that thing from sherlock that’s like “during a fire you look for whatever’s most valuable to you” but it’s “during the mass exodus from the empires server you notice the absence of whichever hermit(s) are most valuable to you”

list of empires smp empires based on whether i think they existed in lore before the players started ruling over them and also how the players got to rule over them:

putting it under the read more bc it got long

Ancient Capital: yeah obviously that’s pixs whole thing. pix is in charge bc he’s the only one there

Gobland: yes, fwhip took over from the former leader by digging up a magical king choosing rock or something idk

Glimmer Grove: yes, confirmed by katherine in her first episode, she inherits her rule and title from her family and bloodline

the Olipelago: nope, it’s literally a beach where oli set up his tent, it’s a place for wandering travelers and musicians (it’s basically an artsy homeless encampment). olis in charge cause he was the first one to set up there, but there aren’t really strict rules or any proper government (i’m not caught up on olis streams pls don’t come at me if the vibe has changed since i saw it last this is just my interpretation based on what i saw)

Dawn: yes, gem inherits her rule and title from her family and bloodline like katherine , but unlike katherine her family’s rule is chosen by the butterflies and bees through some kind of magical process and if they find the family unfit to rule they can choose another family/heir. if gem has siblings, then the heir isn’t necessarily the oldest, it’s whoever gets chosen by the bees

Stratos: yes and no kind of? lower stratos existed before, but it was a pretty small village, joel is their patron god and he moved in and started improving the village and building upper stratos bc he heard their prayers to him. he’s in charge bc he’s literally their god obviously. he’s actually a pretty minor god, which is why he gives so much help and attention to what was at first, a very tiny and insignificant village, bc they’re the only ones who regularly prayed to him

Tumble Town: yes, confirmed by the old sheriff. jimmy is the new sheriff cause he found the badge in a random mineshaft chest in his first episode. tumble town was a ghost town before jimmy came along so there was no one to contest his claim. they all moved on once they thought the mines were drying up and only moved back once jimmy revitalized the industry (that was very common on the real western frontier, except they just ended up abandoned forever unlike tumble town)

The Evermoore: nope, just a swamp. shelby gets to be in charge cause she’s the only one there and the spirits she helps are still spirits and don’t rlly want to be in charge

Sanctuary: no, sausage founded the settlement and was completely willing to step down once it started to grow into a real empire but he’s very well respected and everyone wanted to him to stay the ruler, esp cause they trusted he wouldn’t be like the king from their old kingdom. the people who work at town hall do all the official paperwork and stuff but sausages still the unofficial ruler

Animalia: no, there were hidden underground societies of animal citizens before but they were all separate by type, like one place for the frogs, one for foxes, etc, and then one day lizzie recruited animals for the critter council and started building a place where they wouldn’t have to hide. at first lizzie’s villagers were mostly living there under coercion, but as word spread throughout the hidden animal communities the animal citizens started immigrating willingly

Chromia: honestly not sure, this and gobland are the empires i have the least ideas for, i feel like it could go either way. chromia scott just doesn’t feel like the kind of guy who would build a whole new settlement from scratch, so maybe he hid out in a village while on the run from authorities or whatever kind of trouble he got himself into, and then he decided to liven up the place with some colors and ended up being in charge somehow. or maybe he was on the run and decided to build a house and a new identity and start selling dyes and ppl just started coming and building there too idk.

Cogsmeade: no, but i think there was a village or 2 nearby, and the people there are super wary of strangers and pretty isolationist, similar to false herself. when she first moved in nearby, the villagers weren’t sure what to make of her, she seemed strange but she kept to herself and didn’t bother them so they let it be. after a while they saw the stuff she was building and were begrudgingly impressed and a few of them decided to try and trade with her for iron and stuff. it takes ages but she builds some buildings and and some people move closer to her and some stay in the inn. it’s a small, close knit community, and the citizens and false trust each other as much as people like them can. false never actually tells any of them about her past and her trauma, but there’s an unspoken understanding that they all have. they’ve all gone through stuff and are running from something, they know what it feels like. there’s lots of solidarity, and they’re not nice but they’re kind.

Forgotten Cove, Eversea: yes, eversea isn’t actually a land it’s just the pirate term for certain parts of the ocean, the strategically important parts, where the merchant ships have to pass through, and the pirates who control those waters are super powerful. if a pirate crew is powerful enough to enforce it, they can basically claim parts of eversea as their territory and it’s off limits to other pirates. sometimes different crews make alliances and trades for use of the territory and sometimes they’ll just challenge the other crew for the territory and if the challenging crew defeats the crew that holds the territory then they can claim it.

when a crew that holds multiple territories is defeated their other claims are essentially considered to be very shaky and other crews will start swarming them to try and claim them for themselves. there’s a lot of politics involved and reputation is an important part of all of it. if a crew wins a challenge and gains more territory, some might leave the other territories alone bc they think that the crew will most likely be coming to cement their claim on those next, and it’s not worth it to try and fight for them. while some would view the defeated crew as weak and run to try and rip off a piece while they’re down. it all depends on politics, reputations, risks vs rewards, how valuable the territory is, and a ton of other stuff.

some parts of the eversea waters change hands constantly, while others are held more consistently by 1 or 2 crews. skeletron has held the vast majority of territory for the past years, which is basically unheard of. usually there’s a few big players and a bunch of smaller groups who have ties or alliances with one of the big powers. skeletron came out of nowhere and started taking out the big powers, and the the smaller groups either flocked to him out of fear or got taken out.

if the major powers had teamed up to fight him they may have been able to take him out, but it would take something huge to make them set aside their feuds, and they didn’t take skeletron seriously at first. by the time they realized what a huge threat he was, it was too late. joey was actually the last holdout, which is why skeletron was so hellbent on getting him. joey wasn’t a major power yet, but before skeletron sunk his ship and kidnapped his crew mates joey was considered a very promising up-and-comer, well on his way to becoming a major power. although most people gave up on him once skeletron sunk him, because at that point skeletron was considered an almost mythical legendary figure, like blackbeard, and no one thought joey could’ve survived his attack.

but he did! and he washed up in the forgotten cove! a bustling shantytown that every pirate knows is the closest thing you can get to being at sea while still being on land. the floating docks and the ships moored there considered just as much a part of the town as the many many pubs and bars. just like the sea, the town has its own politics, depending on the delicate balanced ecosystem of the town to keep it thriving. if you need something illegal, the first place to look is always the forgotten cove, which was named that way because the more honest and more wealthy parts of society didn’t like to remember it existed, and they got so good at forgetting that eventually everyone forgot what empire it belonged to originally.

nowadays it’s considered its own independent territory. it’s one of those places where everybody knows it exists and that people are committing crimes there, but the people in charge turn a blind eye to it bc of, again, politics. the town is considered more stable than the sea. in addition to the pirates, there’s also a bunch of gangs, smugglers, and a shit ton of poor street kids. it’s a great place to disappear, which is why it was the best place for joey to lay low and gather more power to try and defeat skeletron.

he also manages to unite the town and improve the conditions a ton while he does it. which is why he ends up in charge. he does have to fight a bit for the position but most of the town likes having him in charge and it’s hard to get them to agree on anything. the other rulers are shocked when joey shows up for one of the empires rulers meetings, because despite sending the invitation out of courtesy every time, no one ever shows up. they’re way too busy worrying about internal politics to care about the external politics with other empires.

after joey defeats skeletron with katherine and shelby he gains legendary status and is considered the greatest pirate of all time. he spends a year sailing around with katherine and shelby (i know shelby’s finale had kind of a vague timeline but i decided i want them to sail off into the distance happily ever after and it’s my post) and they also get added to the legends. the pirate king, the monster-slaying princess, and the great witch. friends forever.

my star wars opinions and a lengthy explanation of my dislike for die-hard jedi apologists

if you don't agree with these, that's okay! you can follow, but don't expect me to change any of my views bc i've held these stances for years at this point.

my main opinions: the sith are worse than the jedi, order 66 was bad, the republic sucked shit but was better than the empire for a while, the separatists had the right to secede from the corruption of the republic in theory but in execution they were both 1) brutal and 2) sith-infested and therefore worse than the republic, mando clones is a fun headcanon, the children of the watch aren't a cult at least up to s3 (haven't watched it bc the s2 finale pissed me off), and anakin was ultimately responsible for his own fall but his actions didn't occur in a vacuum and were due in some small part to an absence of open communication on all fronts, a lack of support, and the jedi allowing palpatine to spend time around him as a child (and the council asking anakin to spy on him).

finally, i dislike hardline jedi apologists for reasons i will explain under the cut, and despite me being a mandalorian enthusiast (save for the kryzes and new mandalorians), i enjoy the jedi as well and totally reject the jedi-fan-vs-mando-fan false dichotomy. i'm going into a lot of detail below bc this is the most widely held belief i don't vibe with in the fandom. feel free to ignore the following if you don't want to hear my ramblings on the jedi!

so my personal stance on the jedi apologism thing is that i disagree, but i can see where they're coming from bc that used to be me. around the time of my blog's creation in 2020, i was mutuals with ppl who held those beliefs. i agreed almost entirely with them and followed basically all of the BNF blogs that i've now either blocked or been blocked by as of writing this.

anyway, the more i interacted with the apologists, the more i found myself disagreeing with some of their opinions as time passed. i found them brushing aside criticisms that i thought deserved to be addressed e.g. the jedi's involvement in the GAR and the ensuing exploitation of the clones. then after mando s1 came out, i started getting into legends mando content and enjoyed their particular flavor of moral complexity a bit more, partially due to the fact that there's very little mando apologism and black-and-white takes on them in comparison to the overwhelming amount of jedi apologists, which i had already started to view as overly simplistic.

that said, obi-wan is my absolute favorite character, and that held true even after i started having gripes with the apologism crowd. i like cal kestis a lot too, as well as ahsoka. i loved these characters who were good individuals and also jedi, and so i felt that the order had to be wholly good to create such people. but the order was chained to the corrupt senate, which was the beating, rotten heart of the republic. they inacted its will, got sucked into its war despite holding peace as a main principle of their belief system, commanded an army of clones viewed as no more than property by both the kaminoans and the republic, and then gave into political pressure to expel ahsoka from the order after she was framed for the bombing.

all of these actions are hypocritical at best and horrifying at worst. the jedi undoubtedly fucked up in canon, without even taking legends into account. they were founded on noble ideals and did a lot of good in the universe, but they were dragged down by the republic and ultimately destroyed because palpatine recognized their weakness was being tied to the republic and he made it even worse through his political machinations. they did not deserve order 66, and order 66 wasn't necessary to restore balance, but they weren't faultless paragons of virtue with no control over the universe or the republic, either. they had enough clout to fix some of their mistakes or at least attempt to atone for them, but they ignored these options and continued upholding the republic's immoral status quo.

individual jedi could be good, they could be great, even! that said, they were often constrained not by their code, but by the fact that they had become bound to the senate and in a bad spot politically with the public. they were quite literally between a rock and a hard place, but being in a tough situation doesn't absolve them of their culpability.

in conclusion, the jedi were flawed to a degree, and anyone who doesn't believe that probably won't like my blog. thank you for coming to my ted talk ❤️

rift rambles

so clearly something is going down today, which if I had planned this properly, wouldn't mean I was writing this so close to a flood of hc and empires eps dropping lmao but here we are.

i had planned a longer exposition about everything that's known and what's canon and how things might play out but idk I feel that would take too long and I have not enough time to do everything I need to do today so. I will ramble about this instead and we'll see what happens.

