Ah yes- free time! I can now catch up on all the animes I start-

….ted.

……*starts first episode of Blue Lock*

“jaime did it mostly for self preservation” “he did it bc he was ordered to kill his father” are not only blatantly incorrect and borderline illiterate reads of what is in the text but idk why people find it unfathomable that someone like jaime would want to prevent thousands of people from violently burning alive. like it is not actually a difficult moral equation which is why it is at the center of jaime’s arc and his relationship to his society because he realizes that the ethical constructs of westeros seem to be in opposition to this very obvious moral choice as seen by how the situation could even escalate to the point that it does through the enablement of the tyrant by the respected institution of the kingsguard and the uncritical upholding of the honor system over an actual coherent moral code. same with the scorn he receives for killing what everybody acknowledges as an objectively horrid tyrant who harmed innocents and violated law that knights are also sworn to protect and uphold and actually contradict by not acting against.

Mysterious Lotus Casebook (2023) | Ep. 20

Prompt 184

“Well damn.” 

Jason wrenched his gaze from the mess of red and green spattered across the room, searching for the source of the voice. His head hurt, he wanted his Dad. He wanted Bruce. He… his head hurt. His everything hurt. 

“Honestly, didn’t expect them to find another half-breed. Didn’t think there was another halfa out there…”  

He tore his gaze away from the floor- when had it gotten there- finally finding the other… person? The person giving him an empty smile through some sort of muzzle and missing an entire arm. Well, he couldn’t judge, he’d torn his nails off while digging out of his grave before… this. 

“Hey, kid, don’t sweat it, it’ll grow back,” the man apparently noticed where he was staring, shoulder twitching as he shrugged and more green pouring out. Jason couldn’t stop staring, eyes slipping from the growing pool to the rest of the chains apparently keeping the person on that side of the… room? Cage? Cell? 

“Shit, hey, kid, kid, don’t cry, uh, fuck, shh, kid don’t cry-” the person made a noise, some sort of hum or croon that caused him to relax. To his already brain-damaged confusion. “C’mere, away from the door now, shh…” 

Oh, when had he started to move? It was like he blinked and was stumbling away towards the chained person, practically tripping over a limb before the person managed to catch him. “Ope, oh you’re just a little baby-” a hand, clawed, carefully ran through his hair, tucking him against a rumbling chest that nearly made him tear up again. He wanted Bruce. 

“It’s alright kid, shh, they won’t get you,” the man rumbled, everything about him green to his rapidly closing eyes. Pale skin like a corpse, black scales like rot, hair white like snow, all stained green with blood.  “They’d have to kill me again for that.” 

alrighty I’m gonna write this strictly for myself (and whoever needs to hear it): I love stuilly fics, but you guys gotta remember that these homosexual idiots are 17-18 years old. they aren’t mastermind adults that fooled the whole world with their murders. sure, billy and stu might be sick in the head, but they do it together. it’s not one-sided psycho bill; stu even said it himself (“We prefer the term “psychotic.””). there is no hierarchy with them; they are equals.

stu made the plans; billy followed him. billy had the motive; stu followed him with it.

THEY. ARE. BOTH. CRAZY.

they probably bickered with each other off-screen; probably snickered and joked about their kills and teased each other about any mistake the other made while they were chasing their victims. THEY BICKER, ALRIGHT? (“I didn’t kill anybody.” / “Nobody said you did.” / “Thanks, buddy.”)

they are idiots in love, and they are teenagers. they are sarcastic and playful with each other. they laugh and have fun together; they love to kill, and sure, they could hold their own, but it’s just so much better when they’re with each other.

(also, as a side note, billy is not an emotionless/cold-hearted bastard. he’s a complete sarcastic fucking brat that talks back and runs on the thrill of murder. take that piece of information as you will.)

Most dpxdc fics say that in the alternate timeline where Danny becomes Dan, Dan is ridiculously overpowered killed the entire JL. The problem is that idea only works if you ignore Batman entirely. Batman has a contingency plan for everyone. You could say that Dan caught him off gaurd, but tbh that’s kinda boring.

The only universes where someone managed to kill Batman, he was either killed by another Batman or by one of his children. Other Batman’s managed to kill him bc it’s a Batman v Batman battle and they’re evenly matched. For the other universes? Batman wasn’t fighting back all the ways he could.

