@lightandfellowship re: your tags on this post (just to kind of bring this out to a different post).

I was thinking about making a separate post to expand on those tags anyway because they were a little off topic to the op, but I was like, you know, it's that Xehanort was worse to the Dandelions than Luxu was, yes. But Luxu was supposed to be that callous to the Dandelions in the first place. He was supposed to think of them as tools and to just let whatever fucked up thing was supposed to happen to them just happen. And with anyone else he can, but he can't put his personal feelings aside enough to 'do what needs to be done' for this set of people alone.

But Xehanort can.

And I think that's really interesting when looking at Xehanort as the 'replacement Luxu.' Xehanort who, as observed by another post I don't have immediately to hand, speaks with MoM twice. Xehanort who is chosen by MoM and manipulated into doing his bidding the same way Luxu was, given the same coat and made the heir to Luxu's keyblade, Xehanort who actually is allowed to take action to bring the Keyblade War about and revive the Lost Masters while Luxu is only allowed to watch.

Actually I started this post with a different thesis ('Xehanort is able to put his personal feelings aside and be ruthless even where Luxu fails to follow his role') but writing that paragraph I've changed my mind actually. Because Luxu has basically no agency in this situation, whereas Xehanort does.

Like, both of them are assigned roles by their mentors but Xehanort isn't really given a road map about how to fulfill his role. He's being manipulated, sure, but he's also making choices himself all along. They're choices that are fucked up but he understands they're fucked up and is choosing them anyway because he strongly feels it's necessary for the greater good.

Luxu has been told these things are necessary for the greater good. He's been told what to do. He's been told to just watch and that he can never take action. He doesn't even have the illusion of agency that Xehanort, who is actively choosing to lean into his feeling that destiny is inevitable, does. What is that like, to live hundreds of years never having any sense of agency? For Luxu, helping the Dandelions is fucking up. It's doing what he knows he's not supposed to, what he's been told is against the Plan, but he has no agency and this is his little way of rebelling, even if this is, to us, the 'right' thing to do. There's a question of what actually is 'right' and 'wrong' here and whether Xehanort is a 'better Luxu' than Luxu for choosing to simply follow The Plan.

Also I'm rambling here but putting things together as I go, sorry to also expand on other tags on posts I reblogged from you lol, but like. Luxu also very clearly has Lucifer stuff going on, the same way Xehanort does, down to the name. Xehanort takes on the Satan imagery over time - but it was Luxu's first. And Luxu is the one who actually tried to rebel against his Creator by deviating from his role (only to watch) and intervening with the Union leaders.

The thing about angels is they are not, in Catholic traditions (I can't speak to other denominations) is that they are not supposed to have free will. Free will is for humans; angels only follow The Plan, with no agency or say in the matter. They're messengers and avatars created only to execute the will of God. The Foretellers seem to play this role, if you will, in relation to Master of Masters. He hands them roles to execute the plan he's already designed. If we're, in this analogy, considering Master of Masters to be in the role of 'god', both Ava and Luxu are ultimately fallen angels - they both question the will of their creator, both rebel - but Luxu rebelling was built into the plan. He is Lucifer, and Lucifer rebels, and so he was still allowed to come back to the fold at the end of kh3, having fulfilled his duty even considering his rebellion. He still had no agency in the end, even having done what he thought was exercising it by saving the Union leaders.

Anyway I'm just rambling on at this point and don't really have a conclusion to this but the whole interplay between Luxu and Xehanort, agency and servitude, angels and devils, light and dark, feels really compelling to me.

13 is an utter awful rat to Graham in It Takes You Away, she treats him horrifically as she loses her patience and therefore temper with him and never bothers to apologise for it, but nobody notices because she didn't raise her voice and it wasn't in a situation where she'd be expected to mother him, so it sailed over peoples heads. She lost her temper and she got Mean. She didn't get shouty, she got mean. She's not a yeller when she lets her anger loose, she's sharp and cruel and so very deliberate. And that doesn't track with peoples stereotypes of women, does it? Women are shouty and Shrill when they're angry, apparently.

She does it to the master in the timeless children, she's sharp and mean and cruel and never once raises her voice when she does it (she actually lowers her voice when she's being really mean btw). This did Not happen when you're thinking it did. Not in the matrix room. She had no idea she was scoring a hit against him there because she didn't understand what he was thinking (because he'd deliberately mislead her). It was in another part of the episode. She scores a hit and almost makes him cry and nobody cares or notices because it's not in a situation where she's supposed to be mothering him while he's all sad. He was being a jerk, she hit out deliberately below the belt and won that round, the end.