Also I am the kind of person who works quite closely from canon, so there's no super wild speculation here. Just extrapolation from what we know and what we've been told, and where that might lead.

So as someone who watches everyone on hermitcraft and everyone on empires I've been subjected to ALL THE RIFT LORE things going on. I will also be subjected to SO MANY VIDEOS in my sub box when all the rift stuff drops lmao pray for me. XD But at least it's given me a complete picture of everything that's been going on.

Things that interest me about Grumbot and the portal stuff:

if things can go INTO the portal from the Hermitcraft side and not be scrambled, but this doesn't work coming back from the other side/end of the portal (I am not assuming it will always lead to Empires, Grumbot suggests it can link to any world with a Grumbot), what does this mean about how the Hermits may get back without scrambling themselves.

If Empires wasn't originally in Grumbot Prime's database bc there wasn't a Grumbot, this necessarily suggests that the world he came from had a network of worlds hooked up by Grumbots that would allow travel between them.

If Empires does not have a Grumbot, is that why messages going through to Hermitcraft get scrambled? No Grumbot to keep the bits and pieces in order before being sent?

Grumbot Prime clearly controls the rift and can change the world that the portal links to. It might be that he opened the rift to Hermitcraft originally so he could come through to this universe for some as yet unspecifed reason. Perhaps seeking out Grian specifically? If so, why? Establishing a Grumbot on Hermitcraft to allow travel between this server and the world he came from? Again, if so why? Also what led Grumbot Prime to have these kinds of powers and abilities? He was simply programmed to make Mumbo mayor, and seems to have done that, but there's a unspoken creepiness about him and the world he came from. Like that world went wrong somehow, or is darker, or resulted in something very bad happening either with the Mayorship or with Grumbot himself that made him turn on his dads.

There is established multiverse lore on both Hermitcraft and Empires via Ren's lore mostly for this season, but also previous seasons have elaborated on this too, and Mythical Sausage does an awful lot with multiverses as well and has done in both his Empires series and Afterlife. Oli's entire Empires s2 lore is all about coming from Afterlife to Empires and not knowing he's on Empires until he finds other people. Grian bringing in a Grumbot from another universe adds to this. So it's clearly a big theme that's being tied together, not necesarily by everyone, but it's percolating. Which is why, to me anyway, linking Empires and Hermitcraft like this can lore-wise make sense at this time. There are other connections between the two servers ofc, and they seem to be pretty friendly with each other as well as sharing members in Gem and False (and Pearl last season).

Incidentally, Pearl and Gem were my gateway to Hermitcraft. I started watching them on Empires and so when they started on Hermitcraft a month later, I thought I'd give it a watch, and here I am, rambling about multiverse lore on tumblr lol.

Also all the teaser tweets over the past day or so have been, quite frankly, infuriating. XD

The question we won't know until the vids drop is the purpose of linking them together, and what that's going to serve to do, lore-wise, and also for them as two servers. Obvs ppl will include as much or as little rift lore into their seasons as they wish, but it's hard to ignore for big server-wide events like this.

I had a brief thought that maybe this was a Hallowe'en collab, bc of the timing ofc, but I don't know if that's just coincidental. It may be. I would be an awesome thing to do for Hallowe'en, to have Hermits stuck in another server and have to make their way back home somehow. Maybe they have to build a Grumbot to get home, so then they won't get scrambled. That's lore-consistent with what's in Grian's vid, so that may work. The question then is what having a Grumbot on Empires might do, and what lore that brings into their server.

Obviously the two Gems and two Falses (and potentially two Pearls, though I suspect there'll only be one) are going to be interesting, to see what happens with that. I am pretty sure False went through, but Gem definitely hesitated. And Gem heard herself through the portal and I am assuming she is involved in this somehow, but she might be going in late and perhaps doing her own thing.

Scar put some sounds at the end of his last ep, some speculated they sounded like cogs or machinery and maybe he ends up in Cogsmeade. Sausage also included the sound of what seemed like around 13 people coming through the portal at the end of his last ep, and his tweets have very heavily suggested Hermits coming to Empires, and perhaps not the other way around (yet???), and that was before Grian's last ep dropped which showed the Hermits going through first.

Which makes me think even more about what the story is here and why it involves literally going to another server with a big group of people. I'm used to Sausage doing multiverse stuff on his own that doesn't really impact other ppl. So to have a huge group involved is definitely a step up and I'm excited to see what happens next.

I may add other thoughts to this later maybe. I have so much to do to day so I may leave this here for now and go back to waiting for all the eps to drop. It'll be like 10pm my time so good luck to me getting through them all and getting to bed at a reasonable hour lmao. XD

Anyway, if anyone has further thoughts, plz share. <3

2.] The Context for This Rebuke

The story, the bombshell, & how it applies to three kinds of people here today. So first of all the story & here's the story:

If you were in Corinth, which was a city in a very tiny little piece of land, about 4 miles in circumference.

It's in the middle of Greece, below Greece was all the southern provinces & above Greece was all the northern provinces.

And there was one little tiny spit of land, only four miles across. Binding the North to the South.

And so Corinth was the ideal place to make money.

………………………………………………………………… Corinth was a commercial center because anybody who wanted to go North or South had to go through Corinth—every interstate highway went through it. …………………………………………………………………

Imagine that, but not only that—if anybody wanted to go on a boat from East to West, they could either go to Corinth & they could transport their cargo just four miles & put it on another boat

     or they could go hundreds of miles to the      South around the bottom…

You see, in other words, Corinth was in a sense a kind of ancient Panama Canal, it was a place where people had to go through for any kind of trade route whether it was by sea or by land.

2.1] Historically Destroyed by Romans

But in 146 B.C. Corinth was destroyed by the Romans because it rebelled against the Roman Empire that was rising at the time for 100 years.

Corinth was leveled, it was laid waste. Nobody lived there for 100 years from 146 B.C. until the middle of the century before CHRIST.

And Julius Caesar knew a good thing when he saw it & he put a little Roman Garrison there, & decided to turn it into a Roman Colony—because anybody who was there, was going to make a lot of money

In the next 200 years, actually in the next 100 years, from the time Julius Caesar restarted it to the time that we have this letter coming to us:

     Corinth exploded from nothing into one of      the biggest cities in the world, but it was a      unique city because first of all:

     [1] it had no aristocracy,      [2] it had no tradition,      [3] it didn't even have a native population

     And as a result this, it was one of the largest      cities, it was incredibly densely populated &      was totally diverse, utterly multi-ethnic

Because the only people who came to Corinth were people that came for one thing—the only thing that bound them together was

     one thing they came to make it! They came      to have success, they came to make money

And as a result, one ancient commentator/historian says that it was the most densely populated because it was all packed with hundreds of thousands of ppl..

     one of the biggest cities in the world at the      time that was stuck into that 4 mile parcel      into the most densely populated cities..

One of the most dog-eat-dog place, success-oriented, sex-obsessed cities in the world—there was no reason to be there except to be successful.

And they had to coin a word in that culture or society, that had been coined in the Roman Empire called to “corinthianize” it was a verb & the verb

     corinthianized means to live in utter      depravity — without any rules at all.

Better Than Miracles P1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 | Timothy J. Keller [1 Corinthians 13:1-3]

omg i would like to know the hated author...

OH thank you for asking I was. of course secretly deeply hoping someone would ask so I would have an excuse to go off. 

The author [dramatic pause] is VE Schwab!

Now I will pause (again) to say that I just spent like two hours writing a six page long essay on exactly why I dislike her as an author (I don’t know anything about her as a person so no feelings there) but then when I reread it I started to feel worried that it might hurt someone’s feelings who really likes her as an author, so this is a slightly redacted version.

But basically there are three things I hold against her.

For context, I’ve only actually read one book by her, A Darker Shade of Magic. But it’s not just that I didn’t like it. It’s that it left me angry. I read it a year ago and I still get furious when I think about it. It is, in my opinion, a profoundly toxic and hateful book. 

While at the same time also being a very boring and bland book.