Because here’s the thing about Batman: he has contingency plans upon contingency plans for Superman, for his rogues, for the entire JL. Superman goes evil in about 50% of the universes he’s in, and even with his friends he isn’t willing to let sentiment get in the way of saving the world from a potential threat.

But for his family? Batman doesn’t make contingency plans for his family. Even when he arguably should, even in universes where it leads to his death, Batman never makes a single contingency plan for any of his children.

What I’m saying is this, the only universe where Dan could successfully kill Batman is a universe where Dan is Bruce’s son.

And that, my friends, is a far more interesting story to tell.

So fucking glad to see someone talk about SSS Class revival hunter 😭 I lived it so much and I feel like no one ever mentions it against more popular titles like ORV or even The Lout of the counts family, so I'm so glad to come here and see your amazing takes :>

Thank you for the ask which lets me talk about SSSCRH (the version I read was titled 'Suicide Hunter', which tbh I like more - no beating around the bush).

It's hard to draw an accurate comparison since I'm going off just the webtoon for SSSCRH, while I'm going off both the webtoon and the webnovel for ORV. And I love ORV, ORV is my media blorbo right now, it hydraulic presses my brain, I am writing ORV fanfic - it's, like, funner to enjoy. But SSSRH is just better. In the vast majority of ways it is is better. It's better than the holy trinity by a wide margin. TW talk of suicide obviously.

I can't believe I'm saying this but you need a basic understanding of Buddhism in order to understand SSSCRH. It's not about Gongja's suicides - he doesn't suicide from depression or lack of self-esteem. SSSCRH is about suffering in the Buddhist sense - dukkha. I don't want to make this an essay, so I might reblog this with more information, but extremely shortly:

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. You've heard that Buddhists say 'life is suffering'. To put it one way that doesn't require defining a lot of words: the cause of suffering is experiencing the world as we percieve it instead of how it truly is. Suffering isn't just being miserable and in pain, and life isn't suffering because life sucks and global warming exists and people voted for Trump. Life is suffering because we can experience beautiful and joyful moments in this world, but we do not exist in the moment of that happiness or place our ego/'self' between us and that happiness. Living in that moment, accepting the moment as it is unconditionally, is freedom from suffering. The Buddha tries to free people from suffering through teaching Buddhism.

"What does this have to do with the webnovel and manwha about a guy murdering himself thousands of times" it has everything to do with it. Because SSSCRH is about suffering, and it is about using suffering as a tool in order to experience a world unfiltered by ego and break down the artificial boundaries between human beings. Suffering in SSSCRH is not a bad thing. Gongja has the unique capability to (reincarnate.) experience a person's suffering in unity with them, which dissolves the delusion of separation between people and puts us in touch with the reality of oneness.

The Murim arc was fucking insane because Gongja pulls a Big Bodhisattva Move and walks through the suffering of the world in order to achieve full understanding of the human experience. He takes all of the suffering of the world into himself and is liberated. You can tell it's Buddhist because death was not presented as a bad thing - death was an aspect of a happy ending for the Heavenly Demon lady, because she was finishing her life according to her own joy, and because her teachings were passed on she did not truly die.

But the purpose of embracing suffering is to discover the ability to fully embrace life, and that's where Heavenly Demon's teachings were incomplete - as the ghost dude said, Gongja hasn't even experienced his own full life and the infinite capability for his own happiness. You can only feel the depths of sadness when you've felt the depths of happiness. Sadness deserves its place in the world and it can strengthen you, but so does happiness.

Gongja is attention-seeking, envious, and unbelievably petty. When he drills down into his own desires and why he wants the things he wants, you see that he has a very strong sense of justice and right and wrong - he realizes he doesn't want to be famous, he wants to be acknowledged, but on an even deeper level he is desperate for love and to be loved. Everything he does is to experience love, and as such he learns to love others. His love for the Flamey Asshole was purely parasocial and ego-filled, with no concern for who he was as a human. Throughout the manwha, he grows to care for people as they truly are and pierce through any delusions or misleading outward appearances. He has released all attachment to life and death, and as such does not fear death, and as such has taken a step on the road towards becoming a Boddhisatva who frees others from the cycle of samsara, and as a result has learned sick sword techniques and is sooo good at beating people up.

