I've been hurting myself with this thought that just won't leave me so I'm sharing it so others can suffer with me, hi

But

The one who suffered the most from the group regression was Yoo Joonghyuk.

Let's look at it this way: When 49!kdj collapses, the party ends up with the knowledge that someday, the Kim Dokja in front of them will just disappear. He won't wake up, and will remain as he is until that time. So, they band together under Yoo Joonghyuk, who has evolved his skill into allowing a group to regress, and they go back to save the rest of him. At this time, Yoo Joonghyuk regains his memories of his Turn Zero, and he realizes his sponsor - that silent force that has been watching him all 1864 rounds - was Kim Dokja all along, likely observing from that train.

Then they get there. They reach him, they dig him out of that subway car....and they have already failed. The end result is Kim Dokja in a coma, now looking younger as well.

To the rest of the party, it really is a zero sum, or maybe slightly better even. They started with a comatose, incomplete Kim Dokja who would never wake up and would someday disappear. They ended with potentially even less of Kim Dokja, still in a coma never to awaken, but without the surety that he would disappear. Essentially, nothing was gained, but also nothing really was lost.

Except for Yoo Joonghyuk.

To Yoo Joonghyuk, he intended to rescue Kim Dokja - to complete his own original desire to finally meet the person who led him through his first life, to face the one who has been watching him since then, and rescue his life and death companion.

But what he is left with is so much worse. Not only does he fail, but after they return, that sponsor, that gaze that had been watching him - a gaze he had come to hate but now no longer could - was also gone. He has to live with the knowledge that Kim Dokja had watched him sink into hatred for him, had sworn to kill him, and then in the moment when he had returned at last, intending to save him, he instead fulfilled the dark wish he had made for countless lives instead. There is a black stain on his sword he can't get rid of that is proof of that.

If he had not regressed, if he had not gone to save Kim Dokja, then Yoo Joonghyuk would not have been the one to strike down the last remnants of him. The gaze of that sponsor would have simply faded away with the system, and he wouldn't know what happened to Kim Dokja. He would probably believe he would just keep living to watch over the world lines forever.

Instead, he has to live with the knowledge that he rushed Kim Dokja to his death, and cut him down at the last. The comatose Kim Dokja he has now is a cold reminder of what he truly lost, and the sky that used to be alive with that silent gaze is now wholly empty. For the first time in 1865 rounds, he is alone, and that fact is not a celebration, but a dirge.

If you're still doing the character ask, please: Fingolfin

Character Ask Game 💚🤍🖤

I am always up for asks! Thank you @melestasflight, Fingolfin was very fun to tackle!

Give me a character and I will give you my thoughts on

Fingolfin

one aspect about them i love 

Leading several thousand people across a desolate wasteland after cutting ties with their deities is THE most insane thing anyone does in the Silmarillion. This is true, and every time I remember Araman is right there as an option it makes me insane. 

 He is the single most interesting leader in this whole book for that. I don’t think it can be overestimate what a feat of every kind of resources it is. The commitment it takes, the huge amount of - even social control you need to have, to keep so many people united to the same goal, when the goal means fighting another worse deity, and vengeance, and sublimating the grief of the many partings and direct religious trauma while surviving the Arctic and facing constant privation?

In a way it’s a good thing everyone is busy creating steel-strong community concepts while on the Ice, because otherwise it would be a gigantic nightmare to deal with that fallout. The fact that he maintains the Flight of the Noldor as a Chase of Morgoth, creating unity and a shared ideal to maintain - the fact that his host only splinters under Turgon’s direction? Insane. 

one aspect i wish more people understood about them

It is not even so much about Finwë, although of course it is also about Finwë. 

Being ambitious is not a crime! It is however a strong character trait, and a way to define one’s life when it’s very existence is a cause of philosophical debate. 

But politics, governing, those are Fingolfin’s true crafts, and Fëanor insisting on being always a step up on the dias and above him is maddening, and to a point feels like he is outright trying to stifle his calling on purpose.

Which he is, although perhaps not in a would-steal-your-forge-along- with-father’s-favoritism way. Not sure Fëanor cares to conceptualize leadership in such a crafting-equivalent way. 

This may be more suited to headcanons, but I do think the idea that a social role can have such a strong impetus, even spiritual value to someone is mostly Vanyar, and having no material evidence of work, doesn’t fit so well in the Noldor’s material culture point of view about singular purpose. 

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character

Big tea drinker. Not much of a musician. Loves cool tones (Indis sorrows for the adorable emerald green and amethyst-bright onesies he refused to wear). Also a smith, as all Noldor princes are, but his interests are tied to infrastructures - steam-energy mostly, awfully boring stuff for most. Runs life according to a constantly updated list of priorities in his mind, that include meal times, coups, trips with each of their kids, divorce settlement negotiations with Anairë, etc. 

This made him the logistics genius the host in the Ice needed, and was in fact the kind of basilar confidence that led him to it - among other things, I'm sure he studied the journey to Valinor extensively. He knew it would be incredibly difficult in their circumstances, that many would not survive, that the loss would change them utterly; but he also knew it was not impossible, and therefore it ought to be made possible.

His confidence in himself in never entirely wrong, but sometimes misjudged; he knew exactly he would be able to land up to five wounds on Morgoth. The last two were a freestyle bonus :/

as well as

one character i love seeing them interact with

Fingon! Father and son, king and heir, bright flare of despair and the inheritor of hope - they are foils, they are parallels, and they are painfully, painfully aware of it. Would love to read a JSTOR article comparing their rules, up to the yearly tax reports. 

one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more

Lalwen (not a surprise!). The sort of loyalty involved is so interesting to me, but also the true that has to be based off true understanding and belief. They’re each other’s ride or die, and the idea of generally very magnificent and polis-minded Fingolfin being bffs with his irreverent younger sister is very amusing and fascinating.

(Also Turgon! Turgon and his disappearing act - well. He kind of commited treason, in a way? Treason-ish. It’s certainly a very pointed denial of Fingolfin’s direct authority, that’s for sure. Like. I crack up every time I think about this. Turgon must have been a nightmarish teenager, he’s very much like his father.)

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character

Had a hard time connecting with Finarfin. They enjoyed each other’s company, mostly! Had a very clear understanding of who the other one is, which was even about 60% correct. 

But the spark just isn’t there, and later on that’s something he grieves as much as Fëanor’s whole business. In part because idealized memories of Finarfin’s restful diplomacy are a succor in Beleriand, and in part because he has moments of clarity with some foresight, and sees Finarfin in a position of commander against Morgoth against his own. 

That’s part of his despair - he thinks the war against Morgoth will go so badly it will be taken up against the elves of Amanyar in their own terrain, that all the efforts of guarding and defending in defiance will be for nothing, and even fair Valinor will perish with only Indis’ son to defend the Noldor.

 This - is not correct. Finarfin fully takes the hosts of Valinor to Beleriand; but part of Morgoth’s power in battle is to take one’s worst fears and inflate them with the force of his own undeniable might. It gets him one dead Noldorin king, but also several painful scars, so really it’s a toss up on how well that works for him. 

Submitted by @saberamane

For the Ark Survival Evolved AU, the guys and their tame’s I personally think fit them, pokemon style. Meaning they have 6 ‘fighter’ tames, plus a shoulder pet. And post 1 is going to be The Island specific tames. (So no wyvern, shadowmane, glow pets etc. Also, I’m going to make it a running gag that Desmond tames things he shouldn’t be able to, because he is the ‘chosen one’.)

They all have an Argy (Argentavis) as their main flyer tame for travel.

Desmond:

Carnotaurus (named Rex)

T-Rex (named Cars)

Yutyrannus

Unicorn

Liopleurodon

Accidental Dragon Boss Tame

Giga (Desmond is special and gets an extra tame)

Shoulder Pet- Microraptor (Desmond tamed it out of spite after it got him killed several times as he tried to travel the redwoods. Desmond has a love-hate relationship with it.)

Altair:

1 Sabertooth (unknown gender, but named Malik because the cat is a bit of an asshole, as all cats are. Likes to nap.)

1Troodon (Named Nips by Desmond, because it likes to bite.)

Purlovia

Megalania

Thylacoleo

Megalosaurus

Shoulder Pet- Ichthyornis(It flies, and steals…)

Ezio:

Dodo Farm (Various, Cesare gives the best eggs though)

Ovis Herd

Hyaenodon (As a pet)

Equus

Therizinosaur

Spino

Shoulder Pet- Pegomastax (Because they steal. And Ezio is very good at pick-pocketing.)

Ratonhnhaké:ton:

Raptor Pack

Dire wolf Pack

Dire Bear

Allosaurus Pack

Baryonyx

Megatherium

Shoulder Pet- Otter (He does a lot of solo cave runs, so having an otter would be very useful for him.)

============================================

Additions from teecup:

The Ark Survival Evolved AU idea (this one and this one too)

Desmond

Desmond likes to take Rex, Cars and Yuty (which may or may not be the Yutyrannus’ name) for walks around their main base which served as his idea of patrolling.

Desmond being the only one to tame a unicorn, of course, causes a lot of teasing of him being of pure heart since the first time they (at least, Ezio) tried to tease him of being of pure body, Desmond listed the many, many, many ways why he doesn’t have a pure body.

Desmond’s dragon has its own cave underneath their base and Desmond spent months making sure it’s a ‘bonafide’ dragon lair. Their metal and most resources are stored there as the dragon’s hoard but they can get it any time they want because the dragon isn’t actually programmed to be protective of its hoard anyway.

His Microraptor likes getting in the front lines a lot, pecking hostiles then running straight for Desmond who also has to run away because the hostile’s aggro is on him, not on the Microraptor clinging to his hoodie.

Altaïr

Desmond believes Altaïr’s Sabertooth is a female just because he thinks it would be funny. No one bothers to check the Sabertooth’s gender though.

His Troodon acts as his second in command and seemed to be able to understand more complex instructions than the rest. The Troodon also coordinates with his other tames and Desmond sometimes feels like he’s competing with the Troodon for the spot of Altaïr’s assistant.

All his tames tend to keep to themselves and hides a lot, only coming out when Altaïr calls for them. The only tames who show themselves to the others regularly are the Troodon, the Sabertooth and Megalosaurus. Most of the time, they’d get a jumpscare because one of Altaïr’s tames was on the ceiling or burrowed in an empty spot in the garden.

The Megalosaurus is usually seen in the middle of the base sleeping during the day and is usually one of the ones being used for nightly patrols

He tamed the Ichthyornis because everyone hated them for trying to steal their items and eating their food whenever they were nearby but Altaïr realizes that their stealing capabilities could be useful. Most of the time, his Ichthyornis flies around and is used by Altaïr to steal materials it can carry without them getting near dangerous areas.

Ezio:

Some other Dodos in the Farm include Haytham (Ratonhnhaké:ton just shrugs) and Rashid. There’s more but they remember Haytham because Desmond made him a tacohat for some reason and Rashid always has a black fabric tied around its neck similar to a farmer’s head scarf. Nobody understands why Desmond did it but they’re leading theory is Desmond was bored.

Shearing his Ovis Herd is relaxing for Ezio (even though they can sometimes be heavy). Desmond also sometimes joins him in shearing.

Nobody knows how but Ezio managed to make his Hyaenodon act like a sheep dog for his herds. It’s… quite frankly impressive.

They also built a stable for his Equus and Desmond’s Unicorn and they sometimes go horseriding together.

Therizinosaur and Spino usually guard Dodo Farm, the Ovis Herd and the stables. Although when Ezio is feeling adventurous, they get to go with him (while Desmond takes over Farm/Herd duties)

His Pegomastax has very sticky fingers. Unlike Altaïr’s Ichthyornis, his Pegomastax will steal anything it thinks Ezio would like which is both adorable for Ezio and annoying for the person it stole it from. Especially Desmond who gets to be the target… a lot. (I wonder why)

Ratonhnhaké:ton

He usually doesn’t use all of his packs at once, mostly picking one pack that he believes will be suitable for the terrain and the place he would be going to.

Most of the time, he leaves the other packs at the base and they only let Desmond come near them. Ezio and Altaïr usually gets roared or growled at. Sometimes, bitten. Because of this, Desmond usually takes care of them and takes them out for ‘walks’.

Baryonyx is usually his go-to mount and Dire Bear is usually more used when he’s going somewhere cold.

Megatherium and Otter always join him during cave runs and most of the time, he takes all his packs when he’s going out for long periods of time (like cave runs) just to be sure.

All of their (mainly) aquatic based tames are in a separate base by the river near the Northeast shores. Ratonhnhaké:ton and Desmond are usually the ones checking on that base.

(I kinda like the idea that they keep their tames out, just doing whatever the hell they liked (within reasons) because Ratonhnhaké:ton wants them to be free… ish)

Okaayyy thanks God requests are open again dbsbdb I jope tou are fine hun!

As for the request, I dunno of ypu are willing to do but can you do something with time-traveller! Phantomhive! Reader with Ciel, Sebastian and one character that you love? The choice is yours but I'd be pretty happy if you can do it a bit detailed :)

Like reader is from the future, was hunting a witch or something and the witch kinda curses her to stay in the Victorian era or something, she also has a cousin like Elizabeth, then they end up in the manor, the servants and Seb attacks but she easily dodges easily etc. Bonus part if she is cocky, a bit cunning but sweet hdjsjdj

You don't have to write this one ofc I'm already grateful that you read this idea!

Have a nice day Muahh💗🤩❤

I did some headcanons for the whole household, but I did try to do a couple extra for Ciel and Sebastian!

honestly I just love the whole concept of characters meeting their descendants and stuff, and this was fun!! I hope you like it~

To be perfectly honest, you’re a headache that Ciel is completely unwilling to deal with at first. Not only have you fought with his entire small army of servants, you’re also somehow from the future? And a Phantomhive? Of course, this knowledge means he survives at least long enough that his bloodline doesn’t die. That he’s going to have a child in the future, then maybe a grandchild, and that his family name isn’t going to be swallowed when his soul is… he’s not ready to address those kinds of things and the feelings that go with them.

For the moment, take your… friend? Sister? Cousin? Partner-in-crime, and assist the servants in cleaning up. If he’s stuck with you, he’s not going to let you get off easy for making a mess in his home, no matter who you happen to be. He’ll let you sleep in the servants’ quarters at least for now, but with good behavior maybe you can move to a guest room.

