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Day 5: I think everyone should love and cherish Mr. Bones from Origins SMP

New Years Resolution! Everyone should read Osamu Dazai’s Entrance Exam, for me <3

(the eyes, chico, they never lie)

what's up it's time for me to have life series derangements again. you ever think about scott smajor? <- an entirely rhetorical question

a little while ago, i was like, "oh, it'd be fun to me if cleo in double life looks at martyn, looks at scott, realizes which of those two people is going to be more dedicated to helping them survive, and makes a decision that is both tactical and emotional, where even they can't be sure where the division between those two motivations is." and that IS fun, especially in light of martyn then teaming with scott in limited life, maybe because he's now seen what scott's like. however, actually, out of [cleo, scott], i think maybe i had the wrong guy! (relevant here: scott suggesting to cleo in secret life that the best thing to do once etho's on low enough health is to have him let her kill him to get extra hearts. cleo's pov saying, "i couldn't.")

the thing about scott that i think about sometimes is. at the double life finale. scott has the tnt that whole time. he's the one holding the flint and steel, he's the one who calls pearl to spawn, he's the one who gets his final word in and decides when and how they'll go out. "you deserve it more," he says to pearl, as if he doesn't know full well this will kill them both, as if he couldn't hand over the explosives to pearl and let her decide. there are ways to read this that are. deeply cruel. it's the same thing he did at the start, right? yanking the rug out from under pearl, making decisions about their relationship on his own and then forcing her to deal with it, knowing it's come down to just the two of them and snatching this last choice out of her hands too. there are, also, kinder ways to read this. by "you deserve this," he means pearl deserves the win, of course. she deserves to win the game, because it is a game and they are playing it, and after this much, she shouldn't have to figure out what to do about scott, too. he should just give it to her, make this as easy as possible.

i think... it's not even that scott loves throwing himself on other people's swords -- there are other people in the series for that type of thing. i think it's that scott has figured out that throwing himself on someone's sword is a useful thing to do, not just for his allies but for himself. oh, we can tell each other about his loyalty and trust and love and sacrifice, and he can tell that type of narrative too! but there's an element of business, or practicality, or calculation to a lot of it. i think the story that gets out and lingers IS more often about loyalty and trust and love and sacrifice and maybe that's there too, but telling someone, "oh, yeah, you can kill me for the time / hearts / victory, go for it," is also a way of shoring up alliances, of ensuring you stay in people's good books, of reminding people you can be trusted and relied upon. it's a death game, but it's also a social game! your reputation is a tool, and your life can be a bargaining chip. (relevant notes: he yells for martyn to kill him when he's the last yellow left in limited life. lets cleo knock him off the tower in limited life to get some time from him. in his secret life finale, once he gets down to fewer than ten hearts, he goes looking for gem, throws her all his good items and tells her she has to kill him. talks about deliberately saving / not saving the one gift heart per session for trade deals. he thinks this stuff through, when he can.)

this also, when you start putting focus on it, makes it really easy to read scott as just straightforwardly manipulative and cruel. i don't know how interested i am in that. i think it's important that watching scott, i find myself surprised a lot at how often he keeps promises, offers food, shares information. he is honest and generous when i think other people would not be. there are, as demonstrated by the other players, funnier or less complicated or more secretive ways to play the social side of the game. whether that just reinforces [scott is always on-purpose carving out a more positive reputation for himself] or adds more interesting dimensions in other ways, i don't really know either? but i feel like understanding him as purely sadistic flattens him somehow. he tells gem in his secret life finale he's going to stay loyal to his day-one alliance above all, no matter what, and even that is tied up in him trying to convince / remind gem that her loyalty should stay with scott and impulse, but i think it's often like this with scott.

