A half truth is a whole lie

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I am not the first, and I won't be the last, to make this crossover comparison but there's something incredibly appealing about it.

Reigen would be a NIGHTMARE client Trying to wring a single honest word from his mouth would be like pulling teeth The man himself is a contradiction.

but he'd have the most entertaining sprite animations

what can I say? mob psycho 100 season 3 has got me tight in its grip

justice of toren collecting songs and one esk/breq constantly humming/singing them is such a good detail and ann leckie does so much with it. an incomplete list:

justice of toren's eager collection of songs is part and parcel of its violent destruction of cultures: these songs are cultural artifacts that it only learns because of its presence on those worlds during their conquest, and in many cases breq is the only one to remember them because their people have died out due to that violence. JoT preserves cultural artifacts for its own use at the same time it directly contributes to the need for that preservation in the first place.

the matter-of-fact way in which this is narrated to us gives us information about JoT's stance on respect and imperialism - that is, contrasted with other characters who look down on the conquered cultures, JoT does actually seem to appreciate their value. and yet it communicates to us no sense of remorse over its role in their genocide.

singing can be a communal activity. this allows us to feel the difference between one esk's multiple bodies singing together in harmony/in a round vs. breq singing alone. this has emotional weight, is an evocative image, and illustrates quite nicely some of the logistic considerations of having one vs. multiple bodies.

the constant humming/singing is extremely notable and idiosyncratic according to other characters, which is a dangerous combination for someone who's supposed to be undercover, so it adds a lil bit of fun suspense for us.

the fact that no one ever figures out breq's identity despite this giveaway tells us something about the other characters' attitudes towards artificial intelligences (though see below about seivarden).

the fact that it's so idiosyncratic also tells us something about the ability of individual AIs to have personalities that distinguish them from other AIs, and the fact that one esk sings constantly but two esk doesn't tells us something about the ability of different ancillary decades that are all part of the same AI to have distinguishing characteristics. this is very relevant to, and illustrative of, the series' thematic throughlines around identity, personality, continuity, etc.

the fact that breq personally has a bad voice also serves multiple purposes. because breq and seivarden both believe that the medic could have chosen a body with a good voice if she had wanted to, we can infer something about how ancillary bodies work, how much the AI (and, by extension, its medics) knows about the individual capabilities of those bodies while they're in suspension, and what kinds of things the AI can and can't control once it has unfrozen and taken over a body.

we can also draw conclusions about the medic that chose that body and about intracrew relations on that ship.

breq's bad voice creates moments of humor and irony in the narrative, such as when breq's constant singing - aka the most obvious clue that she is one esk - is precisely what makes seivarden so sure that breq can't be one esk, because no esk medic would use a body with a bad voice for an ancillary.

constant singing/humming imposes itself on the shared soundscape, meaning other people can't easily avoid it and it has the potential to annoy them, especially if the voice itself has annoying qualities. the reactions of other characters to the frequency and/or quality of this verbal tic tells us something about the level of affection those characters have for one esk or breq.

because singing involves words, the meaning of the lyrics being sung can be used to advance the plot, communicate things about specific characters, create irony in juxtaposition with what's happening on the page, etc.

i especially like what's done with the lyric "it all goes around". it's woven throughout the story in such a way as to manifest its own meaning (the repetition of "it all goes around" is, itself, an example of something going around). by repeating the lyric, breq is the one making it true, and i would argue that her repetition of this particular lyric about things orbiting other things contributes to, and/or is a sign of, her growing understanding of the necessity/reality of interdependence and her place in that framework/her role in constructing it, or in other words, the extent of her own agency and the rights and obligations it confers upon her.

because the singing/humming is a constant, background, automatic action, it only ceases when breq is experiencing a strong emotion. from this we are able to infer things about the emotional state of our famously-omits-details-about-her-emotional-state narrator based on other characters' comments about whether or not she is currently doing this thing.

we also aren't even aware that breq is doing it constantly until another character says so. on a narrative level, this serves the dual purpose of making sure we know about how much she hums AND of reminding us that she's not telling us everything.

the humming is not mentioned constantly even though it is happening constantly - this helps us forget in between mentions that it's going on while also simultaneously reinforcing just how constant it must be, so constant that to mention it every time it happens would be like narrating every time she breathes in or out. whenever someone brings it up, we are reminded anew that something has been happening all along that we forgot about. this means that ann leckie is able, by leaving information out, to hammer home to us how much we are not being told.

through this one character trait, ann leckie efficiently and elegantly communicates not just aspects of character but also of setting, plot, tone, theme, and narrative. there's no extraneous exposition just to tell us about the song collection or singing; everything that tells us about it is serving other functions in the narrative as well. the ways in which she manifests this one character trait in the universe and in the narrative contribute to and exemplify both the story itself and the method of its telling.

ozone

Feel free to be more specific/explain your reasoning in the tags or replies if you want to (especially if you think it's less than a month are we talking 2 days or 3 weeks)

Everything vaguely timeline related from Jumin AE below if you want to use it to inform your vote

the thing about ctntduo is that they aren’t each other’s worst enemies, they’re their own worst enemies and they see themselves reflected in each other

modern Vash posting videos about him trying to replicate trick shots done in movies or just doing weird shots in general, filmed on his low-quality phone camera. He always starts off saying something like, ‘This one might be a little tricky,” and then does something absolutely logic-defying insane. *fist pump* “nice!”