However you got here, you’re still a Phantomhive, so… Sebastian at least seems to forgive your audacity. He’s bound by contract to serve Ciel, which includes making nice with you as his master’s descendant. Certainly, though, should the truth come out, (which it very well may, there’s no sense keeping supernatural secrets from a time traveler), he’ll admit he’s surprised you managed to keep up with him in a fight. If you managed to land a hit, you might have even caused a little bit of pain; the only other mortal who’s ever inflicted any pain on a demon like Sebastian is Lau. Though he may not understand you, he does respect you.

The household really is rather more lively with you around. Even not being dull at the best of times, you appear to bring out that much more chaos when it comes to the rest of the servants. (This is the main reason Sebastian gets easily frustrated with you. You encourage reckless behavior with the people under his supervision, and they all have enough of a problem with that as it is.) Thankfully, it really does seem that you can handle yourself, so in the event of everyone needing to protect the manor, you’re more than able to hold your own alongside the servants.

There’s absolutely no reason for Pluto to not still be around, so you and your cousin might have some fun assisting Finny in wrangling the demon hound. Pluto really prefers Sebastian’s company over anyone else’s… surely, you’re a close second, though, especially because Sebastian doesn’t really like dogs. And, this does mean that practically from the second you meet him, you’ve got a built-in attack demon. You dare anyone to defy you now!! You’ll have London’s worst cowering before you know it.

Speaking of Finny, whenever you or your cousin need a break from all the crazy adventures, he makes it clear you’re always welcome in the garden. There’s a little spot just for you two… in part because he might have a crush on one or both of you, but, mostly because he wants to be nice. Even though none of the others know what’s happened and why you’re here, they do know you’re related to Ciel in some way. That makes the servants want to protect you as well as him. At the end of the day, Finny wants to make sure you have a safe place amid all the chaos. He knows how it can get round this household, and everyone needs some rest.

You’re forever sneaking snacks, sweets, and tea from the kitchen… even behind the servants’ backs. Although Sebastian gives you a stern warning to leave some for everyone else and not ruin your appetite, Bard is your accomplice and is equally as to blame for your sticky fingers. He’ll pretend he doesn’t notice you in the kitchen at all, claiming his back was turned while cooking if he’s questioned about it. More than once he’s loudly proclaimed in full earshot of Sebastian or Ciel that he’s sorry, but he doesn’t want you to spoil your dinner, he has a cup of tea for you and nothing else… while pressing a little bag full of sugar cubes into your hand. Then Sebastian wonders why he has to go buy more in the middle of the week. (… Ciel’s sweet tooth is only rivaled by yours, after all.)

Far as Mey Rin is concerned, thank God, another couple of women!! Despite that she adores her coworkers, sometimes it drives her a little batty not to have another girl round the house. Now she’s got you and your cousin to make conversation and bond with. It gets a bit lonesome unless Lizzie comes over, so, she’s happy to steal you both away for a moment under the guise of making sure she’s made your beds to your liking… only to immediately muss the linens up by bouncing on the beds like a couple of schoolgirls at a sleepover, giggling and talking. Of course, she still does her work, and she’ll fix the bed later; it’s just nice to be able to spend time with other ladies. If you want, and if you don’t know how already, she’ll even teach you to shoot a gun. Even though you shouldn’t need to help protect the manor… well, it’s a dangerous world, so if you want to be prepared to keep yourself safe, she’s here to serve in any way she can.

The one who’s a bit of a toss-up as to how he interacts with you is Snake. He’s nervous around other people in general, and here he is among upper society as a servant, and he doesn’t really know how to behave, so he… often simply stays silent and still just so he doesn’t say or do anything wrong. Mercifully, though, you’re actually a little easier to interact with. It’s like you don’t fully know the social mores yourself, which is a comfort to someone like him who doesn’t either. He still does his best to help you in whatever you might need, despite that it’s in a quiet kind of way. Watching you fight like you do, so much action whereas he’s typically about stealth, he’s mystified. You’re a puzzle, alright. But… he sort of likes having you around.

Ciel has given Sebastian an order that he must obey you, to treat any order from you as if it were an order from Ciel himself. He grants you this privilege as soon as he knows he can trust you not to abuse it, and not a second sooner. It’s almost as if you’ve got your own contract with Sebastian, with all the benefits and none of the risk. (Ciel’s reasoning is that if you really are a Phantomhive, and you’ve proved you aren’t going to betray him, then you deserve the right to access whatever he can give you, including his demon butler.) This irks Sebastian to no end, mainly because he has to follow your orders without the promise of a second meal. Not that your soul would be nearly as enjoyable as Ciel’s, but still, it’s more work for no additional reward. That being said, unless you show incredibly poor judgment in your orders, he can’t complain too much. He’ll fulfill your wishes to the best of his ability, so… whether you use him for good or evil is up to you. Should you take advantage, though, Ciel isn’t above rescinding this order and preventing his attendant from being your plaything.

… You’re not so bad, Ciel supposes. You can fight, you have knowledge the rest of them don’t, and… alright, well, he has a soft spot for determined people like you. If he can help get you home to the right time period, he’ll try to find a way. In the meantime, however, he finds that he doesn’t mind so much having you around. It’s nice to see that the strong will of Phantomhive didn’t stop with him.

Do you think it's fair to ask others, even strangers, to treat you with kindness and respect, or is that a bit presumptuous because other people don't owe you anything?

Oh, is this one of the qs off that list? Nice, those are some bangers! Thanks for the ask <3

I'm going to answer at length beneath the cut, but here's the short version:

Of course humans owe each other kindness and respect. Of course we owe each other humanity. In fact, humanity can't support itself without cooperation.

However, the difficulty is knowing:

-What is humanity (basic kindness and respect) vs taking on too much?

-What are healthy boundaries?

This trend of, "I don't owe anyone anything!" is really worrisome, man. I guarantee you that literally no one is an island- and I also guarantee that a large percentage of people who espouse this belief feel that others owe them basic kindness and respect, and likely more. But let me try to break all of this down; it's kind of a lot?

Note: I am a scientist, specifically a molecular biologist. I am not an expert in evolution/history/culture. I Googled a lot of stuff, but don't consider me an authority, lol! Also, I can only comment on American culture.

-Why humans owe one another humanity

I'm going way back on this one, fam. Humans have been evolving for... Apparently, at least 160,000 years (that's just modern homo sapiens, this number is far larger if you go back to hominids). Back then, we couldn't buy pre-made goods and services at the store; groups of humans survived by splitting tasks. Some hunted, some foraged, some made clothing, some cooked, some cared for the young and elderly and sick, etc. If humans didn't closely cooperate for the shared goal of group survival, they... well, they died. And the more individuals died, the less likely the group was to survive. This group survival arrangement went on for at least 160,000 years, remember.

The idea of suburbanization seems to have started in the 1940s-50s, at least in the states, along with the rise in the cultural importance of the nuclear family. The problems with spreading out and dividing large human groups (towns) into small ones (households) include:

-Isolation and loss of community

-Ingroup vs outgroup thinking (ie, fear of people beyond the town, or even the household)

-Physically removing people from resources and help, which is especially devastating for vulnerable populations (children, elders, disabled people, anyone who is othered in any way)

And probably a bunch of other things!

Obviously, this is a gross oversimplification, but suffice to say that the shift from community focus to household focus, at least in America, is a very recent and brief part of human evolutionary history. Thinking of our units as the household, rather than the town, seems to have led, in part, to antisocial behaviors that, unsurprisingly, make life more difficult for everyone.

If we don't treat others with kindness, then we can't be surprised when we are not given kindness. If we don't help others, then we can't be surprised when we find ourselves alone in our time of need. Have you ever seen those social media posts that say, "Modern adults have to do all the tasks alone that were once split among families and even towns?" Well, I'm not a sociologist, but yeah, it sure seems that way. We all somehow have to get to work, get our kids to daycare, take care of everyone's medical needs (with what money???), feed everyone, clean, do errands, and more, alone. It didn't used to be that way! There are reasons why we're all so damned tired and burnt out. Chief among them is that help is not at hand without a hefty price tag, because our trusted unit starts and ends at our own front door. And this isn't anyone's fault; American culture is set up this way.

Now, I also believe that we should help each other out of compassion, but even on a basic survival level... Yeah, we owe each other humanity. We suffer at the group and individual level when we don't offer others basic kindness and respect.

However, despite my strong stance on this, um... In practice, it's difficult.

-What is humanity (basic kindness and respect) vs taking on too much?

Oof, now we're at the hard part. I personally have struggled my whole life with being kind vs hurting myself to please others. At the risk of getting too real/personal, I am a cis woman, and I was explicitly raised to have no opinions/desires, to bow to the group, and to take care of everyone. In my mid twenties, I realized that I tensed whenever someone approached me, because I knew they likely wanted something from me. And why wouldn't they? I had unconsciously trained them that I would "happily" help with whatever they wanted. They didn't know about my resentment and perpetual exhaustion.

And the worst thing was probably being a source of emotional labor. Kindly listening can quickly escalate to being everyone's unpaid therapist, and that takes a serious toll.

I'm in my mid thirties now, and I was in therapy for years. I still don't know exactly when to prioritize others vs myself, and what is basic kindness vs extraordinary effort. Everyone probably has their own thresholds for this one, but "treat others how you want to be treated" sounds like a decent starting point?

But no one can help others with an empty cup, so learning to take care of ourselves is a must.

-What are healthy boundaries?

I am not a therapist, and I'm still learning this myself, so this is 100% opinion, but...

I think we owe everyone basic kindness, but those big favors... Well, you can't keep giving forever to someone who doesn't give back. That's not a village, right? That's a pit. If someone approaches you for help and you feel scared or tense instantly, that's a sign that something is wrong.

When I started learning and employing boundaries, I quickly became less popular, lmao! Some people get angry and upset when you start saying no, and may "drop you" as a friend or acquaintance. This is actually far better for your mental health in the long run. As a general rule, if you find yourself anxious about interacting with someone in particular, and especially about telling them no or something they won't want to hear... You likely need boundaries with that person.

A boundary is basically like... Teaching people how you want to be treated. I often see people mistake boundaries as telling other people what to do, but in reality, you can never control other people.

Let's say you have a friend who is chronically late.

Not a boundary: "You can't keep being late!"

Boundary: "If you are more than 15 minutes late, I will leave/start the activity without you."

Boundaries center on your behavior, which you control. Generally, a boundary is established after a problem is proven to be persistent, and you've already tried gently asking for respect.

I admit that, in my own journey, I've pivoted too hard away from being helpful and open. I'm searching for that happy medium of supporting others while prioritizing taking care of myself. But everyone deserves basic kindness and respect, and humans don't thrive while isolated and distrustful. All of this is complex, but please, don't forget to be kind to yourself and others.

We're hurtling through endless space on a blue marble together. Let's keep it real, babes.

Thanks for trusting me with such an important q <3

Beautiful Sunday

Happy Sunday, everyone! I hope you are doing well. If this were 1970, the odds are high that the vast majority of us would be getting ready for church. And if you are not of the Christian persuasion, you would have included synagogue or temple somewhere in your weekend mix. It’s what we did.

Notice I used the past tense.

Instead, I find myself writing and working on a Sunday morning. I just returned from Walmart with some groceries, as well as another five gallons of diesel for my tractor. I’ve still got mowing, thanks to the nearly 20 inches of rain that fell while I was gone in May. Can anyone say jungle? My ten acres have proven once more to be tough rows to hoe. I mean mow.

I haven’t been to a regular church service in years, at least eight years, and probably closer to ten. It’s not that I didn’t go before, because I most certainly did. I was raised by a Protestant mother (Church of God—Anderson Indiana denomination) and a Roman Catholic father, and I often went to his and her services in a weekend, not to mention the Sunday and Wednesday evening services in my mother’s church. I was truly holier than thou.

I was involved to the point of even being church organist, as well as member of multiple praise bands. From “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” to “I Can Only Imagine” I played them all through the years. And while off at university, in addition to majors in Marketing and Economics, I grabbed one in Religious Studies as well. I was somewhat slightly an over-achiever, you see, and, sadly, more theologically qualified that some of the preachers I endured.

But I had growing doubts, many of which were seeded by my profs at Anderson University, the flagship school in the Church of God. While the campus ethos was decidedly conservative (no drinking, dancing, smoking, etc.), those profs taught me critical thinking, and so I had a growing list of questions and concerns I could never resolve.

I wanted to believe, and tried hard. There were simply too many questions. But marrying a PK (that’s church-speak for Preacher’s Kid) who also attended Anderson pretty much meant I had to resign myself at minimum to Sunday mornings in a pew or at the keyboard.

Of course, when she came out and married her best girlfriend, any semblance I had remaining of Christianity rapidly vanished, especially once I saw how our past church—one of Amarillo’s finest mega-churches—removed them from their life group leadership positions and kicked them out. You could say that in the process of a marriage crumbling to pieces, REM’s “Losing My Religion” became my theme song.

Done, and now None. And for the record, the ex, her wife, and I are friends now. We have family gatherings with all the kids. Hate doesn’t win. Love wins.

But enough of my confessions, which I hear are still good for the soul. The fact is that I am just one anecdote among many, and the list of Leavers has grown to the point that only 47% of USAmericans belong to a church, synagogue, or temple, and only 30% attend at least once a month. Can you say empty pews?

And it is a generational thing as well, with religious affiliation trailing off the younger a person is. Older folks like me—but not including me—are more likely to attend just as they always have, similar to those surviving members of generations before the Boomers.

So what does this have to do with marketing, you ask? Plenty, and especially for Christianity, which has its own marketing plan if you will located in Matthew 28:19-20. "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (NIV)

How will the Church—and by this I mean all houses of worship—overcome this downward trend and find relevance among the masses once more? What was once the norm has increasingly become an outlier.

Never mind that younger people have become skeptical of churches that say one thing, yet do another. That pithy “Love the sinner, hate the sin” slogan has worn thin, especially in the LGBTQ era. I recently saw the perfect comeback in a meme: “Hate the belief, love the believer.”