it's cleo and martyn (and also scar, i'm pretty sure, but he's cleo's ally in limlife so.) specifically that he gives up time to -- he'd rather his allies get the time (in limlife) and health (in secret life) than anyone else. and it's not that it's not tactical -- even teaming up with cleo in double life, where he gives the justification to pearl that he and cleo already bonded: because they're not soulbound, they've got two health bars between them for pvp instead of one the way the other soulbound pairs do. but he also just. likes cleo! makes the choice over and over to stick with her. i think it's hard to separate out how much of any given choice scott makes is motivated by [this is a tactical / social advantage] from how much is motivated by [i like and care about this person] because those things blur together so often. certainly i can't separate those two, can't say, "oh, this time he was being calculating 100% and this time he was being much more emotions-first nice." i don't know that i want to be able to do that, and i don't know that scott can tell either? it's both of these things at once, and it works, so there's no real reason for him to try separating them.

my examples are from secret life because that's what i watched most recently, but scott loves to remind people how well he knows them and is startlingly good at knowing / guessing / pretending to know what other people are like. he gets a task where he has to get people to say 'i love you' back to him and at the end, he rattles off the list of people he knew would say it. he's halfway up a cliff and etho calls to him, asking him to come back down; after some back-and-forth, etho admits he was trying to stall so bdubs could get away, and scott replies, "i know you were." and like. i don't always believe him! he did fully climb back down the cliff to talk to etho. i'm sure some of the time when he says stuff like this it's true -- these are people he knows fairly well, of course you can predict some moves -- but i wonder how often he figures something out mid-conversation, goes, "oh, okay, this is what we're doing," and adjusts accordingly as if he knew all along. (relevant note: when boat boys start chasing pearl around after going red and scott gives up on trying to convince pearl to appease them, he switches to hurrying into the midcentury modern whateverthefuck and setting his spawn there so he's not running back from spawn to get his stuff when pearl dies.)

i wonder how much that contributes to the blurring motivations, the idea that scott himself doesn't necessarily go into these interactions really thinking about the tactical advantage all the time, but maybe he'll tell himself afterwards that that's what that was. i've been thinking about the limited life finale (when am i ever not thinking about the limited life finale) and the like million different ways i've thought about scott and martyn's motivations going into and coming out of that final betrayal ("betrayal"?), and how "i wouldn't have it any other way" is still something i like to come back to chew on sometimes. like, yeah, that's his closest ally, and he's already won before. that does in fact work out great for him. i think, maybe it's like that. oh, okay, this is what's happening, scott thinks. i knew it. this works out great for me, and i knew it all along.

i think dean getting a stray that has food issues would make him worse but ultimately make him better

HI HI MAC. I JUST WATCHED THE NEW GEMINI VIDEO (was going 2 watch it this morning but i forgor 💀) HOLYYYY SHIT i am so creeped out EAUGH it was so good. creepy faces fuck me up AUGHHH. many thoughts head full. also i apparently love drawing characters as teru vash plush bc i started drawing teru vash and then realized oh iam just. drawing patton. so then i drew el woowoo 2 keep him company!! holds out my hands and places these guys in ur palm <3

OH FUCK LITTLE GUYS...... ohbtheyre so perfect. squeezing them like stress balls. <3333

UGH THE GEMINI HOME VIDEO. GOD. I KNOW. i rewatched it like 3 times this morning. that bit after it says the deal is broken with the body that gets progressively more shriveled up made me feel soooo fucking crawly. also the comeback of the jack dialogue. fuck yes. jack do you see me... i have become something else... im still in here dont leave me you bastards..... god that bit was so cool. the face jn the window at the end was what absolutely broke me last night tho like holy fuck thay shit gets me so bad

seeing the japanese house in a few weeks 😁

> “i brought you fish, watch out for bones”

> explain to her that i cannot eat fish that has bones

> she reassures me theres no bones

> eat the fish

> bones

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HAPPY 11th BIRTHDAY BONES!!! 🥳

I love sexualizing male characters cuz it does absolutely nothing for me, but it makes my friends go nuts which is very funny to me

just wrote another sick poem btw