I think the only other thing I want to mention here because otherwise this is an essay: in almost every time loop/regression story, only the final regression matters. In stories with dungeon monsters and NPCs, only the humans matter. The regressor exists in a space where there are no consequences for their actions, so they act terribly and do whatever because none of it matters. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray acts like an asshole because he can. That's not the case here. Everything Gongja does matters. The NPCs are fake, but Gongja never treats them as anything less than real people who deserve life. Once he understands a person's life he never treats them as unimportant. No loop is thrown away and no person or life is disregarded. His choices matter, the way he treats others matters, and Gongja never treats anybody as if they don't matter except for himself.

That was not short. There is a lot more. The female characters are so good and so rich. From a craft perspective it is excellently paced and has a wonderful sense of set-up/payoff and balances tone and maintains a lot of momentum, which is really hard in a time loop story. You have to do a few very specific things to write OP characters well and SSSCRH does it very well. There's more to say from a craft perspective and it's hard to judge accurately from a webtoon but it's good. I was so strangely struck the entire time about how sincere and genuine it was, how it said what it said with no trace of irony of confusion, and I think that's what stuck with me the most.

TL;DR: SSS Class Revival Hunter is good for a lot of very normal reasons, such as excellent pacing and set-up/pay off and characters, but it's also so sincerely and genuinely Buddhist that it blew my tits clean off.

"a dude in Texas legally changed his name to "Literally Anyone Else" and he's attempting to run for President against Biden & Trump" [source]

okay, but putting aside the comedic aspect of this, it is concerning the amount of people who are prompted to vote for candidates just because it's funny. I'm not the biggest fan of how his policy about the boarder sounds [Site], but I do implore anyone who is able to vote in the 2024 US election to please research other candidates.

The media is only going to continue pushing the idea it's inevitably going to be Trump vs Biden 2.0 and we have no other options, that we have to vote for Biden again because of Project 2025. Is that whole thing terrifying?

Yeah, fucking absolutely.

But voting for Biden will not solidify our safety from that. Biden is exactly like the rest of them. He always has been. You can't make the lesser of two evils argument when they're both just plain evil.

You cannot say that Biden is even mildly a better choice than Trump when he is currently directly involved in a genocide. That is not some little fucking thing. That in and of itself disqualifies him as a lesser evil. Biden is just as bad as him and he will not save us because he doesn't fucking care.

Cornel West [Site] is an Independent candidate running for President in the 2024 Election. [Policies]

Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia [Site] are running for President and Vice-President as the candidates of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in the 2024 Election. [Policies]

There are options.

There are people trying to change the corrupt foundation our system is built on, but we have to help amplify them because the mainstream media will not.

"Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan" my beloved

me thinking about yuji and how he's his mother's son

u are not immune to gortash's tits!!!!!!!!!

(and neither am i. take this trend with my durge before i become too insane)

bonuses:

the stupidest thing ive ever drawn ever. coping abt them through memes because if i think too hard about my durge + gortash i will pull a gale and explode on command x

I know he's the diggity dog but ren has some serious wet cat energy this season

au where mehrak is a eldritch horror that took a liking to kaveh and kaveh just rolls with it

Do I have enough concrete evidence to claim Lindsay has prosopagnosia. All I’ve got right now is it’s the only reason that makes sense to me why Lindsay can’t remember Tyler’s Tyler in world tour. What if she literally can’t remember his face

Oh my God. I don't want to die! Oh God, please! The bill is not due!

There is a fic in the hobbit fandom where Bilbo has a Gift and he can take someone's injury from them. Aka. They scrape open their shin, he holds onto them a sec, and they're completely fine, but his leg is now bleeding. Direct transfer. This came about because that fandom really enjoys killing Bilbo in myriad horrifying ways.

So I was thinking about ST fandom, and how much we love to see Steve be insecure and self sacrificing. And If I'd watched the show maybe I'd have the details to do it right and talk about him taking head trauma from Lucas in 2, and undoing the damage to Robin before she wakes up and knows about it, but I don't know much more than that.

So just consider Dustin begging Steve to help Eddie after the bats. Dustin, who knows that Steve doesn't heal the injury, he takes it on. Dustin who would never ever ask for this if he was thinking straight. But Dustin is hysterical, and Steve is desperate, so he tries, and he succeeds. Steve sort of falls sideways after its done. For a second, Dustin is too focused on the color coming back to Eddie's face, and the way his eyes are focusing again to notice.