a right sleeping beauty, or maybe a snow white if the glass coffin is anything to go by.

Oh, theyre intentionally creating a new session of Sburb?

“New Race” so maybe not humans, trolls or cherubs? Interesting, still could be new human race though

Gotta love how it ends on a dismissive tone from Dirk lol

So, is Rose all in on the idea of starting up a new session for some purpose?

and what does her flesh body have to do with it?

The only thing I can think of is that it’s meant to be a vessel for something, and right now the only person using flesh vessels on Dirk’s radar is Alltie

Do they mean to trap her in Rose’s body for some reason? and through that control her in some way?

I can’t help but think of Callie’s word again, that this is not a purple rose, but a red rose dyed blue, Alltie is certainly Red, and in Rose she’d be a “Red Rose” like how currently in Jade she makes a “Red Jade”

Dying her Blue, using Candy to control her then? Her one weakness was basically her eternal reverence for the CandyPop which if Alltie ever took part of would be the one time she’d basically lose control and think there was no problem with anything, putting her into her own drugged haze of not caring, basically the only thing you could do to stop her if you wanted to

As for this new session of SBURB, I can only guess that it’s importance lies as their attempt to rewrite their own story top to bottom starting from Humanity as a whole, only this time it’s Dirk writing everything not Hussie

So Dirk really is doing the Doc Scratch thing like with Alternia

Again, he thinks he’s doing the right thing, but he’s just totally wrong about it

That’s it then for the “Epilogues” it was a good read!

Can’t wait for the “Sequel” :)

#Homestuck #Meat or Candy

[beansthembo]

I need to do a bit of a vent about the new Star Wars movie. Spoilers below.

I’m having some trouble processing what happened. If you’re reading this, you probably are interested in my opinion on it, and you probably also know that I was a big fan of The Last Jedi. By no means was it a perfect movie, but it took the chance of distancing itself from the rest of the series by springing off of what was established in TFA and building something new. A lot of people weren’t too pleased by this, and there are plenty of legitimate criticisms, but being completely transparent, I can’t listen to most critics of it because most of the people I know in real life who didn’t like it are racist or misogynistic.

TLJ tried to introduce people to the idea that, in reference to the new canon, just because it’s new and different, doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Kylo’s/Ben’s line, “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to,” finds meaning in this, though a bit extreme. TLJ was going to learn from the past films and move on, for better or worse. TROS is determined to wallow in its past. As a lifetime fan of Star Wars, I can’t bring myself to hate it outright, like many vocal critics of TLJ, but I find myself severely disappointed by the decisions made in it.

I’ve honestly spent too much time composing those last paragraphs, as if I’m a legit critic or reviewer. I’m just kind of going to present my nitpicks and criticisms as they come to me.

So, first a few nitpicks:

-The opening crawl seems... poorly composed to me. The first line is “The dead speak!” Correct me if I’m wrong, but they don’t usually use exclamations in the opening crawls. I know I just spent the last couple of paragraphs defending new ideas, but the opening crawl always seemed as though they were meant to present information formally from a neutral perspective. Not a major criticism, but it did bother me a bit.

-What happened to Kyle’s TIE Silencer? I mean, it could’ve been destroyed in the previous movie, but I don’t really remember that happening. Either way, it seemed to me that they made the decision to make his ship more similar to the Interceptor, as, like, a ‘safer’ choice, but I don’t see why they couldn’t have just had the same ship.

-The Falcon has a round dish again? You know, now that I’m thinking of it, the dish may have been blasted off in TLJ. I just was surprised by that.

I may add to that list later. the actual problems I had were:

-Rey is sort of obsessed with ‘earning’ Luke’s (and Anakin’s) old lightsaber. Which has been repaired, by the way. She doesn’t actually ‘own’ it, even though she’s been using it for the past two movies, she’s just been borrowing it from Leia. I was really looking forward to seeing her make her own (or already have her own) lightsaber, which she does, but she waits until the end of the movie to show it off. And it’s rad as hell! Wtf? why couldn’t she have been using that the whole time! It’s one of my favorite lightsaber designs now and they show it for a whole two seconds!

-They finally give Snoke a backstory, and it’s... that he was Palpatine’s puppet the whole time. I’m gonna say, not the worst backstory they could have done, but they really tried to make him just not matter at all. I mean, yeah, the way he was done off with in TLJ was pretty unceremonious, but I always felt that meant that the real big bad was meant to be Kyle all along. Instead, the Skywalker saga becomes the Palpatine saga. I’m not opposed to the concept of Palpatine surviving and attempting to resurrect the Sith, but that’s something I’d expect from a novel, not the main story of the final movie in the franchise. And, honestly, regardless of whether or not Snoke was secretly Plagueis, I always thought he was supposed to be some other ye olde sith master, not just some sort of failed clone(?)

-Kyle rebuilds his fuUcking helmet. Why? What purpose does it serve? He doesn’t even wear it most of the time. The longest period he wears it is when the First Order officers comment on it. He’s just being dramatic. Which, I suppose, would be in character, but after the scene in which he shatters it in TLJ, it seems pointless.

-Another nitpick, but when they expand upon Rey and Kyle’s ability to connect through the force, it seems a little... disjointed. I do like that they took the time to expand upon that, even though I thought Rey closing the Falcon’s ramp on him at the end of TLJ was symbolic of her cutting him off, the way they presented it seemed, well, off. Like, it makes sense if you take it at face value, but if you start to think about it at all, it sort of... weird. I dunno how to describe it. Like, they interact with each other’s environments, but can’t see what they can interact with until they interact with it, and they can trade items, and... yeah.

