Since the season is winding down and this fight could even be next episode Place Your Bets!

Before you chose! This isn't asking who should defeat Willy, I'm not asking who deserves it the most, I'm asking y'all to predict who is going to be the one to get the last hit and bring him down to 0hp (if they take his death into a cutscene and choose to have one last exchange before killing him (or not killing him?? again???) properly, I'm still looking for whoever got the last hit within combat that triggered the cutscene)

Correct answers get nothing but the satisfaction of having called it

ok I don't think we as a fandom talk about the way Vash cries blood enough

we only see it once or twice from what I remember, the one definite time being here ^ when the puppet attack first begins & he's dealing with the emotional agony of seeing so many of his family turn into puppets.

so it's clearly something that comes out only when he's in severe emotional distress.

the interesting thing is that Wolfwood is fucking TERRIFIED of him bc of it.

whatever this moment is, Vash is giving off the same sort of oppressive energy that Wolfwood's experienced with Knives. it's the first time during their travels that he's really been forced to recognize What Vash Is. he knew it of course, saw him in Jeneora, but he's such a goofy guy it's easy to forget.

but whatever Vash is doing here, it makes Wolfwood Incredibly aware of what he is.

so the real question i think is What exactly is going on here? is it unintentional? is it simply a response to the emotional agony?

Vash isn't the type to indiscriminately terrify everyone in the vicinity on purpose. he wouldn't be doing this purposefully out of anger while Wolfwood's there. no, in this moment, he's not even angry at all. he's Distraught.

going from This

to this

in just a moment.

yeah. that's some fucking emotional agony. i dont think Vash is doing this entirely on purpose.

but THEN...

as both Leonof and Wolfwood stare at him in fear, Both feeling his oppressive energy, Vash then lets out some sort of blast that blows against everything between him and Leonof. it doesn't destroy anything, doesn't even injure him, but it's a physically tangible effect that scares the Shit out of Leonof & spurs him into motion.

there may be some anger involved in this moment, but it's not the hair-trigger rage you would expect from seeing his family turned into puppets. it's something Quiet, something almost cold. he's distraught, Resigned, & retaliating just because he has to.

Vash hates all of this. he doesn't want to fight him. he fucking Knows this guy too, knew him as a kid, & none of this makes sense. but he knows that he needs to fight him, & doesn't have any kind of choice.

but he's not happy about it. not in the slightest.

the writers on here making the miguel fics need to remember his fangs inject paralytic venom hes not a real vampire it was just a joke in the movie 😭

oh but i still want him to bite me don’t get me wrong idgaf if they have venom 🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️

Cannot believe at this late stage of my life I'm becoming a Gabriel fucker. Local mean jock doesn't want to be evil now, he wants to be loved. I'm slightly annoyed they didn't make Beelzebub more unhinged because the "plot" should have been at least half about them fucking up shit on an absolute rampage trying to find Gabriel, a thing everyone assumes they are doing to fry him with hellfire so they can kick off the war in a way that's advantageous to hell, BUT ACTUALLY!!! true love.

THERE'S NOTHING LIKE YOU & I a Good Omens season 2 playlist

Quiet, gentle, romantic, and a little bit devastating – roughly in story order. For being lonely together across 6,000 years and aching for the freedom to love.

On Spotify Here

(Previous editions: Soft To Be Strong – Good Omens season 1 | Crowley/Aziraphale upbeat song dump)

Also look at Nesta getting another weapon for doing the morally good thing and trusting others. That's my baby girl.