Let’s not forget the recent Southern Baptist Convention ruling that women cannot serve in positions of leadership. Well, I give them a couple of points for at least being somewhat consistent in their literal interpretation of the Bible. They need to work on some of the other admonitions, though, like shellfish and mixed fabrics. You really shouldn’t cherry-pick your scriptures, and then explain it all away as saying this part was metaphor, but that another part was intended to be taken as the last word on the matter.

And then there’s The Righteous Gemstones on Max, which makes a mockery of mega-churches. You know what I’ll be watching at 9pm CDT today. It would be easy to say that COVID played a role the last few years, which it probably did when churches were forced to go online, but the trend was already firmly in place before 2020. COVID just solidified it, even though the percentage of people claiming no religious affiliation—the Nones—has leveled off, for now, at 21%. Our highly polarized society, though, will likely exacerbate the problem.

Furthermore, I doubt the Millennials and Gen-Zers will reverse their views on the big social issues. That ship left the port, which means that once the Boomers and earlier generations are dead and gone, our society may never have to deal with a Pride Month controversy again because it will have become normalized. I can only imagine.

Meanwhile, I cannot help but recall one of my favorite Van Goghs, “The Church At Auvers.” Look closely. A church with no visible doors. Hmmm. You can’t get in, but neither can you leave.

That doesn’t sound like a place I would want to be today or any other day. I’m looking forward to a nicely paced Sunday, and heading to the brewery later. As for whether I would ever find myself in a churchly setting again, I learned long ago never to say never. Besides, I still know all the words. But all the so-called modern-day saints collectively digging in their heels are not going to convince me or many others to come back.

It will take a Church that reaches out to people where they are, just like the Savior they worship did. What a crazy idea.

Dr “Running Through The House With A Pickle In My Mouth” Gerlich

Audio Blog

Okay, so my plan was to write you something from the lucky one universe for your birthday, but getting Covid has derailed my plans just a bit, so here’s my alternative. This is going to be an essay that basically outlines every single thing I love about Illicit Affairs, and why it’s probably my favorite Rowaelin fic of all time.

I knew this fic was going to be good right from the first chapter, the prologue of sorts. The chemistry between them was immediate, and I was so so so frustrated when I found out he was married that I wanted to scream. But… I knew something obviously was going to change cause there’s no way you can deny their connection. And low and behold it did! This is kinda evil of me, but I’m glad she’s dead. Not in the sense that Rowan is now mourning her cause f that, you have a perfectly wonderful woman with you now sir you do not need to be stuck in the past 🙄, but I’ll get to that later.

Also f chaol too, he sucks. But, I’m glad she got rid of him and ended back with Rowan 😁😁😁. As his stud he too 😏. Guilty pleasure trope there, an age gap, only if there’s absolutely no chance of abuse of power or anything. Only healthy relationships, which you have portrayed perfectly!!! I love the way you write them, because even though rowan is twelve years older than her and even though he’s her professor, you have complete trust in him to do the right thing. He’s not a creep or an asshole, and because of that it makes the relationship hot instead of problematic.

Speaking of hot… 🥵 this fic makes me want to combust. Literally I think the smut in this is the hottest smut I’ve ever read. Rowan could step on me and I would thank him. From the moment they almost kissed in the beginning, to when they did kiss in chapter eight, to the bathroom hookup to all the hookups at his house and then chapter twenty three (before they got interrupted of course). Literally, it’s just so so impeccably good and spicy and I don’t even know how else to describe it. I’m obsessed.

Also, I love the way you included Celaena as Aelin’s twin. Now, im not a fan of when people in the fandom try and separate her as two different people in canon, and act like she’s completely apart with two different mates, etc. But this is fanfic and I’m so intrigued by your set up, it provided such an interesting background to explore grief and mourning and moving on from that kind of loss. And it was so unique compared to other fics I’ve seen, not to discount any, but I just love the way you’ve handled those topics. It’s set in the background of a forbidden romance, but it’s so much deeper than that.

And omg I can’t forget about Helia! She’s so adorable, and I love her relationship with Aelin. It’s so realistic, and I love the concern and care Aelin and Rowan have toward making sure she’s comfortable with their relationship and not too confused. Rowan is an excellent father, and Aelin is coming into her own as a mom. ❤️❤️❤️

All I can really say beyond this right now is just thank you. Thank you so much for sharing this fic with us, and please try not to break our hearts too much 😭 (otherwise I’ll never forgive you 😊😂).

Happy birthday!!!!🎊🎉🎁🎈🎂

oh my god morgan it’s 7am and i’m crying😭😭

YOUR FAVOURITE ROWAELIN FIC OF ALL TIME?? THIS IS MY HONOR

I adore every single point you’ve made, and I am so glad you noticed every single little detail I slipped in between the lines to make that fic better 🥺

HELIA IS EVERYONE’S BELOVED AS SHE SHOULD!!! I’m going to do like SJM did for KOA and promise that only one character is 100% sure to survive and it’s Helia, I could never hurt my girl

Thank you so so so much for this Morgan, I reread it at least 6 times before answering and I think I’ll reread it many times more🥺❤️❤️

Hunt the Stars review

5/5 stars Recommended for people who like: sci-fi, space opera, aliens, enemies to lovers, adventure I love space adventures and definitely don't read enough of them, so I was excited to come into this book. A good portion of it is spent in space on the ship Starlight's Shadow, which I liked. The rest of the book is spent on Valovia, an 'alien' planet, though we don't get to see much of it. Mihalik includes a good amount about the history of the characters and the world the book is set in, which I think is essential since we really only get to see two settings, and that background is integral to understanding some of the actions they take when traveling from Point A to Point B. I found the concept of the Valoffs to be very intriguing. They're a humanoid telepathic species, with each Voloff having an additional power (i.e., healing, telekinesis, etc.). The general human populace doesn't know a ton about them due to a long war that was fought between the two groups for control over wormhole access, and so both Tavi and the readers get to learn some things about them during the course of the book. Tavi is headstrong, but intensely loyal to her crew and hides a soft heart. I like that she kept her harder exterior on for at least the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the book. She was a captain in the war and faced Valoffs on the battlefield, which no amount of money can easily fix (especially without a common understanding). Her main goal is to help her crew and keep them safe, and that is reflected in her decision making. At the same time, she's also able to warm to the Valoffs once enough time has passed, which shows she is able amend her previous schemas. I also liked Luna, Tavi's Valovian 'pet.' I thought it was a cute addition to the story. Kee is one of Tavi's crewmembers, and one of the three surviving members of her unit from the war, and is a bubbly, softer personality. Kee definitely cuts some of the tension on the ship by being someone who easily befriends nearly everyone, and I appreciated the mitigating effect she had at times. Eli is Tavi's other crewmember and also one of the surviving members of their unit. Like the other two on his team, he's caring and loyal, but unlike the other two he's a little faster to jump to antagonism with strangers. He did cause some conflict at times, but like the others he does eventually warm up. Torran is a gruff, hard-to-read wall when he's first introduced. It's hard to figure him out at first because he stays relatively quiet, but it's clear there's some level of violence simmering under his skin. He's quick to jump to conclusions in the beginning, but once he's a bit more comfortable in Starlight's Shadow, he becomes more relaxed. Havil is the main member of Torran's group that we see in this book, with him being the healer. He's gentle and kind-hearted, willing to help those in need. While more mellow than Kee, he's another one who can befriend just about anyone. Despite the short time period over which the book takes place, I felt that Tavi and Torran's transition from enemies to friends, then to lovers, was natural. There's enough wariness and slow building of trust for it to feel real when they finally begin relaxing in one another and at least somewhat confiding in each other. Likewise, there's enough sexual tension between the two before they finally commit and give in that it didn't feel rushed (even though I'm pretty sure the book takes place over the course of 3 weeks). There's a lot of subterfuge going on in this book, from pretty much all sides. There's Torran, who refuses to inform the crew of what exactly they're searching for until they figure it out themselves, and then who refuses information on several more accounts. Then there's the people behind all of this, who are attempting to obfuscate and remain hidden for obvious reasons. I'm also pretty sure Lexi (another of Tavi's unit members who joins the group a bit later in the book) is hiding stuff of her own. I liked that the initial quest led into something larger, and that it flowed nicely from one thing to the next instead of feeling like the perpetrators were randomly thrown in to push the series in a specific direction. Overall, I enjoyed the book and the background on the world it takes place in. Despite the short period of time the events take place in, I felt that the transitions from enemies to friends to (for Tavi and Torran) lovers was natural. I'm looking forward to the next book!

The Six Realms

Okay, so I was pretty close to giving up on writing analyses but I'm back LMFAO plus I see we're close to 100 followers and I just want to thank you guys for being so very supportive <3

Alright, I'm not sure if anyone's ever written about this, but if an analysis like this exists, please do let me know because I'm kind of curious as to what other people think about this, too!

Remember that time Fukuchi spoke about bringing "about the five signs of an angel's death"?

I read a little bit more about it, and as a minor content warning: this analysis will focus on a few religious aspects (Buddhism + Hinduism). So if I get any of the facts wrong, firstly: I do not mean any disrespect to either religion, and secondly: please do correct me if I interpret anything in the wrong way.

Spoilers for BSD chapter 90 onwards + BEAST!AU under the cut!

So I'll start by talking about the Decay of Angels. As we all know, the members include Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Sigma, and Bram Stoker, and their leader, Fukuchi Ochi. After Fyodor's arrest, the Decay of Angels came into light with Nikolai murdering four government officials in a week. These murders symbolise the Buddhist cycle of existence, or otherwise known as samsara: the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

"We are the Decay of Angels—hiding here as terrorists, a 'murder association', five people who will announce the demise of the celestial world."

Nikolai Gogol, chapter 57

Samsara is described to be a concept beyond human understanding. According to Hinduism, samsara is the physical world where every being has its soul trapped into a physical vessel. The Hindus believe that everything has a soul, and due to a soul's attachment to desire, it is forced into a deathless cycle of being born, dying, and reincarnating into a different body. In Buddhism, the ultimate way to break free from this cycle is by obtaining nirvana.

Nirvana is a Sanskrit word for the goal of the Buddhist path: enlightenment or awakening. In Pali, the language of some of the earliest Buddhist texts, the word is nibbana; in both languages it means "extinction" (like a lamp or flame) or "cessation." It refers to the extinction of greed, ill will, and delusion in the mind, the three poisons that perpetuate suffering. Nirvana is what the Buddha achieved on the night of his enlightenment: he became completely free from the three poisons. Everything he taught for the rest of his life was aimed at helping others to arrive at that same freedom.

- TRICYCLE'S definition of nirvana

As Fukuchi mentions in the panel above, there are six different realms of existence. These realms represent every possible state of existence, but one cannot live in a specific realm forever. Depending on whether or not one's past actions were morally good or bad, an individual is born into one of these realms. Basically, the controlling factor of which realm a person is born into is dependent on their respective karma. The realms are separated into two categories: the hellish ones and the heavenly ones.

The Deva Realm: where beings are rewarded for the good deeds they have done. This realm is void of anything unpleasant. It is basically paradise— empty of unfulfilled desires, any form of suffering, and fears of every kind. Religious individuals, however, do not seek to be born into this realm since its attitude is more or less carefree.

The Asura Realm: where demigods are admitted. Asuras are driven by greed and envy, and may come in conflict with human beings since they are quite similar. They are powerful beings, but quarrel with each other quite a bit, making this realm quite undesirable to be reborn into.

The Animal Realm: where beings are given the form of an animal (you probably guessed that lol). Individuals here don't actually have good karma to take pride in, but rather, they are born into this realm to work off their bad karma (by being slaughtered, hunted, or forced to work, etc). Being born into this realm forces one to atone for their past sins by living out their life as an animal.

The Hell Realm: where one is punished for their evil actions. The most merciless of realms, where one pays for their transgressions through pure suffering, methods of which include: dismemberment, starvation, and psychological/physical torture. However, once a person's term is fulfilled in this realm, they are presumably promised to be reborn into a higher state.

The Preta Realm: similar to the hell realm, in which beings pay for their past sins (specifically: greed and stinginess) by having to survive through hunger and thirst. This realm is also known as the 'ghost realm,' because some pretas are psychologically tortured by being forced to live in places their past selves have lived in. They are invisible to human beings living at that time, which pushes them to face the depths of despair and loneliness. Your typical horror movie, really.

The Human Realm: the only realm where one's actions determine their future. The status (social ranking, physical wellbeing, and so on) of a human being in this realm is determined by their past actions, but due to the fact that a person has their own conscience to differentiate good morals from bad, the actions they commit in this realm have the power to determine which realm they are sent to next.

Okay, so now that I've got that out of the way, let's shift our focus to the Book. Very little is known about the Book, but the basic fundamentals of how it works is that whatever is written in the book will come into existence only if its contents follow the rules of karma. In addition to that, only a few sentences can be written into a single page of the Book, and it must follow the current narrative of the story.

If I'm not wrong, the first time the Book was mentioned was by Fitzgerald, who wanted it to resurrect his deceased daughter in hopes of restoring his wife's mental health. The next time the Book is brought up is when Fyodor's intentions to possess it are divulged; his goal was to decimate the global population of ability-users. And now, the current arc has the Book as its central focus, with a single page in Fukuchi's possession.

[ BEAST!AU spoilers ]

The Book acts as the central point of multiverses, with each character's lives differing from universe to universe.

Dazai committing suicide in this alternate universe stands in sharp contrast with how he decided to start up a new life in the main universe.

Oda staying alive to act as a mentor to Akutagawa in the ADA differs from how Oda uses his death to prompt Dazai to "be on the side that saves people."

And of course, the way Atsushi and Akutagawa have their positions switched in the two universes depicts how different their lives would be if they were given the chance to be mentored by different people— these are just a few examples of how the Book houses an endless amount of possibilities.

[ end of BEAST!AU spoilers ]

Hypothetically speaking, this kind of reminds me of the differing realms I mentioned before, where suffering is promised in some realms, and better things are granted in the rest, depending on one's karma, or the deeds they've done in their past lives. In this scenario, perhaps one's past life can be understood as one's current life in a different universe. That's just a personal opinion though. Take it as you will.

side note: Keep in mind that the person who is more or less impervious to the Book's effect is Dazai, with his nullification ability. I wouldn't want to propose any theories in this aspect (I don't believe I'm fully fact-checked ;_;), but I could use Dazai as a raw example of how your choices affect your future. If Dazai had decided to stay in the Port Mafia after Oda's death, or if he even decided to go through with his suicidal fixations, life would've been different for him in the root universe (obviously, ryley) I mean, you could basically understand that from how he ended up in the BEAST au, but imagine if he really did slip up in his decision-making in any of the universes.