So that’s point one) I just don’t get the hype. I read ADSM b/c I saw it recommended everywhere, but I really don’t get why? It’s not very well-written. Purely on a technical level her writing isn’t bad, but it’s not good either, its very...okay. The world building was really disappointing (it’s about four alternate worlds but they’re all almost. exactly the same. which was super disappointing. and also she seems to be under the illusion that london is like the most important place in the world?) The characters are bare minimum sketches, they basically feel like she came up with an initial concept and then never went any further. The characters aren’t particularly likeable or compelling, either, except for one character who...I felt like you weren’t actually supposed to like, lol. The pacing was actively bad. The plot doesn’t really start till around halfway through the book. I actually started ASDM twice and gave up on it the first time b/c it was boring. when I tried again the second time, I thought I had only read maybe the first quarter of it on the first try b/c I couldn’t remember anything happening, but it turned out I had actually read about half, its just that nothing happens in the first half. 

to be fair, I have read reviews of a different book she wrote which specifically praised the writing, so maybe she just did a shitty job on this book and she writes better in her other work?

point two) if you only pay attention to the text of the story, it’s fine! again, its not particularly compelling but its fine. but if you pay any attention to the subtext, its...really misogynistic and queerphobic. its incredibly pervasive through the whole text. 

for one thing, the female protagonist is introduced and is immediately like “Oh. I hate all other women.” (No one asked!) which is not necessarily bad in and of itself, except that...not only is her sexism never called out or contradicted, its actually actively supported by the text. there’s only one other important female character, and she’s Evil(TM), and also gets killed. the very few other female side characters are either someone’s mom or are portrayed as being extremely shallow and vapid and silly. they act exactly how the female protag despises women for acting. so...I don’t think its intentional but you’re left with this weird impression that the female protag is completely justified in her internalized misogyny b/c apparently all other women ARE bad. also, the female protag likes wearing boy’s clothes, which is great, but there’s this weird vibe that girls who don’t wear boy’s clothes are like, dumb and bad and sexist. I think the author is trying to critique repressive female clothing in the past (female character is from regency era england) but she does it really badly and instead accidentally(?) implies that girls who wear skirts are like. dumb sluts. a very weirdly sexist take. like it literally feels like this book hates women and specifically hates them for wearing “women’s” clothes.  *also not the point but it’s really funny that of all the time periods to critique for restrictive clothes, she picked regency england. ah yes, the torturous constraints of...empire waisted dresses and minimal or no corsets. dastardly! 

for another thing, the queer rep is just...so so bad. there’s one explicitly multisexual person (bi or pan isn’t specified but something along those lines) who gets tricked by a manipulative man older than himself heavily implied to be gay (bad) and gets horribly injured and almost dies (bad) basically just so the straight male protag can have angst (bad!). 

the manipulative guy implied to be gay is in turn being magically controlled by...a different! manipulative older man (bad) and is strongly implied to be sexually abused by that man (bad) and the straight main character literally never tries to help him in any way (bad) and ultimately kills(ish) him (bad) but it’s revealed that he basically chose to die (bad) because it was like, the only way he could ever escape his suffering (very bad!!) and the main character then! uses! his dying body! in a spell! to save his own fucking life! and basically disposes of his still alive! body into hell like he’s garbage (so bad I’m literally still fuming of it over a year later)

and then there’s the guy who is manipulating that guy, who is an older man heavily implied to serially abuse and assault teenage boys and young men (bad!!). he also dies too which is fine and good in and of itself...*

except for the fact that of our three queer-adjacent characters, two die and one is horribly injured and almost dies. two are abused and one is an abuser. two are used as angst-fodder for straight characters and one is literally sacrificed, coldly and selfishly and without his consent, to save a straight character’s life. they’re all closely associated with injury and death and trauma and abuse and it’s suggested that death is the only escape. 

subtextually speaking, this book hates queer men and punishes them for existing. 

*note: I want to specifically say that “enjoying abusing teen boys” does not automatically make a person gay or queer. that’s not what being gay/queer means. HOWEVER, there is a long and ugly history of gay men being portrayed as predators who deliberately prey on and abuse younger men, and this character plays directly into that stereotype, and that is why I included him. not b/c he’s positive queer rep but exactly because he isn’t

thirdly) about a year ago there was a bit of buzz about ve schwab writing a book with a canon asexual character...except I looked into it and a) it’s not actually canon at all; the book only says he’s disinterested in sex, which is by NO MEANS the same and it’s shitty to conflate the two when there’s a vast spectrum of asexual experiences (to be clear, it would be one thing if the text said he was asexual AND disinterested in sex. to say he’s disinterested in sex and that equals asexuality is a whole other thing, and is wrong), and schwab then confirmed on her twitter that he’s meant to be asexual. That’s not the same its not the same and we all know its not the same. b) this character is in fact a villain, which is frustrating when asexuality is FREQUENTLY and harmfully associated with people being heartless and unfeeling and evil and like, literal serial killers; to be fair, as I understand it the majority (all?) of the characters in these books are villains, so that’s less bad, but to be fair again, apparently this specific character is also portrayed as being, like “a sociopath” which is ableist AND goes back to all the stuff I said above. and c) what really annoys me is that in her tweets at the time she was very smug about this and fully patted herself on the back. she did half-assed, unresearched “rep” which wasn’t even actually canon and then acted like she was doing ace ppl a favor. excuse me, I didn’t actually ask to be represented by you. 

SO YEAH that’s not the...medium and short of it. the long and short is reserved for a Cursed(TM) google doc filled with my rage. but the tl;dr is that I think she’s an overhyped writer who wrote a profoundly misogynistic, homophobic book and trumps herself up over rep she didn’t actually do a good job of providing. and I would definitely never read another one of her books. The End!

Essay quam videri

hey, so this election is the first time I’ve been old enough to vote. im not a Democrat; I was doing work for bernies campaign and was pretty heartbroken when he suspended his campaign cause I know that biden is a rapist piece of shit and kamala is a fucking cop. but when the time came to vote in the election I voted for biden anyway cause I was told it would do more to protect people who were harmed by trumps campaign I don’t expect any sort of real change with biden and I worry that electing him will pacify civil unrest and provide people with a false sense of security,, but I felt like I wouldn’t have any right to be upset about trump being re-elected if I didn’t vote but do you think that voting for biden was fundamentally wrong? I’m trying to figure out how to navigate living in an evil system and sometimes I don’t know if it’s better to opt out or to participate and support an evil that is nominally better than another evil just wanted your opinion cause most ppl I know are on that “vote blue no matter who” shit

Hey,

I do understand how you feel. It can be really confusing, and it is a difficult question to come to grips with, trying to navigate an evil system and to minimize the damage your participation in it brings. This isn't an indictment of you personally, but an indictment of the world in which we live. One of the most horrid aspects of Capitalism is the barbarity that it makes us all ineluctably complicit in. Most people participate in the evils of this system through no real desire of their own, but because Capitalism has developed over the centuries a number of means to coerce participation. You can't have slavery without slaves, and there were always slaves because they created the profits that shackled them. That doesn't make picking master's cotton a fundamentally wrong act. You're a captive, and the captive's first duty is to survive, and secondly, to escape.

This ubiquitous coercion naturally makes any mechanism which we are invited to participate in suspicious. This recent election is a prime example: do you vote for this senile, racist, war-mongering, pedophile rapist, or that senile, racist, war-mongering, pedophile rapist? Do you vote for the man who put the people into camps, or vote for the man that built the camps? Do we bear the ills we have, or fly to others we know not of? You're right to be wary of participation. Part of its purpose is to instill a feeling of complicity in the crimes that result, either in yourself, or cast over some other party. The Democrats took advantage of this over the last four years to berate Trump for doing everything that Obama and Biden also did. They did and said the same things during Bush II's presidency. Now they exchange gifts with him and have brunch. It's theater, and they're all in the same troupe.

Do you know what constitutes bourgeois moralism? That it is pointless, epitomized in the phrase "thoughts and prayers!" It's wishing for good rather than doing good, hoping to be passed over by evil instead of working to destroy evil. Why do the bourgeoisie love philanthropy? Because it does nothing to lessen human misery. That is the essence of bourgeois moralism: seeming rather than being. The proletarian has no use for something so impractical, and you should not let yourself be fettered in this way. It will do you no good, nor anyone else. You will merely appear to be doing good, which is far worse than being nakedly evil.

Whether you decide to vote or not, and who you cast it for is entirely your prerogative. Haranguing the voter for participating or not, in a system they do not control, have no voice in, nor any real method of shaping, for people they had no hand in choosing, is nothing but vapid bourgeois moralism. It's a sleight of hand, transferring the guilt for Trump's crimes from the people that perpetrated them—Trump himself, the bourgeois that supports him, the thugs that carry out his orders, and so on, the willful perpetrators—onto you, the individual that had no part in any of it. This tactic is used to assuage the guilt of those who are willfully either complicit in a real sense or complicit in spirit. The same charlatans that try to shame you into voting want you to ignore that they've spent the last four years casually participating in the society that Trump runs, and dutifully supporting his regime with their taxes and commerce, and facilitating it with their compliance. They have nothing to offer you for your vote, because they are bankrupt themselves, bereft of the moral fortitude they fault others for not having. All they want is absolution, and the onus does not lie on you to give it.

That not casting a vote gives you no right to be upset about the outcome of that vote is another facet of this, a fallacious tactic on the part of the bourgeoisie. Not casting a vote is a vote in itself. Your assent and support is something that should be earned, not demanded, or expected, or brow-beaten out of you. If there is no candidate that you believe deserves your vote, then the only responsible choice is to not cast it. To say otherwise is to disembowel the very meaning of democracy. The compulsion of assent renders it meaningless.

With that said, is it fundamentally wrong to vote for Biden?

I think that isn't as useful a question as, what do you hope to accomplish by it? Biden as an alternative to Trump is a false choice—we have Trump _because_ of Biden. He didn't spring from nothingness, after all. Biden, and the rest of the political class at the behest of their corporate donors, have for decades shaped policy, enacted legislation, and brick by brick built the road that brought us to Trump. That is in addition to the Democrats' faux opposition to Trump, and their total collaboration in acting with him and the rest of the Republican party. The danger you want to mitigate is as much the legacy of the Democrats as it is the Republicans. They work in tandem in order to hold the people you wish to shield hostage against you. To put it simply, there is no Trump without Biden.

Yet neither is one exactly like the other. While they are both bourgeois politicians representing bourgeois cliques, they represent different factions of the plutocracy and their interests. Does the US go to war with Iran, or with Russia? Does the US continue to spread fascism in South America or in Southeast Asia? You can choose not to choose, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that. You can choose the person that supports bombing country A or the one wanting to sanction country B, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that, either. In the grand scheme, your personal, individual vote amounts to very little. You'd might as well fret over which brand of soap you buy at the store, which brand of cereal, or your search engine. If there is no ethical consumption under Capitalism, then it would seem to follow that the only ethical choice is to not consume—to commit suicide. Even if you make your own rope from your own home grown organic hemp, you are still injuring the working class by doing the work of the bourgeoisie for it. Capitalism robs us even of escape in death.

What is fundamentally wrong is casting a vote based on nothing but wishful thinking and delusion, of which "Blue No Matter Who" is a byword. The bourgeois voting for Biden at least has the virtue of voting for their own interest. "Blue No Matter Who" is an affirmation of nihilism, that not only can they do nothing, but they also expect nothing. It isn't a political strategy. It's naked resignation. The consumer society that Capitalism has shaped has induced people to believe that their desires can be bought. Buy this soap and 5% of the sale goes to preserving the rain forest. Donate 30 cents to end starvation in Africa. That is the mindset at work here. The removal of Trump is just another item to add to the cart. Vote, and all the discomfort and ugliness that Trump has made them aware of will go away. Things will go back "to normal." They are deluding themselves that think this is not normal.

