#so just don't think about the implications

[jjunae]

NYC ⸺ sjy

❔ spiderman pays you a visit 〡 spiderman!jake x fmr warnings! lil implications of skinship, swearing ( LIBRARY )

‘are you upset?’

‘no, of course not. do i look upset?’ you asked, teeth grit, while you aggressively flipped through the pages of your book, hardly bothered to spare a glance towards his direction.

‘i don't know. pretty, can you look at me?’ jake pleaded, and you closed the textbook shut, eyes flitting towards the window. he was always there, in his red and blue, web-themed suit. you’d, eventually, grown a habit of leaving it open, just for him. 

‘don’t call me that.’

‘i knew you were mad. i promise, i'm not hurt,’ he said, his hand reaching to pull the mask off his face. you instantly jumped off your bed, scrambling over to him, to drag him inside your room. you slammed the shutters down, before turning to face him. 

‘are you fucking stupid? i’ve told you a million times! don’t pull it off, even if you’re just out my window,’ you snapped. it was evident you were irritable.  

‘sorry,’ he muttered, while he flung the cloth away. 

‘don’t throw your shit around my room,’ you grumbled, while he bent over to pick up the mask off your floor, quietly mouthing a “sorry”, yet again. 

you looked him up and down, your eyes scanning every inch of his body. he had a bloodied lip, and a couple of scrapes and cuts. not too much, you thought, while pulling out the first-aid box you’d kept for him. 

‘sit,’ you instructed, and so he did. he knew exactly where to sit; he’d been in this room at least a million times, for this very reason.  

‘i’m sorry,’ he started, causing you to furrow your brows. 

‘i really am. i didn’t mean to stand you up, something was happening down at oscorp, and you know jay works there, so i-’

‘wait. you think i’m upset because you stood me up?’ you cut him off, with a tilt of your head. 

‘yeah? i know you’d got us reservations, and i’m so sorry. i know it meant a lot to you, so i’ll make it up to you,’ he swore, a hint of confusion seeping into his eyes. 

‘jake, i’m not upset about that. i know you have a duty to fulfill,’ you murmured, hand reaching to push back the sweaty strands of hair falling over his forehead, ‘it’s just, i’m always so worried. i know i’m being silly, but i’m scared for you. i don’t know what’s happening to you, or what you’re doing. is it so hard to tell me where you are?’ you asked, your voice slightly quivering. 

‘no, i don’t like calling you. what if someone traces your number through my call records? i don’t want your safety to be compromised, but i guess that doesn't make sense, yeah? i mean, you’re always exposed to danger, because you’re close to me,’ he finished, with an awkward chuckle. 

‘i chose to be with you, even though i knew about you being spiderman. it was my choice, so quit acting like a hero; like you’re responsible for me, all the damn time. i’m my own human,’ you spat, grabbing him by his cheeks, looking into his eyes.

a part of you knew, he could’ve stopped your hand if he wanted to, but he didn’t. he was trying to understand you, though it was hard for him. god, if only he knew how much you loved him. 

‘okay,’ he said, slowly. 

‘okay,’ you nodded, letting go of him, and you both maintained a comfortable silence, while you patched up his cuts. 

‘what about my kiss?’ he complained, after a pause. it was (another) habit you had, kissing him after you were done helping him out.  

‘you’ll get it. be patient, spider-boy.’  

and, patient he was. sim jaeyun returned home as a happy man, with pink-colored smudges imprinted on his cheeks.

#( ᐢ..ᐢ ) . . . 𝓌orks #enhypen #enhypen scenarios #enhypen imagines #enhypen fluff #enhypen fanfics #enhypen fanfic #enhypen fanfiction #enhypen oneshots #enhypen drabbles #enhypen x reader #enhypen x y/n #enhypen angst #enhypen jake #enhypen jake imagines #enhypen jake sim #enhypen jake x reader #jake sim #jake sim imagines #jake sim drabbles #jake sim x reader #jake x reader #jake imagines #sim jaeyun #sim jaeyun x reader #enhypen headcanons #jake fluff #jake fanfic #jake oneshot #jake sim fluff

[super-who-locked-me-in-here]

I think the thing that I've taken away from this panel is that it's okay if you don't like your work because there are people who will love it.

And I didn't take that away because there was any implication that Hugh or Mads disliked the work they did on Hannibal but because they so obviously loved it but even they couldn't remember all the details of the things they loved. Hugh wouldn't stop talking about S1EP2 Amuse-Bouche but he could not for the life of him remember Eldon Stammets' name, and Mads and Hugh had to be reminded of Donald Sutcliffe's name.

And those details of the panel stood out to me because it's like wow I may forget about something I've written or recorded or drawn, but someone somewhere out there, even if it's just one person, probably loved what I made even more than I did and they might've committed parts of my work to memory that I've completely forgotten about or thought were insignificant.

I guess the panel just reminded me how thankful I am for fandom spaces and the fannibal community and just generally people who are kind and uplifting and share what they love with each other.

#hannibal #hannibal reunion #mads mikkelsen #hugh dancy #c2e2 #dot says #fannibals

[cnl0400]

WH KDKDLXLLSLSÑÑS⁉️⁉️

WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS MEAN ‼️‼️

#obey me #obey me nightbringer #obey me thirteen #NO FUCKING WAYYY #🤯🤯🤯🤯 #🤨🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈 #i can't fucking believe it you just can't drop this on me SOLMARE‼️‼️ #if this doesn't mean what I think it means I'm going to kms #this is so fucking cute omggg #She enjoys hanging with us more than their job as a reaper... I don't want to think about the implications 🥲💔

[max1461]

I think in general people are too impressed by "paradoxes" and "unintuitive truths" and stuff from science and mathematics, e.g. Gödel's incompleteness theorems, the Banach-Tarski paradox, quantum mechanics...

This is part of my whole "people believe too much" thing. People commit themselves to too many strong general principles and too many implications between ideas. The average person should be more "passively skeptical". That is to say, they don't need to go out of their way to doubt or debunk things, they should just in general take a more "I dunno" stance towards the world; they should be more inclined by default to suspend judgement on things, including on the truth per se of ideas that they have decided to adopt as working best-guesses at the truth.

Coming at this the other way: in practice, life requires us to commit to all kinds of beliefs in order to figure out what to do in various circumstances. But I feel like a vastly underrated observation is that you don't have to really believe these commitments in any deep sense. You can be more casual, more willing to say "this seems like the most likely thing at the moment, so I'll go with it for now, but idk if it's really true". This is more of a posture towards ideas than a proposition in itself. Most people are willing to entertain the concept of doubt, but it's almost about... how fluidly you entertain it? Anyway, I think this posture of casual skepticism has many epistemic benefits.

The point I was making about "paradoxes" and so on, though, is like... ok, it was reasonable based on what was known about physics in the 19th century to adopt this view of the world as made up of little billiard balls with definite positions and momenta and all that, progressing according to clockwork rules. I think if I had been alive then, I too would have adopted that as my working best guess about how the world is. But I don't think I would've have been that committed to it. I mean it's purely an empirical thing, right—"huh, sure looks like the world is made up of little billiard balls progressing according to clockwork rules". And anyway, I don't really think any of the concrete claims of quantum mechanics are that unintuitive or philosophically troubling or whatever, unless you start out weirdly committed to this billiard ball idea. If you had a more casual stance towards it to begin with, I don't think QM would have been such a shock.

I mean, I guess I do think QM was (probably) justifiably surprising, but not for the reasons most people think that. Not because of its "deeper philosophical implications" or whatever, which again I think are not that big a deal. Just for the reason that the billiard ball idea worked really well for a long time and seemed to have a lot of success and (potential) explanatory power, so seeing it overturned, if you're a specialist familiar with the area, seems like very reasonable cause for a "whoa moment". But anyway, in light of this, I'm tempted to call it "surprising in a mundane way" rather than surprising in a deep way. And I guess my further feeling is that with a sufficiently causally skeptical outlook, there isn't very much that actually should be surprising in a deep way. Most surprising stuff should just be like "oh huh".

So anyway the fact that people keep getting deeply surprised at these scientific revelations suggests to me that maybe they have too many commitments.