Many analysts have proposed that he went MIA (early in his life) from the main universe for a while to figure out how the BEAST universe worked, whilst having the Book to his advantage. Perhaps his actions were guided? I'm not saying he's all-knowing, but he's sure as hell smart. I'm not sure if Kafka was trying to highlight the concept of karma when it comes to Dazai, but if he is, then I suppose you could say that Dazai is pretty much unaffected by the rules of karma, existing as the centerpiece of all the multiverses. No Longer Human is the namesake of his ability, but the book talks about disqualification from societal norms and generally, the world. I was talking about it with a friend, and they reminded me that Yozo (the main protagonist) was pretty strong in his views against society. Like he didn't speak out of total defeat, he spoke out of defense. If there was anything Dazai actually lost to, it was his guilt— "Living itself is a source of sin."

Then again, that's my personal interpretation since everyone has their unique perspective of his writings. In terms of the actual adaptation, you could translate the word 'disqualification' to 'insusceptibilty' when if it came to the Book's effects on Dazai? This side note is becoming really long lmao anyways I'll link a few theories which afflicted me with brainrot down below.

Another thing before I wrap up, the name 'Decay of Angels' stemmed from Yukio Mishima's book entitled 'The Decay of An Angel.' This is the final novel to the author's tetralogy: 'The Sea of Fertility.' The main protagonist, Honda, meets a person he believes to be a reincarnation of his friend, Kiyoaki, who takes the form of a young teenage boy named Tōru. The last novel of this series enhances Mishima's dominant themes of the series as a whole:

the decay of courtly tradition in Japan

the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy and aesthetics

Mishima’s apocalyptic vision of the modern era

Again, this could be referred to what Fukuchi goes on to say:

Some people view the concept of samsara optimistically, justifying it by saying that perhaps each individual is given a second (third, fourth, fifth, who knows) chance to refine their actions in order to be birthed into a better realm, with their karma being the independent variable.

On the other hand, other people, specifically the Hindus, view the cycle of existence as some sort of plague. To them, the flow of life and being forced to endure the suffering of mere existence in any form was somewhat frowned down upon. Some Hindus viewed samsara as a trap. Besides, having one's soul being limited to a physical body for the rest of eternity was not very appealing, especially since where they ended up at depended on the karmic value their past actions surmounted.

Even so, particular types of Buddhists don't seek nirvana, but instead, like the Hindus, they make an effort to be good people of society, building up their good deeds to increase the likelihood of being reborn into one of the better realms.

As mentioned before, the Deva Realm was the home of angels, the most carefree, gratified beings to exist. Fukuchi describes these angels as the people who don't get their hands dirty, the people who act as the puppeteers of society: politicians.

In terms of parallels, angels were the most fortunate and powerful, but they didn't have anyone ruling over them. A lack of supervision would lead to the abuse of power, which is what I believe Fukuchi was referring to. Deeming himself the Decay of Angels, he sought to prove himself as the 'sign of death that falls on the nation's greed.'

A few fun facts (okay, not really) about Yukio Mishima: he committed seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment) on the day he held a speech to voice out his unpopular political beliefs to the public. Mishima deeply treasured traditions and opposed the modern mindset the nation was advancing forward to adapt eventually. In his last book, The Decay of an Angel, he spoke about the five signs which complete the death of an angel:

Here are the five greater signs: the once-immaculate robes are soiled, the flowers in the flowery crown fade and fall, sweat pours from the armpits, a fetid stench envelops the body, the angel is no longer happy in its proper place.

The Decay of an Angel, p.53

The reviews about this series I've read so far describe Mishima's works to be quite complex; his writings demanded a lot of time to deconstruct and understand. They were highly symbolic, and he was pretty obsessed with death and the 'spiritual barrenness of the modern world.' I think you could attach a few strings from here to the mindsets of the DOA members. Of course, this parallel is completely abstract, but I'll go on rambling anyway:

He should have armed them with the foreknowledge that would keep them from flinging themselves after their destinies, take away their wings, keep them from soaring, make them march in step with the crowd. The world does not approve of flying. Wings are dangerous weapons. They invite self-destruction before they can be used. If he had brought Isao to terms with the fools, then he could have pretended that he knew nothing of wings.

The Decay of an Angel, p.113

I suppose you could resonate Nikolai with that excerpt. As much as Fukuchi takes the lead in this whole murder association, I'd like to believe that each member of the DOA plays an equally interesting part in whatever movement they're trying to execute. Fyodor feels it is his god-sent purpose to cleanse the world of its sins, his motto being, "Let the hand of God guide you." Sigma doesn't know where he belongs, since his origination comes from a page in the Book, and is fueled by the desperation to find a reason to live. Bram holds one of the most powerful abilities which is counted to be one of the "Top Ten Calamities to Destroy the World."

What I mean to say is that the DOA members are incredibly powerful, and they're not your ordinary antagonists (or I'm just biased). It's not just overthrowing authorities, mass genocide, and world domination— you could say that each individual is trying to utilize their purposes to their fullest expenditures, and the way they're trying to assert their plan into action is a little more passive-aggressive (framing the Agency, having a convo with a suicidal dude in jail, etc). They're the gray area between evil and good. As they framed the good guys for their own crimes, they're trying to conquer the bad guys for exploiting the innocent as they please.

This post would definitely age well if all hell breaks loose in the current arc (as if it didn't) and Kafka doesn't give us a happy ending.

That's all I have to say for now I guess! Thank you for reading, and once again, if anyone else something they wanna share, feel free to do so <3

sources (tryna follow Q's example ^_^) :

the six realms

samsara

the decay of angels

beast!au

the book

the sea of fertility

yukio mishima

theory: dazai’s emotional/mental state in beast!au

q’s theory: dazai being the protector of the book

theory: beast!dazai and the book

Clone genetic enhancement ideas

So the clones were genetically enhanced, but i don’t really see any writers (in fanfic or in published stuff) really exploring what that MEANS beyond “clone very stronk”. Here are some ideas that would actually make clones significantly different from just a regular-ass human in peak condition. 

-enhanced senses: eyesight, hearing, etc. I’m talking eyes like a HAWK

-better reflexes

-quicker information processing

-can hear sounds of higher and lower frequency than standard humans

-can see light of a broader spectrum than human standard

-learn quicker, retain information and skills better (potential problem: if you learn something the WRONG way, that way might stick really well)

-photographic memory (really useful for memorizing layouts and maps)

-immunity to various diseases

-can tolerate a wider range of temperatures and environments

-increased stamina and strength baseline. Clones can just run full-tilt for hours and hours and be like “ah a nice stroll”. Over long distances, they can out-pace jedi in the same way that humans can out-pace horses.

-higher tolerance of certain poisons/toxins (clones can straight-up drink ethanol, and get maybe a little tipsy)

-bodies respond quickly to physical stress, and slowly to the absence of it (basically, this means that physical conditioning results in stronger muscles and a stronger cardiovascular system really quickly, and it takes MUCH longer for a clone to lose strength and conditioning due to not exercising than standard humans. Think how much valuable training time is saved if they only have to go on a run like, once a month in order to stay in shape)

-increased ability to function through intense pain and acute injuries. Basically, semi-disabling the pain system so it’s less distracting. Probably not good for the survival of the individual in many situations, but an advantage on the battlefield. 

-heal faster and better, with fewer long-term complications. Clones can dislocate their shoulders and NOT have the joint be permanently fucked up, because the Kaminoans re-designed the whole damn thing to suck WAY less.

-actually, unique internal anatomy. There’s probably a lot about the human body besides the shoulder joint that is actually just really stupid, and something no intelligent designer would actually build. So the Kaminoans can fix a lot of that stuff. Better knees, maybe. Stronger ribs. Maybe Cody punches droids not just because he’s a mad bastard, but also because his metatarsals are literally as strong as steel. 

-Hearing loss/hearing damage? No problem, your ear can regrow those little hair-thingies that help you hear. 

-Of course, it takes energy to maintain muscle mass, which is why human bodies lose it if we’re not using it. Clones need significantly more calories than standard humans. However, their digestive systems are enhanced to extract calories and nutrients from food much more efficiently, so food goes much farther. Potential weird side effect: maybe clones only have to poop like, once a week?

-You could probably extend that into increased ability to tolerate long periods without food/on low rations, despite the increased need for calories. 

-wouldn’t it be NEAT if the kaminoans somehow designed self-repairing DNA. This would mean that others couldn’t take a DNA sample from a clone and modify it to create their own clones (basically, it protects their product. It’s like DRM for clones). This ALSO means that clones couldn’t get cancer, and that they’d be immune to radiation poisoning. So a clone could just walk up to a sphere of uranium at critical mass and pick it up. Maybe with oven mitts on if it’s hot. (this would also make it harder for a rapid-aging cure to be developed, but uhhhh fanfic writers find a way)

- “bred for obedience” I think most of this would have to be accomplished through tightly-controlled messaging and cultural norms as the clones grow up- basically, enshrining obedience as a desirable and almost sacred trait, to be prized higher than anything else, including the lives of your brothers. In the same way that we hear stories of people sacrificing their lives to protect their loved ones, the clones would grow up hearing stories of soldiers sacrificing their brothers’ lives to obey an order from a superior. 

-SOME of the “obedience” thing could be engineered, though. Humans are already super social, but it would probably make sense for the clones to have an even greater need for social bonds. This would make for greater teamwork and coordination, and better unit cohesion, since the clones would be more inclined to prioritize friendship/agreeing with someone over winning an argument. It would also make it so they’d bond with their natural-born generals more easily, so they would obey them not just because they’re supposed to, but because they’d be much quicker to see them as a friend, and someone who’s trust they want to earn, someone they want to incorporate into their group and make happy.

-consequently, clones who find themselves alone do NOT do well. Isolation has a much more profoundly negative impact on clones than on regular humans.

-Originally, clones designed to operate alone or in small teams would not have the social enhancement- ARC troopers, spec-ops teams, etc. There wouldn’t be much of a noticeable difference in everyday interactions, but they’d also be vaguely weirded out by what they interpret as aggressive friendliness from their brothers, and their brothers would think they’re a bit shy and standoffish. 

-actually this social modification would make it MUCH harder for clones to kill people. REGULAR HUMANS are already super bad at killing people- i remember reading this article about how as soon as soldiers have to point their weapons at actual people, their aim gets mysteriously much shittier. Even when compared to situations that are exactly the same, except they’re not shooting at other humans. So reconcile this how you will, idk.

-I imagine a lot of these enhancements would be accomplished not through DNA, but through microorganisms. Retroviruses could explain the DNA resistant to modification, and the increased healing speed, and possibly some disease resistance (do i know anything about retroviruses other than a vague concept of what they are? no i do not. will that stop me? also no.) Their metabolism can be partially explained through specially engineered gut microbes.

-not sure how they’d go about making clones “resistant to any stress”, because you can’t exactly turn off the trauma response in the brain without breaking a bunch of other things. They could probably do a bit of fiddling to make clones more resistant to chemical imbalances, and therefore more depression-resistant. I think most of the “stress-resistance” would have to come through training. Either they train the clones to basically suppress everything, which might work alright in the short term. OR they actually have systems in place that help prevent the development of things like PTSD and help treat trauma. Meaning the clones are literally trained in self-care, positive self-talk, talking about their pain with their brothers, and having community rituals around things like death and grief. I don’t think that’s super likely because one thing that’s integral to those concepts is the concept of “i am a person and i have worth, and if i feel angry about something bad happening, that is ok and valid” and considering that a whole lot of bad things happen to the clones all the time and their childhood is a whole boatload of bad all happening at once, i don’t think the kaminoans would want the clones realizing “hey wait a minute i’m a person and i don’t deserve to be treated this way and it’s ok for me to be mad at you”. 

- the clones were supposedly engineered to be “less aggressive” but i think there was literally nothing more to that than a cover story for the control chip. The clones wouldn’t be raised with a lot of the aggressive western concept of masculinity, where anger is the default reaction to like, everything, and your personal pride is extremely important and also fragile (no offense lmao). So you wouldn’t have clones posturing and getting angry over perceived slights and fighting each other all the time, like everyone in-universe apparently expects to be the case. Anyway, why would you want your soldiers to be less aggressive? they’re literally supposed to fight and kill the enemy. You want them fully capable of getting angry, anger is the human response to fear and danger that lets us DO something about it. 

-obviously the biggest component in how they behave would be how they are raised, but that’s an entirely different post

-Specializations! I imagine that initially, the Kaminoans had different clones with different traits engineered specifically to fill certain roles. However, as the war went on, they struggled to keep up with demand and had to start shoving clones into whatever roles were needed (hence Fives and Echo becoming ARCs, despite not being engineered as ARC troopers). 

-Command clones would have better abilities in the executive function parts of the brain that deal with extrapolation, planning ahead, spatial reasoning, etc. They’d also have increased visual pattern recognition (like a pigeon)

-search-and-rescue troops would also have the pigeon pattern recognition abilities. The coast guard literally strapped pigeons to helicopters who would tap a button when they saw orange in the water, because they were better at spotting it than humans. Pigeons can detect cancer in microscope images of cells, because they’re that good at pattern recognition

-Pilots would have hella reflexes, excellent spatial awareness and spatial reasoning skills, much greater ability to process visual information, stronger hearts and blood vessels (to resist greater Gs of force), and they’d also be much shorter, to better fit into a cockpit. Which reminds me of Axe, that poor bastard from Ahsoka’s squadron over Ryloth who was almost eight feet tall. rip poor Axe, how did you even become a pilot, you long bastard.

-medics who can smell certain diseases. If you want to get a little bit out there, make the medics able to purr so they can sooth stressed-out patients. 

-infantry would have even greater endurance than everyone else, as well as greater tolerance for, and ability to, remain constantly on alert.

-ability to fall asleep at will? that would be super dope.

-maybe more efficient sleep, so to an adult clone, 4 hours of sleep is genuinely sufficient.

