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#Definitely A Book Club
the-blaze-empress · 1 year
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the syndicate but with a sticker chart.
hear me out hear me out okay? cniki gets a sticker sheet of gold stars and starts handing them out at syndicate meetings as a bit of a joke but phil and techno especially just go absolutely feral for the gold shiny thing that means theyve done well. ranboo loves them too hes just not fistfighting anyone to physically acquire a sticker.
niki starts handing out the stickers for actual reasons when the others have done something good/well. like ranboo gets a sticker for practicing his breathing exercises, phil gets one because he went to bed before passing out from exhaustion, and techno gets one for killing a man.
the three of them start trying to get as many stickers as possible, theyre all ridiculously competitve and thus they actually do the things on the list of ‘things that earn a gold star’ and they do them properly because then they can get more gold stars.
they start a sticker chart to organise it all because at least one fight has broken out about who has the most stickers (ranboo is the only one who properly knows because he’s been writing it down in his diary) (he also has a whole page dedicated to his own gold stars). niki makes the chart for the three of them, and doesnt see much point in putting herself on the chart.
the boreal bois, though, immediately protest this and maker her her own row on the chart with another piece of paper tacked up the top of the chart and her name written a little wobbly (phil did the honours). none of them have any gold stars to put in her row but that doesnt discourage them.
phil sticks a small feather on because niki gave him a sticker, ranboo digs around in his basement and finds some holographic, garishly coloured love heart stickers (there was also a sheet of smiley faces, he throws those ones out) and puts two of them on niki’s row because she was the one to teach him the breathing exercises, and techno smudges a bit of leftover blood from the aforementioned killed man onto the paper and refuses to elaborate.
connor gets a row on the sticker sheet when he joins too, but he fills his up on his own almost immediately with both sonic stickers, and letters which he uses to spell mostly swear words with.
in short, niki has managed to bribe two centuries old war lords and an anxious enderman into self care with only a sheet of shiny gold stickers
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finchers-ipad · 1 month
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MY 1999 ‘SIGHT AND SOUND’ MAGAZINE ARRIVED!!
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minnow-doodle-doo · 6 days
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'This was before Jason, before the fire, before Bruce would discover exactly how difficult it was to dig his own grave with the bones of his son.' -The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
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communistkenobi · 4 months
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reading the intro to decolonizing trans/gender 101 this morning by b. binaohan and one thing that has been particularly insightful for me is their description of the closet as a place only white people get to inhabit - not only because it is premised on having access to a private sphere (whose origin lies in the private property relationship of colonialism & capitalism, a type of ownership only white people have historically had access to), but also that the body itself can be private, a site of individual expression that you both 1) have control over and 2) a desire to assert a liberated, enclosed, individual agency separate from the social fabric of your life (a privilege that, again, only white people have full access to).
I think this diagnosis is very helpful in revealing that a lot of white discourse about transgender identity is, if not outright biologically-, then bodily-essentialist - that gender is expressed and mediated through the individual, that the decision "to come out as trans" is a decision that an individual makes, that being transgender is a wholly private revelation disconnected from the history of gender as a social system of control, that being trans is really not a social relationship to gender, that if you don't "come out of the closet" you are not "doing gender." it reinforces cisgenderism as a natural default, something you don't do but rather simply are, in contrast to transgenderism, a type of gender expression you can only do, and only do alone by emerging from a private realm into a public one. this is in contrast to, as binoahan puts it, "being a non-white person in this world, is to immediately be rendered available for public consumption."
This is not to say that white trans people (or any trans person who engages in the practice of "coming out") are making up the social exclusion, harassment, and violence they face by publicly transitioning or announcing their transhood, but that this imagined white universal trajectory of transhood is one of individual self-actualization, a breaking away from the world to be your own individuated self - to be liberated from the world around you, to forsake an original set of (insufficient, backwards, hostile) communities for a liberated, individuated queer one. This is, again, the product of a white imaginary and a trajectory of identity only white trans people have access to. Again returning to binaohan, "because my experiences in either the trans or queer community have made it very clear that the 'community' is hostile to my existence. and so the request to sacrifice my current communities, the communities to which I properly belong, just to fulfill some (imaginary) obligation to a community that regularly lets me know how much i don't belong, seems ludicrous. but it is not just that: it creates a situation whereby not only is the white trans/gender narrative normalized but your value/goodness as a human being becomes dependent for how well you are able to locate yourself within that narrative."
