We all know how a lot of Luffy's opponents have been in some ways premonitions of the type of person Luffy could end up as if something went wrong in his life. For example Moria is what Luffy could've become had he truly lost his entire crew at Sabaody if Kuma had not saved them

And we know Crocodile is what Luffy maybe could've become had Luffy given up on his dreams and become jaded after losing to him. But like, when you think about it, that's not the only dark reflection of Luffy in Crocodile, is it

'Cause Crocodile, despite employing people for Baroque Works, did not trust anyone around him and did not considder anyone to be anything else but an employee to him. And we know he had been planning on taking over Alabasta for like 14 years (at the very least), BW being a thing for only the past four (pre-timeskip)

So like. Did Crocodile spend the last 14 years alone

Like yes he had his workers at the Casino and Robin etc, so he was like, around people, he wasn't like Brook who was in Total Isolation. But on an emotional level, has he not spent the last 14 years all by himself, completely detached from anyone, unable to trust or rely on anyone else?

That is sad as fucking shit, holy hell

'Cause then you compare him to like Luffy and like

Our sweet baby boy was so afraid of being alone that Luffy literally went through hell just to gain Ace's approval despite Ace trying to signal to him he wasn't interested befriending him

And through out the whole series Luffy reiterates time and time again how he needs and wants his friends around because he literally can't live without them, both on a literal "he can't cook or navigate or have fun by himself" level but also on that emotional level

And Crocodile just. Spent 14 years of his life, if not longer, alone.

Sweet jesus what happened to this man

And that just makes me further wonder, what the absolute fuck were Crocodile's Rookie Pirate days like?? Like did he have a crew or was he just yolo'ing it by himself???

Like. Mihawk's never been on a crew as far as we know. Kuma was a Revolutionary, not a pirate, but he wasn't like alone still. Doflaming, Hancock, Jinbei and Moria however have/had crews of their own. So what was Crocodile's deal? Did he have a crew before? Was he a captain or was he on someone else's ship? (Although surely the Government wouldn't offer the position of a Shichibukai to a cabin boy or the first mate, right)

And if he did have a crew, the hell happened to them??

Like we know Crocodile got his ass kicked by Whitebeard, I just find it unlikely Whitebeard would've pulled a Kaidou on Crocodile's crew and slaughtered them, that's not a very Whitebeard-y thing do, right?? ...Unless Whitebeard was just different 20+ years ago and was willing to annihilate entire crews. We don't know. Or maybe Crocodile and his entire crew were like Turbo Rotten from the beginning and Whitebeard figured they deserved to get wiped out, much like how we saw Shanks wipe out Kid's crew at Elbaf. Or maybe Whitebeard saw no reason to have mercy on someone affiliated with the World Government.

That all said, if we wanted to assume Crocodile had somekind of trauma that lead to him viewing people not only as disposable but also untrustworthy, then maybe losing people dear to him like that wouldn't lead to that mindset. Like Moria witnessed his beloved crew die and that caused him to want to create a crew he couldn't die, so he wouldn't go through that emotional trauma again.

Which leaves me to wonder. If something caused him to lose his ability to (emotionally) trust people, and if Whitebeard broke his dreams... Maybe Crocodile had a crew. And maybe they abandoned him when he lost to Whitebeard. Figuring they didn't need a weak captain who was probably going to bleed to death anyways. Or maybe the crew tried to take his head (after Whitebeard kicked his ass), after all, he was already a Shichibukai, anybody who took Crocodile's head could maybe attempt to take that title for themselves if the Government allowed it, and if not, at least gain more fame for themselves.

Either of these scenarios would certainly result in you losing your ability to rely on others. And leave you willing to spend the rest of your life alone. Who would have in them to go through that again.

Or maybe he came out of the womb unable to trust people and he was just yolo'ing it by himself like Mihawk right from the begining, who knows

Regardless I'm just

pondering on a meta diving into Gale's abstract brand of selflessness (willingness to go away to a corner of the world to die so that none of the faceless masses will be harmed by his mistake) vs his personal selfishness (willingness to stick by tav despite being repulsed by tiefling camp murder + general vocal approval or interest in accumulating more power) and Gale's status as someone who is good aligned but generally ineffectual at enforcing actual good (the way that wyll or karlach will actually leave the party) which is fascinating for a fairly good-aligned person. just love when the Good Guy is actually kind of fucking weird. edit: tumblr cut off my tags Okay. and how all of this ties back in an interesting way to his relationship and power imbalance with mystra. he was wronged, deeply, but he also desires still that ... status / closeness to divinity in some way, by her influence. Gale thinks that he would be a better god simply by virtue of his mortality but he cannot escape the appeal of holding himself apart from others and being more than, greater than, something closer to godliness and thus inherently removed from mortal values and standards of right and wrong, which the gods themselves don't adhere to in the same way.