#navel gazing

[thelakesuite]

The Rusty Lake Story in Bitchass Baby Terms

this is ALL off the top of my head (and i haven't experienced like 10% of it maybe?) so i might be wrong but i don't care right now

the lake itself isn't, like, that well established 'cause it's a mystery game or something so we don't need full exposition. it's some deity-like thing as old as the mammoths (not canon) that eats time. or rather memories that are stored in lil cubes. and it gives its zookeepers immortality so they can keep feeding it. they call themselves the Rulers of the Lake but we all know the truth. 'immortality', or rather enlightenment, is represented by you becoming your fursona and living maybe an extra century. mr. owl's looking for a new heir pretty quick in the process but we'll get to that.

corrupted souls are kinda a byproduct of all this. truly the lake's farts. when a person dies horribly, when their memories get extracted wrong, or when the plot demands it, they become corrupted. corrupted souls still talk, and some of them are even sensible (like your mom oooooh), but generally they're jumpscare beasts or wet little puppies. sometimes both. yes you can get corrupted when you're enlightened, and right now it's the more likely outcome actually. there's a whole 'elixir of immortality' that gets harped on, where one drinker gets corrupted and the other gets enlightened, but that is literally only a thing for roots and a little bit of cave so don't worry about it too much. unless you're making dramatic fanart in which case leverage that shit.

cubes come up a lot in cube escape, believe it or not! black ones are bad memories, white ones are good memories, blue ones are connected to the past in a way that's somehow not a memory, gold ones are connected to the future, red ones only exist in my fangame that ellesian recently unearthed, and green ones are jello yum. also suck it anyone who told me pre-tpw the gold cube thing was unestablished. anyway. it was a big thing mr.'s owl and crow were working on, creating a golden cube (presumably to extend their own lives) as seen in cave, but then one just kinda appears in the past within when albert does electric jujitsu. jury is still out on that.

onto the actual narrative i think.

in paradise, you're mr. owl pre-owling (1790-something). the lake's current suckass servants are your family who tried to sacrifice you to it way back, but your mom took your place for mom reasons. now mom's corrupted and guiding you to... well, to get sacrificed for real this time. but with your powers combined (yes mr. owl was two people, no it is never addressed) you get enlightened and tell your family to fuck off 'cause you're building a hotel on that island now. you also get a tease in the secret ending that dale and laura will do a similar fusion dance to be the lake's next suckass. we've been waiting 6 years for that to happen.

in roots, two alchemist brothers get that elixir shit going (1860-1935). one of them becomes mr. crow, while the other becomes a playable character for a game. and corrupted. you rope your whole bloodline into this, harvesting their body parts (usually after they die from other means, but you totally caused most of their deaths) for a reincarnation ritual involving a magic seed (that also only exists for this game). this is where the best characters come from because rusty lake actually wanted to tell a story with this game. you reincarnate into a woman! don't think about the implications.

in samsara room, the inside scoop of reincarnation is fuckin' weird, dude (1935). the original was made before rusty lake began, so it's not truly part of the narrative, but it got folded in for the fifth anniversary.

in hotel, you do not get the backstory of the third bird man (1890ish). instead, you get to kill mr. owl's family again, but one-on-one as animal people. how did they become animal people? fuck you that's how! mr. owl probably did it on purpose to spite them with shit sandwiches and bullets to the brain. oh, also, there might be an evil twin of mr. rabbit that shows up later.

in arles, you're vincent van gogh. that's it. he's not relevant. but it is funny seing the death date of paul gauguin in the timeline docs.

we're talking about the past within later but the 'past' segment takes place around here. 1926 iirc?

in birthday, your parents get shot (1939). you're going to be an important detective, dale, but like right now you're getting traumatized. or rather you're experiencing that memory, then doing blue cube magic to fix it and have your grandpa shoot evil mr. rabbit instead. is your grandpa actually mr. crow? no. shut up about it now.

in underground blossom, your mom gets abducted (1935-1972 maybe). okay, well, not you. this is the laura backstory metaphor game but you're actually playing as the third bird man who is both her stepdad and her pet. and her grandpa albert takes her mom rose for his own nefarious reincarnation schemes maybe probably. rose is surprisingly okay with it but characters rarely put up a fight with the plot anyway. laura's a lonely kid, starts dating robert, picks up art to soothe her nightmares, gets murked, then reaches some kind of epiphany that we just train ride away from before finding out what actually happens. she's your daughter, damnit, you should support her transcendence. not enlightenment importantly. also, no, laura's life didn't literally happen at train stops, it's just a vehicle. not even a pun don't fucking laugh i see you snickering.

in seasons, you set up a really interesting plotline that gets utterly countered by everything that came after (1960's-80's). it's just laura time in there, and she uncorrupts herself, thank you very much. the series has been struggling with how laura gets her corrupted self to 1980-whatever, and so far only one other game's even taken place after 1972. and that game's the past within which also counters every other plotline. sigh. maybe we're not smart enough for these puzzle games. at least harvey's cute and bird-shaped. key point that's impossible to fuck up is that laura dies in 1972, and it's unclear whether it was a murder or suicide. that's why we get a detective.

in harvey's box and the lake, uh i don't know really (1969). these are early games that are basically spinoffs of seasons. they help with the overarching stuff but aren't much for the narrative at this point. also they suck

in case 23, dale starts investigating laura's death and gets wrapped up in the lake stuff (1972). it was supposed to be just another murder case, but he got too into it and it got too into him, so he gets teleported to the lake chapel and ferried off to. somewhere idk. he goes into an elevator that takes him down memory lane to the lake floor.

in the mill, mr. crow is really trying to clean house before dale gets here (1972). this is where laura gets her ass corrupted by mr. crow, and we find out how the lake eats memories or whatever. it's supposed to overlap with case 23 and it almost succeeds. whatever skrunk is still there is forgiveable, this was the flash era after all.

in theatre, dale learns about ripoff hinduism, goads a man into suicide, and abandons his darling toilet fetus son (1971). it's like birthday again, where this is a memory we're seeing, but that is a light distinction. robert kills himself at the bar, and we take his memories for legal reasons. there's some sixfold wheel we learn about that doesn't matter much.

in the cave, mr. crow still cleans house before dale gets to the Magic Memory Machine (1972). mr. owl's kinda sorta dying, and dale's been elected his son or something. gotta get his mindmeats. you read a textbook about cubes, pilot a submarine to the lakefloor, put dale and laura in a surrogate fusion dance machine, then give dale the golden cube it makes before sending him up the elevator again. hotel did imply something serious was gonna happen when he gets to the top, but that was eight years ago. the devs probably forgot and fell too in love with albert vanderboom in the meantime.

in the white door, robert unkills himself and gets wrong psychiatry (1972). as it turns out, mr. owl has a front business running a for-profit psych ward to extract totally good and healthy memories from people. this one is an actual factual spinoff but is kinda relevant for the greater rusty lake metropolitan area.

in paradox, fuuuuuuuck who knows maaaan, isn't it all just a metaphor? (1972). there's a consensus that none of the stuff that happens in paradox actually happens, and that it's all in dale's head while he's in the Magic Memory Machine from cave. even though there's five different endings, he kinda walks away at the end, which might be the worst ending of the lot. the information's solid though; mr. owl spells out the whole heir thing, there's bits of backstory for dale and laura everywhere. also the movie's sick.

in the past within, albert becomes a mechanical engineer for the sole purpose of making plot armor (1926/1984). yeah, remember that guy from roots? the voodoo murderer who got third-hand alchemy information to make up for his lack of pussy? yeah, he invented a time machine decades ago. and he enlisted his daughter to talk to her past/future self to grow him back to life in 1984. with a gold cube that he somehow got. and somehow his scar is genetically coded in him. and we don't see his wiggly lineart dick. what does he do in 1984? trap his daughter in a time loop then who the fuck knows. he's stuck in his jumpscare beast ways from being corrupted for so long. how did he get corrupted when he was literally buried in the ground and salvaged bones from? next game!

there's an ARG that i never saw a thing of because i hated it, best kept memory. from what i gathered, it was another front scheme for memory harvesting, except in the 2000's. does that mean it's enlightened dale/laura doing this one, since mr. owl presumably passed on the title then turned into a fish? i'd like to know too!

also, a chapter of underground blossom i haven't completed, and a paper-based game coming out within the next two years or whatever. i don't know how much they'll clear up.

toodles!