-concept: clones can sort of turn down their bodily functions- slow their digestion, heart, lungs, the whole nine yards- to last longer in adverse conditions. Sort of a half-hibernation (or quarter hibernation- they’d still be able to talk and think, but they’d feel very lethargic). They wouldn’t be able to function very well, but it would be great for things like enduring intense cold, periods without food, low-oxygen environments, and it would be especially useful if you were wounded and waiting for help, since you could slow your circulation, meaning it would take you a lot longer to bleed out. This state could be triggered by a combination of physical actions such as sitting or lying still, breathing slowly and deeply, and focusing on slowing the heart down (humans can actually slow down their hearts consciously if you practice at it, this is basically that, but turned up to like 1100).

-one thing that never made sense to me was the whole “we’re running out of jango fett’s DNA, all the new clones won’t be as good, and we have to stop ventress from stealing the original DNA” because like, can’t they just, get the EXACT SAME DNA from the clones?? you know, the exact genetic copies? With all the enhancements already done? But now my idea is that the kaminoans have engineered the clones so their DNA straight up can’t be copied. The clone’s own body can obviously replicate it, but if you take a sample and try to extract the DNA, it just self-destructs or something. This is to protect their intellectual property, but also means that they literally have to use a couple of Jango Fett’s actual human cells for every single clone they make (and the fact that they then have to do all the above enhancements to every single embryo helps explain why there’s so many small mutations, such as hair color and height). So they kinda shot themselves in the foot with that one. 

-of course since things like ADHD and autism have a strong genetic component, the kaminoans could theoretically engineer those out of the clones, but actually FUCK THAT so for whatever reason, that’s just not something they are able to do, and neurodivergent clones are absolutely a thing

Alright let’s talk GVK spoilers!!!

My reactions as best I can remember them!

- love how Kong is humanized from the very first scene, like every time he shows up he’s humanized so much more than other titans are. If that was at the expense of other titans being made likable I wouldn’t enjoy it so much, but like, Godzilla is made pretty lovable over the course of Monsterverse, Mothra is too, and all the titans featured for long are given recognizable emotions that let us see them as more intelligent and feeling than “just” animals; so all of them are made understandable/likable/sympathetic. But of them all, Kong is the only one really humanized. Which makes sense, because like, big monkey! Basically our distant cousin!

- And they kept playing, like, normal songs for him, which cracked me up.

- I really appreciated how you could SEE the titans in this movie. After all the weather effects to hide the titans in KOTM, there was such a clear difference in this one from the very start. Kong in the daylight! Godzilla makes his first attack at night, and even then you can see him much more clearly than you can for most of KOTM! Nice!

- after the Iwi were portrayed as silent stoic witnesses in Skull Island, I really appreciated that they took an Iwi character, made her a main character, and gave her dialogue and a real role to play in the story while also keeping her deaf/mute. I think that was a good way to improve on the way that the Iwi got got sidelined in the last movie while still maintaining the worldbuilding!

- I didn’t appreciate so much that, y’know, they murdered the rest of her people off-screen in order to do it. Couldn’t they have gone “her parents died so she got adopted by a Monarch agent that was close to her family, but like, the rest of her tribe is fine”? Or at the very least “their island got fucked up so they had to be evacuated but like they’re settling in somewhere else”? “They’re living under this island dome with Kong and they know what’s up and Monarch’s keeping them in the loop and they decided they’re chill with their new dome home, but this one girl likes to go on adventures with Monarch”? Something? Did we have to kill them all off? Y’all make up an entire fictional indigenous culture and then murder them off-screen when you don’t need them? Just let them live.

- a few minutes in I was like “hold on, we’ve got two characters that speak sign language, we’ve got a giant gorilla, gorillas learn sign language, is there any reason they can’t teach Kong?” and then later I was like “OOOOOH!!” Humans and titans learning how to communicate with each other has been one of my favorite themes to explore in Monsterverse fanfic so I was absolutely tickled to see it getting explored in canon, too.

- That said I think it’s hilarious that the girl managed to teach Kong to sign without, like... anybody seeing. Kong’s hands are above the tree line and there are cameras everywhere, how did NOBODY with Monarch see him signing.

- Bernie’s weaponized being an annoying coworker to such a degree it can only be called an art, and I really appreciated it.

- Godzilla’s extra chonky in this movie and I dig it. Roomie noted he was extra crocodilian and I dig that too.

- “There’s been no confirmed titan sightings in three years” I don’t buy that for a minute. They’re BIG. Rodan NESTS IN VOLCANOES. They found a MOTHRA EGG. Humans have A SCARILY WELL-FUNDED ORGANIZATION DEDICATED SOLELY TO FOLLOWING TITANS AROUND. Like, most of the lore in GVK that I don’t personally like, I can be like “eh... I can tweak it just a little bit with headcanons to make it work for me...” but NO confirmed titan sightings? You expect me to believe ALL of them moved underground when we’d previously seen them all prefer to live above ground? You expect me to believe that now that they’re all AWAKE, they learned how to HIDE?? Uh-uh. And at the end of KOTM there was stuff in the credits about using titan droppings as biofuel, obviously they’re still walking around up top! Can’t take that from me. Nope.

- Who the FUCK is Ren Serizawa and how is he related to Ishiro Serizawa? IS he related? Maybe they just dropped the surname as another “yeah this is a Godzilla movie for Godzilla fans” easter egg but I have a hard time believing that he can’t be somehow related to the other character with the Very Important Last Name who was so important in the last two Godzilla movies. If he is related I’m sure it’s been explained in a tie-in comic or the novelization or something, I’ll look it up later.

- I had to look up how much weight huge battleships can carry while writing a KOTM fic where Ghidorah hitches a ride on one, and y’all, I had to pull weird gravity-negating magic to get him to ride on that boat. Godzilla and Kong woulda sunk that boat like a rock. All I could think during that scene is “this wouldn’t work and I know that because I DID THE RESEARCH and I wasn’t even getting PAID.” I’ll choose to believe that Monarch gets special heavy duty ships designed to carry titans but nobody mentioned it because it wasn’t relevant to Kong’s journey.

- The bit where they could see where Godzilla was swimming because he’d got half a ship hooked to him that was bobbing around on the surface, didn’t Jaws do something like that with a buoy? It’s been ages since I’ve seen Jaws. Anyway good reference.

- Insert “they’re gonna need a bigger boat” joke

- I LOVED the part where they shut down all the ships to get Godzilla to leave. Both because, one, it’s a spectacular callback to KOTM’s “turn off all the guns so he knows we’re not a threat” that makes it seem like now that’s just what Monarch knows what to do to get G to chill out, and two... we know that Godzilla backs off either when he’s killed his enemy or when his enemy has yielded to him. At the end of KOTM—and the end of GVK—the act of yielding is presented as very ceremonial and uniform across species: everyone lowers anything they’ve got that could be dangerous (claws, fangs, beaks, axes) and bows to show Godzilla they’re not gonna fight. Battleships, obviously, can’t bow, but even without being inducted into whatever secret titan cultural intricacies might be going on, humans have figured out their own way to “bow” to Godzilla: cut all the power, so their ships can’t move and can’t use weapons. I know the movie presented it as “playing dead,” but c’mon, if Godzilla could hear MechaG power up from halfway around the planet then he could hear that Kong’s heart was still beating, and he’s been around enough boats to know humans can turn them off and on when they want. The humans bowed to Godzilla. He accepted that they yielded and left.

- Mark Russell looked like such a dad in this movie, like he’s retired 100% from being a rugged action hero and now he’s just Pure Dad. I like him better when he’s a dad, it’s a good development for him. He got like 3 lines and I’m like “I appreciate this character development.”

- Despite all my qualms about how conspiracy theories and extremist groups are handled in Monsterverse (and WHICH conspiracy theories they decide to reference), I really love Madison and Bernie’s dynamic. The adult man who’s the excitable wide-eyed believer in every BS conspiracy you can possibly imagine; and then the serious, severe Teenage Girl On A Mission who’s hypercompetent because she was raised for five years by a friggin doomsday cult militia; and despite having wildly different personalities they’re just, in total agreement about everything. Handled just a BIT differently (like, leaving out the more gross IRL conspiracies) they would be a wildly fun comedic duo—especially with Josh the Only Sane Man coming along as the hapless sidekick. And they all play off of each other so well! Both in a comedic sense, and in more serious moments—when Bernie talked about his wife, there was a real moment of empathy between him and Madison with very little said. I’d watch an entire movie just about the three of them. I’d watch a TV show.

- On the one hand I wasn’t too much of a fan of KOTM’s “all titans... are inherently In Tune With Nature... nature has a Balance, because that’s a Real Thing and not an anthropocentric concept to describe how we like nature to act, and they automatically restore it... because they’re like, some kinda borderline divinities or something... we should probably be worshipping them...” thing; but, now that it was totally absent in GVK, I sorta miss it. Like I feel like there needs to be a balance, a few humans who are like “i lowkey worship these dudes?” and a few others who are like “they’re cool but like, that’s a lil extreme” and that neither side be presented as Right in how they regard titans’ relationship with nature.

- “All titans come from THE HOLLOW EARTH” nah I don’t buy that it’s silly. Basically, what I object to is the idea that all titans have some sort of intrinsic similarity (they all come from the same hitherto-unknown location; they all are part of the same pack that has the same alpha; they all are fueled/fed by the same energy source; etc) rather than letting them be SEPARATE species whose only unifying traits are “they’re all big enough to fuck everything up everywhere they go” and “they’re big enough that the typically-insurmountable barriers between different biomes (mountain ranges, valleys, long distances with terrible weather) aren’t insurmountable for them, so even if they’re specialized in different environments they still all have to deal with each other pretty often.” I’ll make some exceptions for convergent evolution (i.e., claiming multiple titans developed similar traits that are relatively easy to spontaneously evolve and a prerequisite for a creature to survive at such a large size). But I can’t buy “this big gorilla has more biologically in common with this big crocodile-iguana than he does with, say, gorillas,” or most of the other “all these titans have THIS IN COMMON” claims that Monsterverse makes, including “everyone’s from hollow earth.” So I’m tossing that out the window and substituting my own headcanons. Some might’ve evolved there but some evolved on the surface. Maybe a majority of them like ducking in and out of the hollow earth like some kind of titan shortcut system. Kong’s species, I can buy, IS native to hollow earth, considering that they built a whole-ass society down there with tools and architecture.

- I’m SO curious about the little underground Kong home, the Godzilla motif in the floor, and the axe that appeared to be made with a Godzilla scute. What’s the story there??? We know Godzilla’s species and Kong’s species are ancient rivals. Is it because Kong’s species hunted Godzilla’s to steal their scutes to make weapons, seeing them as a valuable resource the way, like, early humans considered woolly mammoths a valuable resource—thus making that Godzilla on the floor equivalent to cave art of mammoths made by people who hunted them—until the Godzillas got pissed and started fighting back en masse? Or were Godzillas and Kongs already enemies when Kongs decided to start making weapons out of their corpses? Did they use to be allies, fighting together, with Godzillas voluntarily offering shed scutes and/or bones of their deceased members to Kongs, and that place used to be a shared home until they started fighting?

- What about that power source, is it something that was already there that both Kongs and Godzillas started to deliberately harvest for technology/atomic breath? Or did Godzillas automatically channel that stuff and Kongs exploited/borrowed/traded with Godzillas to utilize it too? Or is the power from Godzillas who collaboratively poured a bunch of power into the place thus that Kongs were able to use it too? I doubt Godzilla’s species CREATED all that weird energy but the question remains of whether, like, they channel it FROM underground, or naturally produce the same thing in their own bodies, or what.

- Godzilla using his atomic breath to dig a hole STRAIGHT TO KONG just to KICK HIS ASS is hilarious. How lucky that Hong Kong just HAPPENS to be straight over Kong’s house! Were all the tunnels to the hollow earth made by pissed off Godzillas who wanted to kick monkey ass??

- I loved the aesthetic of the battle scene in Hong Kong, with the brightly colored neon building outlines, VERY cool look. The choreography of the battle scene was great too, especially

- we literally broke into applause when Kong shoved the axe handle in Godzilla’s mouth. Love it, perfect callback, that was the ONE thing from the original King Kong Vs Godzilla I was hoping to see referenced and there it was.

- You could really see a difference in how Kong and Godzilla fought—Kong doing a better job at using tools and the environment, Godzilla fighting more like a reptile. They seemed to emphasize Godzilla’s more animalistic behaviors in this movie to accomplish that contrast—he was down on all fours and moving like a crocodile more often, he was clawing at Kong’s chest—but even though it seemed a bit different of a combat technique it also didn’t seem out of place compared to how he fought in prior movies. And we’ve already seen that if Godzilla’s involved in a fight and one of the combatants knows how to use the environment, it’s typically not gonna be Godzilla. (See: Ghidorah using the reflection in a building’s windows to see what’s behind him, and recognizing a nearby power source and biting it to juice himself up.)

- So many of Godzilla’s enemies seem to have specialized in negating his atomic breath in order to combat him! The MUTOs directly suppress his ability to use it—and it makes sense that that’s an inborn ability they have, since they evolved to use Godzilla’s species as prey. Kong has a weapon that both acts as a shield to absorb the breath and turn it back against Godzilla’s species—they didn’t evolve to counter Godzilla, but they developed tools once a rivalry happened. Ghidorah’s the exception—which makes sense, since he came from space—but even at that we see him using tactics specifically to take into account Godzilla’s most powerful weapon (such as keeping one head on lookout for when he starts glowing so that they know when they need to dodge).

- LOVED the reveal that MechaG was based off of Ghidorah’s brain, it has vibes of both the Kiryu Saga and the way that Heisei MechaG is based off of Mecha-King Ghidorah. Not the most surprising plot twist, since we’d theorized that they might use San to make MechaG, but I wasn’t 100% sure they were gonna go with it until they finally did. Even when I was going “huh, the mecha pilot’s chamber looks weirdly organic” I didn’t make the connection to WHY until the reveal, lol.

- “Ghidorah’s necks are so long that the heads have to communicate with each other telepathically” that’s COMPLETELY WILD but I love it, it follows very well from their prior portrayal as telepathic empaths in Heisei, it lines up with their emphasis on electricity (because BRAINWAVES AND ELECTRICITY, hey ho movie monster pseudo science!), and it very much compliments my own private headcanon that they’ve got some psychic/mind control abilities.

