also can I just say. the difference between the joy of fit and bagi having a full day with blue, getting acquainted with the base, reuniting with their loved ones, all relieved to have more materials and more of a team - and then the absolute misery of etoiles and roier, moving the few valuable possessions red has to a new base that got immediately discovered anyway, losing all their gear, getting it back, then burning it themselves before killing eachother, is just so fucking funny. the new blues had freshman orientation while the new reds had a trial by fire canon event
i'm rewatching the second to last day of wormhole eclipse convo for the one millionth time because i need parts of it transcribed for my blog post and vitalasy straight up asking "Why do we play?" is killing me. you may as well turn towards the camera and stare directly at me. 2k words of this analysis are spent on definitions of play. stop that
(incoherent vitalazam ramble below the cut real stream of consciousness in here. i guess some of this might get rehashed in the thing i'm Supposed to be writing right now but it won't have the same sense of fervor due to the restraints of proper grammar. consider this a bonus...?)
i can't even articulate what i want to say here fucking. fuck my life. the way this conversation is a perfect capstone on eclipse's relationship. zam spends the entire thing acquiescing to whatever vitalasy tells him but not hearing any of it. because he's still mad but he can't express that, and Vitalasy is still mad (Cannot acknowledge zam's anger at him re: exploits without jumping to his own defense. and then he cuts himself off because he knows that's not helping . purely said that on reflex. it reads like a joke.) and vitalasy Still doesn't understand him at all, is still so intensely frustrated by him. and it's just manifesting as vitalasy digging the two of them into this pit while zam does nothing, doesn't fight back even though he reads it as vitalasy trying to kill him to which vitalasy says "i'm not trying to kill you!" even though moments later vitalasy will offer to ban zam, has been urging him to do it this whole time. because not only is killing zam in this moment made trivial and pointless by the exploits but even if it were possible and it could mean something it Wouldn't mean anything because it wouldn't change anything; banning is synonymous with leaving and despite how relentlessly zam toys with the idea he will never. ever. Ever. actually do it.
he's miserable but he can't put himself before the server the way vitalasy thinks would be best for him and for everyone else because as far as zam is concerned his health and the health of the server are one and the same. he's playing out the exploits and sticking with spoke because it's like, it's almost saying "if you won't see it through I will" to a vitalasy who has in his own words discarded first the exploits and then the server itself. BUT AGAIN: HE CAN'T EXPRESS THIS! HE APOLOGIZED TO VITALASY! it would be wrong to go back on that but the apology was as much of a lie as his relationship with vitalasy always was when they were on good terms.
i mean look at this you can literally watch him course correct over and over again as he remembers what vitalasy wants from him. it never ends. i want to squeeze him until he dies. it's exponentially easier to place the blame on himself but doing that has always just freaked vitalasy out he hates when zam does that so bad. it's the easy way out of dealing with a problem to punish yourself for it.
LIKE OKAY ... what does he want? does he want vi and subz to just fight him? would that be easier? that's always been the expected response that's the counter to the move zam has made on the board. i betray you; you attack me; differences are settled in combat. he talks about fighting at one point like winning and losing have ingrained moral qualities. if someone thinks you're wrong, and tries to stop you, and you beat them, it proves that you're right. but he tried to go against the exploits and vitalasy wouldn't fight him, vitalasy stepped out of bounds entirely and said "i'm not playing anymore, i don't like this game!" after fucking the game over for everybody else, and he never forgave that. and now, vitalasy hates what zam is doing but he's not trying to fight it, he's trying to force zam to do what he did, to stop playing by his own rules. to look outside of bounds. to consider a bigger picture. he is notoriously bad at that.
he likes mapicc so much because they speak the same language. you know how mapicc is able to temporarily settle their differences before the pangi duel and subsequent extremely obvious betrayal by handing a "win" to zam and it Works? it works really well? whatever. whatever
So I’ve got a lot of theories for trial 3 and stuff but this is the one I want to talk about first since it was the one that stuck out to me most yet I haven’t seen people talking about the possibility
I actually wrote about this theory quite a while ago which I’ll just link to but I definitely do think it’s very likely but hasn’t been discussed much.
For a brief summary of the post I made it’s a theory on how John may have self harming desires but doesn’t physically hurt himself as he’s afraid of hurting Mikoto. Basically it’s how the reason why Mikoto’s clothes are so tattered is because John has been ripping them apart in another way to harm himself but not physically hurt Mikoto. Heck, there’s very clearly bite marks on the clothes so I highly doubt it was from the fight with Kotoko. And as well as just ripping his clothing it probably explained the breakdowns John is said to have at night especially in that one minigram where Es heard on it and there was a lot of crashing sounds and stuff breaking, even ripping sounds which definitely matches with what I was saying. So John does all of this in a method to self harm as a stress reliever but not physically harm Mikoto.