#rusty lake #basically the cube escape era set up this 1972 arc without actually concluding it #and each of the steam titles have been more distinct stories while still playing to the overall plotline #kinda like spinoffs of spinoffs #a lot of us old folk are bitter that we still haven't resolved 1972 and there isn't much focus with the recent games #like they do just enough building on each other to make it irritating they aren't doing more. especially compared to the cube escapes

[comradekatara]

Can you go a bit more in depth about your post about Sokka in the Burning Rock episode? You said that it was basically his suicide mission, which I agree with. I'd really like to hear more of your thoughts on it.

okay yeah i mean i'm sure i've covered all these points before extensively because i love weaving a tapestry of sokka's fucked up psychological landscape more than anything in the world, but every so often someone will comment on one of my posts and be like "i think you're reaching i think sokka is the paragon of mental health actually" and i'm just like um. did we not all watch the boiling rock. did we just ignore the apotheosis of sokka's entire character arc. like katara's apotheosis in "the southern raiders" is both very overt and impactful and also, arguably, subtler than sokka's, because they don't explicitly spell out the themes every five seconds, but like. if you didn't watch the boiling rock then you cannot understand sokka. and weirdly enough i also believe that zuka shippers are the biggest culprit of this despite this episode being thee zucchini episode because they somehow still have the audacity to characterize sokka as "goofy sunshine who exists to comfort zuko" when like. the entire point is that sokka is legitimately suicidal here and zuko is doing everything in his power to support him thru what is quite literally a mental breakdown. like their relationship is legitimately interesting i don't understand how people have taken that and made it deeply boring.....but i digress.

the boiling rock is quite obviously sokka at his lowest. the worst thing that could ever happen to him – fumbling a mission that was squarely his responsibility, from its conception to its execution, due to not being able to sufficiently compartmentalize his emotions, leading to the mass imprisonment of most of his comrades, including the men of his tribe whom he idolized his entire life and felt immense pressure to live up to, including his father who he is deathly afraid of disappointing (for reasons that have nothing to hakoda being malicious or neglectful in any way, fwiw), and thus being directly implicated in the failure and the harm caused by said failure – happened. sokka is someone who is especially bad at dealing with failure, because a) he is exceptionally talented, and thus has less experience dealing with failure in both minor and major ways, and thus lacks the emotional resilience developed through the process of struggle and growth that normal people (such as, incidentally, zuko) go through and b) to sokka, whose primary desire at all times is to protect and provide for others in any way he possibly can, for someone else to sacrifice themselves for him constitutes a fundamental disruption to the order. there is a perverse wrongness to kya or yue or hakoda or suki making sacrifices on their own volition, because it means that sokka has existentially failed to protect them by martyring himself. like, he somehow feels so guilty about suki being imprisoned that when azula reveals this piece of information to him, it literally distracts him from his own mission. and mind you, there's absolutely no way sokka could have known or been responsible for suki's imprisonment. but he still feels guilty nonetheless. and azula knows that, knows exactly how to twist the knife to make him break, because, well, it's honestly pretty obvious.

sokka obviously cannot retroactively save his mother or his first girlfriend, but he can save his father and his current girlfriend. in "the awakening" aang says he has to restore his honor after the guilt and shame of his failure in ba sing se (aang is also an incurable gifted kid perfectionist, btw, as is azula. posts for another time...) and sokka repeats zuko's line again in this episode, after experiencing the guilt and shame of his failure during the eclipse. the driving motivation of zuko's entire character, feeling like he has failed in some ontological way and must therefore redeem himself or die trying, is reinforced through aang and sokka's respective experiences mirroring that drive. aang goes out in a storm and nearly drowns to redeem himself in some vague, nebulous way, because he isn't thinking rationally. and likewise sokka, who usually always has a plan and always thinks things through, feels that caution and foresight is pointless, because he came up with a genuinely brilliant invasion plan and it didn't work, so clearly there's something wrong with him (just as he always suspected) and no amount of planning even matters, because he's a capital F Failure and always will be. and so he vows to save his father, as he promised him he would when they parted on the day of black sun, or die trying, because if he can't even do that then what is he good for; at least he'll die a martyr, which to him, is basically his ideal situation. because to sokka, dying as a martyr is basically the highest form of fulfilling his purpose (being needed, protecting people) and so if he dies a martyr, then maybe his catastrophic failure (that is entirely his fault and rests squarely on his shoulders btw) can be forgiven. so his plan is basically just to sacrifice himself for his father so that he can die "redeemed." very normal, rational, healthy behavior, i would say.

sidenote, i also see people claim that "the boiling rock" makes sokka look stupid because why wouldn't he take any of the insanely talented benders to a prison in a giant volcano surrounded by a boiling lake, and it's like. sokka literally admits that he's not being rational, that he doesn't think he's going to survive this, that this is not a good idea. it would go against sokka's entire modus operandi if he brought the children who he feels a deep, presiding responsibility to protect on a suicide mission that he's lowkey hoping will fail (because he not so secretly loves courting death. it's like she's the moon or something). he only lets zuko come with him because he doesn't actually care whether zuko lives or dies at this point. sokka has absolutely no faith in zuko whatsoever (and frankly, why would he, zuko has yet to actually prove himself to him. he didn't even kill combustion man; sokka did) so he has no idea that zuko is actually going to be helpful and supportive in a meaningful way. and frankly, if he had known that at the beginning, or even remotely liked zuko as a person, he probably wouldn't have caved so easily when zuko invited himself to join. if he didn't think that zuko was objectively worse than him and basically worthless as a human being, i doubt he would have let himself be so vulnerable with zuko in the first place. meanwhile zuko is eating it up bc he's like "omg he's confiding in me he's letting me help him we're basically besties" because he doesn't actually know sokka well enough to realize that sokka doesn't actually do that shit with people he remotely respects. shit like "my first girlfriend turned into the moon" and "i had a feeling this was going to be a one way trip" are simply not things that sokka would say out loud 98% of the time. the fact that he is admitting something real is not a testament to the trust he places in zuko, but rather the opposite. sokka spilling his guts (you know, for him) to his resident collateral damage, sokka bringing his lovingly crafted space sword on this mission, sokka not even confirming whether or not his father is actually there beforehand – he's simply stopped giving a fuck, he doesn't care whether or not he lives to see another day, because to him, he has nothing left to lose.

but of course, that also isn't true at all. i mean, for one thing, zuko still needs to teach aang firebending, so he does serve a pretty important function to the group, and zuko simply telling him to do hot squats in his absence does not qualify as significant tutelage. but also, even more importantly, sokka is integral to the fabric of the group. when he's gone for a day in "sokka's master" they literally all just shut down and start complaining about how much they miss him (we don't actually see any b-roll of the gaang hanging around the western air temple because the episode is simply too busy for that, so who can say whether the same thing occurs twice). sokka cannot afford to simply die just because his first plan failed, he still has a major responsibility to his friends. fucking idiot. i've said before that sokka has the emotional resilience of like. a pathetic wet newborn kitten caught in the rain. but like, come on man. i mean, as someone who has also suffered from debilitating perfectionist issues and never had to be responsible for a failed military invasion that cost my people their freedom, i do get it, but still. not his best moment. although there is something genuinely admirable about the fact that after he finds suki, he decides that saving suki is enough, and genuinely does want to succeed in his mission going forward. like his love for suki is one of the only things that consistently makes him happy and makes him forget that his greatest dream in life is to be murdered, and that's so beautiful to me.

the entire point of this episode, by the way, is that sokka is wrong. if that isn't obvious. sokka's entire worldview, that he only has value insofar as he exists to provide for others, and if he fails to protect people in any capacity, he has fundamentally failed to uphold the one reason he even exists on this earth, and thus he does not deserve to exist unless he is bearing the weight of everyone's suffering or otherwise proving his worth through sacrificing himself for others, is um. fucking stupid???? and incorrect. and stupid. the thing is, unlike zuko, sokka can't really point to any one person who taught him to see himself this way. he can't just face his father and tell him that his abuse was cruel and wrong, because hakoda is a good father who has never not supported and believed in and encouraged him, done everything in his power to protect him, loved him unconditionally. hakoda has inadvertently damaged sokka's psyche in various ways, of course, but never with any intention to hurt him. like, ozai tried to kill zuko, on multiple occasions. it's a pretty obvious indicator of the primary source of harm in his life. but sokka is equally if not more Unwell, and there's no one single figure he can blame, because his complex lies within a tangled web of what my best friend fanon calls the "massive psychoexistential complex" of the colonized subject. he is being dehumanized not through interpersonal abuse, but through the violent logic of imperialism. sokka's formative traumas inform his psychology as he understands that he only has value insofar as he is protecting the people he loves (namely his sister) from being murdered by imperialists, much like his mother did. and that logic is continually reified through the violence he is being subjected to, until he truly absorbs the belief that his life has no value on its own, that he is genuinely Less than [human] in some fundamental way. which is obviously deeply tragic, but also lowkey kind of comical because he also happens to be the specialest boy in the world, who literally did come up with multiple working escape plans at the world's most secure supermax on the fly, mind you! but whenever anyone tries to point that out, including piandao literally saying "you're the most exceptional and worthy person i've ever met in my life" sokka is just like "um. that is incorrect actually." like NO ONE should depersonalize themselves and feel that their only value lies in their ability to serve and sacrifice themselves for others, but it's especially ironic that sokka literally does not think he has any value as a human being, and yet he is also objectively exceptional. like, do you understand why i adore this character so much. do you.