- The movie ended with both “Godzilla won, technically” but also “since they teamed up as equals, the ending doesn’t FEEL like ‘Godzilla wins, Kong loses’ but rather ‘they both won against a common foe’” and since I’m on both Team Godzilla and Team They Should Be Friends, I’m happy with this outcome. Plus since the last time they fought, the Japanese movie company graciously let the American monster win, so it’s only polite that the American movie company graciously let the Japanese monster win.

- There were just a few too many humans in this movie. I was intrigued by Ren but we didn’t get much out of him, but like I guess somebody had to be in the pilot’s seat other than the Apex CEO. Didn’t care for the author of the hollow earth book, I feel like his role was superfluous. Didn’t need the Apex CEO’s daughter there at all, coulda done without her. How about this, combine all three roles. Instead of having a whole-ass author who knows about the hollow earth, just casually reference that Rick from KOTM wrote a book about it since he was the expert, and (since he wasn’t in this movie) say that he tragically died going to explore the hollow earth himself, and that way we’ve got the book with the “titans are from there” theory AND an excuse to share the “humans die when they go underground” info. Now, have Ren be working for Apex as a pilot for Mechagodzilla, but have him be MechaG’s pilot because he’s also a good pilot in general, and can fly those HEAV things. Have Apex send him to Monarch to be like “hey, you guys trust me right, since I’m Ishiro Serizawa’s relative? We at Apex have heard all about your failed hollow earth expedition, and due to Ishiro I’ve got some past ties to Monarch so I’ve got high clearance with y’all, so I could bring over this useful Apex tech that’d let you go underground and use what I know about hollow earth from my past time at Monarch to help guide things.” Once they’ve got the little chunk of energy stuff and go topside, he hustles it straight to Apex and straps into his seat to run MechaG. Bam, you’ve combined “person who knows enough about hollow earth to help the expedition,” “person who represents Apex’s interests and gets the energy,” and “person who pilots MechaG” into one character, in a way that takes three flat/underdeveloped characters and turns them into a single interesting character with a lot going on and some intriguing ties to the rest of the cast.

I think that’s everything?? Hoo.

Hey everyone,

This will be my final post addressing the fandom conflict that has quite frankly gotten out of hand. Although it’s very likely this post will be picked apart, no matter how well intended it is, I will no longer be addressing, interacting, or responding to any further accusations made against me. Of course, if people have questions from a genuine place of interest, I will be happy to clarify anything for you, either via DM’s or non-anon asks. I will not be answering anonymous asks on this, as I do not want anything else posted on this topic. 

As a side note: For anyone tempted to wade into the debate, I sincerely ask you not to get involved. Do not make yourself a target, do not feel you need to ‘pick a side’, and please do not think you have an obligation to reason with either side. It seems to be well past the point of that, so please find people you get along with in this fandom and curate a space for yourself away from all this conflict.

Warning: This post will contain uncensored slurs, mentions of racism, paedophilia, transphobia, LGBTQ+ phobia, death threats, threats of violence, targeted harassment, and abusive language.

To start off, I want to apologise to everyone who has somehow gotten drawn into this mess by either defending me, following me, or interacting with my content. This whole situation with me began well over a year ago when I wrote a crack-smut fic featuring Javier/Micah, posted back in August 2019. A crack fic is defined as “a work of fan fiction that is absurd, surprising or ridiculous, often intentionally.” It was inspired by a camp interaction between Micah and Javier, and like many other fanfiction writers, I decided to write smut about it. The fic was titled ‘Dirty Fucking Greaser’, and if that shocks you, I’m sure you can imagine how shocked I was to be informed afterwards that ‘Greaser’ was in fact a very serious 19th century slur for a Mexican individual. My first encounter with this word as insult was via RDR2, where it was used like a very casual insult. My only prior knowledge of this term was in regards to the greasers youth subculture, so the severity was lost on me. This obviously does not excuse my ignorance, and I should have researched the term better, but this is just again to apologize for that oversight, the insensitivity, and to highlight that my use of this term was not meant maliciously. Following this being pointed out, I proceeded to make 3 separate apology posts [Unfortunately I can only find the third one: HERE], renamed the fic, and added slur warnings in both the tags and the fic description. When I continued to receive complaints and increasingly aggressive abuse (which included being told my apologies weren’t good enough and I should delete my account and even kill myself), I attempted to delete the fic and mistakenly abandoned it instead. I contacted AO3 to see if it could be removed, but they said there was nothing they could do. I contacted their DMCA takedown team, who also said they couldn't remove it. Please note that all this happened 7-8 months ago, and has been dragged on for almost a year. 

So, from this one unfortunate incident, I’ve been branded a racist, and someone who attacks POC, when all I have done is tried to defend myself and correct my past mistakes. I could have done this more gracefully in the past, but frankly when you’re suddenly the target of unrelenting callout posts and nasty anons, it’s very hard to be open to criticism of this sort, but this is what I’m trying to move past.

Over the course of the year, this one mistake has spiralled, and the crusade against me has somehow coincided with moral conflicts over certain characters and ships. This has devolved into dehumanizing abuse, witch hunts, death threats, doxxing, anon hate, and much more unpleasant behaviour.

I have been in fandom for a very long time, and at the heart of all fandom circles is the fear of censorship and subsequent purges, so the ‘ship and let ship’ mentality was more or less the pinnacle of fandom philosophy. And yes, this can be problematic in some contexts. People have their right to be uncomfortable with content, have a right to be offended by content, but that is not content meant for you. This argument has devolved into ‘what material is morally right to engage with’ and that is a mentality in which fandom will not survive, because for every person who is telling me I’m an awful person for writing about Micah, there are three other people telling me how much they appreciate me making that content. For every fic in which I characterize Javier and Flaco a certain way, some people are made uncomfortable by it and others tell me they enjoy it. And this isn’t just white people, but POC too, which makes it very difficult to know whether I am genuinely in the right or the wrong, especially when it comes to the concept of ‘fetishization’ which I have been made aware I need to educate myself on. I intend to do so, but I disagree with the common accusation that finding non-white men romantically and sexually attractive is inherently fetishistic and makes me racist. It’s pushing a catch-22; don’t find POC sexually attractive? Racist. Find POC sexually attractive? Racist.

I am always willing to be (politely) approached about anything my readers may be concerned about, but if it’s something I’ve specifically tagged for (such as themes, scenarios, etc.) I’m afraid you consented to reading it and with that I cannot help you. You are just as responsible for curating your space and what you see/read just as much as I am responsible for tagging it appropriately.  

On the topic of racism, I want to bring up my prior use of ‘white racism’ which has obviously been a point of contention among both white and people of colour. The (literal) black vs white concept of racism is incredibly American-centric, and as someone from Europe, which has a history of oppression against white cultures and those of people of colour, it feels inaccurate. However, this has recently been discussed with me and I came to the realization that while growing up, especially in the UK, ‘xenophobia’ and ‘racism’ were marketed as one and the same. So, with this little revelation in mind, I will no longer be using ‘white racism’ (Or ‘reverse racism’) to identify the abuse I have been receiving, but will instead call it by what it really is; dehumanizing, debasing, xenophobic, puritanical.   

Very briefly, I will also touch on the NewAustin situation, which has also been dredged into this. I did not ‘chase a POC from tumblr’. NA was a minor who for some reason was on my 18+ blog and took issue with me, likely from the ongoing discourse regarding my fic and initial mistake, as well as my interest in Micah. They were subsequently harassed into deleting their account by anonymous hate following various conflicts with other users for their support of me or their ships in general. I have never encouraged my followers to target anyone, and have always asked to be blocked and blacklisted by those who do not like me or my content. When NewAustin messaged me following the deletion of their blog, I was admittedly indifferent to the point of being unkind, and accused them of sending the hate themselves. This was based on the anon hate being racially-driven without there being any prior knowledge or publication that NA was a person of colour. This aside, I should have at the time, whether I believed it was my followers or not, condemned this behaviour. Regardless of the issues I’ve had with these people, it is never ever ok to send hate to anyone, no matter the motivation behind it, and that should have been stated at the time.

All I can do at this point is acknowledged and apologize for my past mistakes, and try to improve myself going forward.  

It is not my place to dictate the morals of the character/ship-aspect of this argument, and I am not interested in waging a war of opinion. This post is simply to clarify how I am involved in this, and why I am so viscerally targeted. You can draw your own conclusions, but I am no longer interested in this endless back and forth.

To my mutuals/followers, I stand by my request to not interact and to block and move on, as this is what I’ll be doing too.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope it makes things from my perspective a little clearer.

-RAT <3

EDIT: Just after this post was made, the fic in question was finally removed. I had to go through a DMCA take down, which can take months, since I originally abandoned the fic, thinking that meant delete. I explain this in more detail above. Said fic is gone, and has been gone since this post has been around.

Onwards to the episode in which we get to see Flint and Silver each having a very bad day (as well as two literal dicks that nobody had asked to see).

Black Sails VII (s1 ep07)

- We open on Pastor Lambrick's sweaty face as he intensely rehearses the Easter sermon and he’s obviously eaten up by what he did with Miranda. His sermon, unsurprisingly, focuses on sin, keeping sin hidden, and the hell that awaits the sinner. Which leads us nicely onto Flint, who’s distracted (by his own sin? by thoughts of Miranda? both?) during a meeting with Eleanor. Eleanor is pissed that Miranda let Richard Guthrie send a message to the Andromache and then waltz into town to close up his business; Flint tries to take the heat off Miranda, once again protecting her (at this point, he may not know the contents of the letter).

- During this meeting, Flint is startled when Silver first speaks up to say that the mob in the street was bad - clearly Silver is a sort of intruder in this meeting. But Eleanor, after Silver reminds her by unsubtly clearing his throat, tells Flint that he’s not to harm Silver because he was instrumental in setting up the Consortium. Silver looks so pleased with himself in these scenes, and Flint quite defeated when he tells Silver to follow him back to their camp. I love it.

- To parallel Flint/Miranda’s Sulky Sex scene from ep4, we have Anne/Rackham’s frustrating/disconnected sex scene. It shows us a few things about them mainly that Anne wants to keep a lot of control over what happens, hence Rackham being tied up (though of course this might also be his kink), her wearing a shirt that covers up most of her body, and the reverse cowgirl position that means that she’s both in control of what happens and completely avoids eye contact. The position reminds us of the Flint/Miranda scene, where Miranda was also on top, but their scene involved more eye contact (yes glaring counts, he’s still intensely focused on Miranda), gentle touching (on Miranda’s side) and her being naked and open to him. Another parallel is that both Flint and Rackham aren’t in the right frame of mind for sex, Flint being angry and Rackham lost in a sea of worries (and probably also somewhat angry/disappointed at Anne for forcing him into the plot to kill their crewmates). The difference between Flint and Rackham is that while Flint doesn’t seem to have any trouble performing, Rackham is miles away and doesn’t even notice that he’s lost his erection - again. Anne is frustrated by this, and apparently knows him well enough that she offers to put something up his arse, but he’s clearly not in the mood, and she leaves in a huff, abandoning him all tied up as a sort of revenge for his performance problems. Whatever the problem is between them isn’t put into words (because Anne can’t yet, for starters), unlike the one between Flint and Miranda. The intimacy between Rackham and Anne, so often described as close partners, seems much more distant to me than the one shown between Flint and Miranda. I’m not sure whether it’s because of anyone’s sexual orientation, or just the fact that they’re fucking but they’ve never discussed the big important things, such as Anne’s identity/feelings/etc.

- In this episode, Dufresne gains a lot of power: with a freshly (and badly) shaved head and a new tattoo, he’s been promoted to Quartermaster on the Walrus in Billy’s place. And very quickly he has a problem to deal with: Randall revealing that Silver stole the page. Gates had actually already told this to Dufresne, as is revealed at the end of the episode, which might explain why Dufresne is relatively calm during the whole conversation, while DeGroot wants Silver and Flint hanged and Howell is surprisingly ruthless: he brings up the idea that it may be better to kill off Randall in order to get to the treasure, if they can’t make sure he’ll keep quiet about Silver being the thief. Dufresne is actually quite kind towards Silver in the scene where he puts Silver’s memory to the test - a test that could result in his death if he fails it and that Silver constantly grumbles against (I love his grumbling!). Basically, at this point Dufresne remains quite a sympathetic character, which will change a lot as the show goes on, especially after Jannes Eiselen had to leave the show (such a sad story, RIP Jannes).

- In the meantime, the Flint and Gates relationship is crumbling. It's sad to see, especially since they're shown sharing chuckles as they talk about Dufresne's appointment in the beginning of the episode. But then Gates brings up the subject of Miranda and demands explanations about the letter Billy found. We're not shown exactly what Flint answers, but it's clear that he's actually trying his best to give him an explanation without incriminating Miranda too badly. The sad thing is that Flint is actually telling the truth: he actually wasn't involved in any betrayal of his crew and and can only guess at Miranda's motivations. But the fact that he's lied time and again in previous situations, including on the Maria Aleyne where he claimed Lord Alfred drew a weapon on him (and Gates secretly verified that this was a lie), and used men as pawns to advance his and Miranda's plans, is now catching up to him. Flint seems truly hurt when Gates accuses him of using the men for his own purposes, and turns spiteful, telling Gates that he should have been "a better father" to Billy and helped him "understand the world he was living in" (suggesting that such a forthright character as Billy can't really survive in a world of pirates who are all ready to stab each other in the back). After that slap in the face, Gates says he's exhausted from Flint and threatens to take it to the crew. Somehow, this pushes Flint to bare all: he tells Gates about his plan to keep a part of the treasure and use it to build up Nassau, depicting himself as a sort of saviour, doing it for the men's good: they'd rather be rich men in a safe place than dead thieves hanging from a noose. Gates sees this as delusions of grandeur, and tells him that while he'll see the Urca plot through, after that they're done. I actually think he sees Flint’s point, since he doesn’t just throw him to the crew, but won’t admit that out loud. The whole of this scene hurts bad, because you can tell that Flint is desperate and sad to be losing his closest ally and friend, and that Gates is hurting from the loss of Billy and exhausted from the toxic relationship he has with Flint, where he's played enabler to his manipulations for years.