So here’s the trial 3 theory. As of recently Mikoto has stopped denying John’s existence as everything he’s seen in heard it’s just too much for him to deny anymore. And instead of that he’s began to hate John so much and blame him for every bad thing that’s happened, even going as far to blame him for what happened to Mahiru even though it was very clearly Kotoko’s fault. And with John, he loves Mikoto. Dedicates his entire existence to him and despite all the constant trauma and suffering he’s endured the only thing that keeps him going is the possibility that Mikoto will love him and praise him for saving him.
“Hey now, I saved you, right? So why in the hell are you crying?
Cling to me, hoist me up as your "savior", stand up and sing out your gratitude, that'd be good.”
Judging by these lyrics, it seems John is somewhat aware that Mikoto is denying his help but still wants to believe it. Even Neoplasm he says how Mikoto’s entrusting him with his heart, which can either be he doesn’t fully know about the hatred or is denying it. But what I’m really worried about is how much Mikoto loathes John in trial 3 and what he could do.
As I said earlier John dedicates his existence to Mikoto and I couldn’t explain how John may feel after he would realise his hatred for Mikoto aside from his entire existence being denied. I already discussed this in another theory but for John to so deeply love Mikoto and dedicates everything to protecting him and only holding on with the possibility of approval and being told he did a good job, only to be met with unimaginable hatred from the person who he idealises as someone who could never hate anyone must be devastating on so many levels for John and… you can tell where I’m getting at here.
So what would happen next? Could perhaps John feel so betrayed by Mikoto that he could go to actually physically hurting himself out of conflicting feelings around Mikoto? Loving him like that but feeling so betrayed and hurt that he just tries not to care about Mikoto any more and harms himself out of both previously established coping mechanisms and spite?
It’s hard to tell here, as John is one of those characters who it’s very hard to predict what would happen next so who knows what he might do. I just believe this may be the most likely based off things that have been implied and established.
And just to address a potential elephant in the room is I highly doubt John would disappear in trial 3. That’s not how it works, and just because Mikoto may not be Guilty any more doesn’t mean he would be relieved from all stress so John definitely would still have his purpose. And I think it’s most likely why John claimed that he would disappear was that he believed Es hated him and wanted him gone, so he claimed that he would disappear if Mikoto were to be voted Innocent as a way to sway Es to that verdict. And there are lines such as “I’ll play dead even if I’m alive right?” And “can’t get rid of me now” that definitely imply that he will stay or perhaps pretend to go dormant which perhaps would be interesting as we’ve seen him masking as Mikoto in the minigrams before so it would be interesting if he does that in trial 3 perhaps. And side note even though this is kinda cheating theory wise but it would be stupid to remove John from the story like that so uhhh.
If the finale comes out and then they all somehow make it out alive and the producers and shit are like, "LOL APRIL FOOLS (a month late)" I think I will spontaneously combust.
[MINUTE] (reading chat): Who do you think is the most trustworthy?
Out of all the active people right now... the people I trust the most are Pentar and Jumper. If Clown and Leo were active I'd trust them more, but like, its hard to trust someone if they are not on the server though.
A little bit of a cracky one- Soulmate AU in which when you die your soulmate dies too. Of course there are some rules, otherwise AoT would end dramatically fast, but we ain't talking about those yet.
The idea is that Eren needs Jean to stay alive. He straight up can't do his plan without Jean. That guy must survive at all cost, which sucks.
The problem? No matter what Eren does, Marco always overhears Berthold and Reiner talk and fucking dies. ALWAYS. Is like that scene is some canon event or some shit. It must happen. Is written in the stars for Marco Bodt to die at Reiner's hands (not necessarily in Trost, but is always because of Reiner.)
Cue to Eren going through multiple memories trying to somehow keep Marco alive AND still make Jean join the Survey Corps AND somehow trigger all the events in the right order to get the desired ending. Is a nightmare.
Next chapter: Yona comes into the mausoleum to the scene of Zeno stabbed by the sword and she gets a king Il trauma flashback. Zeno is lying there with dead eyes because he failed and didn't die and is just so fucking tired
The type of Christian who asks atheists how they don't like, murder people on the reg are so funny to me because they seem to think their religion makes them the Peak of Morality when statements like "if you don't believe in God how comes you don't do X thing" all but outright state they have no idea why shit like murder and rape is bad except that God doesn't like it lmao. Like way to admit you have no intrinsic sense of morality and need to be afraid of a higher power to be a decent person, but I promise if you're not a piece of shit it's actually very natural not to want to do heinous evil shit all the time potential punishment from a higher power or not 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️