anyway. the point of this episode isn't that sokka has worth because he's exceptional, either. that's lowkey the point of "sokka's master," but also a) sokka doesn't really internalize it and b) the more important part of the episode lies in how much the gaang just misses his company because they miss their neurotic control freak big brother who makes bad jokes. but even if he couldn't come up with multiple working escape plans on the fly, suki and zuko still stay by his side anyway because they care about him. they are demonstrating that they would risk their safety and possibly even their lives, in the exact way that sokka is always trying to for everyone else, for him. that sokka doesn't need to be the one who always protects everyone else, and that he isn't a failure for letting people who care about him help him and protect him. and sokka has to accept their help, because suki and zuko are simply too stubborn not to force him into letting them support him. they are standing in a literal maximum security prison in the middle of a volcano and they are still choosing to prioritize sokka's mental health and wellbeing, which is honestly crazy, but also exactly what he needs in this moment. suki has known sokka for what, 3 days maximum? yes they're soulmates but like, girl get up. and in zuko's case, "girl get up" is magnified tenfold, because he literally risked his life to go with him to the boiling rock (also largely motivated by the guilt of not being able to stage his own prison break with iroh, but still!) and let himself get imprisoned despite being the fire nation's most wanted criminal, stayed by sokka's side no matter what including getting thrown into a literal torture chamber for him, jumped across a gaping boiling chasm with no guarantee that he'd survive except for the implicit expectation that sokka would catch him on the other side. like zuko is so fucking pussywhipped and sokka didn't even value him as a human being until like halfway through their entire mission. insane.

in conclusion: "the boiling rock" is a beautiful story of the most mentally ill boy on the planet (he took first place ever since jet died rip jet forever in our hearts), and his two ride or die bitches who he met like yesterday, and also his dad, and a casual homophobe named chit sang, all working together to demonstrate to him why killing yourself is a bad idea in most cases, probably. it's also the story of the most insane dyke drama of all time, but that's for another post (of which i have of course made multiple, most recently, here). i said it's the apotheosis of sokka's arc, and by that i mean it's the most overt acknowledgement of what his fundamental issue is, and the first steps one must take in actually resolving it (namely, accepting help and support from your peers and loved ones). do i think that sokka is magically cured after returning from the boiling rock? no, probably not (in fact, because i'm somewhat sick & twisted myself, i like to imagine that once the war ends, he actually gets worse). but he does seem genuinely happier after they return. and maybe that's just bc kyoshi warrior pussy hits different, but like. he was able to rely on others for help (including mai my best friend mai) who supported him unconditionally and prevented him from simply giving up, and that's so incredibly important. that kind of support is always important, to everyone, of course, but as we've established, it's especially important to sokka specifically, at his lowest (quite possibly ever), in this situation. no one has an obligation to risk their life for someone else, but sokka is something who thinks that his purpose is to risk his life for other people (namely katara), and so for people who really have nothing to gain and everything to lose in standing by and promising not to leave without him, to actually show that they support him unconditionally is huge. if sokka has no fans then i am dead and so is suki zuko hakoda toph aang piandao iroh the mechanist etc etc etc. perfect episode <3

#suicide / #writergracethepanda #asks #analysis #sokka #sokkaxsuki #cinematic masterpiece the boiling rock part 2 #(technically i use that tag to talk about maizulee but swagever) #this post is basically just stream of consciousness unstructured rambling so i hope you find it valuable in some way... #at this point i've given up on trying to do Readings of and make Arguments about sokka #and i'm just rambling. i posted a whole fucking. ACTUAL essay about him yesterday and no one read it #but this is not that. this is. who even knows. it's certainly not an ''essay'' #my thesis statement: i love sokka so much #my body paragraphs: hes a weak willed mentally ill fucking IDIOT #just trust me ok. trust the process

[jimraisedmeup]

TICK // 11.1 - against all odds

Rating: mature (angst, language)

Word Count: 1500

☾

How can I just let you walk away? Just let you leave without a trace When I stand here taking every breath, with you You're the only one who really knew me at all

☾

February 14, 1984 - junior year

"Your room smells nice."

"Did you expect it to smell bad? Jesus."

Eddie stared at you, standing in his bedroom. You were looking around, your piercing gaze taking in every little detail, which suddenly made Eddie self-conscious.

"Do you have, like, multiple personalities or something, Buckley? I'm getting whiplash from your mood swings," he muttered, dropping the keys to his van on the dresser.

You scoffed, removing your jacket and scarf before laying them out on his bed. You sat on your jacket like it was some kind of protective barrier between yourself and his bedsheets. 

The strange action made Eddie roll his eyes.

Taking time to look at you, Eddie was sure now that you were going through some shit. Your hair was still pristine as always, but the bags under your eyes made you look like a goddamn ghoul.

"Hot chocolate?" you reminded him, running your hands over the tops of your thighs.

Eddie shifted awkwardly. "Uh, yeah, about that. I don't have any hot chocolate, I just said that to lure you in here."

"Again with the homicidal implications, huh, Munson?"

"I do love implications, sunshine," he snapped back with a quick wink. "Woah, woah!"

Standing up suddenly, you grabbed your jacket and made for the door. On your way out, you stopped in front of Eddie.

"Stop calling me sunshine. I don’t like pet names. I’m not your pet," you spat.

Ignoring the jab at his bruised heart, Eddie sneered at you, second-guessing why he even bothered to bring you there to talk. 

"At this point, I think the only thing I know about you is that you're a total asshole."

You paused in the hallway outside of his bedroom. You seemed defeated, like a car that ran out of gas, like a bird giving up after trying to fly with a broken wing.

"Look, I can tell you're not having a great time lately. Obviously," he said, gesturing towards you as a whole, "you're a little off your rocker."

When you didn't respond, Eddie continued. "Let me help you get back on your rocker. Talk to me, tell me things, anything. Tell me about your shitty parents, tell me about your dirty dreams. I care, you know. I'm not about to judge you."

He worried that his pleading would chase you out the door faster, which honestly could be the last straw for Eddie. There was a fine line between trying to help the girl who was hell bent on pushing everyone away and maintaining his own self-respect.

And then you nearly crumpled to the floor, rubbing your eyes with your fingertips.

"I'm sorry, Eddie. I'm sorry about ghosting you again, for leaving after what happened on New Years."

He hadn't expected an apology from you. Sure, he wanted one - but he sure as hell didn’t expect one. 

And then the very last thing he expected from you was the amount of emotion on your face. A mixture of confusion, exhaustion, just a sprinkle of anger.

Unsure of what to say, Eddie scooted towards you, taking a knee on the floor near where you leaned against the dingy wall.

"It's… it's okay. I can't be mad at you. We're both going through our own shit."

"That's no excuse for me to abandon you. Twice."

Eddie chuckled grimly. "Huh, yeah. You did ditch me twice, didn't you?"

"I'm so sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"You mean, besides being a typical teenage girl?" He tried to joke, but immediately felt bad. "Is it about your parents?"

And finally, after months of wondering what the hell you were hiding, the wall you were desperately holding up… fell down.

☾

How can you just walk away from me? When all I can do is watch you leave 'Cos we've shared the laughter and the pain and even shared the tears You're the only one who really knew me at all

☾

You told him about your family. You told him about your religion, or ex-religion at this point, and how much it affected the dynamic of you and your parent's relationship.

You had been so used to maintaining your stoic appearance even before you changed your mind about religion. Since you were a small girl, your parents scolded you for crying. If you even laughed too loudly in public, your mother would pinch your arm. You're embarrassing yourself, child.

Your parent's recent divorce was the talk of housewives all over Hawkins, but not necessarily as big as Eddie's father's arrest. More like the hottest gossip amongst adults since back when Hopper went off the rails and banged nearly every woman in town.

You felt responsible for the entire thing. You told Robin about your father's affair, who in turn told your mother. The whole situation was a complete cluster fuck, ending up with your mother moving to Indianapolis and now the Buckley sisters only had your shitty dad. Not that either of you really needed him, though.