Usually he’s in an empty field or an abandoned parking lot shooting at empty beer cans and stuff and ends the recording when he hears police sirens. “Okay I think I’ve done my part to keep property values down, you’re welcome. Love and peace!” camera shaking as he fumbles to turn it off and run.

later he learns to edit so there’s not minutes upon minutes of him running around putting up new targets or running back and forth to switch the camera on and off, or tripping and falling flat on his face. Sometimes Wolfwood films and the quality is much better. He talks from behind the camera but never shows his face.

Vash: hey, come over here so I can shoot the ash off the end of your cigarette!

Wolfwood, puffing smoke off-screen: no

Vash: boo!

once they have a contest. It goes pretty evenly until there’s one target that Wolfwood just can’t hit and he’s, “You know what? Forget this.” And obliterates the target with the punisher, firing off-screen with Vash screaming in the background, “You’re hurting it! Leave it alone, it can’t take it!”. Vash sadly lays a flower by the remains of the target, tears in his eyes, before looking up at the camera and saying, “That made a lot of noise. We’re going to run now. Love and peace!” There’s a shot of Vash’s running feet before the video cuts off.

people are crazy about these videos. They’re posted at random times to different accounts with no identifying information. There are people spending their free time searching for undiscovered videos and no one can tell if they just can’t find it or Vash is on hiatus again. He’ll pop up again saying something along the lines of, “Sorry my last burner phone had a lousy camera,”, “there’s no place to charge my phone in the woods,” or “I got shot!”

Milly was the one who taught Vash how upload and edit. Originally he just sent them to members of his posse until Meryl told him to go bother someone else with them.

Now that the translations are out I gotta say that IF this is trully how it ends for him, I'm disappointed. Like I was never under the illusion that Gojo would've survived till the end of the manga but this just feels so... off? So underwhelming, almost? Like, it feels incomplete and granted, Gege has killed characters that, arguably, weren't finished with their arcs (Nobara, Nanami) before but even if we take that into consideration this one still feels so wrong to me.

Obviously I wanted Gojo to win and obviously everyone knew that he wasn't going to (historically, he has always lost something so important whenever he 'wins' a battle that it renders his victory almost meaningless) but killing him off screen, even with all of the explanations, when he was straight up folding Sukuna's shit for like 10 chapters straight just feels cheap and Sukuna's victory actually feels undeserved to me bc of it.

He was on the defence most of the fight. He pulled out every single thing he could from Megumi's CT and STILL got his ass handed to him multiple times. Im gonna be real, despite me making fun of his ✨fraud-core✨ chapters, I like Sukuna. I like him a lot as a character and as an antagonist and so I want to see his victory actually mean something, or be hard won since this was a fight between THE pillars of the jujutsu world. Perhaps if he killed Gojo with his own CT it would have felt more right ? Maybe..

Besides all of that, what happens now? What could possibly be done against Sukuna now that The Strongest is out of the picture? Kashimo, and let it be known that i love him dearly, will be folded in probably 2 chapters max. Yuta (<3), Yuuji, Maki, Hakari and his domain will not be enough.

Like sometimes I feel like people just either forget or don't grasp the sheer depth of the power gap between Gojo and EVERYONE else. It's just so insanely large that after defeating him, Sukuna is trully unstoppable. And if Gege pulls some shit and has him defeated regardless, then that will just be bad writing and Gege, for all I curse him on the daily, isn't a bad writer.

Truth be told, whenever a chapter ended before, I wasn't all that scared that Gojo was done for solely because the manga would have ended. Like, in universe, if Gojo goes down then it's a wrap for everyone else pretty much immediately (like mans got sealed and not even 10minutes later everything went to hell in that godforsaken train station) so now that this has happened I trully wonder where this will go from here?

not me popping back on here with a post after months of semi-inactivity (uni is being a bitch) just to reiterate how much i love writing the pahkitew island cast.

aside from sammy and amy (obviously), literally everyone else can be shipped with one another and it'd make sense to some degree, like it takes skill to create a group of people so inherently shippable (platonically and/or romantically) and ofc the writers didn't know it they just shoved a bunch of random ppl together and dusted their hands off on it but fr tho 😭