Mao himself says that nothing is wholly good or wholly evil. Good may come from evil actions, and evil may result from good actions. Gavrilo Princip had no idea that when he killed two aristocrats that he was setting in motion events that would not only lead to the deaths of millions of people, but also the death of the empires he hated. Your vote is just another small piece of an ongoing, dialectical process of events and actions and decisions leading into and influencing one another, most of which is largely outside of your control. Years from now you might have reason to regret it, or to celebrate it, or maybe even both. Actively making that decision, however the outcome, at least means that you chose to be rather than to seem, and that’s the first step to doing good.

What ppl dont get is that Fodlan *already* had one Ruler, and it was Rhea

And if there were a second one it would be Thales, who casually had the last generation of rulers replaced to install his own agents, though he was only able to do so by making use of the corruption, xenophobia, inequality, crest obsession, instability that Rhea's... lets be generous and call it incompetence, had allowed to fester

She's kinda sad and lonely and had her good days she didn't enjoy her existence as it was, she was acting out of fear and a desire to return to her peaceful childhood, but thats good writing not goodness. There's a critical mass of badness where we can safely use the world evil even if the person has some redeeming qualities and isnt a cackling disney villain, though as with all things involving threshold this is bound to be somewhat subjective.

But ultimately it doesnt matter how you do or do not label her. Lets say shes dark gray not shiny black.

But clearly no surface dwelling humans had any say at all before the war. Remember Dimitri's father who wanted to make peace with the neighbors? Nooot with those corrupt xenophobic nobles around, nooot on the Slither bois watch.

Why do you think Rhra made the hated enemies that *butchered her family* out to be heroes? So the ruling elite couldnt defy her as their legitimacy came from the church. So that all power came from the goddess so people don't even get the idea in their heads that they can attain any sort of power that doesnt come from her. That goes beyond just protecting herself.

Also though its at a tiny scale compared to all this lets not kid ourselves about what she expected to happen at the holy tomb.

She was 100% justified up until the moment she gave Nemesis that well deserved stabbing but to judge and subjugate the next 1000 years worth of people for something their ancestors did? And she wasnt ever going to let them go!

Its actually kinda ironic that her own lies ended up biting her in the ass. The ten elites and Nemesis had it coming, but whose fault is it that this is not common knowledge? Who purged all the records? Its not like Edelgard took the stories from her ancestors as fact without trying to look further, she moved in a big troupe of sholars to sift through the archives.

Claude had to extract the truth directly from Rhea and before that point fairly late in the game he knew no more than anyone else. He didnt just stumble about with minimal effort, that notion is actually more insulting to Claude than to Edelgard... hes a man who is in info gathering mode 24/7 and also the smartest person in the game, period, and the cast *brims* with astute cookies lets not shortsell him.

And in the end its not Rheas past that Edelgard is basing her response on but the results of her actions in the present.

Edelgard didnt "impose her will on the people" - was there anyone who wanted to be ruled from the shadows? She made it so the people had any say at all. She stopped someone else's will from being imposed on them...

That btw includes the routes where she perishes in the endeavor.

Either way Seiros is dead or out of power, the Slitherers are dead or at least suffered a major setback, and someone halfway competent winds up on the throne and steers the society a more equal direction... since its actually a government meant to help ppl not control them.

Edelgards beef was always with the shadow factions, both of them and them only. Which one is she gonna fight first? The bigger one of course. Throw them AT each other, pick off the smaller one at the end, dont risk having them throw the (heavily infiltrated) Empire into civil war. They were gonna do their evil deeds anyway; If she sticks around she can curtail them, or at least shed be around to end them eventually.

She disseminated info about the Churches actions and gave everyone the chance to choose sides - She knew that she probably would have to go through the Kingdom and possibly some of the Alliance because of the Church's influence and indoctrination (they literally have all aspiring leadeers exterminate rebels) and was fully prepared to pay that price (for it's lower than the price of letting all the injustice go on and on forever) but if theyd just stayed neutral you wouldnt have seen her complaining.

Any peace at the start of the story was wholly illusory - casualties were piling up left and right like... ALL the characters backstories.

Edelgard stauched the gushing bleeding wound, even if she had to do so by cauterizing it first, or amputating the infected limb if you will.

Hey Lavi, I never got around to reading Dante, but I studied Renaissance Florence and I saw someone in that long post mention that Dante seemed to have it in for Florence? Why is that, or was that a misreading? All I can recall of Florence’s flaws for the time were it’s reputation for gay guys and prostitutes (IIRC the German word for homosexual is derived from Florence :P)

ba… er, it’s not that he had it on florence, but like, people in that post (the not italian ones) have 100% Missed The Point, so I’ll go at it from the beginning. so, quote in question (I suppose):

he and his idol/mancrush, the famous poet Virgil, journey through Hell on behalf of his dead girlfriend and everyone who he didn’t like was there and suffered punishment for all eternity and then he blames three whole popes and the entire fucking city of Florence, Italy for the shitty state of the Church and over seven hundred years later it’s played a major influence in Western culture

now, never mind that ‘it’s played’ is dumb af because ITALIAN LANGUAGE WOULDN’T EXIST WITHOUT DANTE so it’s not played for shit, but like I’ll try to not touch all the other subjects regardless of how much my eyes are bleeding just reading this sentence.

the point is that he was permanently exiled from florence because of his political stances in which the church took part and that happened before the reinassance, which is like… long and complicate so I’m gonna make it very short and simplified sorry everyone but it’s not a thing you can dissect on tumblr properly. so, list:

florence at the end of the 13th century was a republic in the context of the rivalrly between guelfs and ghibellines, pls refer to that link for specific info but basically most of the politics in italy at that point where ‘there’s a bunch of separate small republics/states fighting each other and people tend to either stand with the pope [guelfs] or the emperor of the sacred roman empire [ghibellines]’, and in florence there had been a war in between the two factions that ended with the ghibellines being sent away from the city around 1289 if I’m not getting the year wrong, dante was a guelf and a nobleman and was directly involved in the city’s politics from then onwards until the aforementioned exile;

after then there was a further split in between the guelf faction ie one wanted the pope to be less involved and the other was more with sticking with him, and dante was in the first one;

now this is the point where I should tell you that the pope was boniface viii ie someone who has since then (and during that time) been wildly recognized as one of the worst people who ever had that job ever and whose papacy can be summed up in ‘trying to have both spiritual and temporal power in each single possible way in italy and outside it’ - pls read the entire article and get to the part where he had an entire feud with philip the ivth of france and ended with him getting slapped in the face in anagni -, and who dante saw as someone who had corrupted the catholic church and was fully not doing what his job entailed ie shepherding souls and not being an emperor;

tldr the white vs black guelfs feud ended up with the black guelfs winning and exiling the whites among which dante who therefore ended up exiled from his hometown for the entirety of his life later;

now the thing that those people don’t get is that to dante/people in his situation being involved in their hometown’s politics especially when being a public figure and so on was most of their life and they had an attachment to their city that was similar to what you’d have for your country since back in the day italy was barely a cultural unit and not a political one, like fighting for your city it wasn’t the same as fighting for your *hometown*, it was the same as your COUNTRY, which means that in his context being exiled from there meant leaving the country he was born in/that he loved/felt like he 100% belonged to and never come back, not just leaving one town and going to another. like, if someone told me I couldn’t ever go back to rome in my entire life but I could stay in naples I’d still be in the same country and as I’m italian first and everything else later I’d suffer but who cares, if someone said you have to leave italy and you can never come back I’d suffer a thousand times more because italy is my damned country and the place I was born in and in whose culture I partake/that I feel at home in, that was what it meant leaving florence to him;

now, his problem wasn’t with florence, his problem was with the people who threw him out and the system which allowed it and the catholic church which instead of worrying about religion worried about politics and mingling with them, which by the way is *exactly what the catholic church does here in italy to this day no more no less*, from then on nothing has changed, and he didn’t blame FLORENCE for the shitty state of the church as OP says, HE BLAMED THE CHURCH FOR THE SHITTY STATE OF FLORENCE AND THE ENTIRE COUNTRY, and guess what it’s been seven hundred years and counting and exactly nothing has changed, which means OP’s point even more dumb because dante saying that then and nothing having changed now should witness to the fact that he was only speaking sense;

like: dante had it in with corrupt popes who turned the church into a temporal power rather than stick with the spiritual because he thought that the temporal power didn’t belong to it, which is like… the principle of separation between state and church on which each single post-american revolution constitution has been founded on sure as hell he didn’t have it in for florence when he missed it for his entire life and wanted to go back more than anything and he couldn’t because he was exiled;

now, another thing that OP doesn’t get because lmao what is context: to catholics, the pope is technically infallible. like, if you’re a catholic You Cannot Criticize The Pope, period, so the fact that dante alighieri, A Catholic In The Middle Ages, puts not just one pope in HELL but more than one in a book/poem that he wants to sell as a revolutionary work (which he wanted to do or he wouldn’t have had vergil walking him through hell) is like… a level of disruptive revolutionary literary BDE that these people can’t even conceive, because it implied saying that the head of the church was wrong and calling him out of it. which, again, for a catholic, is basically the highest BDE level in existence. and guess what, Dante Was A Catholic But Not A Bigoted One As Much As These People ThinK;

also, never mind that the people he put in hell were also people he LIKED and most of the sympathetic characters are there, but tumblr doesn’t know that he put in purgatory manfred, the not legitimate son of frederick the second, who was excommunicated by the church, which I should hope anyone can guess the meaning of - like, excommunication is The Worst Thing The Church Can Do When It Comes To Catholics -, and he still put him in a position where he could be redeemed because he repented on his deathbed (according to dante’s rendition anyway), which means that he said someone the church had expelled for good from its ranks could still be redeemed and eventually go to heaven, which was basically telling them fuck you. same BDE.