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carg0-toad · 4 months
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this was supposed to be something serious but then the worm eating my brain said "remember that one scene from the book"
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dawnthread · 1 year
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i’m no fanartist, but i couldn’t help but get in on the dracula book club hype with a knitalong after finding Dracula’s Bride by Renee Linville on ravelry!!
my wonderful datemate gifted me a gorgeous gothic-lit-inspired skein pack for christmas last year, and this is the PERFECT project for it. after a lot of winding, a little math, and a few rounds of swatching to test-drive the needle size and gradient technique, we’re off to the races to the tune of our boy jonathan’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad business trip to transylvania - played to perfection by ben galpin in @re-dracula‘s audio drama production!!
i meant to post these earlier to properly track my progress, but i forgot XD
further updates to be posted as work progresses~!!
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is anyone even listening to the shit mal is saying at this point. this mf is so corrupted it isn't even funny anymore. where's my side quest: force mal to go to therapy. im going to climb the walls
and like yeah mal is an adventurer and all but if anything he's the opposite of an adrenaline junkie. like someone pointed out last week, he's a survivor through and through. and throughout book 1 he is almost hilariously afraid of danger. he is scared of fucking threep and convinced he would eat their faces. he didn't want to get on the objectively cool drakes because he was afraid. even threep makes fun of him for always running at the first sign of danger in that diamond scene with the voxper. mal enjoys adventuring, yes, and he's got a knack for it and he's quick on his feet and good at escaping difficult situations, but he was never the kind of guy who enjoyed taking risks
and with the way tyril talked about him last chapter like he's been making an habit of taking bigger and bigger risks.... i know we've all said that already but im just really worried about what this means. the least sinister option is that this is the only way he's managed to feel alive lately (bad), but i feel like it goes even deeper and is likely related to whatever sort of shadow shit he has going on and I'm afraid
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jamiesfootball · 5 months
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Beautiful Damned You has got me on the ropes just from the idea of it
This one is further down on the priority list but very much alive in my head!
Some highlights I have mentioned before:
Jamie does not throw away The Beautiful and Damned
He reads it
He has strong feelings about it
He starts coming into practice with a nastier than usual bite towards Ted, who is rapidly losing ground and can't figure out why
Jamie accidentally keeps recreating that scene in The Office (US) where Michael is watching The Devil Wears Prada. Jamie keeps quoting parts of the book at Ted (or attempting to quote- look, he's paraphrasing, ok, but these are lethal strikes)
Ted takes a while to figure out what's going on because spoiler alert he has not actually read that book since like. Ninth grade.
So all of this is culminating and in the midst of it all the gala happens. Which, Ted in his Ted-wisdom is still optimistic. He thinks he can still work things out with Jamie. He also still needs Jamie and Roy to work things out with each other, so despite Beard's warning he goes ahead and seats them all at the same table.
That turns into the most epic of shit shows you could possibly imagine.
Because it is one thing for Ted to insinuate via literature that Jamie is like Anthony, the protagonist from TB&D, but to then insinuate that Keeley is anything like Gloria, someone shallow who only sees their value in their beauty and who looks down on other women? Or that Jamie would treat her like Anthony does?
Fuck you, Lasso.
And also, if you want to talk about shallow- he didn't even want to do this stupid gala in the first place. It's disgusting, and he's not gonna be putting out for any old ladies. He doesn't care if Ted kicks him off the starting line at this point - he's not doing it.
Keeley does not know what has gotten into Jamie, but she's officially concerned now. And poor Roy- he did not sign up for this. Ted was the one who stuck him at this table under the guise of making things work with Tartt. Now Tartt's stormed off, Keeley's flustered and upset and a little embarrassed, Ted's sitting there like looking someone's whacked him with a shovel.
It had to be Roy to go talk to him, didn't it? Couldn't be anyone else.
That didn't mean Roy isn't annoyed when it turns out all of this drama started because of a fucking book.
Roy ends up talking Jamie down by telling him he'll read the fucking book, because it's clear to him that part of what's got Jamie so riled up is that no one's really listening to his side of things or taking him seriously when he says that the gaffer just- doesn't fucking like him? And when Roy tries to pivot that actually Jamie is kind of a prick so it's probably not just the book, Jamie gets more upset, so yeah, Roy will read the book, and then Jamie can explain to him what's got him so twisted up about it.
