just thots

hey! hi! the cartoonist cooperative has an e-sim drive for gaza, offering art for e-sim donations (instructions etc in the link)

There’s a line from American Gods I keep coming back to in relation to Yellowjackets, an observation made early on by Shadow in prison: “The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment.” I keep rotating it in my head in thinking about the six survivors, the roles they occupy in the wilderness, and the way the show depicts them as adults in society.

Because in the wilderness, as in prison, they’re trapped—they’re suffering, they’re traumatized, they’re terrified—but they’re also able to construct very specific boxes to live in. And, in a way, that might make it easier. Cut away the fat, narrow the story down to its base arc. You are no longer the complex young woman who weighs a moral compass before acting. You no longer have the luxury of asking questions. You are a survivor. You have only to get to the next day.

Shauna: the scribe. Lottie: the prophet. Van: the acolyte. Taissa: the skeptic. Misty: the knight. Natalie: the queen. Neat, orderly, the bricks of a new kind of society. And it works in the woods; we know this because these six survive. (Add Travis: the hunter, while you’re at it, because he does make it to adulthood).

But then they’re rescued. And it’s not just lost purpose and PTSD they’re dealing with now, but a loss of that intrinsic identity each built in the woods. How do you go home again? How do you rejoin a so-called civilized world, where all the violence is restricted to a soccer field, to an argument, to your own nightmares?

How does the scribe, the one who wrote it all out in black and white to make sense of the horrors, cope with a world that would actively reject her story? She locks that story away. But she can’t stop turning it over in her head. She can’t forget the details. They’re waiting around every corner. In the husband beside her in bed. In the child she can’t connect with across the table. In the best friend whose parents draw her in, make her the object of their grief, the friend who lives on in every corner of their hometown. She can’t forget, so she tries so hard to write a different kind of story instead, to fool everyone into seeing the soft maternal mask and not the butcher beneath, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the prophet come back from the religion a desperate group made of her, a group that took her tortured visions, her slipping mental health, and built a hungry need around the very things whittling her down? She builds over the bones. She creates a place out of all that well-intended damage, and she tells herself she’s helping, she’s saving them, she has to save them, because the world is greedy and needs a leader, needs a martyr, needs someone to stand up tall and reassure everyone at the end of the day that they know what’s best. The world, any world, needs someone who will take those blows so the innocent don’t have to. She’s haunted by everyone she didn’t save, by the godhood assigned to her out of misplaced damage, and when the darkness comes knocking again, there is nothing else to do but repeat old rhymes until there is blood on her hands just the same.

How does the acolyte return to a world that cares nothing for the faith of the desperate, the faith that did nothing to save most of her friends, that indeed pushed her to destroy? She runs from it. She dives into things that are safe to believe in, things that rescue lonely girls from rough home lives, things that show a young queer kid there’s still sunshine out there somewhere. She delves into fiction, makes a home inside old stories to which she already knows the endings, coaxes herself away from the belief that damned her and into a cinemascope safety net where the real stuff never has to get in. She teaches herself surface-level interests, she avoids anything she might believe in too deeply, and still she’s dragged back to the place where blood winds up on her hands just the same.

How does the skeptic make peace with the things she knows happened, the things that she did even without meaning to, without realizing? She buries them. She leans hard into a refusal to believe those skeletons could ever crawl back out of the graves she stuffed them into, because belief is in some ways the opposite of control. She doesn’t talk to her wife. She doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not about what’s underneath the surface, because that’s just a mess, so instead she actively discounts the girl she became in the woods. She makes something new, something rational and orderly, someone who can’t fail. She polishes the picture to a shine, and she stands up straight, the model achievement. She goes about her original plan like it was always going to be that way, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the knight exist in a world with no one to serve, no one to protect, no reason propelling the devastating choices she had grown comfortable making? She rechannels it. She convinces herself she’s the smartest person in the room, the most capable, the most observant. She convinces herself other people’s mysteries are hers to solve, that she is helping in every single action she takes. She makes a career out of assisting the most fragile, the most helpless souls she can find, and she makes a hobby out of patrolling for crimes to solve, and when a chance comes to strap her armor back on and ride into battle, she rejoices in the return to normalcy. She craves that station as someone needed, someone to rely upon in the darkest of hours, and she winds up with blood on her hands because, in a way, she never left the wilderness at all.