now, that is the entire point of THAT SPECIFIC THING RE FLORENCE, but I’d like to state that the way I put it is the 0,5% of the entire problem which I can’t possibly summarize because in that book he comments on the status of things in the entire goddamned nation even if it wasn’t a nation politically at that point while mixing it with his philosophy treatise and his own search to have his faith and political ideals coexist while also discussing courtly poetry and changing his language based on the needs while using the same poetric meter that he invented/came up with and no one else could manage to use again after because it was too complicated, and while he does that he gives you a summary of the entirety of greek mythology figures that he incorporated in his work, a summary of the status of things in discussions of medieval theology and philosophy and on top of that there’s some expressions which are now staples of the italian language like we use them commonly and 80% of the time ppl don’t even know he came up with them.

and that still is a badly put summary of 20% of the basic things you find in the divine comedy as a whole because there’s more than that and there’s a reason why here in high school you study it for three years one cantica per year and it’s not even enough to barely scratch the surface. and that’s why those posts give me a damn aneurysm, because if you say that ^^^^^ above is fanfic sorry but I see red.

also sorry for going off like this but you went and pointed out the one thing that irked me most about that OP but I also didn’t want to reply directly because this discussion has given me metaphorical ulcers in the past plus gave me three days of feeling really fucking down (I don’t wanna use trigger but it was the closest thing I came to that in my entire life) and I’m done engaging with people who wouldn’t want to listen but eh. XDDDDD anyway sorry for the rant I hope it was exhaustive. XD

keith and shiro have both matured so much since they’ve met.

keith’s growth is obvious and what’s usually talked about by fandom (and myself!) so I won’t go into it that much. 

shiro’s growth is less acknowledged. I think for a lot of ppl shiro being ~24ish when he left for kerberos sounds really impressively old but hahaha it’s not. it’s also semi-irrelevant b/c what shiro goes through would remake any person, no matter their age.

shiro was part of the garrison, but a soldier he was not. earth was at peace. he was a pilot that dreamed of the stars. but the galra didn’t care. the galra turned him into a weapon. the shiro that returns from kerberos is physically altered: a scar across his face, a shock of white hair, an arm taken from him, replaced with something alien that makes him permanently ready for a fight. these physical changes are visual reminders that he’s lost a year of his life captive to the galra. his memories are scrambled; when he does remember things it fills enough gaps to know he probably doesn’t want to remember the rest.

shiro doesn’t get to process what he’s gone through either because what he returns to is a war, a war that he ends up at the forefront of, in a leadership position. shiro is such a natural leader to us when we’re introduced to him, but it’s not actually something he was in the garrison. he was just a young, talented pilot. he wasn’t leading shit. there’s a reason he’s so caught off guard on the atlas when he’s asked to lead it. that wasn’t his place at the garrison.

he didn’t stay static while keith “caught up” up to him. he was also growing and maturing. he also, well, DIED. he died & that sure as hell has given him a new perspective on life.

when I look at their relationship now I’m hit with BOTH of their growth.

before kerberos, shiro was there for keith as a friend and a mentor but he wasn’t asking keith to be there for him. that’s where the age gap when they meet matters: shiro’s support came with no strings attached, no future expectations keith would return anything.

but that’s exactly what keith does. keith becomes a warrior and a leader, and shiro starts to lean on him. in the past, shiro had so many walls up and didn’t want anyone to protect him, not even his significant other. but that shiro is gone. this shiro melts into keith and says “you found me,” “you saved me,” and “thank you” when keith protects him. shiro allows himself to be vulnerable around keith. the same shiro that tried to hide his disease from keith. 

“I died,” he says to keith. “I disappeared,” he says to everyone else.

anyway, all this to say I love sheith so much and knowing everything they’ve been through leaves me in awe of voltron and s7 just built on everything before it. keith kills the man that represents all of shiro’s fears about himself—all the fears the galra empire gave him—and then holds shiro gently in his arms like he’s the most precious thing in the universe and it feels so damn right and satisfying and overwhelming. shiro thanks him and it’s so much (thanks jkeaton!) and they look at each other with all this love in their eyes (thanks vld animators!) and wrow!

Everything is A Lot with sheith

SWJFO sure FEELS short at least.

This, like much of everything else I spew, is a rant. Sry.

Oh and there will be spoilers ahead for the game, so: sry.

Finished Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order yesterday (2019-12-01) and am now in the regular post-playthrough depression that always hits when finishing a game with no replay-value. Ooooh! Yeah I know some are gonna be mad at that, but it’s MY truth! The fact that the game doesn’t even have a new game or new game plus mode really drags. I bought it 2019-11-18, but because I was busy it wasn’t fully downloaded until 2019-11-22 and then I didn’t start playing until the next day and let’s say I then played maybe 3 hrs per day, let’s say everyday...then the game is around the 25 hrs mark, however: did I feel like it was time well spent? No. Did I feel satisfied with the ending? No.

Did I want to keep playing? For no reason? F*ck No! I mean I already got every secret and collectible before the final mission, so there is literally no reason to keep playing! This is the reason why dark souls has new game and new game plus modes, there is nothing to explore and do if you have already done it all! But if you get to play the game again, while keeping all outfits and weapons: you get some damn fine looking shots of your character looking awesome during boring-ass scenes you’ve already seen before! Honestly, the story was kind of meh in the end and the outfits were too few and the ponchos didn’t make any sense and the fact you don’t get to customize the colour of “you know what” until basically the end of the game just sucked all in all! Why wouldn’t you implement a “new game” mode in a game like this?! (I’m pretty sure the first one is just called “new game” and then the one after that is called “new game plus”, I think that was how dark souls did it at least, I can’t speak for the other games in the series tho it could have changed).

Seeing Cal wearing the outfit I chose and using the lightsaber I customized throughout the entire games cutscenes would be a much needed alleviation of a moderately boring story honestly... (But why can’t I change Cere’s saber piece on the other side?! I had to pick her piece for the other side too to make it look cohesive, and I didn’t like that, I didn’t want that, but it looks dumb otherwise!)

Yeah yeah, it isn’t as short as a usual indie-title, but it isn’t a Fallout game for sure, I mean I am still playing Fallout 4 every now and then because of all the shit you can do and all the different perks that can change your playstyle too... and because you can customize your character to look how you want and say kind of what you want and have it kind of matter and... *sigh*. 

Why is this Star Wars game so good but so bad at the same time?

I liked that you could change the buttons... I didn’t like that you couldn’t re-bind all things to new buttons. I mean having the shoulder button be block/parry only works in dark souls where the shield actually felt like it was there and oh it’s hard to explain, but it didn’t work for me in this game, so I re-bound it to the B-button and made dodge the Y-button. However, I didn’t know that the game f*cked itself and took away the “drop ledge”-button as well when I changed B. Luckily I, through my massive brain’s incredible problem-solving skills, managed to figure out I could manually re-bind the drop-button to my dodge-button (Y). I did google it first tho and got no useful information: instead I got a f*ck-ton of same-y sounding whining about pc-keybindings, which, for a console-user like myself: is f*cking useless! Apparently not a single other soul had had my issue! In the end, like I said, I figured it out, but still: The fact that the game didn’t warn me that I had consequently un-bound another command as well when changing the dodge-button was really shitty. Oh well. ...the game making X and B (because of my changed buttons no doubt, but still), the way to do double saber attacks was f*cking hilariously dumb tho and the fact that I couldn’t change that attack to other buttons really irked me let me tell you! I had to release the camera and steer sticks both during the fight that the game wants you to do it to push both X and B at the same time to perform the stupid attack! I literally could never do it again after because it was a hassle to let go of the left stick to awkwardly hold the controller somehow and push X and B down at the same time, my word! A useless attack since I could never do it smoothly. Not really the games fault, but still. Anyway...

...why was Cal a ginger?! You can’t have a ginger wear a red or pink outfit! It clashes! Couldn’t they at least have made his hair more of a brow-ish shade to ensure it would go with most colour-schemes. Ginger doesn’t go with red or orange because it is red-ish or orange! Then again: colour-wise most of the ponchos didn’t work with the under-outfits either so, gah! Who designed the cosmetics in this game!? It never quite looked right to me. 

...why was Anakin in it? I fail to imagine Anakin letting the empire murder children for no reason, yeah yeah: he murdered the kids in the temple that one time, but... he came back to his senses to rescue his son in the end tho right, so... Yeah ok, maybe not, but... I just don’t understand how torturing the kids make them inquisitors either, wouldn’t they just kill themselves right when they had the chance instead of actually doing the empires bidding after all they’d been through because of it? If Trilla was so angry at Cere for letting her get captured at all by giving up her potential location, why did she join and why did she stay? She could’ve killed her at practically any point, but didn’t and then she ended up dying in the end while kind of maybe kind of “forgiving” Cere anyway... I am confused as to how murdering force-users and kidnapping them and torturing them is even a viable plan at all, but then again I ain’t evil so... Sure sure, less potential jedi and all, but if one can turn to “the dark side” at any point then you can get off of it too at any point can’t ya? and if the kid was tortured to join you and stay, wouldn’t they be more likely to just f*ck off your “dark side”-shenanigans the moment you are out of earshot? Yeah, they make it sound hard, but I have no idea how this shit is supposed to work in the first place so what the heck do I know! Why is the “dark side” a thing in the first place? I thought the force was an all powerful omnipresent-kind-of-thing that moves through everyone and everything, why/how does it have a “dark side” if it is everywhere at all times? Technically, wouldn’t the ppl NOT force-sensitive and the ppl NOT using the force be the ones on the “dark side” of the force? They are the ones that don’t affiliate with it and can’t “feel” it after all... Technically the ppl on the “dark side” aren’t actually on a “side” of anything, they are just happening to use the force for evil. I can perhaps understand why the idiots in charge want something to blame, like our religious ppl inventing the devil, but the ppl that actually feel the force would know that there’s no such thing as a “dark side” of the force, right? And yet everyone, even Luke in that second new movie was all like “Oh my gawd Ray, you went immediately to the dark side, whine whine whine!” But the whole thing with you Luke was that you embraced balance, right? I mean you were all: green lightsaber but all black outfit and was so badass when ya rescued Han! It wasn’t Anakin that brought balance to the force like the prophecy Obi had had said: it was his son that managed it, right? Or was that retconned? ...anyway.

I feel like swjfo was so short and for the amount I paid for it, it sure as shit doesn’t feel worth it in the end. I mean, I was so shocked when I started up the game and was gonna load my save and saw that we were 54% or something through the game and the main story had barely picked up any pace!

This definitely felt more like a prequel to another, better, more story-rich and exploratory game. 