So Roy reads the book.
Huh. Turns out he might be on Jamie's side of this after all.
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brother-emperors · 6 months
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Dante's Divine Comedy (Inferno, Canto VIII. trans. Robert M. Durling) / 10 December 1513 letter from Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, trans. Alan Gilbert
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iris-drawing-stuff · 7 months
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Just Shidou
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sonofenki · 8 months
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hello THOR????
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the-blaze-empress · 1 year
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i am so normal about the boreal bois tonight you have no fucking idea
i just. them yknow?
three people with little other places to go, three people who’re trying to escape the binary good and bad that others are forcing onto them, three people who just want to be left alone and for the people they care about to be safe.
when phil offered ranboo a place to stay so casually, god, top 5 dsmp moments ever. he saw this scared, lost child and just. took him in. didnt make a big deal out of it, but he took him under his wing and gave him the safety and security and net to fall back on that he’d lacked.
and techno did the same, he may have been more gruff about it but he gave him resources, he let him build, he came to check on him to make sure he was alright. he cared. he layed his life on the line for him without question, and there is only one other person techno does that for and its phil. he layed his life down because he knew ranboo would do the same for him.
ranboo, trying so hard to be ‘deserving’ of this care, trying so hard to pay it back. not realising no matter what, he’s getting the kindness of two people who tend to give that away very rarely. he doesnt have to repay anything, he can just... be. he doesnt have to try to prove anything, existing is enough.
and just. the headcannons. the quiet moments.
ranboo being gifted a matching cloak, a crest he doesn’t really recognise and a history lesson that sounds much more like a personal story than anything else. techno refusing to admit he cares about ranboo, phil knowing it anyways. ranboo scared to open up but being met with nothing but endless kindness when he does. the little family they become, out in the arctic, out with only the dogs and the foxes and the bears and each other to keep them company.
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msmargaretmurry · 3 months
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my dirty little secret* as a noted rat boy girlie is that when matthew and brady play each other i'm usually rooting for brady. like i dont REALLY expect the sens to win because they are a notably worse team than the panthers and i'm not mad if the panthers win but as a middle child i just have too much sympathy for the plight of the middle child to not root for brady lmao
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communistkenobi · 1 year
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I think when people describe dark hallways or all-grey office cubicles as “liminal,” they’re using it as a synonym for creepy, which is not really accurate. What’s being reached for is a sense of dislocation, of being in a place that is not meant for you or is otherwise hostile to you in some way. “Liminal” is limited in its ability to describe those feelings, because the word is typically meant to refer to a place that exists only to get you somewhere else (like an airport, for example, or an interstate highway). “Liminal” isn’t synonymous with “a place of horror,” but I think it’s become that in the tumblr lexicon.
I think a much more robust term for what people are trying to describe is ontological (in)security. Ontological security in geographic scholarship means “a confidence that the world exists as it appears to be.” To give a very basic example, there are handles on doors because the function of a door is to act as a gateway to another space, and the handle is there to open that gateway. You trust that doors with handles are meant to be open and stepped through, and you also trust that door handles will always be placed at a standing person’s waist height - if you’ve ever seen a character try to open a door that leads nowhere in a story, it’s playing with your ontological security. Likewise, you see a flight of stairs and understand implicitly that it exists to facilitate pedestrian traffic to and from a specific place. It’s not a place to have a party with your friends, and you wouldn’t think to go to a stairwell to socialise.
To be ontologically insecure, on the other hand, is to exist in a place that is built for purposes that are not available to you. This is most commonly used in disability scholarship to refer to inaccessible entrances or stairwells - these things exist for able-bodied people only, and the structure of the built environment is now acting as a mechanism to divide people into groups who can use the space and groups who cannot. This is part of the way that ableism essentialises disability, which is then reproduced in the built environment - urban structures are taken as neutral, and if you can’t navigate them effectively, something is wrong with you individually (which of course is not true).