-The big one... Rey’s a Palpatine. Her father was Sheev’s son. (When did that happen, huh? Who’d want to get with that wrinkly mess?) Why the everloving fuck couldn’t Rey just have been Rey? Why did she have to be related to someone existing in the franchise already? JJ’s going around saying that this was his plan the whole time, which is bull fucking shit, because otherwise they would have communicated this to Ryan, and I’m pretty sure TROS was originally going to have another director in the first place, and ALSO I’m pretty sure JJ did say at some point that Rey’s parents only mattered to her. While I’m on the topic of fan theories and origins, nobody in the movies was ever concerned about who Snoke really was. They knew who he was-the Bad Guy. Nobody ever cared who the Emperor really was in 1983, so why was Snoke’s death and non-explained origins such a big deal? I have more conflicted thoughts than I can even put down, so i’m gonna move on.

-Oh, before I forget, they just completely write off Rose. She’s present, but they minimize her screen time. I get that a lot of people didn’t like her, and there are some valid criticisms of her that aren’t completely rooted in racism and misogyny, but I never found any problem with her. I actually felt she was pretty relatable. She meets a hero, trips over her own words, and then learns why you should never meet your heroes. Disillusioned, she’s about to turn him in but they come up with another plan, and together they visit a world full of people she joined the Resistance to get away from. I’ve got that same feeling about those sorts of things-while I do enjoy a decent amount of privilege, I still, you know, fight against the system that gave it to me. And I can’t stand to see people abuse others just because they don’t have that privilege, so hearing her speech about wanting to punch a hole through that city did mean a lot at some level. Then, at the end, when she’s like, “this is how we win. Not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love,” I can even relate to that. It’s when, like, you explain to a kid how you hate something, and they jump on the bandwagon, and get real angsty, and then you’re like, “no no no that’s not what I wanted you to learn!” It’s hard to describe it with my rapidly deteriorating attention, but I never thought she was a bad character.

-DJ wasn’t in it! I mean, he wasn’t the most important character, but I still wanted to see him again.

-They have this fake out where they pretend Chewie was dead for a whole 20 seconds. I totally called it, too-the ship he was supposedly in blew up (or rather, Rey blew it up with force lightning accidentally), but since he didn’t die on screen in front of us, I knew it had to be a fake out. And it seems like the only reason for that was so they can find out that Hugs was the traitor, who is only betraying the First Order to see Kyle lose, which I mean fair, but then he’s unceremoniously killed off by the new big officer guy who we’ve never seen before but was supposedly one of the Emperor’s top men. I don’t think his name was even mentioned in the movie-or if it was, it had zero staying power. Also, they have this part where Threepio had his memory erased for a while before being backed up by Artoo. The lead up to it was very dramatic- Threepio’s generally been a comic relief character up to this point, and now he’s got to give his life for the cause (He had a translation of some Sith runes in his memory, but his programming prevented him from saying the translation aloud, and his memory needed to be wiped in order to access it), but as soon as his memory is wiped they do not give two shits that one of their best friends basically died right in front of them. Then Artoo brings him back and still no one cares.

-Poe and Finn do have a nice dynamic in the movie, but then we find one of Poe’s exes and he starts flirting with her and its like no Poe your husband’s right tHERE POE DON’T DO IT (and don’t dismiss this as shipper nonsense because John Boyega and Oscar Isaac both wanted FinnPoe to be a thing and acted through the movies like it was already don’t you say this is the first you’re hearing of this)

-The way that Rey defeats Palpatine is by crossing lightsabers in front of him to deflect his lightning?

-Reylo is canon NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (Insert the gif of Vader yelling no at the end of ROTS)

-Also why does it always have to be a planet destroying superweapon? I know legends did that a lot but there doesn’t always have to be one for there to be stakes.

I think there was other stuff, but my brain is too scattered at this point to make any more cohesive thoughts. I mean, there was a lot of stuff I did like about it- Lando’s back! And i think Wedge is too, but he was on screen for about a second and a half, so I couldn’t tell. It was confirmed that Leia had force training, and even had a lightsaber! And I do like that they’re taking some inspiration from Legends, but I’m pretty sure Dark Empire was not one of the most popular series’ from it. I also did like Ben seeing a vision of Han; It’s not entirely clear if it was a force ghost thing (I am of the belief that Han was at leas a little force sensitive) or if it was just Ben sort of coming to terms with his actions, but the scene was pretty well done in my opinion. Also, Rey taking the name Skywalker at the end. That was nice, like she chose her family.

Now I just remembered a couple of things-Finn was basically confirmed to be force sensitive, but the way they did it felt very ham-fisted. Like, they weren’t like “he felt a disturbance wink wink nudge nudge,” they were like “HERE IS SOME SUBTEXT THAT ISN’T ACTUALLY SUBTEXT SEE HERE” like they never outright say it but it would have been less insulting if they did. Also, they introduced a force healing thing, which has been a more of a thing in the games, but we’ve never seen it on screen before. But like, Rey dies at the end and Ben brings her back and then [REDACTED] and then he dies, even though, like, a lot of things. I don’t know I’ve been typing for way too long I need off.

Anyway, it felt good to vent, thanks for reading if you did. I give TROS 6.5/10.

#Star Wars #star wars spoilers #the rise of skywalker #the rise of skywalker spoilers #vent