Confiding in Eddie about Robin's sexuality and your parent's ridicule was the hardest part, a lone tear crawling down your cheek for the first time in years. You had never said the words out loud before, even to Robin herself. It had always been an unspoken thing between you two.

You were a girl with a lot of feelings built up inside of you, anger bubbling at the surface of your impassive image. 

After growing up in a vicious, judgemental household, Eddie could see exactly why you were so distrusting of others.

Especially new, unpredictable people. Like himself.

And Eddie sat in silence, sitting across the narrow hallway from you. He absorbed every word you spoke. He felt like he was receiving a precious gift, a priceless artifact, deserving of being protected inside of his heart forever. 

In your close proximity, the Munson boy wrapped his outstretched legs loosely around your own legs. You didn't seem to mind.

"Thank you for telling me. Thank you for telling me about your life, Buckley," he mumbled, after a long stretch of silence between them. 

"Are you okay?"

"What?" he questioned, puzzled. 

"About your dad…"

Your eyes lifted to meet his, and Eddie felt like he saw a new clarity there. Your fixed stare was lucid, like a dirty window that was cleaned after years of neglect. And hell, Eddie would cut off one of his limbs to become the worn out rag that cleaned that window forever.

It seemed like a weight had been lifted from your shoulders. He admired you, not only for overcoming obstacles in life, but as a physical being. Sour conversation aside, Eddie wanted to hold you. He was still afraid you would run away, disappear for a third time.

"Eddie?"

He coughed, distracted, looking down the hallway. "Oh, um, well… my dad got locked up for dealing drugs. Now I live here. Not much to say about that."

"But are you okay?"

Thinking for a moment, he tapped his boot against your hip. "I'll be okay. I was planning to move here anyways, remember? No more drunken screaming fights, no more locking me out of the house on a weekly basis. No more broken guitars, either," he laughed. "I've actually been keeping my favorite guitar here at my uncle's for years because of that old angry bastard."

"Really?"

"Unfortunately, Buckley, you aren't the only one with dysfunctional parents. Hate to break it to you." He had one more question for you. "But, on a more personal note. Did I do something wrong?"

You fidgeted in your seat on the floor. "What do you mean, exactly?"

"I guess I know better by now than to take these last few months too personally. We're human, life has its ups and downs. But are we still friends? Why did our friendship, or whatever the hell it was, become collateral damage in all of this?"

No answer from you.

"Are you going to stick around this time? I'm developing abandonment issues over here," he smirked.

His grin grew wider as you actually smiled back at him. Your eyes seemed to glow at him from across the hallway.

"I don't know, you tell me. Can I stay?"

"I'll keep you forever if you let me."

The blush on your cheeks was displayed to him in an almost shameless way, like an offering. And then your next question would have knocked him off his feet if he hadn't already been seated on the floor.

"No, I mean can I stay here tonight?"

☾

Take a good look at me now, 'cos I'll still be standin' here And you coming back to me is against all odds It's the chance I've gotta take

☾

(song lyrics credit: "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" by Phil Collins)

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#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie x fem!reader #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fanfiction #eddiemunson #eddie munson x female reader #stranger things #eddie munson slow burn #eddie x you #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x buckley!reader

[sadokasochism]

So there's implications that sometimes the aliens deliberately match up contestants with strong relationships to increase the drama and potentially get more emotional performances out of the contestants.

We also know that Alien Stage is firmly treated as reality show-level entertainment. The Segyein are casually talking about brand deals and critiquing performances while several characters we deeply care about are forced to kill to survive and sometimes watch people they love die in front of them.

During Ivan's pre-Round 6 interview, the interviewer kept needling him about his connection to Till, how Ivan felt about facing him.

The Segyein thought that facing Ivan and Till against eachother would be some dramatic storyline on the side of 'most popular season contestant against rough around the edges musical prodigy, also they have HISTORY 👀', but it actually turned in a tragic display of how this whole system finally broke Till and Ivan sacrificing his guaranteed win to save him anyway, because to Ivan, Till mattered as a person he loved and not as a commodity.

Till finally ended up as docile and broken as his owner had wanted him to be all along, and it took away his love of music while making his performance in alien stage worse (I think Till in round 6 is a good example of how 'tortured artists' don't actually always produce great or profound art from their trauma. The far more likely outcome is they just end up depressed and losing the fucking will to live kfdjks)

Meanwhile Ivan has everything going for him, he's become a popular, profitable commodity through Alien Stage, he always did what he was told and was a model pet-human, and he was guaranteed to win Round 6 with the state Till was in.

But he threw all that away to save Till without a second of hesitation. Ivan was given a choice between losing Till, a pet-human that many Segyein view as inferior and disposable, and the highest quality of life a pet-human can aspire to, and he said 'fuck you, I love him' to everyone watching.

#EVERY ASPECT OF TILL THAT MADE HIM A BAD PET-HUMAN AND UNAPPEALING TO SPONSORS IS SOMETHING THAT IVAN LOVED ABOUT HIM WITH ALL HIS HEART #I'm so normal about this #I just KNOW the PR aliens are spinning this into a freak accident and not a deeply flawed but genuine and heartbreaking expression of love #alien stage #alnst #alien stage ivan #alien stage till #alnst ivan #alnst till #ivantill

[harrowharkwife]

for the character meme: dulcie or cam or pal or a character of ur choosing!!! hehe

!!!!! ty lem!! im gonna do my girl dulcie...

favorite thing about them: honestly just the way she's written- it never fails to make me emotional that she *is* explicitly written as being brave and strong, but tamsyn neatly sidesteps the "inspiration porn" ableist stereotype of writing a character as being brave/strong *because* they are sick. dulcie isn't brave or strong because of her illness. her strength and bravery are explicitly positioned, IMO, as being in response to surviving *ableism* and other people's condescension towards her and mistreatment of her, rather than surviving her illness itself, if that makes sense. her health is just a fact of her life, it's not moralized. which i really, really appreciate. it's a small shift, but it's very meaningful to me.

ALSO deeply special to me: her intentional and careful commitment to boundaries re: The Palamedes Of It All. a refreshing change of pace, as far as these books go vgjtjxdjt

least favorite thing about them: i mean. houser. :/

favorite line: three way tie between "truly, wonderful news for my haters," "i am sick of roses and horny for revenge," and "oops, there i go again, never doing what i'm told"

brOTP: gideon!!!!! i think it's a crying shame they've never met. i think they'd get along tremendously. the whole cytherea gideon thing was Horrid and Awful in so many ways, but it always Extra stings (in an adding-insult-to-injury sort of way) when i think about what it would have been like if gideon had REALLY met dulcinea, and not cyth. dulcie would've been a great friend for her, i think. they'd have been so good at making each other laugh

OTP: honestly these days it's cam? @ palamedes ily but get outta here gayboy it's yuri time now. plus i just love chewing on the concept of cam + comphet, and cam + subconscious internalized misogyny, and cam + gender, and cam + her relationships and interactions with other women. i think there's lots to explore there. camdulcie has a certain "when i was eight i didn't realize i had a crush on the new girl in my grade so i just wrote her a note that said 'get out of my school'" energy about it, To Me

nOTP: idk if i really have one for her, specifically? idk. ianthe or something, fuck it.

random headcanon: stoner. on all levels except physical she is taking fuckall huge bong rips. on the physical level though her lungs suck so i think she'd be a tincture girlie. she's got chronic pain she deserves it. am i projecting? you tell me

unpopular opinion: idk if this is an unpopular opinion exactly, but i always see people referring to thee rejected proposal as being something born primarily out of love/out of romantic intent? and i don't know if that's necessarily how i see it. it was CERTAINLY, and obviously, a factor. but at least from my interpretation of pal's monologue to cytherea at the end there, i get the sense that he had already accepted her boundaries in that regard, because he says he "understood that he was a child." and we also get camilla saying that his motivations in proposing were primarily a means-to-an-end way of getting her off the seventh and letting her die with dignity. iirc her exact words were like "so she could spend what time she had left with people who cared about her." like, don't get me wrong, i think pal is lying to himself if he says that being in love with dulcie wasn't PART of the motivation there. but i find it a lot more interesting in a worldbuilding and social commentary way to interpret the circumstances there as him offering, essentially, to be a hospice doctor at age 19, and marriage being the 'easiest' way to get her off the seventh/planet medical malpractice. there's an imperial misogyny ownership-through-marriage throughline there that's nauseating, as well as the implications re: disability and agency and autonomy, and i think that's all very interesting to explore. i think this view is supported in part by the paldulcie interaction in TUG, where she alludes to the idea that she was cognizant about the impact that bearing witness to death and loss up-close and personal like that changes a person, and that she didn't want to do that to pal and cam, especially given their age. i think it informa dulcie's character and grants her additional narrative agency to look at things from that angle, of her "no" being in reference to *both* the age gap AND her intentional choice to continue suffering on the seventh, rather than put two kids through being hospice caregivers and/or widowers at nineteen– no matter how many times and how sincerely they kept offering, no matter that she would've absolutely had a more peaceful and comfortable end-of-life HAD she accepted his proposal and gone to the sixth to die. i think it says a lot about her as a person, that choice. there's a quiet and meaningful responsibility to her as a person that i find fascinating. and her character is just sooooo firmly rooted in and informed by disability politics, on every level, and i feel like people don't engage with that aspect of her characterization enough!

song i associate with them: ooooh SO many, i have a whole playlist. but i think the biggest ones are

-the drama by kesha ("friday night, get too high, keep checking my pulse, am i dead yet?" / "in the next life i wanna come back, as a housecat as a housecat! i'd sleep and play in the sun, i'd be a fuckin' cute son of a gun!")