- While Flint and Gates’ alliance is breaking, Silver has to forge one with Randall or die. Randall finds out in the beginning of the episode that he’s been voted out of the crew. This is apparently due to DeGroot’s fears that Randall could be a fire hazard, which the crew took disproportionately to heart. Randall is furious with Silver, who smugly tells him that in these situations, a setback often comes with a new or unexpected opportunity. He’s right, but at this point he doesn’t know that he is the opportunity Randall’s going to latch on. Randall reveals that Silver is a thief, and Silver denies it, saying that Randall is both a halfwit and was in a haze of opium when he heard what he thought he heard; he even tries to convince Randall that he was mistaken (this, my friends, is gaslighting). However, by revealing that Silver was the thief, Randall sets a chain of events into motion which could either end with his death (if Howell has his way, since Randall is an inconvenient witness) or Silver’s (if DeGroot tips the balance, not trusting Silver to remember the coordinates and not wanting to sacrifice Randall for nothing). Silver figures out that these are the outcomes, and tries to talk sense into Randall by making a deal with him: he’ll care for Randall and make sure he can stay on the ship. But it’s only when Silver finally admits that he is the thief and that Randall was right, that Randall accepts the deal. Later, Silver realises that Randall might have orchestrated the whole thing: he’s now got Silver to serve him, doesn’t have to take any risks on the ship, and gets to remain with the crew. Silver wonders if Randall is a genius rather than a halfwit (a word thrown about a lot to describe him). And it seems quite obvious, considering what happened, that Randall still has strong survival skills (an amputee with impaired cognitive skills doesn’t stand a chance of survival outside a crew and he must be aware of it), that he still has a good memory and an ability to pick out useful information and that he’s aware enough of what’s going on to be upset by the crew’s rejection and Silver’s attempt to gaslight him. I think it’s important to recognise that Randall is more than a comic relief or a grotesque character: he’s a disabled man who's lost parts of his cognitive ability and is struggling to survive.

- This episode focuses on Vane facing his past. He seeks out the island where he grew up and its master, Albinus. I’d forgotten or never really registered that Albinus was a pirate and that the men who work for him were mostly his crew - and likely slaves (or children, hence Vane?) that he managed to capture/press into service. He’s retired from pirating and set up a system where his men cut down trees for timber all day, without wages. It’s not clear exactly how he holds so much power over these men, although it seems that everyone is terrified of him. He’s extremely strong physically, seems shrewd, speaks rather well, and his tattoos suggest that maybe he’s involved in some kind of ritual (truly religious or just for show?) which would make him all the more scary to superstitious people. Vane is clearly still frightened: he barely makes eye contact and practically stutters when he first tries to make the deal with Albinus, which is that he’ll take some of Albinus’ men as crew and send Albinus part of their earnings as tribute. It says a lot about Albinus that Vane, after years of having run away, is still so scares that he’s willing to pay him a tribute. But he changes his mind as he stares at a boy bearing the same brand as he does: he tries to persuade the men that Nassau is a pace of pleasures rather than hard labour, and confronts Albinus. The fight is brutal and ends with Vane buried naked, just after Albinus tells him that he’s proud of him. But of course Vane wouldn’t be Vane if he didn’t rise from the dead at the last minute and kill Albinus, goaded on by his inner Eleanor voice.

- In the meantime, Mr Scott returns to Eleanor, apologising for what he did, telling her he betrayed her out of love. However he also reminds her of his slave status: technically, he belongs to her. The argument upsets her, and he quite cleverly uses this moment to ask her to free the slaves who were on the Andromache. And it works: by the end of the episode, she’s made arrangements for the men to work on ships and has bought the women’s freedom and found them jobs in her tavern. But Mr Scott has still decided to leave Eleanor to join Hornigold’s crew, to refrain from meddling with Eleanor’s affairs, since he disagrees with her so strongly re: the Urca. Hornigold approached him earlier in the episode, and the introduction to that scene is quite interesting: Hornigold says to Mr Scott “I’ll need to know your secret” and Mr Scott looks startled and frightened. It seems that he’s startled because he’d been giving food to the slaves, but in light of S3, it could be a much greater secret that’s being referred to. Mr Scott is relieved when he realises that Hornigold is simply talking about tolerating Eleanor, who he clearly can’t stand.

- Flint’s bad day continues, of course, with the big confrontation he has with Miranda. He’s furious about the letter (of which he now knows the contents thanks to Gates), telling her that it could have got him killed, or destroyed the plans they’d made and asking her whether she was trying to embarrass him. This sounds so weirdly petty, and yet it also sounds exactly like the kind of argument that would come up in a bickering couple. Miranda answers that she was trying to help him out of that life, because she wants to move on. This is where Miranda utters the famous “there is no life here, there is no joy here, there is no love here”. I noticed that, covered by Flint yelling at her, and distorted because her voice has gone very shrill, Miranda says another line, which sounds like “you used to love, then”. If that really is what she says, it’s extra-extra-extra heartbreaking to hear (if someone wants to check it for me, it’s around 35:40). It’s obvious that Flint and Miranda’s views on life are very different, and I can’t help but think back to the fact that, as a carpenter’s son from the country, Flint has had to struggle all his life to become who he is. So when he says that you can’t get a life without having a war, and Miranda tells him he’s wrong, she’s speaking entirely from the point of view of her privilege. She’s never needed to fight as hard as he has to be happy, because she got extremely lucky in marrying Thomas. And when she says that Thomas would agree with her, I’m certain she’s right. But life has never been like that for Flint, and there’s no way he’ll ever entirely agree with their point of view. Rewatching this scene is tough, btw, because they both have great points, they’re both hurting so much, and there’s so much to take in between the body language, the facial expressions, the tones of voice and the actual words that it’s a whole whirlwind. And it feels very, very real.

- It’s absolutely hilarious to see Rackham get robbed by the whores taking advantage of his lack of knowledge (and research). He should absolutely have done a better job and has no clue how to run a brothel. He’s lucky Max takes things in hand after having heard from Idelle that the girls were taking advantage.

- Then we have the beautiful Drunk Flint scene. Eleanor notices him feeling very sorry for himself after Gates has pretty much broken up with him and he’s still reeling from fighting with by Miranda. I think Flint feels very misunderstood here. He thought that he was doing something good, to save Nassau and avenge Thomas, and doesn’t understand why they can’t see it, why they only see the terrible methods he uses to reach his goals. So he’s full of doubt, clearly wondering if he’s the villain of the story, and puts the question to Eleanor: is their plan worth it? Eleanor is the only person who still believes in him, which leads us to the only scene that I would ever call straight-baiting. Flint hovers near Eleanor, breathing heavily, and a variety of emotions play over her face during this moment of tension, as she seems to think this is leading to a kiss. It does, he gives her a chaste little forehead kiss and leaves. All the elements are in place to make your average viewer start shipping these two. I actually find it hilarious that the ship barely exists in the fandom (though I wasn’t there in the beginning of the fandom and I guess the viewership changed a lot between S1 and S4).

- The scene with Flint and Gates glaring at each other from their respective ships and Parson’s Farewell playing in the background... epic! We know this is the beginning of a big struggle between them, especially since we find out that Gates has pretty much decided that he’ll hand Flint over to the crew once they get the money. But nnnnggh that scene! The ships leaving on their hunt! Awesome and heartbreaking!

Alright, chapter 133 of SnK!

I’ve got a few things I want to talk about here.

One of the things that always strikes me about Levi as a character, indeed, one of his defining character traits, is his coolness under pressure.  His calm demeanor, no matter the circumstances.  One of the interesting things to go into is WHY Levi is like this.  

We see it particularly exemplified in this chapter, I think, and there’s a few examples.  For one, they’ve all just lost Hange as their friend and Commander, and this loss particularly impacts and affects Levi, since he was closer with Hange than any of them.  But rather than allowing his grief to consume and paralyze him, Levi immediately begins trying to contribute when Armin says he wants to go over the plan, bringing up Hange’s theory about Zeke and how killing him might stop the Rumbling, etc...  Then Eren transports them to Paths, and everyone reacts with shock and awe, except Levi, who’s expression is duly unimpressed and unsurprised.  We see this from Levi throughout the series, of course.  Situations that present themselves, new and frightening circumstances which throw everyone for a loop and send people into panic, Levi reacts to with calm collectedness, a distinct LACK of surprise or fear.  He really does stand in sharp contrast with everyone else in this situation.  Everyone there is a seasoned war veteran, at this point, they’ve all been through and seen some truly horrific things.  But they still react with a kind of frantic uncertainty here.  They then begin to plead with Eren, Armin and the rest trying to convince him through any means possible, to stop the Rumbling.  They try to bargain with him, show him empathy, make promises, etc...  They make their desperation obvious by saying whatever they think will appeal to Eren.  Levi is the only one who, I think, is fully honest here.  He tells Eren that if he stops now, he’ll let him off with JUST an ass-kicking.  Levi doesn’t try to placate Eren, or show him sympathy, or empathy, he doesn’t try to be gentle or handle Eren with kid gloves.  He tells him flat out he’s going to beat his ass for what he’s done, but he’ll show him some leniency for stopping by not killing him outright.  The thing is, I think Levi’s known from the start of this whole disaster that talking to Eren wasn’t going to work.  Everyone else was holding out hope that if they could just speak with Eren, he would stop, that they could convince him through words.  But like I talked about in my last post, Levi is someone who’s just seen and experienced too much of life’s brutality and unfairness to blind himself to bleak reality.  When the 104th goes running off after Eren appears to them, to try and reach him, Levi just sits down in the sand and has that resigned expression once more, and his expression continues to show a total lack of surprise when Eren puts the 104th back where they started, before they could ever even get close. Levi isn’t surprised, or even dismayed, I don’t think, at Eren’s refusal to talk, because I think he always knew he wouldn’t be willing to.  That he wouldn’t be interested in hearing anyone’s pleas or promises.  I think Levi always knew Eren was hellbent on this course of action, and it was more or less hopeless, trying to appeal to him.  And once again, I have to restate, I think it’s because Levi’s just experienced too much hardship in his life to cling to false hopes.  He’s world-weary and in many ways a realist, someone not given to delusion or fancy.  

I feel like Levi probably glimpsed this uncompromising, hellish bent in Eren back in Liberio, his mercenary compulsion to follow through on whatever plan he had, which is why Levi was so disgusted by him on the airship back then.  He saw a lack of mercy in Eren, and it reminded him of the brutes Levi grew up with in the Underground.  Not just a willingness, but a desire to take from others to satisfy himself.  It’s why, when they’re all transported back to the plane, while everyone else looks horrified and in shock at Eren’s refusal to talk, Levi looks as unflustered as ever, and states with a matter of fact tone that negotiations are over, before asking Armin what it is they do now.  None of this is surprising to Levi.

Levi’s look of despair throughout this final arc continues to strike me as his resignation in the ugliness of humanity and the useless, pointless suffering they inflict on one another.  He’s depressed, and disappointed, because everything happening around them is only a confirmation of all the worst things Levi saw and experienced, growing up.

All this ties into another point I want to discuss, which is Levi’s relationship with Jean, actually.  I’ve found the relationship between the two of them really interesting since way back in the Uprising arc, when Jean was the most vocal in condemning Levi for his violence, declaring with certainty that he would never kill another person.  Jean is disabused of his moralistic superiority not long after that, when he learns first hand the consequences of sticking to ones morals uncompromisingly, nearly losing his life, and forcing Armin to take a life for him.  And it’s Jean who we see, again and again from that point on in the series, grappling with and coming to terms with this difficult lesson.  We see Jean’s respect for Levi, and his understanding towards Levi, grow greatly, after this incident, and Jean himself having to grow, to change and accept that sacrifices are inevitable if one wishes to protect the things and people they care about.  That sometimes even one’s own comfort and moral convictions are necessary sacrifices to achieve those things.  

Levi tells everyone that he’ll take care of Zeke, but admits that he’ll need all of their help to get the job done.  I feel like this is Levi, once again, asking if all of them are ready and willing to get their hands dirty, just like he did before they raided the Cavern underneath the Church on the Reiss property.  He knows he can’t do this job by himself (which is just further testament to Levi’s strength of character, an ability to admit to weakness), but he wants to make sure everyone else is alright with plunging in to a situation in which they’re going to be forced to kill.  Jean is the first to answer, telling Levi and all of them that he’s not going to let the sacrifices they’ve already made, the people they’ve killed in order to get where they are, be in vain, and that he’ll do whatever it takes to stop the Rumbling.  This shows incredible character growth on Jean’s part.  He went from someone who claimed that he would, under no circumstances, take another human life, to someone who declares that he’ll do whatever it takes in order to stop the Rumbling, to achieve a greater good.  And I think this growth on Jean’s part ties directly into his relationship with and the influence of Levi.  Levi never judged Jean for being uncomfortable with killing, never criticized or scolded him for it.  He even told Jean that he couldn’t say, one way or the other whether Jean’s beliefs were right or wrong.  That Levi himself didn’t know the answer to that.  He never tried to convince Jean of anything.  He just told him the truth.  That his failure to kill had put the lives of his comrades in danger, including his own, and that it also caused Armin to have to bear the burden of killing another, one which should have been Jean’s own to bear.  All of that is absolutely true.  And it was really through this lack of judgment on Levi’s part that, I think, Jean was able to grow and expand his own views on killing, and adjust and allow for there to be circumstances in his world view which would justify taking another life.  He wasn’t forced by anyone to change his views.  He changed them based on experience and through Levi explaining to him that there is no definitive right or wrong answer to be found, and through Levi’s simply being honest with him.  He was telling Jean that it comes down to what one is willing to sacrifice in order to protect the things and people they value.  And Jean learned about himself that he’s willing and able to sacrifice more than he ever realized.