I think Church on Ruby Road has finally firmly cemented my opinion that Murray Gold should not have come back.

wait. random idea. Pathetic(blame candy) muzan & kokushibo are exes from Centuries ago and he has Complaints hed like to talk about w him but all hes getting to now is Nakime. hes so sick of his bullshit and just enduring it and goes to kagaya like 'i have to kill kibutsuji. ill help you kill him & the other upper moons just PLEASE im so sick of this shit. i need to kill him' 'well you arent killing me so ill give you the benefit of doubt-'

since they broke up he's hacked at the curse to the point he can snap it Whenever without muzan noticing, he finally did so & went to kagaya bc he can Feel shit's gonna pick up soon. he has his memories but he Ignores Them bc hes ashamed and kinda projecting it onto muzan. he has to kill muzan to kill his shame kinda fucked up coping mechanism yk?

the hashira try to kill him On Sight together but he calmly deflects everything while explaining hes working with them to kill kibutsuji. reluctant acceptance with the note from kagaya giving him a pass. most of them fully believe its a trap tho.

koku seeing tanjiro & his earrings and starting to approach, giyuu already has his blade lodged in his neck as a warning/threat & tanjiro staring at him in shock like 'HUH?? THE MAN FROM MY DREAMS?? HES A DEMON NOW? WAIT WHATS HE DOING HERE-'

I know nothing about Mr Ancient Hero but he is blorbo coded

like dude, what even ARE you?

There was a post asking RPers with moon-worshipping characters how they handle the moon's revelation, especially with Endwalker. But! I am too shy to reblog that with my actual answers so instead I will post this two page rambling under a cut. (:

Okay, so I look at it through two lenses: 1) How much does your average citizen know about the big wide star and everything our beloved Warrior of Light gets up to in saving it all the time?

There are things in the real world I don’t know and things I am shocked to find out other people don’t know!

The history of the Star is vast and dense and no one can possibly know every crumb of it. 

2) Faith requires a sort of peace in knowing you don’t and won’t know certain things. If you have all the answers to all your questions, you don’t need faith.

The asking of questions is vital, here. If you are not curious about the world around you how can you possibly come to love it and those it shelters? If you believe for a second that you have all the answers to all the questions then your curiosity dies. 

That said with Odette and her convent it really boils down to:  They don’t know!

Odette is young, she may not have been alive during Dalamud’s fall and Bahamut’s defeat. I’m not really sure because time bubbles and I’m very vague with her age because time is my mortal enemy. When the moon started its fall the convent probably took it to mean: gods mad. Who wouldn’t? Even the faithless might pray under such a thing, no?  But the convent is secluded and news is slow to reach them and what does reach them is often embellished or outdated or just untrue. They must pick through the stories they are told and find the truth of the matter - which is subjective, as well! What is true for one might not be true for another. 

It is a bit of a chore, is what I am trying to say, and unreliable narrators are aplenty.

Currently, the Convent believes that earlier scripture naming Dalamud as Menphina’s Loyal Hound were written by Spoken who were trying to make sense of the world around them. They got it wrong, but no doubt there are things we get wrong even now with all our knowledge. 

The point of their faith is not to get things 100% right all the time but rather to meet the star and her denizens with hearts full of love. They don’t allow dogs at the convent, however.

The news out of EW is another matter since it still feels very fresh and new. Odette has stepped into the role of Nun Errant and she does relay information back to her Convent, either in person or via letter. I don’t know if the news of the WoL fighting the 12 made papers and so far it seems that most of the Loporrits that stayed star-side are in Old Sharlayan to learn! A big ship did go beyond the moon but that was… beyond the moon! So, like the nuns, I don’t know! They are but Spoken creatures, they question, yes, but it is difficult for them to see the grand picture being as small as they are.  It should be noted that Odette is not the warrior of light. I try very hard for her to not know everything the warrior of light gets up to in the MSQ because she, realistically, would not know. She’s just some nun! What I CAN say is that if Odette knew everything that I, the player, know she would still worship the Moon and Menphina. Imprisoning Zodiark before more needless death, setting the Loporrits to building a fallback and escape plan, reincarnating her closest and most trusted allies to serve as deities and make sure he cannot be freed? That’s love, baby. Of course, Menphina, the deity of Love, would be the keeper of the moon and its secrets! Also, almost none of this answered the secondary questions but… This is already very long but I could go on about the dark side of the moon, what it means to love, and all that but I’ll end it with this: It is okay for your characters to be wrong and make mistakes, IC! Let them have harmlessly bad and factually untrue opinions. 

BONUS: I recall a question about how a manmade moon might effect a god or goddess who is tied to it! But -- prayer and belief is were deities get their powers.