-avant gardener by courtney barnett (the whole song really, but especially the lines "the paramedic thinks i'm clever cause i play guitar, i think she's clever cause she stops people dyin'," and "i take a hit off an asthma puffer, i do it wrong, i was never good at smokin' bongs." i just think she'd love this song.)

-honorable mentions include stoned at the nail salon by lorde, life according to raechel by madison cunningham, rose-colored boy by paramore (@ palamedes, lmfao), picture me better by weyes blood, extraordinary machine by fiona apple, rubberband girl by kate bush, last words of a shooting star by mitski.

favorite picture of them: oh man well it obviously has to be my icon... art made for me by the lovely @franzias-cave !!!! based on the concept of "the woman is dying, please do her the decency of allowing her to look the part in fanart." my girl... she's a malign fairy, she's a hot-eyed wraith <3

ty lem this was so fun! i love my gworl :')

[arnaerr]

Some Elden Ring final thoughts!

I can't stop thinking about the Elden Beast fight. There, you don't feel this adrenaline rush of acknowledging your own power in battle and the fact that you can bring down a demigod. It feels more...sterile? I can't find the word.

I love how in ER they've mixed the ideas of knight ship and valour with a basic biological cycle where the strongest wins. And the Elden Beast fight feels this way. You just have to fight another being in the food chain to take its place. But also in the process you're in awe, bc this being is otherworldly. But also this fight is...stripped of emotions for me? The beast is neither good nor bad. It's just...there.

I still have mixed feelings about its design and appearance, but I love this confusion, bc it makes sense. It's a being we're not meant to understand. It reminds me of some implications in BB that the Great Ones aren't that GREAT. And when it takes only a second for it to transform Radagon into a sword...a good glimpse into its power.

Still not sure what ending I like the most! Hilde is very empathetic, and I feel like she will make banishing the Outer Gods from these lands her main priority. And as much as I like Ranni's ending, I feel like it's a bit too distant for her. The Golden Order one feels more right in terms of her personality, tho it has a vibe of possible Tyranny. So maybe a standard ending will suit her the best. Have to think about it and how I want to interpret everything.

I also love how in the soundtrack, Yuka Kitamura once again was inspired by Gustav Holst and his "Planets" piece. The Astel ost resembles "Saturn, Bringer of Old Age (here's the link)" the same way as in Bloodborne, The Living Failures OST resembles "Mars, the Bringer of War". "Planets" is my fav classic music piece and I love how its motif fit Soulsborne universes. It gives such an eerie quality to all cosmic related themes in Elden Ring.

#personal #vlada plays #elden ring

[where-theres-smoak-2]

So I am still stuck here: 'She'll come to understand. I've seen it.' Because like how Paul? How is Chani possible going to come to understand after everything that happened in Dune part 2?

Like she is so angry at the end of the film and it really does make me curious as to how Denis is going to bring her to a place where she understands and is ok with Paul's actions in Dune 3. So I have been having a think about it and I have a few theories on what I think could potentially happen with Chani's character and her relationship with Paul in the third film.

To be clear, I haven't read the books, I know a couple of details from dune messiah that were told to me, but I've mostly managed to avoid spoilers, so this isn't based off clues from the book and is very unlikely to be book accurate, but then I figure Chani not being a believer and choosing to leave at the end wasn't book accurate either so it would make sense that how she comes back to Paul wouldn't be either. Also these theories aren't necessarily things I want to happen more directions I think they could go in. Some have similar ideas and themes but with variations, I think how likely they are to happen is going to depend on just how messed up and tragic they want to go with it.

All of them do have one thing in common though, close proximity. I really do think the only way Chani is ever going to understand is for her to physically be around Paul and see him using his new abilities as the kwisatz haderach and then realising that Paul's motivations are still in the best interests of her and the fremen and that he's trying to lead them down the best path to achieve that. They need to rebuild the love and trust between them through having intimate and emotionally vulnerable moments together as well. So these are more theories on how she'll be brought back into close proximity to him more than anything else. But without further ado lets jump into it.

Chani is Pregnant.

So these first couple of theories centre around the idea that Chani may be pregnant with Paul's baby when she leaves at the end. This is a theory that I've already talked about in this post. As a summary, Chani finds out she is pregnant and not wanting to raise the child alone or for her child to not know their father returns to Paul. Or alternatively Paul finds out she is pregnant and uses it to convince her to come back, its possible Jessica may try and manipulate her into returning as well as she'll see Chani's baby as the future of house atriedes.

But I also had another idea playing into this idea of Chani being pregnant and its a little wacky but could be interesting to play with. For me the interesting part of Paul's line isn't the implication that Chani will return but that she will 'come to understand', suggesting she gets on board with Paul's actions, she fully jumps on the bandwagon so to speak. We know that Paul could dream the future and that these dreams were often vague and full of terror. What if Paul's child can also have these prophetic dreams and through some weird bond between her and the baby that allows Chani to start having these dreams. Seeing all these horrors of possible unclear futures she realises the potential cost of choosing the wrong path and in her fear of these dreams combined with the conflicting feelings of being pregnant with Paul's child, she chooses to return to him now believing that he is at least trying to choose the path that will be best for them all. I also think this could create an interesting parallel between Chani and Jessica in that they both had kind of mystical pregnancies. Obviously it wouldn't be exactly the same because Chani's child wouldn't have awareness more just the link between mother and child in pregnancy allows Chani to take on some of the child's abilities as the offspring of the kwisatz haderach.

So I am going to put a dune messiah book spoiler warning here because I am going to mention something from the books that I learned, so if you don't want to be spoiled skip to the next paragraph. But I just want to be clear to those who read the book that when I say I think Chani might be pregnant I don't mean with the twins who I think will be born but later in the film, I mean with their first son who was born in the first book who is killed in the sietch tabr attack. They took it out of dune part two, which makes sense as they changed the timeline drastically, so I think its possible that they'll instead move this plot line into Dune 3 as an explanation as to why Chani comes back. I think their child will die in some attack or assassination attempt and this will make Chani angry enough to want revenge and their joint grief keeps her at his side.

Chani the Manipulator

So two important details make up this theory, one is that Chani's main resistance to the prophecy is that she believes that the fremen should free themselves and not an outsider, the second important detail is that whilst many will think the emperor is the most powerful person in the universe, the bene gesserit gained a lot of power because they had the emperor's ear. It can be argued that the true most powerful being is the one who can influence the one people think is the most powerful. So here's my theory, what if after some time away and after her anger has simmered down a bit she comes to realise that she could have a lot of power in being the one at Paul's side, the one to have his ear. Maybe being unhappy with some choices he is making in the holy war when it comes to her people she has this epiphany of, I can't change what has happened, I can't change the minds of the fundamentalists who are lost to this prophecy, and I can't stop Jessica's or Gurney's schemes/motivations, but I can manipulate/guide Paul. So she pretends to forgive him and goes back, puts herself close to him and sits in on the councils and when discussing decisions etc she nudges him into the direction she wants him to take, essential becoming the fremen that will help free them by working in the shadows. As I said above any reconciliation I think is going to come down to close proximity and I think as Chani is around Paul as she sees that he really can see different futures she is going to be more understanding and more trusting in Paul when he says he is doing necessary evils to ensure the best outcome for Arrakis and the fremen. I won't lie but I would kind of love this one to happen. Not only would I love seeing Chani embrace her own power and still stay true to her goals of putting her people's freedom first, I think it would be an interesting parallel to Paul in Dune part 2 where at first he works to be accepted by the non believers because he wants to use them as a way to get to the emperor but along the way he comes to genuinely love these people and feel like he's one of them leading to him choosing to abandon his previous path of revenge. I could see this going the same way, Chani at first sets out to manipulate Paul for her own motivations but in being around him begins to understand exactly what happened to him when he drunk the waters and what his motivations are now and decides that actually maybe Paul is what's best for her people and maybe her role/place is to be at his side and help him guide them to that green paradise.