But this idea can be deployed for a variety of contexts - suburbs once built for the wealthy car-driving middle class typically do not have sidewalks in them. And now in many places in North America, suburbs are being inhabited by much poorer families (who are much less likely to own a vehicle), who are being driven out of the city core because now that same wealthy middle class has decided a condo is more fashionable than a detached house. This leaves people to live in places that aren’t built “for them,” to walk in the middle of roads or on lawns because there’s no space for them to walk, forcing them into hostile situations to either be hit by cars or yelled at by neighbours for walking on their grass. These spaces produce ontological insecurity, a sense that you are inhabiting a place that is not meant for you, and because of this you are frequently made less safe as a result.
This is where the critique that cities are structurally ableist, or racist, or misogynistic comes from. Urban environments are usually built by the ruling class, whose interests and aesthetic sensibilities get reproduced in the roads they build and houses they erect, and if you don’t happen to fit the profile of the ruling class (ie most people), some parts of a city are always going to be less safe for you. This is why in extremely spread-out, low density cities (LA for example), public transit is difficult to implement on a structural level (on top of all the political pushback), because these spaces are structured in such a way to be hostile to certain modes of travel or behaviour (eg any mode of transit that isn’t a car). They are built for a specific ideal archetype of person, and if you don’t fit into that, you’re much less safe and much less secure.
So if you want to use this in fantasy settings or horror or whatever, you need to approach the built environment as a historical process the same way that a government or law is. Office spaces are not “liminal,” but they can be sites of horror because their physical structure compels certain modes of social behaviour, and trying to work against that grain can make you feel “out of place” - i.e., ontologically insecure.
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benkyoutobentou · 11 months
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Language Learner’s Book Club
Are you interested in reading books in Japanese with other language learners? Do you enjoy light novels? 別次元の図書館 (Library from Another Dimension) is a Discord based book club made by and for Japanese learners. This book club was made to encourage learners to read light novels, but the definition can be stretched for book selection.
Book club books are submitted and voted on bimonthly by book club members, so if you have a light novel series you’re interested in, don’t hesitate to give it a shout out!
There is no reading schedule! Feel free to read at your own pace, join in on older discussions, and read without fear of not being able to keep up. Typically, a large number of volumes will be officially part of the book club for each series chosen, but no one is under any obligation to read more than what you want, or are comfortable with.
All participation is text based. Don’t worry if you aren’t comfortable reading aloud, no one will expect you to!
July and August book club picks:
No. 6 - あさのあつこ
One stormy night in a dystopian walled city, the sheltered young Shion meets a mysterious boy intruder, who changes his life forever.
心霊探偵八雲 (しんれいたんてい やくも) - 神永学
When there's a ghostly disturbance in a school, a psychic detective is recruited to get to the bottom of the mystery
Past book club picks (still open for participation, just may not be as active):
キノの旅
宝石商リチャード氏の謎鑑定
美しい彼
ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖
乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった… 
無職転生 〜異世界行ったら本気だす〜
Come join me and a bunch of other Japanese learners in reading a bunch of fantastic novels! I’ve already read more than I ever could’ve hoped for with the help of this book club, and I always look forward to the interesting picks and recommendations.
Note: The server is 18+ but this is only for maturity’s sake. Nothing inappropriate goes on within the server.
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Trimax Thoughts Vol. 14 Pt. 2
We're in the home stretch... last stream of consciousness post! The story ends with these last four chapters...
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Oh. Ok. Immediately hitting me with this on the first page. "What's there left to see?" "Let's see the world together." "I wanted to see tomorrow with him." Just another way of showing us that Vash is not driven to survive this fight anymore.
!!! The lights again! He heard Meryl!!! AGHHHHH
I'm actually a little unsure of who is saying the "hey, come on, Vash the Stampede" lines. I'm assuming he's saying this to himself. I don't think anyone else makes sense.
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The ambiguity of this situation is so fascinating, and it all comes from the way we almost never see the Plants' true perspectives. We know, at least, that they talk amongst themselves. Before the battle began, the ones who were not fused were concerned and worried over the outcome, and what the right decision is. Knives claims here that they were all united in their hatred of humans over the abuse they suffered, but we also see these dreams that Knives sees also of a mix of human cruelty and kindness - the same thing they transfer to the humans when the feathers start falling. They also all know and seem to like Vash - honestly, I'm of the mind that the Plants feel somewhat neutral about humans overall, and are primarily concerned with not hurting their own kind - which includes both Knives and Vash. Unfortunately, they have very little control or free will in this situation. There are two possibilities for the emotions of the fused entity here:
Knives, having walled himself from truly fusing so he can still direct it and maintain his sense of self, is simply feeling his own hatred, intensified by the power boost from the rest of the Plants - and Vash's interference is something he feels due to having a stronger connection with him specifically.