I finally watched marble hornets like 10 years after discovering creepypasta and like- I expected edgy killer teenagers running around the forest like "ah society hates us, we are mentally ill, become a killer" not FULL GROWN ADULTS?????? WITH JOBS??????

i won this competition thing at school which was a surprise and i didn't really mean to or care for winning. but sure they liked my design. why not. they want to give me money. great. but now i have to deal with my deadname being plastered all over the place and i sent an email to the company (that chose my design that they're going to make and sell) like hey im going to be changing my name Very soon would it like. be possible to use the new name when talking about me :-) and they answered that it's not possible (i get it if it was for like legal reasons idk) but their wording was very... ??? 'you won the competition as *deadname* so it wouldn't be right to change it' im sorry what. what does it mean it wouldn't be right. what. why. I'd understand if they wouldn't change it for the booklet if they already have them printed out (i did ask if they do. they didn't answer), fair, i get it, that's your money. but they straight up have a whole paragraph on their website that talks about me that she/hers me extensively (i haven't discussed that with them yet i only learned about it yesterday. like bestie that can't be that hard to change). wtf is a mladá umělkyně I'll kill you

I very much know this is because Jessica Cruz's origin story was written by Geoff Johns in a shitty comic, but by God is there so much going on there. Like damn.

Like there's the really, genuinely compelling stuff, for example the presence of ring horror and loss of control w Jess and Power Ring/Volthoom + the implications of that (character wise, both before and after JL 50) which is just SO interesting (and angsty!) to me personally

But then there's also more plot holes than you can shake a stick at as well (where did Jess get her ring. Guys it just showed up who died where did she get it from GUYS-)

All interspersed between some of the worst character writing for other Justice League members in existence (Wondy fans you know what I mean) and crazy ass plots out there

.

Y’all what if Lilith didn't choose to take a vaycay in Heaven? What if she got redeemed?

Gael García Bernal in También la lluvia (2010, dir. Icíar Bollaín)

(these gifs also feature Luis Tosar and the back of Cassandra Ciangherotti's head)

[other gael filmography gifsets]

In defense of the original, while I do agree the episodic vibes were a bit much at times, and it was something I kinda had to work my way through slowly rather than binging all in one...

I do kinda prefer the more gradual approach to laying out the information; getting to know both the setting and who Vash is as a person and the different facets of both, before getting the context that lets it all click into place. Plus the main quartet having ample time to grow together so that later developments have stronger emotional weight.

I will agree that Knives definitely suffered in focus, and I am interested in how Stampede handles him, but admittedly he wasn't really what I watched Trigun for in the first place. ^^;

yeah my gripe is less with the way the setting and characters were handled and more with the way the. actual plot was handled. it honest to god felt to me like they realized about halfway through their run that they didnt have enough episodes left to get the backstory in in a cohesive way so they just shoved it all into one episode and pretended that that explanation didn't create more questions than it answered. you spend 20 episodes teasing your audience like "ooooh what is vash?? clearly hes not human!! clearly there's something going on!!! don't you want to know whats going on?? keep watching and you'll totally understand whats going on!!" and then your big reveal is that. He Is Not Human. which is something that any idiot who has watched the last 20 episodes has already figured out. the question the audience ACTUALLY has at that point in the runtime is what, EXACTLY, is vash, and what the context is behind the conflict he and knives are in. the backstory episode explains that Knives Is Here, and it gives context to the setting and everything, but it pissed me off that it STILL didn't answer the actual mysteries i cared about, i.e. vash's real identity and the thing with the gun and his fucking arm and knives's motivations and everything. maybe that gets answered in the last episode that i neglected to watch but personally I prefer a story where i UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON by the time the final confrontation hits. with trigun it got to a point where vash was going out for the final battle with knives and i STILL didn't know who vash was, who knives was, where they came from, or what the hell their motivations were. that just made that final confrontation seem so wholly uninteresting to me that i didn't even feel like watching it. it was like "hey look vash is fighting a cardboard cutout that he is Afraid Of. Why? lmao idk man. probably has something to do with that weird spaceship that shows up in one whole episode before this point. not going to tell you how tho." I think some writers have this tendency to think that mystery = good writing and that not revealing anything to your audience will consistently draw them in for more, but that only works for so long. after 20 episodes of virtually net 0 information it got to feel like I was being strung along and like my questions were never going to be answered, so I gave up on the show in the final hour. Again, i'm not saying it was BAD necessarily and i understand the context in terms of writing and production that led to the show being produced that way but i think it really noticeably suffers due to the fact that it refuses to give the audience ANYTHING but crumbs of information for about 80% of it's runtime. that being said. i did genuinely like a lot of it. it has its moments. im not trying to discourage anyone from watching it or anything lol i just think stampede is a little more successful in keeping the viewer engaged in the story throughout by constantly feeding you bits of information and actually answering your questions as they become plot-relevant.