Well, the 12 as we know them are kind of ‘manmade’ themselves. Yes, Venat sort of reincarnated her most trusted allies, however… It was shown that prayers have the power to change them! We know that this altered Halone in some ways and I believe that it altered Menphina the same. Basically: Enough of her worshippers thought Dalamud was her ‘loyal hound’ and so she got a loyal hound. So, why should the moon(s) be any different?

Idk what you mean, this plan is flawless

nothing broke me more in yesterday's episode than realizing that the only reason why ruby doesn't describe weiss to little when looking for blake and yang simply is because she thinks weiss made it to vacuo. girlie already racking up seven different kinds of breakdowns and she doesn't even know her best friend's presence on the island is going to introduce a brand new one... please pray for ruby rose because she's about to eat dust this volume

Do you think the mavity joke is going to be more than a joke in the future?

I mean, there wasn't any reason to have them randomly meet Newton and fuck up an important moment in history... It didn't play an important part in the episode which is weird, because usually it would. And it's RTD we're talking about so I'm very suspicious...

W H A T. I N. T H E. H E L L is going on right now?! This better be part of the "be the most valuable bait" plan cuz WTF RAF!!???? He's obviously got some stake in the Nest and N109 O____O

I can only imagine what Zayne and Xavier would do if they knew what Raf just let happen to MC 😩 (He would probably be dead for one lol.... I really hope we get some interaction between the guys at some point down the road tho, I thought at first their POVs were all different timelines but I guess not o_o)

Anyways, I need the next chapter to drop like now (after I figure out how to beat stages 12 and 13) because I want to throw up.... Chapter 8 has me screaming.

saving sin and sustenance: the contradiction of knives and the final act of planting an apple tree

if we extend the christian themes prevalent in trigun to this scene, knives appears to be both god (creator of the tree of knowledge and the fruit it bears) and the serpent (tempter of the forbidden). however, unlike god, knives is not forbidding the consumption of the fruit he's made, and therefore, he is also unlike the serpent because he is not tempting an act of sin by eating the fruit. in this moment, knives is simply providing sustenance: no restrictions nor trickery.

so, how did we get to this point? for a being that has greatly sinned yet desperately wanted a paradise of his own, who feared being used and consumed by humans; for all the death he has caused, knives is now giving life. and this is all because of vash and in turn, rem. the love and peace they preached and what knives originally rejected so strongly is ultimately what saved him: in both body and soul. for someone who always believed himself to be the savior but was unable to save the one person he was trying to protect, this failure must have humbled knives enough to beg for help; to sacrifice his original hateful dogma so vash could survive; to plant a tree as a wordless "thank you" and "i'm sorry" for what he was incapable of doing himself.

i have also seen people interpret this moment as knives melding and dying to become the apple tree himself. and while i can understand that reasoning, in my opinion, all knives did was plant the tree, not become it. knives whole thing is about having control. he lost it when he fainted after seeing tesla and he essentially vowed to never lose it again. even though vash saving him at the end did change him and his outlook towards humans, i still believe his need for control takes priority and therefore, he would not become a tree because he would not be in control then. he creates the tree with the last remaining energy he has to avoid the effects of the "last run," which was full decay causing immense pain and the blackened hair. the planting of the tree may show how knives finally submits himself to his true nature of being plant: to be nurtured and consumed, but by choosing to pass away immediately afterwards and assuming it would not matter to vash that he leaves without saying goodbye, knives allows himself to remain in control of what little he has left. he is giving himself the autonomy he had always tried to limit from his plant siblings. his final act is both a moment of selflessness and selfishness - and isn't that what knives has always been: a living, breathing contradiction? so, is it truly surprising that he maintains this in death as well?

nightow's ending for knives is so meaningful because it's so cathartic. we see a villain, who thought he was a god, realize his humanity. we see his final act is creating an apple tree and accepting his role as a resourceful plant. we see his final request be "take care of [vash]," which has been his main purpose from the beginning even if his actions throughout the story felt contradictory to that. we see knives be reborn and die just as he has always been.

scratch is an evil greaser

stephen king would be so proud