How does the queen keep going without a queendom, without a pack, without people to lead past the horrors of tomorrow? She doesn’t. She simply does not know how. She scrounges for something, anything, that will make her feel connected to the world the way that team did. She moves in and out of a world that rejects trauma, punishes the traumatized, heckles the grieving as a spectacle. She finds comfort in the cohesive ritual of rehabilitation, this place where she gets so close to finding herself again, only to stumble when she opens her eyes and sees she’s alone. All those months feeding and guiding and gripping fast to the fight of making it to another day, and she no longer knows how to rest. How to let go without falling. She no longer wears a crown, and she never wanted it in the first place, so how on earth does she survive a world that doesn’t understand the guilt and shame of being made the centerpiece of a specialized environment you can never explain to anyone else? How, how, how do you survive without winding up with blood on your hands just the same?

All six of these girls found, for better or worse, a place in the woods. All six of them found, for better or worse, a reason to get up the next day. For each other. And then they go home, and even if they all stayed close, stayed friends, it’d still be like stepping out of chains for the first time in years. Where do you go? How do you make small choices when every decision for months was life or death? How do you keep the part of yourself stitched so innately into your survival in a world that would scream to see it? How do you do away with the survivor and still keep going?

They brought it back with them. Of course they did. It was the only way.

Maybe the problem with Christian fiction is that it's non-denominational. People are just "Christian", with no effort put into showing what practicing that religion looks like for them specifically. No indication that there are other Christians who could have different beliefs. No wrestling with differing ideas and the struggle of how one should live out their Christian faith. And that makes it unrealistic and unrelatable.

waved my ballot envelope at the car watching me park horrendously in hopes of communicating that i would be out of the five minute parking in just one moment; driver nodded at me; in just one moment as i wiggled away saw that driver dropping off her ballot as well. then i had to stop for a man crossing the street with his golden retriever's leash in one hand and his ballot in the other. civic participation is in the air

AU where after Glamrock Bonnie’s decommission/after he goes missing, Glamrock Freddy and the rest of the remaining animatronics end up being reprogrammed—or, basically, having their memories messed with.

The only change to the rest of the animatronics is that they don’t remember anything about Glamrock Bonnie. They’d know about Bonnie Bowl and small things like that—but have no idea that they all had a Bonnie.

As for Glamrock Bonnie himself, they end up having something wrong with the memories, too. Although it’s not because he was reprogrammed or anything—it’s because of the damage/the state they are in.

And with them, whether it’s a “Cassie finds them during Ruin and helps, then leaves with him” type of situation, or something different (like Gregory staying and finding him), Glam. Bon would eventually see Glam. Fred again.

Though, there’s that problem: Reprogramming for Glam Fred to literally not know who the bunny is, and Glam Bon having all of that damage.

But, despite that, both of them feel like there’s something—even just the tiniest bit—familiar about the other.

Long story short: Glam. Bon goes, the others are reprogrammed and forget them—Glam Bon’s damage causes him to forget. The two reunite, but have no idea who the other is.

I think the wildest thing for me about ASOIAF’s world building, especially the KL world building is that almost none of the people in the court of KL have like. A job. Like yeah they’re all gentry. They are hanging out at court because— why??? Home sucks?? This isn’t a Louis XIII making people move to Versailles thing. Where are the scheming officials!! How many departments of the treasury are there!! It can’t all be done by JUST the Master of Coin that’s stupid!! Where ARE the tax collectors!! Where’s the scribes!! What is the state of the infirmary how many maesters are there!! Who’s in charge of the maids!! Who do you have to bribe to get pork for dinner instead of chicken!! Shouldn’t a Lord Hand have like an entire political faction surrounding them???

When it comes to Penelope I feel like a lot of her fans take any valid criticism towards her and turn it into hate, which does her character a disservice. While some people do hate on her, a lot of it holds valid reasons. Admitting that she has hurt many people isn't wrong because she has, it's been shown on throughout the show and the impacts it can have. From labeling Daphne as "unmarriageable" during her first season and events that followed, her labeling Eloise as being part of a group of rebels, the terms she used to describe Kate [and Simon]-- which carried racial undertones no matter how you try to spin it, who didn't even know personally at that point, what she did Marina. All of these were very harmful and to say that none of these characters should feel angry, that they should just forgive Penelope without any work put into it is very laughable (especially because she's still writing as Whistledown and put many, namely women, at risk during a time where reputation is everything--something in which Penelope herself faces). With this being said, criticizing her actions, at least for me, doesn't come from a complete place of hate but more so from believing that she can be better if she puts in the work. By ignoring all that she's done and having her get her happily ever after so easily in the end, to be honest, would ultimately feel lackluster. I feel like she still has room to grow, but it will take a lot of work and, I personally, think seeing her renavigate who she is with who she wants to be outside of Lady Whistledown would be very interesting.