I hope that they are making the next installment where we as Cal explore balancing the force and get to use force-lightning! (I was so disappointed you never got to learn that in this game, it would have been cool... if the game was longer and there was more to do and more things to fight and such!) The fact that Merrin joined so late in the story was dumb, but a hope that they will make the next installment where we together with her and the other crew get a bigger cooler ship and get to explore the world to get rid of the empire together and learn about the force and such too together and maybe romance her or something too I guess, but a male option for the rest of us that don’t want to see that straight shit would be nice too of course. But if their story progresses nicely and their chemistry grows naturally, I wouldn’t necessarily mind in the end if they go steady with each other. 

Seriously tho, a warning from the game that there would be no more perks to be unlocked when I’d unlocked all of them would’ve been nice! At least an option to sink the extra points you could still get into health or force-meter or lightsaber attack strength, (kind of like in Asscreed Ori where ya could add points into increased arrow-damage or melee-damage of a small percentage indefinitely almost. I was literally expecting that to be the case with this game but nope!). Anyway, the second game should focus on us and the crew expanding our operation of defeating the empire by: gathering allies and tools and experience too I suppose and it should also focus on Cal beginning to research mastering all aspects of the force, maybe together with Merrin. Merrin herself should learn about the world and also learn it really wasn’t the jedi that were the cause of her loss and pain and grow as a person and grow closer to the og crew too. Not sure how to end that game tho.

The third and last installment should be one where we actually get to eradicate the empire and actually rebuild the world and potentially the order too. One where we get to actually find balance and get to use a red lightsaber and use force-lightning too without being evil! (That might be more of an end-game goal for the second game tho: Cal masters some of the many aspects of the force and gets to use force-lightning, but not enough to satisfy us maybe, so there’ll be a reason to play the third one or something lol). So: use a red lighsaber and more cool force powers including force-lightning and “master the force”, all the while also working to finish eradicate the empire. Maybe some world-building choices where we decide if or how the new jedi order should be and we become a council member and do council business and such. It could end with the entire world open too us, with little quests of minor significance but it’s something to do scattered around the planets and places on the planets, we get to “build bridges” with the ppl were are to protect as part of the new jedi order and heck, let me decide what should happen and then you just make the game for me yeah Respawn?

...anyway, final thoughts:

I am done with the game and have no reason to keep playing it. This makes me kind of sad, but in the end: the story was unsatisfyingly short and uninteresting and the ending left much to be desired. But! There is very minimal hope (knowing EA) that there will be more to come. Let us hope.

End of rant.

I don't really understand why everyone is waiting for a sonic adventure sequel. The adventure series has ended years ago and it's perfectly normal for SEGA to prioritize new original games like Sonic Forces. I'd rather wait for a new fresh, creative game than a sequel they would have a huge chance of messing up (like they pretty much did with Sonic 06, but i still like the game tho). But what if they made a one (officially)? What would be a good new sonic adventure game for you? (i'm curious xp)

for the last time they didnt mess up with 06 !!!!!!!!!!! they didnt do anything wrong!!!!!!!1 it was just lots of events that couldnt be stopped inconveniencing the production and in the end they just didnt have the time and resources to flesh the game out; if they did have time and help they could’ve totally made this game revolutionary :(

content:

what i hoped/theorized forces would be

why forces looks like an adventure game, but isnt an adventure game

what i want in a new sonic adventure game (doesnt need adventure in the title)

lemme just sum up why i think forces is lacking and what i thought it would be when the first trailer dropped

I thoguht we’d get a 3 story game again. where each character shows us a different perspective of the same story.

I thoguht sonic story was about sonic fighting the eggman empire and infinite, perhaps being trapped in infinites illusions and breaking out after noticing that things are VERY wrong when infinites clones of his friends start acting weird

the avatar is on their way to protect their city and about to give up until they see sonic and they decide to be a hero themselves to help others and therefore go on their own journey to confront infinite (back then i theorized that infinite was their childhood friend)

and classic story (as much as i hate it) would be about classic dimension warping and perhaps overhearing eggmans plan abt the ruby (bc like. he came with the ruby from mania but like. okay.) and through him being a lil spy we get to know more about the origin of infinite until he eventually joins with the main cast becuase a final story where all 3 fight eggman together was inevitable.

however story perspective is not necessary considering unleashed’s placement

ofc multiple gameplay styles and/or multiple playable characters are THE mandatory thing for an adventure game BUT forces gameplay didn’t have a very varying feel to it. the controls were a little tweaked for classic and avatar had the wispons, but essentially it was the same as sonic but with Gimmicks/Tweaks.

also the spirit of the game’s story didn’t have this strong adventure vibe. It preached the power of friendship, yet it was so….. hollow and empty. due to the avatar being a passive character their friendship with sonic was just so….. fake.

“power of friendship” was just hollow words in this game.

personally i also think the ost was lacking, theme of infinite is the most iconic song to come from it , and the only memorable song next to it was fist bump. which is sad (mainly bc it wasnt even the final boss theme)

also remixes and reuses arent a taboo in adventure games (sa2 did it too) but i think it’s different if character themes and maybe… one or two level themes are reused. there should be plenty more original content.

some ppl say crush40 is mandatory, but I don’t think so. the crush40 version of his world IS NOT the main theme for 06, and unleashed also didnt have c40 (jun did do the guitars tho)

i already debunked chao garden so like. not necessary

on the topic of original content i also want to say that the levels in forces were lacking variety. the environment was different, yea, but the way you get throguh the levels didnt really change much despite more 2d sections in eggman base levels and like. more spikes in urban areas and more slides and 3d in the “jungle” level. it wasnt even really a jungle it was jsut ruins… and green hill… AGAIN….. was not really anything special or new either

what i mean is that even when the optical stuff of the levels is different there was zero change of atmosphere or feel. no change in stradegy to get through. it was all just……. the same.

sonic forces was…………..boring.

there i said it. it was boring.

the most exciting part was the customization and i bet kids loved it. ppl who dont know much about game design and just are in to pass time and have some fun probably loved this game. but like. the game doesnt entertain anymore after its beat for the first time. replaying is a real drag, the fun was literally just…. in the story and getting enough customize stuff to make ur dream avatar.

if anyone feels different, as said, thats valid, but from a design point this is terrible.

WHAT I WANT IN A NEW SONIC (adventure) GAME

i do have a game concept for a silver game lying around (with gameplay, controls, story, levels and some dialogue) that would be an adventure-esque game but i cant leak that yet its too unfinished still

let’s start at the bare minimum: no ooc sonic anymore. writers take notes and be serious for once. sonic knows when its time to joke, and in case yall dont know the answer is NOT 24/7

also maybe more than just sonic playable OR have other characters be relevant beyond a bunch of jokes and random voice lines. (preferably both)

the story should be engaging and have a deeper meaning and a strong vibe for justice and/or freedom; the characters have to undergo development and learn from their mistakes. also the story CAN be dark/more serious while still being suitable for children.

we need a minimum of ONE plot twist.

gameplay styles should be varied and not just sonic, and sonic but with a gun

there NEEDS to be some kind of open world/exploration element in the game. be it a hug world or ingrained in the levels themselves. (things can be open world and still linear just saying)

iconic music!!! vocal theme!!! character themes should be representing the characters personality again!!!!11

story perspectives arent mandatory, but definitely a plus!!!!

minor puzzles in the levels please…. make it challenging to get through !!!1

100 rings=+1life

i cant stress this enough ok

the game also needs something innovative and new. (which is most probably the new gameplay style due to new character or something but ykno) adventure games have always introduced something new and it was AWESOME and fun and refresing!

and my mind just cant focus anymore akjshfkjshfakj i might revisit this some time but for now this is all i can say

man i wish i was neurotypical

Year After Year (It’s The Same Routine)

Day 13! (I wish it was Friday the 13th omgp) This is for @sanderssidesspook‘s Spook Month!

Prompt: Friday the 13th

Fandom: Sander’s Sides

Paring: LAMP/CALM

Words: 1,203

Summary: Patton loves many things, but Friday the 13th is not one of them. 

Tags/Warnings: superstition, cute poly boyos, Patt’s not all that into religion because lots of ppl use it as an excuse to hurt others, but he doesn’t have a problem with ppl being religious, cute phone contact names

Enjoy!

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Patton loved Halloween, and October, and black cats, and children’s Halloween movies, and candy, and-

Patton loved a lot of things.

One of these things, however, was definitely not Friday the 13th. Patton had always been very superstitious, even going out of his way to avoid cracks in the sidewalk so he wouldn’t break his poor mother’s back! Needless to say, he did not like Friday the 13th. At all. It was especially bad if it was in October, and this year it was! He’d already decided that he’d stay inside all day, not use the stove or oven, and stay to the couch as much as possible.

It was only Monday.

Patton had sent a text through the group chat to let his boyfriends know that he wasn’t going to be available on Friday, due to his plans to not leave the couch for anything short of a life-or-death situation. It had taken 45 seconds for the texts to come pouring in; Logan’s confusion and exasperation, Roman’s promises to slay any threat that may befall them, and Virgil’s slightly-sarcastic support and kneedling.

Patton tried to reassure them, telling them that it was okay, he just didn’t want to risk anything. Logan assured Patton that superstition held no standing in the real world, and that scientifically, most - if not all - superstition was improbable or impossible. Patton knew that, but there was just something about it that resonated with him, and despite what others said he would always believe it. Just like religious people believed in God, despite most of them not able to tell you where The Big Man even was.

Rosen Bridge: Patton, religion and superstition are not the same thing.

Patt-ernal Love: I mean… They are???

Patt-ernal Love: Religion is based on old books that people just kind of assume have to be true just because other people wrote the same thing

Patt-ernal Love: And I get that! But that doesnt mean the stuff theyre writing about is right, or that were interpreting it right

Storm Cloud <3: can we not do the religion thing today pls

Roman Empire: i promise my love, i shall protect you from any and all harm!

Patt-ernal Love: I know you would, baby

Patt-ernal Love: But I still dont think its a good idea

Storm Cloud <3: then y dont we just come ovr

Storm Cloud <3: movie night

Storm Cloud <3: sleepover

Storm Cloud <3: watevr

Roman Empire: magnificent idea, johnny wept!

Storm Cloud <3: 2/10

Storm Cloud <3: poor presentation

Rosen Bridge: Roman, Virgil, please. We are adults.

Storm Cloud <3: try again

Storm Cloud <3: wow logan way to cut a guy off thats totally not rude

Rosen Bridge: I do apologize, Virgil, but you were both getting off-topic.