Chani the Spy

These next few theories are going to centre around the idea of Chani either being a part of some kind of resistance against Paul or being the leader of a resistance. I could see Chani not being willing to give up the fight that easily and see her finding others who also still don't believe Paul is the Lisan al Gaib and who aren't happy with their people taking part in a holy war. I could see her using this resistance to become a real political pain in the ass for Paul. Maybe even using his own tactics of disrupting spice production against him, or undermining him in other ways. In a theory similar to the one above I could then see her fake forgiving Paul but to spy on him and feed information to the resistance. But again being in close proximity to him makes her feelings more complicated and she becomes less and less sure about what she is doing and whose side she is really on as time goes by and she realises it isn't as black and white as she first thought, I could see maybe the resistance deciding to plot an assassination attempt and this making Chani more conflicted as I don't think she wants Paul to die.

Let's Beauty and the Beast it.

This one again is based on the idea of Chani being part of/ leading the resistance. Maybe the resistance gets into a fight with Paul's forces and it results in this particular faction of the resistance losing and being taken as prisoners of war. Chani is captured amongst them and Gurney upon recognising her takes her to Paul instead of prison. Then we get a kind of beauty and the beast scenario except this ain't no fairy-tale its much darker. Essentially Chani is Paul's prisoner, but he gives her fancy quarters, real close to his obviously, and he makes a few demands like insisting she must eat her meals with him every day, take walks with him etc. You know forced proximity, she agrees to keep her fellow resistance fighters safe, the promise being they won't be harmed if she complies. Again its her being around him, being reminded of how things used to be between them, maybe she also sees glimpses of the Usul she fell in love with during these meals and walks and ends up falling in love with him all over again. That combined with, as said before, her realisation that he can see the future, him convincing her that he is doing it to prevent the fremen suffering a worse fate etc, keeps her at his side.

Green Green Paradise

So this one isn't particularly well thought out more of a vague idea that past through my head, but it was confirmed in an interview that Liet Kynes from Dune part 1 is Chani's mother. This isn't something that they have actually brought up in the films though, yet. But Dr Liet was a ecologist and was all about terraforming Arrakis and bringing water and greenery, which is very similar to the whole prophecy that the Lisan al Gaib will bring a green paradise.

Whilst Chani may not believe in the prophecy I could understand if she still had a dream of Arrakis becoming a green paradise because of her mother's own dream and her mother's background as a ecologist. Paul tells Liet in part 1 that as emperor he could turn Arrakis into a green paradise with a wave of his hand, well he's emperor now, so maybe he'll begin to deliver own this promise and maybe seeing the way he is changing Arrakis so that it has water and greenery makes Chani go back as she wants to be apart of helping build her mother's dream for Arrakis.

Denial

So another option is Denis could throw us a complete curve ball of a plot twist and actually Chani doesn't come back to Paul. Maybe it was only one, or a few possible futures where Chani came back and Paul was just in denial that it wouldn't happen, he thinks that as he can see multiple futures now he can definitely manipulate the events into ensuring she does come back, only he fails and the Dune 3 we get is one where Chani instead is full on resistance leader, fighting against Paul with all she's got. Maybe she even ends up killing him in the end. I have seen this outcome suggested quite a bit and comments like 'I'd love that for her' which whilst I understand the sentiment, no judgements here, personally I wouldn't love that for her. I think as betrayed as she feels, as angry as she is, it is clear that she still deeply loves Paul and I think sadly she always will, that's the true tragedy of their love story, they're on opposite sides/views but still love each other. I think it was clear from her reactions when she thought Paul was dead after drinking the wol and when he was stabbed during the duel with Feyd that Paul dying is her worst nightmare. I can't imagine how heartbreaking it would be for her to be the one to kill him herself, I think it would destroy her, so its not something I would want for her. But I also can't argue that it is a fairly common troupe, the whole love interests where one goes to the dark side, and it ends with one having to kill the other. I'm personally still traumatised from when Buffy was forced to kill Angel in BTVS and don't know if I could take it again.

I Guess We'll Never Know

This is kind of a theory but also more like my worst fear. So another mild spoiler alert for Dune messiah, but the book actually takes place 12 years after the events of Dune part 2. I did put forward a theory that maybe what they'll do for the third film is spend the beginning part showing what happened right after Dune 2, showing the holy war and what happens with Chani etc and then have the time skip a little later in the film and cover the events from the dune messiah book. But my biggest fear is that they will just stick with the time skip and Chani will just be there and we won't really get any explanation as to why she returned to Paul. Maybe they'll just decide that Paul's one line of 'she'll come to understand' is enough of an explanation. I mean I personally would consider this a huge detriment to Chani's character so I am really hoping this doesn't happen, but I'll guess we'll just have to wait and see.

So those are all the theories I have for now. I would love to know what other theories people have but until next time thanks for reading.

#dune #paul x chani #paulchani #chani x paul #paul atreides #chani kynes #dune part 2 #dune part 2 spoilers #dune messiah #dune 3 #dune 3 theories

[jacksmusesdrv3]

I know I've twisted myself into a goddamn pretzel the past five or so years trying not to be 'too much' and backing off when I am

but

A good deal of why I started the #dr literacy tag is precisely because of this- I am beyond tired and fed up, with the kinds of things that people have ignored and left on my back- whether it's to do with Kokichi, or V3 overall. It's easy to deflect and call me 'delusional', and five years later never even consider the implications of having called me that over what I've been trying to grapple with, much less apologise to me sincerely and genuinely try to understand where I'm coming from and why it's so hard to discuss in the first place- not to mention why it's so easy to make mistakes not least because the way Kodaka plays with themes can be decidedly insensitive (and I was clearly out of my depth with that when I started this blog)

This isn't about all of you. A good number of people here have been wonderful about this, even if they don't understand all too well. But frankly such people are the exception rather than the rule, and the rule is that people don't bother to interrogate their own biases about Kokichi, or really grapple with the way him and V3's narrative might be constructed with bias. And this unwillingness to accept ambiguity and nuance results in some genuinely hurtful behaviour towards people who try to point out that, maybe, not everything was even his fault, or that his character and situation is far more layered than it appears on a first run of the game. Or even a second, or third.

So I'm gonna need people in that camp to swear that you'll do better about this going forward. No really. This situation I've been in didn't come out of nowhere, and while I've beaten the proverbial horse to death that I haven't always been fair or reasonable either, that does not mean I should just back myself into a wall and take the status quo that is 'Tsumugi is telling the truth and Kokichi is just a clown' as a 'fact of canon'. Because there's a very good chance that that might not even be true, and that there's even more tangled messes Kodaka left in the text to unpack that you never even thought of, and that really NEED extra care and nuance to fully understand.

I know you're probably sick of hearing this from me by now. But this is an issue that can never be helped until it's faced head on, and the effect of basically being pathologised over it (due to *checks notes* autism), is seriously damaging- the inability of people to address things as serious issues and themes rather than 'just the pet theory that came out of my nutty head', is something I cannot, on principle, force myself to accept. So please just think about the way you're approaching issues in the future. I will try to do the same.

#kokichi ouma #dr literacy #general fandom #no for real #I literally had someone tell me verbatim #'back away from the keyboard there's enough autism out here' #one of the friends of the person who called me 'delusional' #as if 'gullible' (while still wrong) was even CLOSE to that level #I'm not gonna stop being annoying about this it was WRONG #it was WRONG and I did NOT have to deal with the aftermath #of being cast as 'crazy and delusional' over things I did wrong #and over things that you didn't WANT to question in yourself #over how YOU were treating Kokichi and fans of him #who thought DIFFERENTLY about his actions than you #actions that we do not even SEE all of for that matter #just Own Up. #own up and do BETTER. peace #i just want to close this book but it never stop affecting me #and Idk if the person responsible for a lot of this will see it #but it's worth a shot anyway #again sorry the long rant #dangan salt team #ableism #Again.