Unresolved issues facing Ferelden after the end of the Fifth Blight:

Orlais

a failed harvest caused by tainted fields and/or the civil war being fought on the land

stragglers from the darkspawn horde

rebuilding Denerim and other towns/villages

massive depopulation

foreign government getting twitchy about the number of refugees still having the nerve to be refugees

political unrest because your choices for ruler are a) a half-commoner whom nobody knew about until 5 minutes ago b) someone who technically doesn’t have a claim to the throne beyond ‘was already doing the job might as well keep doing it’ c) a combination of (a) or (b) with added spice of being from a family who is politically op but was also all but erased less than a year ago

trade deal with Orzammar (?)

Orlais

political unrest because the city elves were promised power and there’s not really any way to stop them if they riot about it

scrutiny from Wiesshaupt because there’s no way two junior Wardens killed an archdemon by themselves in a year

not enough mabari anymore :(

potentially an old god demon baby who might destroy the world

so we found Andraste’s ashes, who’s going to send an army for Andraste’s ashes?

INSTAGRAM COMMENTER COMING IN WITH THE STEEL CHAIR-

Modern politics described by Max0r

This might be his most meme-dense video yet. He has indeed ascended the political compass, giving him power over life and death.

here have a crappy meme

Out of Cassius, Trebonius, Mark Antony, and Brutus, do you think any of them are "genre-aware" of the type of story they re in, in the late Republic?

imo they’re all aware that they’re on the precipice of something (at a turning point, a fork in the road where the only option is forward/you cannot go back, etc) as people who live through these things often are, which makes them “genre aware” in a way that actually matters, but during his rivalry with Octavian post-Philippi, it would probably Antony after this specifically

But their competitive diversions gave Antony annoyance, because he always came off with less than Caesar. Now, there was with him a seer from Egypt, one of those who cast nativities. This man, either as a favour to Cleopatra, or dealing truly with Antony, used frank language with him, saying that his fortune, though most great and splendid, was obscured by that of Caesar; and he advised Antony to put as much distance as possible between himself and that young man. "For thy guardian genius," said he, "is afraid of his; and though it has a spirited and lofty mien when it is by itself, when his comes near, thine is cowed and humbled by it." And indeed events seemed to testify in favour of the Egyptian. For we are told that whenever, by way of diversion, lots were cast or dice thrown to decide matters in which they were engaged, Antony came off worsted. They would often match cocks, and often fighting quails, and Caesar's would always be victorious.​

Antony, Plutarch

I want to talk about the lore and historical aspects Re1999 but I just don’t have the vocabulary nor can I form coherent thoughts enough to not embarrass myself. Like yeah I wanna talk about all of ch 3!!!!!!! I wanna talk about the Foundation and Manaus !!!!!!! I wanna talk about arcanists as a whole!!!!! I want too!!!! I just have no idea how it where to start ueueueueueue. People as a whole should definitely talk more about so I can be on the sidelines and go “yeah I was thinking about that too no way!!!!!!”

Holy shit, why the fuck are people still talking about the Dragon Maid dub as if it wasn't almost 7 years ago at this point?

I get that it's a particularly egregious example of bad localization, but you know there's a REASON it sticks out so much right?

I thought for sure when I saw this in my recommended feed that it must be an old video, but nope, 8 hours ago.

I know people love to complain about this supposed epidemic of "woke localizers ruining anime", but outside of the few particularly egregious examples that everybody ALWAYS brings up, I rarely see any evidence of this.

Like, I swear to god, it is always the Dragon Maid "patriarchy" line, the Prison School "gamergate creepshows" line (which got redubbed later just fyi), or both.

I keep forgetting (and rediscovering) that gender matters to people. That they do worry about pronouns and looking a certain way and being interacted with in a certain way.

While I simply... don't care? People gendering me is an indication of what kind of game the other person wants to play and I'm very happy to have a heads up.

Why would I want to butcher it by demanding any specific pronouns.