Roman Empire: right! i think a sleepover is a terrific idea!

Patt-ernal Love: Yeah! Lets do it!

Storm Cloud <3: so wat r we doing

Storm Cloud <3: coming ovr thursday night or

Patt-ernal Love: Sure!  

The conversation continued for another twenty minutes like that, the four men planning their Thursday/Friday hangout until Virgil had to go to class and Logan had to get back to work. Patton figured he should probably head to school too and pocketed his phone, grabbing his keys and leaving his apartment.

The rest of his week passed by both achingly slow and too fast, and before Patton knew it, it was Thursday. He got through his classes with jittery legs and ecstatic smiles, heading home in the early afternoon and rushing around to get his apartment cleaned. He knew Logan and Virgil were going to be early at the very least. Logan because he liked to be punctual, and Virgil because he was always anxious about being late to anything so he set alarms on his phone for at least thirty minutes before he really had to leave. Patton had just sat down when the doorbell rang, and he hopped up to his feet to answer it. He opened the door with a smile, the smile growing when he saw Virgil on the other side with a backpack slung over his shoulder, gripping one of the straps. He gives a lazy wave with his other hand, smiling just slightly.

“Hey, Pat.”

Patton throws himself at Virgil, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. Virgil stumbles, surprised, and awkwardly pats Patton’s back. “P-Pat… Can’t breathe…” He wheezes. Patton lets go, smiling sheepishly. “Oh, sorry Virge!” Virgil shrugs it off and enters the apartment, sitting on the couch. Patton joins him, and Virgil almost immediately cuddles close, worming under Patton’s arm. He doesn’t mind; he loves cuddling with his boyfriends! He kisses the top of Virgil’s head and puts on Scary Godmother.

Logan came not too long after, Patton letting him in with the same smile and bone-crushing hug that he’d given Virgil. He pulled Logan into their cuddle pile, Virgil now sandwiched between two of his boyfriends (not that he was complaining). The three cuddled together for the next hour until Roman showed up, letting himself into the apartment with a flourish and confidently striding into the living room. He flops onto the couch, throwing himself across the others’ laps. Patton cards his hands through Roman’s hair. Logan gently massages Roman’s calves. Virgil rests his arms on Roman’s back.

Once Scary Godmother was over, Patton got up (with much complaining from Roman and Virgil) and made them all some popcorn, handing each person their own bowl and sitting back down. The next few hours passed like this, with the men watching Halloween movies and chatting or commenting on the movies. Virgil is the first one to fall asleep, head resting on Logan’s shoulder and mouth slightly open. The others make sure to speak quietly and turn down the volume on the TV so they don’t wake him, and it isn’t long until Patton is asleep as well, his hand stilling in Roman’s hair.

Roman looks up at Logan, who’s staring at the TV without really paying attention to it. Roman whispers, “What’re you thinking about, Specs?” Logan looks over at him, blinking tiredly.

“I am simply confused as to why people believe their actions hold a direct causation to something as unprovable as ‘luck’.” Roman blinks, smiling. “Well you don’t need to understand it to support him. I don’t get it either, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s ‘our happy-pappy-Patton’.” He says with a smirk. Logan smiles slightly and nods. “I suppose you are right. Perhaps we should get some sleep, it is rather late.”

Roman nods, grabbing the remote and turning the TV off and falling asleep soon after.

The next day, Patton wakes up surrounded by his boyfriends. The four of them have a quiet breakfast indoors, then settle in the living room for more movies and a gaming marathon (read: Mario Kart), broken up by lunch and snacks. Nothing at all substantial or scary happened - unless you count Roman shrieking when he entered the kitchen to find Virgil sitting on top of the fridge - and the day passed with little fanfare, just like any other day Patton spent with his boyfriends.

He guessed he could learn to love Friday the 13th too.

weird theory i might have about rey’s parentage that won’t leave me the hell alone

yeah so bear with me

i do think it’s a compelling narrative if rey comes from “nothing” and her parents were just randoms who disposed of her. yes, it would make a great parallel with kylo’s super privileged origins. 

but i also think there’s another side to it. 

basically, i don’t think he was lying to her at all. her parents did “sell” her, but i don’t think it was for drinking money

so here comes my super tin-foil idea

we HAVE met someone in this movie who seems to fit the description of negligent parent who gave up rey for unknown benefits

and that character is none other than DJ. that’s right, benicio del toro’s drunk-on-his-ass weirdly-accented code breaker. 

HEAR ME OUT

1. we know that he sells out rose and finn to the first order, hence we could say this isn’t the first time he’s done this. 

2. he has this oddly soft moment with rose where he returns the necklace she thought he had taken from her for good. but he was only using it to get them into the order. now, that moment played out to show a different side to him, but it also gave me “father figure” vibes. here u have an older dude being kind to a young girl whose name starts with “r”. and we also see that his initial actions may be misleading.

3. his moment with finn, when he “learns him a lesson” about the order and the resistance. he basically tells him “don’t join” because both sides are obsessed with their own path. so he’s the middle “grey” guy who doesn’t fit anywhere. rey, too, doesn’t seem to fit either with the resistance or with the first order. it’s also telling that he doesn’t wanna join an organization and wants to be free. 

4. scavenger connection. more than anything, DJ seems to share that aspect with his potential daughter. he seems to live his life from one day to the next, no plans for the future, just collecting parts wherever he goes. 

5. he definitely seems like he’s seen some dark shit. he seems jaded in a way that...would make sense if he had to abandon his daughter. NOW my theory is that, he had to PRETEND to abandon her for money. he had to pretend like rey meant little to him in order to save her. BECAUSE he probably found out his kid was strong with the force. and i have a feeling someone came close to taking rey from him. so he drops her off on this nowhere planet and sells her “for money”. that’s his cover-story. so that ppl don’t come snooping.

6. the ezra bridger theory. lots of ppl have speculated on this, but DJ sports this VERY INTERESTING scar on his left cheek that is a faithful copy of ezra bridger’s scar. ezra, of ‘star wars rebels’ fame, was a jedi and a rebel during the galactic empire. it would fit the character, age-wise. something has happened to ezra in the last 20 years to bring him this low. i don’t necessarily think this theory is true,but if he IS force-sensitive, it would make sense that his daughter, rey, would be too. also, ezra has faced sith lords and been tempted by the dark side so he’d have an understanding of what rey is going through. 

7. but honestly, i’d prefer it if he weren’t ezra bridger. even as a random shifty character, DJ makes for a compelling father-figure.  it would be a cool twist imo, because it wouldn’t deny kylo’s words. it’s just that DJ managed to find a way to trick both sides. and u know how rey was so attached to han solo and saw a potential father in him? well, her father is a han-solo type, she just doesn’t know it.

8. it would make for a pretty conflicted, emotional reunion. i don’t think rey would forgive him, and i think it would be interesting if she didn’t. DJ might sacrifice himself for her in episode 9 or he might not. i would just be stoked to see a super complicated father/daughter relationship here. 

9. the cave scene with the multiple reys would make sense too, within this theory. because the story of her abandonment isn’t straight-forward, it’s got layers. and if DJ is also force-sensitive, he might’ve put a mental block for her so she never finds out who he is. 

10. the names. DJ stands for “don’t join”. and people speculated that “Rey” also stands for something.  lol, i may be reaching here but i find it pretty interesting. and also, this could be a message for his daughter too. don’t join the dark or the light, choose balance. 

11. kylo mentions her parents’ unmarked graves. so DJ probably faked his death too. we know his real name is not DJ, so his old self died. again, it doesn’t deny kylo’s assessment.  

12. maz kanata’s words would also make sense. “her parents” are never coming back for her, because DJ doesn’t wanna blow his cover. her only way is forward - finding DJ on her own. 

13. DJ seems to have no moral compass because he had to sell his daughter. i mean, imagine if u had to do that. would it matter anymore what u did after that?

14. ANYWAY. it should happen because it would be dope, imo. but if it doesn’t, i’ll be cool with it. i just wanna reiterate that it would be so rad if kylo’s words turn out to be both true and false. 

(sidenote, rey’s talent for machinery // DJ’s talent for code breaking)

WHY THE HELL DOES EVERYONE LOVE AELIN GALANYTHIUS SO MUCH?!?!