But it’s still a struggle, and something all of them, even at this point in the story, continue to battle themselves over.  We see Connie struggling in particular this chapter, looking anguished over what he had to do back at the port.  It’s only Levi who accepts that brutal reality of kill or be killed with a calm understanding, and I think this is probably because, unlike the rest of them, who all had peaceful, probably relatively easy and happy childhoods, without any exposure to violence or real cruelty, Levi, I think it can be safely assumed, probably took his first life while he was still a boy.  And doubtless, that was due to desperate circumstances.  Levi’s life has been one filled with uncertainty.  Growing up in extreme poverty, he never could have known with any certainty where his next meal would come from, or when.  Never knew with any certainty whether he could find proper shelter for the night, or a safe place to sleep.  Never knew with any certainty whether he would be assaulted, or robbed, or if someone would attempt to take his life.  Levi’s life has been one of desperation and a true, unforgiving struggle to simply survive.  And so while all of his comrades have seen and experienced the horrors of war with him, none of them can know with the same level of understanding that true kind of desperation of simply trying to live day to day, that kind of awful and overwhelming uncertainty and fear of not knowing if you’ll be alive from one day to the next.  It’s those kinds of experiences in life that really separate Levi from the rest of his comrades, and in a lot of ways, isolate him from them.  It’s why the extremity of their circumstances and the desperation of their situation in this final arc continually shocks and overwhelms them, but Levi regards it all with his usual, if deeply saddened, calm.

Got the Aux hcs||Jujutsu Kaisen

A/N:  These hcs are prolly gonna vary from general artists/genres to general chaos towards the end :D also gonna do some for the kyoto school...eventually. Didn’t incl. Yuuta because he’s not here yet but tbh he prolly listens to MCR or smthng let’s be real. I apologize for Maki’s being so short, I know her fanbase is starving for content and I’m sorry I was unable to provide it this time.

Word Count: 1123

Plot Synopsis: Some dumb music taste headcanons for the tokyo school. ((I only included characters that have appeared in the anime like fully, onscreen w lines not just mentioned, and I also only did the main ppl from the Tokyo school so that’s why there’s no Yuta or Nanami.))

Itadori

First and foremost

The man is a barb (Nicki Minaj fans) and a hottie (Megan thee stallion fans)

No I don’t take criticism

Aside from that, Yuji listens to pop and some rap (mostly megan thee stallion)

His pop taste is also not limited by generation, he definitely listens to artists like Anri and Miki Matsubara

Other artists he listens to are probably; Rihanna, Post Malone(he just does, idk why), Doja Cat, Brittany Spears, Shakira, Kesha, Lizzo, Ariana Grande

Fushiguro

Fushiguro unironically listened to wake me up inside in middle school, again, I do not take criticism

He also listens to artists like Mother Mother

Fushiguro is kinda embarrassed of his music tastes though so he’ll lie about what he’s listening to

“Fushiguro what are you listening to?”

*cue panicked Fushiguro struggling to put his phone away* “N-Nothing why”

Also this man listens to Lady Gaga and probably some Panic at the Disco

But for sure panic at the disco

Also he makes playlist named after his friends and what not

Now one might say aww, how sweet

Which, yes it is, but also, Fushiguro refuses to let anyone know his true music tastes so adaptation is necessary for survival

If Fushiguro has the aux, it’s a good day, he knows everyone’s music tastes and probably already has a playlist tailored specifically to everyone’s taste, there’s never a single song that everyone hates

Kugisaki

She listens to Avril Lavigne and Kesha

Her and Yuuji have pretty similar music tastes (himbo/lesbian solidarity)

She also listens to songs like Jenny(by the studio killers) and Youth(Troye Sivan) and just stares at the ceiling pining

Her playlist reflects this

From pop to pining and then back again

Also she hasn’t stopped streaming Driver’s License(Olivia Rodrigo), her and Yuuji listen to it and every time she just falls out (when it first came out, she got so invested in the drama of it all)

Genres she listens to are rock ballads, pop, and any playlist with words including but not limited to ‘wlw’, ‘girls are pretty’, ‘how to not have a crush on Maki-senpai’

Artists she listens to incl. Kali Uchis (stumbled upon Dead To Me and hasn’t ben the same since), Queen, pop girlies like Brittany Spears, and Troye Sivan

Maki

Maki mainly listens to workout music or indie/chill beats

 Like her playlists are lowkey dry

And she refuses to use spotify premium, even though Gojo’s paying fo it

I can also see her listening to an occasional orchestral/instrumental piece like Ushiwakamaru

Inumaki also kind of put her onto listening to video game soundtracks, she probably listens to the soundtracks of games like Persona tbh

She does allow herself the small pleasure of listening to Hozier from time to time

Inumaki

Inumaki is a menace

His music taste, while there are bangers, mainly consists of music found in memes/tiktoks/etc.

((He also listens to video game music, but more of the Mario Kart sort))

I’m thinking like Vengaboys, Aqua, etc.

He does listen to other artists like Junko Ohashi and Rina Sawayama on occasion, the majority of his music taste exists to make him laugh as he thinks of all the random jokes made to the songs

Whenever, Inumaki has the aux cord, everyone in the car just mentally prepares themselves

With Inumaki, they feel bad telling him to stop because he’s really sweet and nice, and, maybe he just doesn’t know 

But he does know, he just doesn’t care

Panda

Panda listens to 80/90s rap

Tbh he’s got the best music taste out of everyone sorry not sorry

He mainly listened to whatever Yaga put on growing up so that’s why his taste is older than he is

Artists for Panda include Biggie, Pac, Outkast, etc.

Principal Yaga is black I just know Panda grew up listening to Ice Cube and the like while he was training I just knowwww

Panda’s playlist choices though usually aren’t too egregious

While Panda’s no Fushiguro in terms of adaptability, who’s really gonna be opposed to listening to bangers from the 90′s

Gojo

Gojo’s taste in music exists solely to torture Fushiguro

Now does he necessarily like any of these songs he plays? No

But does his desire to antagonize out rule his dislike? Yesyesyesyesyes

Gojo, unlike Inumaki, does not get the same sympathy

When Gojo syncs up his Bluetooth (bcus let’s be real that man does not have a car with a physical aux cord) everyone in the car just lets out the loudest groan

Just for that he’s gonna make 3 extra unnecessary turns

In actuality though, when he’s not bothering his students or Nanami, I imagine Gojo is a fan of 90′s rap as well as classical music

I think he also likes rock too, he discovered it back in his student days and it never really went away

He also definitely has a playlist called something like ‘my main character music’

General car shenanigans(imagine this as a class trip to some place that’s about 2 hours away)

Gojo and Inumaki team up to antagonize everyone

Like they will play 10 hour loops of caramelldansen with absolutely ZERO remorse

Fushiguro and Kugisaki slowly just go insane during the course of this

Although, Kugisaki will be a lot more vocal about it, cussing up a storm by the 4th loop.

This will then lead to Gojo and Inumaki being overthrown; Gojo being replaced with Ichiji at the wheel and Inumaki on thin fuckin ice

When the inevitable silence becomes too much to handle, Yuuji will tentatively offer to play his music

It’s all good, California Girls and Toxic instant hits

Yujji’s reign will end in one of two ways; 1) eventually, a Megan Thee Stallion song comes on a Gojo’s like “whoa kid, that’s not very family friendly” or 2)The sound of Kugisaki, Gojo, and Itadori singing poorly on purpose pushes Maki to take over out of frustration

Either way Maki takes over and they all kinda doze off because of how chill and soothing Maki’s music is

This ends when Ichiji gets a little too relaxed by the music and almost swerves, causing them to abruptly cut the music off

Panda just puts his paws up non-defensively like, “Don’t ask me, my music isn’t family-friendly either

At which point they all look to Fushiguro to save the day

And he does... until his phone battery dies

(Bonus) Sukuna

Sukuna probably tunes out all the miscellaneous stuff that Yuuji listens to

But one day he was minding his business till he heard Yuuji playing a Nicki Minaj song

Now, whenever Yuuji falls asleep, Sukuna will pop out every once in a while just to turn on Nicki.

Since the first thing that strikes me about re8, story-wise, is that it seems to be all over the place? Again, I’ve no idea how it ties to previous games but it feels like this parental/mother-child theme is just hanging there with no resolution at all? I mean yes, Ethan saved his daughter, presumably breaking some sort of abuse cycle, yay, congrats, but what about his wife/gf? Isn’t she supposed to be like the main protagonist of the story of a mother bereaved to the point of tyrannical madness

Or rather, this specific story is not the right choice for his character since there’s SO many ethical and philosophical issues and questions implied but never properly explored because of Ethan’s ‘fuck you, idc’ attitude (which is completely understandable in those circumstances but adds virtually nothing to the plot and arguably even ruins it a bit). Heisenberg could’ve been an excellent ally with fascinating grey morality (provided the writers wouldn’t push him to the point of absolute insanity and let freedom, not power-hunger be his main goal and motivation for rebellion).And again, aren’t the lords supposed to represent child development stages? In which case Ethan what? Kills the possibility of some evil version of Rose? Or his own chance to experience fatherhood throughout all of those stages? Either way, it seems a bit… weird to have a Parent destroy multiple people whose main relevance to the plot is that they’re children of an abusive antagonist in a storyline so extremely focused on parent/kid relationships.

I feel like the main theme of re8 is not just parenthood/motherhood, but the relationship itself of the parent to the child. There's a lot of mentions to "children being used". Miranda kidnapping people, experimenting on them and mutating them and then treating them like they're her kids; Miranda kidnapping and practically killing Rose; Dimitrescu making daughters out of reanimated corpses she experimented on; Heisenberg wanting to use Rose's powers, etc etc.

And it's important that Miranda is at the center of this. There's something very interesting she says to Ethan in her boss fight:

"Why do you interfere? Surely you have no need of Rose now, so close to death?"

And that's where her mistake was. Ethan wasn't doing all that because he needed Rose herself. He was doing it to save her, fully aware that he wasn't going to be a part of her life cause he knew he was dying. Miranda was way too dependent on her love for Eva - and like, I honestly get it that losing your child can devastate you (if anything my fear of that is one of the reasons I don't want to have kids) - so much that her life literally revolved around her child. Once Eva died, Miranda wanted to die. Once she found the Megamycete and discovered she maybe had a chance to bring Eva back, she dedicated her entire life and ruined multiple others to do just that. Her one and biggest need was to get Eva back. It wasn't a simple want or wish. It was a need. She'd get her child back, damn everyone else - including other people's children.

Miranda had no-one to blame directly; Eva had died from the influenza, it wasn't like she had any chance to change things. Ethan's case was different; he had people to blame, particularly, the one who kidnapped Rose and dismembered her, and her lackeys who kept said parts and fought him for trying to take them back.

So on one end, you have a parent who lost her child due to a tragedy, and ended up destroying other - innocent - lives in order to get her back. On the other, you have a parent who lost his child due to a crime, and ended up going after the criminals responsible in order to get the child back. Like, it wasn't even revenge, and it wasn't that he "needed" Rose in his life. He simply wanted to save her and ensure she'll be alright.

I fully agree it could have been Mia as the protagonist in re8, and that it was a wasted opportunity to simply fridge her and have her in the sidelines angsting over her husband. But whether it was Mia or Ethan as the protagonist, I feel like the theme that I explained above does offer a resolution, showing the opposites of Miranda and Ethan, and ending Miranda's tyrrany of her "need" to have her child back through Ethan's determination to ensure his child's safety and happiness - even if he doesn't get to be a part of any of that later on. Miranda showed obsession; Ethan showed dedication.

And this is how I see the abuse cycle breaking and the resolution is reached; an obsessed parent hurt a good parent's child to bring their own child back - the good parent's dedication stopped the former, allowing the former's tyrrany to end and their child to grow up safe.

Seeing as this is a horror game, I don't tend to focus on the morality issues (if I'm interpreting your second message correctly). Like, the developers are making a grant effort to put us in Ethan's shoes, first-person POV, plain character protagonist and all; our child got kidnapped and practically murdered, and we have the chance to bring her back. We'll absolutely raise hell to the people who are responsible for it and we will get our child back, fuck any moral dilemmas we might have. When someone is threatening your life, you have the ability to kill them to defend yourself. In the case of a caring parent, that ability may multiply by a lot when the threat is towards their child. And I feel that this is what the game explored in the end. Though the whole survival issue is taxing on Ethan, he doesn't give a damn about who he has to kill if it means saving his daughter - but again, it's only the responsible parties. We see how watching all the people at Luisa's house die affected him, and even before Elena died, he wanted to ensure her safety before he went searching for Rose; he is sympathetic and morally rational, but also capable of cold-blooded murder if someone is threatening his child. To a lesser extent, we saw that in re7 too. With his life on the line, he killed Jack (multiple times) and Marguerite, and at the end he recognized how they were actually victims of Eveline. But they were still actively trying to murder him so he wasn't given the chance to help them. With Zoe, he promised to send help, and he did, even wanting to talk to her once she'd been rescued by her uncle and Chris. The same applies to re8, but as I said, it's multiplied since it's his daughter who's in danger, and the end of re8 proves he cares for her safety more than his own.

Now, all that said, I think it's important to note how it's stil a Resident Evil game. I haven't actually played or watched any playthroughs of other games, but the basic concept in these games, from what I understand, is that the player shoots zombies; ex-human beings who have lost any human mentality and will just come for your throat if you don't kill them first. They're not humans anymore, they can't be reasoned or sympathized with. It's not really an issue of morality, ethics or philosophy. Your life, and the life of your child in the case of re8, are in danger. You don't give a shit. You just start shooting and hope for the best. Again, I don't know if the morality issue is explored in other RE games, but to be honest... Resident Evil doesn't sound like the kind of franchise that's thematically into going super deep into the morality of shooting zombies to save your life.

I have to admit I haven't thought of the Lords being representative of child development stages. I think they could be put as Moreau being a toddler, fully dependent on their parent - funnily enough, the Greek word for baby is "moro", pronounced almost exactly the way "Moreau" is pronounced in the game - Donna as a child, Heisenberg as a (rebellious?) teenager, and Dimitrescu as a late teen/young adult (if anything, Dimitrescu seems to behave like the eldest child of the bunch). But I'm not sure the connection that has to Ethan as a father, if anything because the bosses are fought in complete random order of age, if my analysis is correct. Like, I understand the symbolism behind the Lords' behaviours, maybe as you said they represent the obstacles Ethan had to overcome. In one single day and with his life on the line, instead of in the course of Rose's entire childhood and adolescence, but that's exactly why he hated being a protagonist of a horror game, lol.

Anyway, yeah. All in all, I don't think Resident Evil is a franchise where we should expect to sit down afterwards and ponder whether we were right to shoot the zombies that were trying to kill us. Again, I'm not the right person to ask this, since I don't know anything about other RE games, but that's the conclusion I'm making in a meta-thinking way.