The Dragon Reborn:

The Shadow Rising:

The Crown of Swords:

They are made for each other ❤️

If nothing else Koenma is a Kuwabara stan and I'm right there with him o7 (I need to write the kuwameshi fic that goes with this fr)

Since Kojima’s been saying that the Death Stranding film is going to tell a story that can only be told through the film medium, I really hope it’s a prequel to the game. There are a lot of background events represented through text and dialogue that wouldn’t translate well to a video game format on their own.

It’d be really cool to see the start of the Stranding, Victor and Igor’s backstory (as seen in the DS novelization), snippets from Sam’s childhood/early years with Bridges, the development and construction of the chiral network, and most of the events described in Higgs’ journals.

Coffin’s decision to leave her family behind, start a terrorist uprising by radicalizing the porters who unknowingly abetted human sacrifices by delivering BBs for the chiral network, and the decision to adopt Higgs as her protégé? That story alone would be worthy of a film.

Ngl I'm a bit confused as to why people think Vox beat Alastor back in the day and/or that their fight was what caused Alastor to go underground for seven years. I didn't get that vibe from their duel in Episode 2 at all.

Alastor seems to treat him as a mild amusement/annoyance more than anything (something supported by comments outside of the show), and this is the man with the most rancid streak of pettiness in the entire show besides Adam. If he'd lost against a rival then he would have taken that shit personally, but their whole dynamic hinges on Alastor not giving Vox the attention/respect he wants and Vox being obsessed in return.

I also think Vox would have brought up the fact that he beat the Radio Demon at the height of his power when he was slandering him if that was what happened, even if it was a dirty fight that, say, had the Vees ganging up on Alastor like some have suggested. That one line is ambiguous and that's probably on purpose, but I doubt Vox came out on top.

okay. i need to rewatch the episode probably but i think my current feeling is that i like most of it a lot (rome, ken, the siblings not getting ceo, etc), think the tom ceo makes sense from a logical/character perspective but not sure how i feel about it from a broader more thematic lens (altho i'm leaning towards fine with it), and am very mixed on shiv's ending because i think it's well-conceived and meaningful from a broader thematic lens (shiv becomes her mother, the cycle always repeats, etc) but doesn't quite make sense to me from a logical/character one -- it could've worked, it could've worked brilliantly, but it was far too rushed and forced. it makes sense as an ending for shiv, but not her next step. i'm largely talking about her decision to return to tom, not her decision to vote against kendall (which i think should've been executed better and given more space but can understand given her character, mostly). i'm fine with it as an ending for shiv, but what i'm struggling to stomach is the way it played out -- it didn't feel like a choice the shiv we know would've made. it's an ending that makes sense thematically and for her character arc, but not a decision that makes sense for her character at present. that's kinda where i'm at right now

[attaches my izzy hands apologist pin to my vest] kind of fucked up that some find izzy Irredeemable when we have seen him do next to nothing violent or even particularly mean, whereas we know ed made fang shoot his dog and then shrugged at him while he cried about it and also, apparently, regularly forces people into autocannibalism for the smallest of transgressions. which is not hate towards ed! he is a pirate and this is typical pirate behavior, and if ed wasn't prone to violent behavior then that would make his path towards self acceptance and kindness weigh less than it does. but it does seem as if izzy has only ever been the enforcer of blackbeard-slash-ed's Rules and Regulations, and while ed seems happy to abandon all that and turn a new leaf because he fell in love, izzy is left with the harrowing memories of what he has done For Blackbeard, in blackbeard's name, and wondering what the fuck happened.

series 3 is so frustrating because there is like a shining core of pure diamond underneath the problems . like conceptually it rocks so incredibly hard. but the problems

people think i'm "rude" for being too blunt/too honest but if i took some kind of uncontrollable truth-telling serum i would be actually suicide-inducingly horrible to be around. i'm honest but trust that i take care to be much more polite, fair, and controlled at most times than I want to. you could not take 5 minutes of me blurting out everything that goes on in my brain in gruesome detail, especially pertaining to You specifically. kindness and courtesy are neither a weakness nor proof of some inherent purity. they are a bore of a chore. and while it is an incredibly irritating chore it is required in order to exist (less) hassled by society.