It's no that I think 13 isn't at times objectively shitty as a person, because she IS, she certainly was to Graham in the moment above. It's just that instead of looking at the Actual moments on screen when she sucks and dragging her for being shitty person, people have to resort to making up things to accuse her of that are Very gendered (as in, things women are going to get slammed for in society based upon sexist ideology) that never even happen, simply because they didn't pay enough attention to notice her being a crappy Person to drag her for that/they don't actually care if she's in general a lousy person at all.

Because they don't Want her to be a crappy person, that doesn't achieve anything.

They want her to be a crappy Woman.

I’m sorry I genuinely cannotttttt understand how some ppl bash joe even in a joking manner. Like the poor guy did nothing wrong (that we know of) but so many ppl are making such snide remarks by comparing him to Travis which is not only condescending but actually kind of mean! HELLO did we listen to the same reputation album??? You can’t praise Travis for letting Taylor bejeweled and then rip joe to shreds in the same breath when joe was the one there for her in a clearly difficult and trying time in her life

hmm

oh my god that thieving video essayist getting ripped to shreds in the zeitgeist is the "all the cool progressive artistic queers died during the aids epidemic and now it's only boring people who want marriage equality" guy people inexplicably put on my dash. well good. another mortal enemy i barely think about down. score.

"she met a pinecone's fate" was hysterical the first time around and it's still funny but the longer I think about it the more unsure I actually am about the line

I called it, Ruan Mei is deranged and shady as hell

war is evil and so is Bel Riose unfortunately I have complex feelings on him. and an inappropriate amount of adoration.

Last two are referential to the four months he spends on Terminus masquerading as a "minor princeling" of the Periphery. (and also a secret AU that is still cooking)

literally saw somebody say "you post a lot about antisemitism" to a jewish person as proof of them being a closet zionist the other day. like what are you fucking on about. we always post about antisemitism, it's kind of a big deal for us.

tw: death, medical procedures

hey my job kinda like. sucks ass sometimes lol. ive been doing it for almost 5 years and sometimes it still takes the fucking breath out of my lungs man.

i'm standing toward a pt and her husband. heart monitor display is between us. i can see it fall into sawtooth tachy (pulseless) and he can't. I'm literally watching the big flashing 0 for her heart rate. the ICU nurse came running in and that made him catch on and he's asking us "what? what is it!? what's happening!?" and i'm not an ICU nurse so i'm just fucking standiing there and staring at the monitor with my mouth open like an idiot (she was DNR, there's nothing we could have done) while the primary nurse approaches the bed and tells him what's happening

I kind of like. back out of the room bc i can no longer do my job on someone who is. yknow. not alive. And i'm not about to dismantle all my equipment with all of this happening, so my part of the job is done.

He begins crying (obviously) which was bad enough but as I circled back around to start charting a quick note i passed the room andhe's. Lying in her bed holding her and just. fucking. wailing. Like screaming. So fucking loud and just this awful sound. It was so bad, like nothing i've ever seen before. I could hear him from my equipment room like five doors down with the door shut. It was so awful I just finished my work ran out of the ICU and to my car.

For the first time since I've been a nurse (I was a nurse all through COVID and saw plenty of shit then too) I just. Closed my car door and fucking cried. I cried all the way home. Like fucking sobbed. i've never cried over a pt and i've had plenty of moments similar to this. I don't even remember the pts name and never learned her husbands. i've literally done compressions on someone and felt their ribs snap, i've had to tell family their loved one has died, had people tell me they didn't want to die, watched COVID take really young people but this just. it just. fuck. got me for some reason.

.

God I wish so bad I didn't have RSD. I didn't even know it was thing until a few years ago but it's been constant in my life and I hate how much it cripples me over the stupidest things

➼ As Above, So Below by @callous-and-misunderstood

Carlos felt his heart rate accelerate again, and he felt his magic slipping out of him. He felt his body shift into its full, bulky magic form, his nails grow to talons just like his mother’s, his fangs pierce his bottom lip, and his eyes, wide open, saw the world washed in a deep red. And oh, his rage was in full force. He wanted to raze this world, burn everything to the ground. Rip the heads off of the leaders that allowed him to live like that. Remind Auradon that there was still Evil in the world. And he was it.

Please do not edit or repost my art without permission. Thanks!