I think I'm going insane. Lately my dreams have been so mundane, it wouldn't be weird if I wasn't just a person that has nightmares 80% of the time, so I now my dreams are so hard to distinguish from reality.

I wouldn't be able tell what was real from what not if it wasn't because last night I went to my doctor's appointment and I was handed new glasses by Harvey just to go back home and find out Laois was cooking something in my backyard.

66 - So Small

Don't stand so close, my sweet, for the heat of your skin might cause me to catch and burn away to nothing. Oh, that I could stand to look upon you for just a moment longer, but you shine so bright that I cannot see clearly…! There is nowhere to hide from the merciless rays of your attention - the darkness melts at your approach and between your warming hands I feel so small.

Don't look to me, my dear - your gaze might pierce my frail veneer and you'll see the insufficiency I disguise. For what succour might a shadow such as I provide to the very sun which casts it? I have no gifts to lay at your feet - you already gifted them all to me. You have so much more than I could ever offer and in the shadow of your greatness I feel so small.

Don't leave me here, my love - for I'm nothing without you, don't you see? What is a moon without its sun, or a sky without its shining stars? Though I fear the feelings you inspire in me, to feel nothing at all is more terrifying still. So abide with me a moment in this lonely cosmos, my brilliant light, though you are so big and I am so small.

______________________________

The Dark Menagerie No. 66

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Still not feeling confident at all with my writing, so here, have a random headcanon instead.

Given how often my Elwin hung around and talked with the different servants and Bearers of Rosalith Castle -- including of course those who worked in the kitchen -- he picked up at least the fundamentals of numerous useful skills from them. Among this list are cooking and baking, although as one might expect, he never had the opportunity to explore these beyond occasionally sneaking to help the cooks.

Miles, on the other hand, is a different story. Even if the circumstances of the changes are incredibly dire, he does have freedoms that he had previously lacked during his life as royalty...

Hmmh i think for ulixes the desire to cause pain to steban (in a sexy way) should be the mad urge of someone scratching at a marble statue. yes this is fully e/r shit but i'm going for it. there is something that steban houses within him that ulixes can't quite name and can't quite get at but that he needs like air. like he can wreck himself a thousand times on steban's distant shore, but both the shore and the ocean will remain unperturbed. he probably doesn't even bruise that hard

still thinking about the time i did one of those hunger game simulation things with the characters being all the strixhaven student npcs, my strixhaven campaign's party members, and extus narr + one just labeled 'the rest of the oriq' it was actually so goofy because tell me how the oriq immediately set off a bomb killing 4 people INCLUDING THEIR LEADER??? tell me how all the party members died almost immediately except for my character who got tragically betrayed by one of his friends??? tell me how the last two people alive were the biggest fucking nerds in the entire school?? fucking URZMAKTOK and DRAZHOMIR??? tell me how the SOPPING WET CAT of a minotaur that is drazhomir won????? also quentillius died of dysentery on day 1 which is the death he deserves.

i don't want to put my uninformed foot in my mouth or get involved with the Discourse but i've been seeing the two extremes of reactions to the korean low birth rates issue (on tumblr and twitter both) and i'm just kind of like. look. i feel like "low birth rates (in many countries but especially japan and korea as part of this conversation) are more broadly the result of capitalism/a culture of overwhelming overwork that makes social relationships and having families incredibly inaccessible to young people" and "low birth rates are very much a part of the current conversation about misogyny and social expectations for women in korea especially in the context of reproduction as 'unpaid labor' for women" are statements that can both be true

do i want to manipulate this data and if so how? do i want to record all the students who gave their pre form 4/5 langs or do i want to delete those who did hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm