Model Law x Firefighter Luffy x Police Zoro in an au where one of Luffy's co-workers is seriously injured in a fire that later turns out to be linked to another incident from a few months ago and then another and another. Zoro, Luffy's partner whos a cop, tells him to stay out of this, that everything is much deeper than it seems and that it could end very badly for them, Luffy and those around him. But of course Luffy is NOT about to just let it be.

Serial fires that have so far killed more than thirty people and injured hundreds, mainly because one of these fires happened in a factory that exploded and injured and killed not only the workers, but also many passers-by and neighbors, are not something Luffy can just let be. Zoro has little to do but accept that his boyfriend just won't let this go, so the next thing he knows he's sharing with Luffy all the evidence that has been collected so far that points to the Donquixote Group as the biggest suspect of th incidents of 'industrial sabotage'.

Luffy unfortunately can't keep his mouth shut to save his life, so suddenly the whole 'gang' knows about it and, through Nami, they discover a very good chance to collect evidence. Annually the Donquixote Group hosts a charity ball that invites 'the whole' city and by whole city, she means the entire upper class of the city. Luckily for them, her girlfriend, Vivi, can definitely help them get into the ball without a hitch. Then, all they have to do is go through security and get to the president's office and look for possible evidence. Which, in Zoro's opinion, is a terrible plan, but Luffy's terrible ideas usually work out, so they go with it. And it definitely works. Vivi easily takes them to the ball and, in the confusion of Straw Hats causing chaos among the big shots of GrandLine City

Luffy and Zoro slip through security and find their way to the Donquixote group CEO's office and that's where their luck ends. Or not. Not even five minutes after they begin to search the room, the door is opened and a pair of golden eyes stare unimpressed at them. The door is instantly closed, and before long, they hear voices outside, one of them being undoubtedly those of the owner of the room in question, Donquixote Doflamingo. Luffy and Zoro, practically frozen, simply look at the closed door in anxious anticipation as if at any moment Doflamingo would break down the door and set them on fire. He doesn't and soon the voices drift away. After that Luffy and Zoro are quick to continue the search, despite the scare, and unfortunately, they do not find anything of value to the investigation.

They are quick to leave after that, taking with them the straw hats that served as incredible distractions. Back at square one, they meet again at Luffy's house trying to plan their next step. But their little evil-combating meeeting is interrupted by a surprise visitor. Outside the house, standing at the top of the stairs, dressed in expensive clothes and looking fabulous, Trafalgar Law, the super model who is the face of the Donquixote Group all around the globe, the owner of impassive golden eyes, offers a deal.

Please let's talk about the infamous quote about Tigris. Enjoy ALL the quote, first of all (thanks to @burntblueberrywaffles for the screen):

Now. You can ignore the second half and take the phrase at its face value, as antis love to do, and think "omg what a horrible man, who thinks this things?! Monster!" and feel proud that you can read in the sense you can recognize the letters, put them together and see that you know how all the words and the word's meaning and applaude yourself. Congrats, you can read!

No, that's not how you read.

Welcome to "basic reading comprehension 1.0".

First of all, this phrase doesn't exist alone, it's not floating in a blank page. You have to read the several sentences before that to actually understand why this phrase was written in the first place. And this phrase is right at the start of the book so I promise it won't take long.

So, let's start. I don't have the english book so please bare with me when I explain you things without the actual quote, I promise it is what actuall happens in the book.

We first see Coriolanus Snow who force himself to eat cabbage soup. That he despises it but he knows he need it to prevent the rumble in his stomach. So, you see, right here in the first sentence you have one important details: Coriolanus is not worried about hunger per se, is worried about let other people know he is hungry. Just with this you can already understand one of his core value: the appearences.

And he tells us so in the next senteces. He has an important name and live in a fancy house (from outside) but he has nothing. He has so nothing that he is now worried about a shirt, because he has important stuff to do (later we discover that the Reaping is tied with the Plinth Prize he needs so desperately). The only hope for the shirt is his cousin, Tigris, who can sew and already save him more than once, but... Well, this time she has not a great start. The only shirt he owns is stained and burned and has only half of the buttons. It needs a miracle, he needs a miracle, and even the black market was no use...

They already tried, he tells us so. But no one wants to buy or exchange the shirt. Only... This morning, the morning of the Reaping, he can not find nor Tigris nor the shirt.

So he starts to worried. And he leads us to why he was thinking about a price for Tigris in the first place. Context, people. I will post the actual quote of the book (thanks to @xalonelydreamerx for the screen):

They already try to sell/exchange something for a better shirt, and they have nothing. What is left? Tigris herself. WHAT IS LEFT? TIGRIS HERSELF, PLEASE READ THIS AGAIN.

So, we have an actual reason, a valid reason, he has to think about Tigris selling herself and people putting price on her.

Now after this come the quote, I paste again for you:

And now we can read the FULL quote.

The first half: he uses this to describe to us his cousin, and he tries to mantain a "fair" and "external pov" for it, because he puts himself in the shoes of a man who can be interested in buying her. The "vulnerability that invited abuse" is a mere objective though and also serve the purpose to tell us reader that Tigris is sweet and innocent and maybe a little bit naive, or can be perceived like that from the world. And we know this is true. Tigris is sweet and caring, she takes care of Coryo, she always did. We will know better later, this is a mere introduction.

But the second half. The second half of the quote, you all. He feels disgusted with himself for the though and this is already a good start to understand that HE DIDN'T MEAN TO PUT A PRICE ON HER AND SELL HER, NEVER, but the actual most important word here is "helpless". HELPLESS. BECAUSE HE IS THE PROVIDER OF THE FAMILY.

He is the hope. We will learn about the Plinth Prize and what it means for the family. We will learn that everyone rely on him to win the prize and save them. We will learn that he was told, since the start, that he as 'the man of the house' has the duty of provide for his family.

He is happy in that role, mind you. Worried sick, of course, because it is difficult and he can count only on the Plinth Prize to achieve something, so he has to win and the pressure is huge. There are also complex feelings around the Snow names: the fact that he feels that it is his duty to protect the family image, masking the thruth... etc etc etc.

But the first information we have, the most important piece we have from the start to put together who is Coriolanus Snow at the core, is right here. In the first page. In a part of that sentence antis like to quote and simply forget to do it in full.

Coriolanus Snow has to face the realistic possibility, the realistic concern that his cousin might consider the idea to sell herself to help him provide for their family and he fells horrified and helpless.

Helpless.

Because 1) a Snow could never think such a thing, how humiliating, how a failure for their name; and most important 2) if Tigris will do it it means that he failed in the worst possible way and he is not longer able to provide for his family and so were is his own worth? When everything he learned since he was born was to take care of his family and his family's name, that it is his duty, because he is the heir (also little ps: we learn later that since he will graduate the little pension they have now for his father death will stop because he will be a man, so also Panem itself is telling him he has to be able to provide for his family because he will be 'grown up' and 'in the real world' now).

We learn that Coriolanus Snow never wants to sell Tigris, that he is sick at the mere though, and we learn just right here just in the first page what are the core value of him. What moves him and what he thinks of himself and his family.

We learn who Coriolanus Snow is, as if we never knew his name and he was just a boy at the start of his own story.

And antis always forget about this and take one sentence out of context and judge him with "president Snow tinted glasses" and just because this quote is at the start of the book they like to scream to everyone "See? This is it, he was always bad, from the start!". And they actually just tell us that they can not understand what they are reading instead.

Okay, I hope that this lesson was worth it. Reading comprehension 1.0. I hope some antis will come accross this post and take time to read it. It's not too late to learn how to understand what you read, after all.

And now I will go to sleep that I have a terrible headache 😂 bye!

Me being very rational and normal about my blorbos: in the Zack timeline in Rebirth, Biggs brings Zack to take a look at an Avalanche poster asking people to meet up and fight Shinra. Right next to the poster is a Banora White poster. As Biggs and Zack go to the meeting point, they have a conversation where a) Biggs talks about how he's struggling to find his "role" in this timeline and b) they both mention having memory issues. Furthermore, it's suggested someone has actively worked to make Biggs survive, and also to make Zack survive - but are these the same person? Was this Cloud's seven seconds? But why would he save Biggs alone, not Jessie too, and why would he save Zack when he didn't remember him? The only other person we know of who has the power to change things seems to be Sephiroth, that had no interest in either Zack or Biggs. Now later, Zack tells Biggs that when things get tough, he has to rely on, "I dunno - hopes? Dreams maybe? Something like that", which seems to be a reference to Angeal's lessons regarding dreams and honor. However, it is strange Zack would struggle to remember that, given how important Angeal was to him.

Therefore, considering the discussion of roles to play and the reoccurring Banora White imagery, is it possible that Genesis is playing some role that we still haven't seen? Could someone - perhaps Sephiroth - have done something to attempt to change some of the events of Crisis Core, thus causing Zack to misremember them? Could Genesis also have some power to change things, and have been the one to save Zack rather than Cloud, whether to fight Sephiroth or for his own gains? Or is the fact that Biggs survived, while Jessie - who we see played Loveless as part of her career - presumably died something to be read into?

Anyway I broke my waffle fast on account of @double-o-boze being a little gremlin

that was the best nintendo direct ever im going feral

things to do today

- worry about tutoring a kid

- worry about tutoring a kid

- worry about tutoring a kid

- tutor a kid

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

to me, the funniest thing about “that’s rough buddy” isn’t the fact that sokka says something patently insane with zero context seemingly out of nowhere, or the fact that zuko clearly doesn’t know how to respond. it’s the completely incorrect use of the word “buddy.” zuko would obviously like to be friends with sokka, but sokka is not, in fact, his friend. this is the most time they’ve ever spent together, and it’s because zuko invited himself to tag along on sokka’s suicide mission. at this point in the episode, sokka still hates this guy, perhaps less than he did a week ago, but he still hates him enough that he didn’t bother forcing zuko to stay home, which means he still didn’t really care whether or not zuko lives or dies. which, considering that he had tried to kill zuko multiple times in the past, is not all that surprising. this entire episode is essentially just zuko forcing his friendship onto sokka while sokka is legitimately too depressed to care. so when zuko calls sokka “buddy,” there’s a spirit of dogged optimism characterizing that epithet, because in no possible realm would sokka consider zuko his buddy at this point in the episode. and that’s something we miss when noting the iconicness of this exchange, simply because, by the end of this episode, they are buddies, so in our minds looking back on these lines, the implication of friendship doesn’t feel out of place at all. and really, it isn’t out of place, but only because zuko’s tenacity and determination (in this instance, his determination to befriend sokka) has always hugely outweighed his ability to read the room.

I want to post this here too because I’ve seen it happen a few times

Please understand that there are cultural differences and language differences, if you see this happening let the person clarify what they meant, that person might just not be familiar with words the western side of the internet use

alright look, i just wanna know who is the writer that came up with the dumbass idea of replacing the line “Ever since I lost my son, I think of you as my own” with “Lu Ten would have been proud to have you as his father” in this scene for the Netflix live action series???

I love you garbage truck workers I love you janitors I love you waste water treatment workers I love you sanitation workers I love you

Gregory asks Michael an important FNAF lore question..

just finished opla mood

nothing makes me more insane than the phrase "selling your body" btw. like was i not also selling my body at every other job i've had where i had to be on my feet all day, lifting boxes, working in a warehouse, etc. why is it that sex work is uniquely labeled as "selling your body" while every other job is sorted into another category, no matter how much that job might have a physical impact on your body. lmao.

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"