idk. it's truly annoying to spend much effort and energy on all of everything alone. and after accepting no help will come your way, no ackmowledgement or reward for your work comes either. and not only. instead comes punishment. punishment for the grave sin of not being good enough at pretending like i love small talk and not being good enough at kissing ass and not being good enough at neither keeping my head down and doing nothing nor making waves. not being good enough no matter which way you turn, what weight you pull, how much pain you opt to ignore in favour of pushing onward. there is no prize, no safe space, there is only the anger in the meaningless and base fight to survive. hatred, death, despair, the deep wells of agony. and within it all a part of you screams itself hoarse and then quiet to break the dam. at such high capacity, it doesnt matter of its toxic sludge or just water. "just water" kills everything in its path. tsunamis, typhoons, tropical storms, rainstorms, deadly hail... a little bit builds up and in the right place it can be cried out, or redirected, or simply evaporate in the warm, kind, invigorating rays of the sun. but what then if there is no place for that kind of thing. you are the river above a city and you grow and you grow and come the next storm you may just flatten it all to nothing with everyone inside. the dam allows no space to move or grow smaller. you grow so big you don't know if it's even a river anymore. what you are is some strange unnatural body with a riptide so intense it rivals the wildest ocean tides.

i remember the time i almost got swallowed by a storm riptide clearly. it took just a touch of the water and i am being pulled by a force stronger than anything i have felt before or again, something wild and so much bigger. a storm that no longer wants or has any purpose or even one clear cause... without reason, it doesn't *want* to destroy ships and tug people to their crushed deaths. no. it just-- will. it will do that. it has no will but it will kill you. it will destroy everything. what a beautiful terror. but why in me. tugging tugging tugging. sometimes i wish my weak little kid body got seized by the riptide and that i could not break free at all. that would be an epic death.

instead of grinding for finals i lost hours to a one piece wiki spiral

Do you ever figure out your Type and you go Oh No cause it’s just 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

excuse me????????

today in the wild I came across a phrase to the effect "...And this [pair of ethical axioms about what constitutes quality of life for purposes of discussion about disability and coma prognosis, based on the opinion of one person who has not ever been in a coma or disabled thereafter] suggests that maybe, just maybe, [relevantly comatose or recovering or disabled] people may have quality of life sufficient to make them ethically relevant"

that's ... not, um, normally considered to be what makes people "ethically relevant" in the world where all the people are and there's sunshine and grass and things, but, you know what, ok jennifer, A for effort! :) gold star for you, philosopher extraordinaire, moral lodestar for people unsure what to do with granny, paragon of ethical conduct!

the first time EY "stole" those headphones, the shop owner didn't have any proof it was him. despite this, he insisted on calling his dad, proposed to call the cops, and showed very little sympathy for a child literally getting beaten up by their father right in front of him.

-> why?

he felt disrespected bc of how EY talked to him. it stopped being abt the headphones before his dad even arrived. he just wanted to see the kid who disrespected him shut up, apologize, and admit he was wrong. especially considering how many people were watching and talking abt their argument -> gotta save face and restore your credibility & pride.

this is why, in a way, his dad wasn't wrong to tell him to apologize bc he knew that's what the shop owner wanted to hear. sometimes, the quickest way to solve the issue is to give the person what they want (in this case, an apology) and walk away.

WHY AM I GETTING SO MUCH GENDER ENVY FROM A GUY 2 YEARS YOUNGER THAN ME

I need to draw my main team at some point because the roles are so uneven. Taru murders everything. Shinobu and Yanfei are the heals + overloaded duo. And 90% of the time Thoma is kind of just happy to be there.

Well…if there’s one (1) good thing about having a crush, it’s that when I’m (for the moment anyway) not worrying about the other person’s boundaries and terror about whether I’ve stomped on them or not + my own frustration at how slow things are to just communicate verbally and directly instead of constantly dancing around nonverbal reads (that are two-way, I suppose but still no substitute, can still mean just about anything)…

…yeah. I do let myself be selfish. Acknowledge what I want instead of burying it so deeply away from my consciousness to not “take up space” I suppose. Finally give myself some damn permission to fall in love with another person “despite” being ace, and “despite” being chronically ill and struggling with my mental health.

And what is it I want?

To feel cared for. Cherished. By someone here. To wake up and have someone greet me with a gentle embrace mindful of the constant chronic pain especially in the mornings to not accidentally pinch things, but not treating me like glass, either. To be given autonomy instead of having it taken away—to do things together, FUN things, without being made to feel guilty about that “taking away” spoons from chores or “well why won’t you just work a job then!” but also respecting my need to rest periodically or take a longer rest after the fact.

To feel heard. To trust that there’s love enough for us to disagree and feel angry and frustrated and sad around eachother and with eachother without judgement, without the risk that things are forever one disagreement or misunderstanding away from falling apart completely or worse.

And please tease me. Teasing is a love language just as much as communication and encouragement and acts of service and finally being held. It’s verbal play, and I trust you to not bully me.

And…I’ve shown as much as I can, I think. I know you’re trying to mirror at least some of it. And I think I’m reading you correctly, but I wish I understood why you seem so terrified to talk directly to me.