[mr-payjay]

analysis of oj's thought process in this scene for funsies (quick warning for suitcase being put down and seen as inferior by another but it's not character neg)

why is oj being a massive fucking bitch? 🤔 Let's analyze.

so, obviously oj is living off a power trip in this episode. interesting implications about his actual power as a hotel owner. actually, at the beginning of the episode, we can see that he is NOT RESPECTED. salt lies about cleaning up, pepper demands him where the towels are (and he smugly lets her enter the DEATH TRAP DOOR? implying a familiar but negative relationship), and in general oj (and paper sort of but that's not relevant) seems to be the only caretaker while the rest of the residents are more like customers. though it seems they are *meant* to help out (such as salt being supposed to clean).

anyway. once oj gets the temporary host role for inanimate insanity, he immediately gets excited. we transition to the scene outside the hotel and he even does a little twirl! oj starts to read off the paper mephone uses (which oj has happily vandalized with drawings of himself and a snarky little message, this points to his general disdain towards mephone) and is trying to go Smoothly through with it. once the teams start fighting, he doesn't even try to figure out who's telling the truth, preferring instead to eliminate a random person. he REALLY likes to be efficient with his time, huh? that's talked about more in the next paragraph, but in this one i'll say a bit about his hatred for inanimate insanity. for the whole episode, he is uncaring of the show's rules, guidelines, structures, etc. he eliminates someone at random, he makes the contestants clean the hotel NOT as a challenge then flips a coin to determine the loser (only after they question him), he makes them sing for no reason other than to be entertained, he zips through every step as fast as possible. he does not care at all about ii, despite being so eager to host it. why? because hosting it means he gets to boss around a group of people (and he can make them clean his hotel! something he really needs help with!!), he gets to take mephone's place and mess with his stuff and disrespect his show, and generally he gets to sort of... take out some of his lasting frustrations surrounding ii. i don't think ANY of the season one cast is fond of inanimate insanity (and especially not of mephone), even if it brought them together (also not always a good thing). oj certainly isn't.

once he picks suitcase, he starts by calling her "whats-your-face" (thank you for noticing mari), then a few seconds later calls her by her actual name. thissss is so interesting to me. he KNOWS her name, apparently. but he called her a mean name first. this can either imply that he forgot, that he's just being a jerk for the hell of it, or both. i think it's both. a mix of his obsession with productivity and his need to be superior motivates this. he wants to get the elimination over with as quickly as possible, so quickly that he doesn't even bother to remember her name right away, because he's SO efficient that he just simply Doesn't have time for these things (in his mind). so it makes him feel both superior to her (disrespecting her), makes him feel good about himself (he feels like he's just being Productive and Time Efficient and part of that is that he has "no time" to do anything else but work). basically, he DID forget her name for like, a singular second, he just didn't bother to wait a moment or correct himself instead of calling her something else.

and for telling suitcase she's ruining the show? let's bring it back to ii1. oj insults people whenever he feels like it. he's pretty mean, and he's worse when he's stressed. he insults people particularly for being "useless" (such as to bomb), and is quick to fight back against anyone who challenges him. a pushover like suitcase is easy to demean. and it makes him respect her even less when she's being so meek! oj thinks his snappishness is justified by the fact he's, once more, simply being time efficient ("we've got a busy schedule!"), and that she is just wasting his time. i said earlier that oj doesnt respect inanimate insanity. so why does he accuse her of ruining the show if he doesn't care about it? well, because this is *his* episode. his time to be the host. even if he disregards the usual way things run, he's still going to get upset if something conflicts with *his* plans. he wants to get this over with and get them to clean his hotel, not much else (again, he's still enjoying being in a position of authority, he just likes to be nonchalant about how Superior and Powerful he is now). if someone's interrupting that, he's going to assert himself. oj always fights back against anyone who challenges him, and suitcase is too much of a doormat to stop him from shutting her down.

now for oj telling her to step back. this part is petty. he's irritated but also kind of. happy about being irritated. "what," you say? well, see, suitcase is genuinely trying to follow his directions. she just doesn't know how *much* to step back, obviously. so oj keeps shooing her a little bit at a time until she's finally offscreen, and you can tell he's a little bit annoyed by it. but this is part of the power & superiority once more! he gets to boss around someone "inferior to him" who is just soooo stupid that she doesn't even know where to go. and oj has to shoo her over and over because she's just not getting it (since he is sooo very much smarter than her and she is just completely incapable of following OBVIOUS directions.) but it's okay she is simply a Minor inconvenience (in his head) that he has dealt with now. also note that he could've just pointed to where she had to go. does this paragraph make sense? he likes being able to tell others what to do and have them do it, so even if she's kind of annoying him by not completely understanding the instructions, he still gets to assert his authority quite a bit.

this analysis is particularly focused on the scene in the video but i do bring up some other parts of the episode to support it.

#juice.txt #osc #oj ii #ii oj #oj inanimate insanity #inanimate insanity #yet another ramble of mine #i should start tagging these #juice ramble #there #anyway oj has npd #this thought process may seem insane and cruel #and it kind of is #but he's not a bad person #just has fucking problems

[oamlete]

schrodinger’s cat is dead to the world

#akane kurashiki #zero escape #zero escape 999 #june 999 #zero escape spoilers #999 spoilers #sissel #sissel ghost trick #ghost trick spoilers #its only spoilers if you Get It #so just don't think about the implications #i was worried all the effects i added would make it hard to read #but i feel like the ambiguity kinda fits the theme so whatever #i love to make silly little connections between my little obscure vn characters #anyways you know the drill play ghost trick play zero escape join me in hell

[egophiliac]

a bunch of assorted episode 7 stuff from the last couple of days! because they're still taking over my entire brain! (I keep forgetting that the diasomnia uniform has that weird spike...chain...thing on the back. do you think when they get bored they, like, throw balloons at each other and whoever pops one first wins? is this what the dialounge is like in the off-hours?)

hey when do we get to see maskless red Lilia. please Twst I'm dying over here

#art #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland spoilers #twisted wonderland episode 7 spoilers #twisted wonderland book 7 spoilers #long post #i just really loved that sebek drags in a very upset silver who starts going off on a rant about how none of this is real #and dream!lilia is just like 'aw my baby' and starts fixing his hair #and this was sebek's dream! sebek's lilia was just being real sweet to everyone. adorable. #anyway SO LILIA'S DREAM HUH? #the soldiers wearing animal masks -- and ESPECIALLY the guy in the bird mask -- have made me so suspicious #the implications! #what does this mean for crowley! #WHO IS HE REALLY #auuuughhh waiting for the next part is going to be agonizing #i will continue to analyze each pixel of lilia's sprite to try to figure out how his hair is doing that while he's wearing a hood #speaking of #drawing serious lilia feels weird. he doesn't look like himself. :( #i straightened his bangs and i think that was a mistake #if lilia takes off his mask and his bangs don't still look like he cut them himself in the dark while in a rowboat during a storm #i'm going to be sad

[that-ineffable-devil]

I know I already posted about this but it was on a reblog that I think got buried under the original and I need someone else to lose their mind with me.

So the wonderful human that commented on this post about Hell's understaffing problem made me rethink something that I think a lot of us are sleeping on: Hell is RATIONING something.

At the beginning of S2 in between other remarks, Shax mentions that Beelzebub has put some lower ranking demons "on half rations." But we know celestials and infernals generally don't eat, so surely it's not food, right?

So what could they be rationing?

And then I remembered how both Heaven and Hell keep close tabs on the miracles done by Crowley and Aziraphale on Earth--even the little things.

And how, in S1, Hastur is stuck in Hell waiting for "maintenance" to come fix a leak in the ceiling. It's played off as a joke and it's something that would be so mundane for a human in an office or apartment building, so we don't give it much thought... But they can do miracles. They could literally fix that with a snap. We've seen Crowley fix the Bentley, so surely a little leak is nothing.

And Aziraphale gets reprimanded for doing "too many frivolous miracles," which we initially ignore because it's exactly the kind of bureaucratic/corporate BS we'd expect from Heaven and Hell.

But what if it's not just BS?

What if the power sources used by angels and demons are not infinite? Worse, what if they're not replenishable?

What if Hell is rationing miracles, because there's not enough power to go around?

And if so, where's the power coming from?

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #good omens meta #good omens s2 #good omens s1 #I have not stopped thinking about this fr #There's so many ways it can go #And I can't think of one other thing Hell could be rationing that makes sense #And this could have serious implications in the whole “We need Armageddon to happen” ordeal #don't send help #I'm just screaming into the Void #Sorry void