The Plants, having a less defined sense of self in general, feel whatever the dominant consciousness feels - so all the fused Plants really do feel hatred for humanity. When Vash connects though, they feel his grief and sorrow, as he is the one with the stronger Gate.
I think the second option makes more sense - and this kind of makes this whole situation even more tragic for the Plants... it makes it even harder to glean what they actually want. (Though the situation could be drastically improved if they were recognized as conscious entities - that at least would be a start.)
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I like that we still, even in the final act, see Vash allowed to be a bit afraid and hesitant - he definitely knows this is going to be overwhelming and probably going to hurt a lot. With him being as exhausted and prepared to die as he is, he could've just been written as utterly indifferent to the pain but no, even with all that, he's still got a bit of a preservation instinct. It's very real actually.
"I felt that! Where are you?!" "Don't touch me!" <- ...brothers...
Oh it's actually breaking apart... but um. What happens to the Plants...? :(
"I beg of you... once again... grant me that ticket." 😭
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MERYL YOU ARE THE STRONGEST PERSON IN THIS MANGA I LOVE YOU FOREVER
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YES!
Also this means they're all going to see Vash too, doesn't it?
WAIT. HOLY SHIT THIS IS THE PLANTS. They call him Red Brother? That is so cute... And they are convinced to give love and peace a try because Vash knows and loves both of them... humans and Plants...
(I actually am now thinking, because of the feather we saw on Vash before, that he wasn't talking to himself but that was in fact the Plants urging him to get up... I wasn't aware they could use speech or just images/emotions, so I wasn't sure.)
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:') (I was so scared for them guys. But this is interesting - can progress be made so they don't have to live in the lightbulbs? That would be a good step towards instating more autonomy for them.)
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AAAAAAAAAAA :''')
"But I will not yield. Our past and our future will not allow it." <-Sunk cost fallacy again. I wonder just how much of the conflict in this series are the characters feeling unable to change simply because they've "come this far". Might be interesting to go back and look on a re-read.
Knives... :(
"I was the one who broke away." 🫠
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That's what she told him??? aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
IN COMES CHRONICA WITH A STEEL CHAIR
Vash saved him!!!
Oh. The wings... they each only have one... because they shouldn't have been separate like that...
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Help girl I am. On the floor. Crying.
"Oh and welcome to No Man's Land." Livio you are so funny
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WHAT WAS THE REASON. I AM ALREADY CRYING STOOOOP
Love the return of Vash's old wanted poster. Lol.
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Hair down Vash with dark hair :)
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Knives... I find it so interesting again that Knives immediately tries to barter Vash as necessary to these people so that he'll save him. But the doctor was actually convinced by the sight of Vash's injuries and the desperation in Knives' voice. It's so minor but it's still such good characterization and further proof that the ideal of kindness is present in ordinary people.
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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The symbolism of him creating an apple tree as a gesture of what is both thanks and trust... but Knives, ffs, why would you just disappear on your brother without telling him. UGH. He used the last of his power, didn't he. Healed Vash's injury as much as he could then created the tree. Is he dead, or did he just lose corporeality or something? I'm honestly not sure. Either way, Vash lost his brother too after they just got each other back.
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Begging him to start singing his murder song again
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It was at this moment he knew. He fucked up.
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Aww! They are going to be such a good team now that Vash is going to hopefully stop running off. DUDE.
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HJHSBJHCBZJHVSBJV WHAT
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I did not get the song I was expecting, but the fact that these two apparently play a song about Vash to signal the start of their broadcast is so funny. What is happening.
OMG Sheryl and Lina!!! Badwick and his family! Brilliant Dynamites Neon!
LIVIO!!! And the kids and Miss Melanie... at Wolfwood's grave... (Livio I love your new look.)
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:')
"The same song of humanity still sang."
What a beautiful end to this story... thank you everyone in the book club (and to Rev for organizing it!); I had so much fun with this. I can't wait to go through the tag some more and go back through everyone's posts again - I fell behind a few times so I want to do a re-read of everyone's analyses and thoughts. I'll have a few more posts probably, but for now... thanks for what was a really fun experience everyone! I think this manga's story and characters will stay with me a long while.
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