(yeah im planning out my leonave 'stranger things inspired' au, and the gears are turning, and i forgot just how much i love writing for this dumbass group)

(i swear im working on the next chapter of a guide to surviving the apocalypse too)

okay hot take time with tumblr user designernishiki yet again.

i really don’t get the hype over majimako like. at all. I’ve tried to wrap my head around it but every time I just end up so confused how it’s such a popular pairing and wondering if we played the same game like?? they had no chemistry, barely even knew each other (and what they did know of each other was almost entirely built off desperate traumabonding) and people treat the pairing like it’s the most deep, romantic thing in the world despite there being like. nothing there. at least romantically speaking. it’s honest to god baffling to me.

their most iconic “romantic” image together comes from a scene where makoto wants to fucking run away from him because she wants to find lee, who she fully trusts and who’s in danger (and probably also because majima’s literally just admitted to initially planning to murder her.) and he has to hold her there so she doesn’t get herself killed by running (literally) blindly into the street or something. how on earth is that a romantic scene.

their little sort-of date consists of majima being kind and sympathetic to her, sure, maybe even displaying some surface level feelings, but she’s completely preoccupied because of the massively important issues going on at the time with the lieutenants who wronged tachibana, she’s more or less probably plotting their deaths in her head during that scene, and in the end she purposefully has him run to get takoyaki so she can flat out Leave without him stopping her. because she has other priorities and is Not In The Headspace For A Soft Sentimental Escapade to say the absolute least.

Whatever they were, they were not In Love, they didn’t have time or circumstances for that, or to get to know one another as Actual People rather than as incidental liferafts in the midst of a sea of traumatic, nightmarish events. majima attached himself to her and felt strongly about her safety and eventual return to normalcy because she reminded him of himself and wanted her to have the pleasant civilian life he couldn’t give himself. on her end? honestly I don’t think she felt that connected to him at all up until the end, namely up until when he fixed her watch. and even then “romantic” is not even close to the word id use for what she was feeling– in fact I think that waters it down, if anything. I mean like fuck she was there bringing flowers to her brother’s grave in the spot where he died in front of her i really don’t think this was about romanticism, it was about compassion and selflessness and wishing her good luck in her new, free life, while expecting nothing from her in return. he cared about her and her outcome in life deeply and this would be the case regardless of any romantic feelings for her.

Anyway I didn’t mean for this to turn into an essay and somehow I could go on for longer but I absolutely do not need to. I just. am so secure in my thoughts about this and sometimes seeing how people talk about this relationship and it’s supposed deep romanticism makes me feel like I’m losing my mind or played a completely different game or something ngl. don’t get me wrong, ship whatever you want I’m not saying it’s problematic or something it’s just. bizarre to me how popular and sensationalized it is. and a little frustrating how applying this overdramatic romantic narrative to them can so often water down a dynamic that’s way more nuanced and interesting on an individual character level.

genuinely one of my favourite things about edgeworth is how morally ambigious he is in AA1. I love the ambiguity on wether or not he used falsified/illegal evidence during his earlier years (which gets a little ruined in the Lana Skye case but alas), I love that it is SHOWN how he pressures witnesses into saying what he wants, leaving out vital information, updating court information in his favour etc etc like its SO interesting!! And its all driven by a personal desire to win!! yes he hates criminals yes he wants to use the law in a rightful way but on many levels he is blinded by that desire and doesnt really take any time to doubt his own judgement or the system he is working for!! he just believes he is right!!! its FASCINATING to see and on a lot of levels you can be sympathetic to how he ended up that way, but when typically the people he is sentencing end up on death row, it makes his potential mistakes much much much heavier.

there is 5 years of people he potentially wrongfully sentences to death because of his flawed belief that he simply Cannot Be Wrong. and thats CRAZY!! it makes his redemption and desire to change even more compelling!! he is allowed wallow (run away for a year) but even more so he is allowed improve and move on, he is not condemmned forever, and instead makes intentional moves to improve himself and the system he works under! i love u miles edgeworth

fellow spg folk! do y'all have any tips for figuring out fanbots' faces without just. Redrawing the canon robits but slightly to the left?

exhalted vampeeric maaastah

REALLY want to legit learn how to sew. I can't just buy myself things for various reasons, so I'm always looking at, like, how to make dinner with random shit around the house, how to alter clothes since they WILL fit differently from 2013 (because I only own old things and hand me downs), how to repair things at home, and I really just want to have things I like to wear without resorting to fast fashion or even shipping stuff to my friends and picking it up that way. I bought one jacket off of amazon as my, like, single purchase of the last five months and I feel really bad about it (which is silly and I know it, but alas), and I just really want to be able to sew actual garments on my own. Do I need another hobby right now? Not really but we'll see.

-/&;3;

sleepy...

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