The girl who turned her back on her kingdom and changed her name for 10 years cause she didn’t want anything to do with them. The girl who wanted to take the life of the man who got her out of Endovier and offered her friendship when she had no one, who gave her Fleetfoot and continues to support her cause. Who got her out of prison and was her friend when everyone else was afraid of her, offered her support after Nehemiah died and when she was alone, and freed the continent because they were friends. 100% the fact that she even ATTEMPTED to take Dorians life and THOUGHT that it was hers to take just made me hate every being of her and wishing she dies. Dorians life didn’t belong to her. Yes she fought for him in the end but that’s only because of what Manon wrote and Chaol changing the plan at the last minute. Before that she basically dismissed him. Chaol, absolutely, but a bitch who just used him???? I WANTED TO SEND HATE TO SARA J MASS. (But I didn’t) She’s so obsessed with Aelin and Rowan that she forgets that Aelin is not better Meave, or any of the bad people in her books. She acts like she’s all high and mighty but since she got her powers she’s just as arrogant. I don’t understand why ANYONE thinks she would make this MARVELOUS AND AWESOME queen. I actually think people only worship the ground she walks on simply because she’s AELIN ASHRYVER GALANYTHIUS. I have to say I LOVED watching her get kicked out of Terrassen by Darrow because it served her right. She changed her name and then all of sudden DECIDES that after 10 years she finally wanted to be queen and expects people to see her as that. Bitch please. It doesn’t work like that. She was too young to even remember anything about her people, and while they were being butchered she was training to be an assassin. People want her as queen because she’s sassy and has a good heart but so does everyone else. She’s a tyrant. That vision the Valg demon gave her was a warning. Then Meave saying saying about Aelin and Rowans children could rule empire’s. She’ll either become a great ruler or a maniac. And that alone makes her a threat. Dorian would definitely be the better monarch. He’s the the most amazing person in the books. Pissed that SJM had him free the continent just so she could hand it over to Aelin whenever she wanted. Dorian deserved it. He deserves everything. Aelin has had it hard, yes, but so has he and he didn’t turn out like she did. Yes she was a child when she left but she is a woman now and has been for several years. She got by for a long while without the king recognized who she is. The point is she never went back to her people. She never forget it no, but she never helped them either. The minute she had her period and became a woman she could have sought out her cousin and did SOMETHING to help her people. But she chose not to. She CHOSE to stay with Arobrynn and become an assassin and leave that life behind. SHE EVEN CHANGED HER FREAKING NAME. That’s how much she wanted to escape her birthright. You don’t leave for years, enjoy killing people, then meet some fae Prince, then come back and think just because of who she is now people should accept her. Her BEST FRIEND HAD TO STAGE HER OWN DEATH TO GET HER OUT OF HER SELFLESNESS, and even that didn’t work. It wasn’t until she met Rowan a while after Nehemiah was killed, that he talked her into it that she FINALLY decided to wanted to be queen. She can’t just come back and call herself Aelin after all that time away and expect people to see you as their queen and your NOT. At least SJM has enough sense to realize that. And so do her fathers court. They see how reckless, unpredictable and immature she is. I loved her in the first 3 books but in the 4th she was insufferable. Cocky, arrogant, and more than a little cruel. I love Celena but I hate Aelin. They’re two completely different people. When she came back in the fourth book after she honed her magic and accepted who she is she was a completely different person. But what she did to Arobrynn and those assassins….I hated her so much I swear I was reading red. What she did to them was completely uneunessecary and horrible. That screamed cold blooded. And psychopath. So was Arobrynn yes, for what he did to her but no one cares about him. He made her what she is. If he hadn’t trained her she never would have been what he is now. Everything was her choice. What she seems to be so proud of. Amazing with a sword, smart and cunning. Always having a plan. But that doesn’t make what he did to her okay and same goes for her. That was more than cruel. And she’s very self absorbed. Do you really think that if her friend wanted her to free the continent do you think she would do it because she is kind? Hell no. She didn’t even want to allow Dorian to let Manon out of that cabin on the ship. She would never give that power up. Once again why Dorian is better than she is. All she cares about is Terrassen and her court. She puts them above EVERYTHING. Nothing and no one else. I’m sure she’d sacrifice her own mate. And everyone who can read between the lines knows the real reason she sent Rowan to rescue Dorian from the witches. It wasn’t because she cared about him and he was her friend, but because if he died her kingdom would lose it’s support from Adarlan. Now WHY THE HELL WOULD I LIKE SOMEBODY LIKE THAT. Why even think that about him after he’s done so much for her. The way she’s treated Dorian since the 4th book really ticks me off. Would he have done her like that? No. Because even If his court was at risk he would try to save her AND his court. Like now. He’s choosing to stay with her instead of taking back his city. Because he continues to support her and all she gives a damn about is Terrassen. She never forgot about it but at the same time never returned. That combination plus the way she was in the fourth book is why I hate her. I’ve never felt this strongely about a fictional character. Now that she has her court and Rowan by her side she doesn’t care about anyone else. Her court is super powerful and no one will challenge her.👎 If she ruled the continent it would be terrible. Her kisses her ass so there’s no one who would stop her from becoming a tyrant if she wanted to. Rowan even said he would lay the continent at her feet and asked her if she wanted it. Or if she would stop at Terrassen or take more. It says says something that Meave, a powerful fae queen, could take over the continent as well but chooses to stay in Doranelle. If SJM does let Rowan and Aelin take the continent I’m burning all her books. Because there is nothing Aelin has than Dorian doesn’t. Not to mention the way she treats her own cousin. She gave up his blood oath because she said she thought he was still faithfully serving the king. But she was Kings champion and he never gave up on her. She lied to him and made it seem like it was his fault. And then she basically told him she is queen, he is just her General and he can fuck off. That was his blood right. He’s family. He grew up with her and loved her but Rowan, who she’s only known for a FEW months, who SJM started writing and fell in love with apparently, tells her to give him the blood oath just so they can stick it to Meave and she does it. In the book she wants even THINKING about her cousin. And yes she can do what she wants but then she lied about it and when she got caught she brought up the I’m the queen card. Like no. Every guy in the book is worshipping her, they’re all wanting to serve her knowing she can protect herself just fine. I just don’t understand what makes her so better than Dorian. Every guy is basically having a pissing contest and she’s just amused by it. Is she really that intelligent?? In EOS she treats Dorian, the KING, like he’s one of her warriors and orders him around and treats him like shit when he’s a valuable ally. “The battlefield is no place for a king” STFU. I wish Dorian told her then that she doesn’t give him orders. I get that he’s in that dark place right now but he needs to snap out of it. That’s not smart. If I were him I would have been done washed by hands with her. But as we all know he’s better than she is. She wasn’t THINKING about how Aedion would feel when she gave away his blood oath. She wasnt THINKING about what would happen when she chose to always flaunt her magic, not thinking about all the monsters it drew to them and put them in danger. The books try to tell us that she is super intelligent and an amazing strategiest but we don’t really see it. Nehemiah was killed off just for her character development. And if your queen cared about Erila at all she never would be thinking of conquering it. People who want to conquer a continent only care about power. I just don’t think she deserves the world like everyone thinks she does. Dorian has hard it as well. Been imprisoned, had a demon inside his body, violated, forced against his will, seeing the woman he loved beheaded, his best friend’s paralyzed SJM takes him away from Dorian, and then Aelin and her fucking court leave and then there’s no one there for him…GOOD GOD he went through a SHIT TON. But still isn’t cold and cruel like Aelin is. Diplomacy is not her strong at it. She’s very terrible at it. She is also very young and half fae which makes her temper harder to control. She has a lot of self doubt and is terrified to openly fail. That combination is a power keg ready to go off AND IT DOES in EOS. She has not developed into the queen I expected her to be. I expected her to be a grown up version of Caelena. More grownup, more thoughtful and less reckless. The worst part is she thinks of her own self, Calena, as a monster. But ppl forget how she disobeyed her master, and risked her live to save 200 slaves. Celeana chose to spare Ansel’s life even after her betrayal. In EOS AND QOS Aelin was more than ready for her COURT, but would she die for her FRIENDS the same way Chaol and Dorian do? Probally not. I love Celena but I hate Aelin. The lords of her kingdom don’t want her as queen and I have to agree. When he aid that I was cheering them on. Her line to Chaol in COM when she said “I would always choose you” was the biggest lie ever. She thinks she’s better than the bad guys which is laughable. SOOO Based on everything I just said can someone please tell me what this girl has that my cinnamon roll, or anyone else doesn’t?

hmm hhm ha. hhm hmm ha

here are my thoughts on The Last Jedi:

- welp. i did it. i outlived luke skywalker, and IT FEELS LIKE SHIT 

- themes: mistakes & forgiveness; i.e. every single one of the heroes, new and old, makes at least one kinda major mistake in this movie. but they & we are reminded that a) you can fix your mistakes and b) whether or not you do that, others can forgive your mistakes

- still don’t really give a shit about kylo as a person, but it was cool how luke kicked his ass without even actually being there. just with his brain like that. that was fucking sick. 

- ya boy had the skywalker extra gene, and let me just say that i fully expect Force Ghost Luke to be exactly as extra as Live Boy Luke was and is 

- unless he’s not, like, dead, which i would also appreciate

- i would SO appreciate

- hey, his sister force-yanked herself out of the icy debris of space and back into the ship in one long stretched-out second of magic space shit, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that luke didn’t pull an obi-wan-in-a-new-hope and is, instead, just real wiped out 

- he needs some milk

- listen, i understand that luke skywalker isn’t ever dead so long as mark is out here being his custodian & giving wisdom & kindness & shit, but if u say the man is gone in a movie, you gotta expect some denial out of me

- all of the criticism i’ve seen of the movie i.e. kylo is 100% justified, but it didn’t detract too much from my actual enjoyment of the movie. i’m not o.d. salty about finn’s storyline, either, because while some ppl thought it wasn’t enough, my coworker was just today telling me about a friend of hers who (and court & i couldn’t BELIEVE the AUDACITY) THOUGHT IT WAS TOO MUCH. it wasn’t. there’s no such thing as too much finn. i’d have loved to see even yet more of him, but i got enough of him that it didn’t piss me off major. i’d just love to see him assume a bigger role in episode 9, is all

- that said, i did feel like That Kiss came outta nowhere. it was just a lil peck, and in star wars ppl do often give each other lil pecks and then turn out to be twins, soooo....

- not that i’m saying finn and rose are long-lost twins, but that i’d be happiest with finn’s romance storyline if he doesn’t end up with anybody Yet at the end of the series. let’s be real, he’s pretty obviously gotten an immediate crush on Literally Every Single Friend He Makes, which at the moment is like, four people counting the droid. my man needs some time to settle. then, maybe towards the end of episode 9, Poe comes up to him, asks if he and rose are a thing, and he admits that just now, they’ve settled on friends. i guess i’m trying some things out, he says. you think you’re done trying? Poe asks. probably not, finn says, with a grin. they get coffee. okay, so i do have a preference. 

- rey’s pretty cool & she can fight so good & she’s so stronk. i lvoe her.

- poe is super in love with his boy & freaks out every time he sees him, which is relatable, because finn is handsome and smart and it’s hard not to 

- again, i can’t state how DISINTERESTED i am in kylo ren except as an example of a one hundred percent corrupted dude who’s had multiple chances to change for the better and has turned each and every one of them down. i can’t wait to see rey and finn smoke his ass in a few years

- REBEL SCUM

- rose got a horse-girl-frees-a-bunch-of-animals-and-rides-them-furiously-through-the-moonlight-on-a-beach scene AND I DIED THAT WAS SICC

- anyway i miss Mom. i cried a lot. she’s beautiful. 

- i had a good time. i enjoyed myself. it wasn’t my favorite star wars movie, because that’s the empire strikes back, but it had some good parallels to ESB and i’m excited for the next one. remember that while we can discuss a story’s legitimate problems and absolutely we can do that about TLJ

- we can also enjoy something even tho it doesn’t follow the exact concept we’d set out in our heads for it. 

- that said, i do hope Mark got to enjoy his time as luke in TLJ, even tho it wasn’t his vision. because Luke really is his character, not George’s, not Rian’s. and i hope he had a great time, not knowing how much time he’d have left with this character, and i hope he enjoyed every minute of it. it really affected me, and i probably won’t be over Luke Skywalker, He Who Wasn’t The Last, for a long time maybe ever. i don’t like the idea of luke being dead in any way, but if he has to phsyically kick it, can you imagine a more skywalker exit? 

- you can’t.