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#Obviously people sometimes have to do bad things for the greater good
violetlunette · 1 year
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LoV members have morals in the gray area. They might kill people but their reasons for being villains aren’t bad.
Notes: *Anti LoV *Take with a grain of salt
For the MLA, Dabi, and Spinner? True.
Though the Meta Liberation Army's methods are awful, what they're fighting for is what can be considered human rights. Dabi--again, bad methods--is taking revenge on his abuser. And Spinner is fighting against mutant racism. Shiggy and Kurogiri were brainwashed, and I'll even be generous and say that Tago feels she can't belong in society the way it is.
But despite all that it doesn't change the fact they murdered innocent people who never hurt them and all had a part in destroying millions of lives, homes, and a city. Having a sympathetic reason means they're sympathetic, not that it's a get-out-of-jail card.
There's a gif for this I believe;
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(paraphrasing, obviously. Let's go with, "sympathetic reason, still murder.")
They had their reasons and never once have I denied that they're sympathetic. I have only ever said that it doesn't justify their actions or that they shouldn't be held accountable.
Others may not care but they all hurt people who never did anything to them. They stole lives that can never be returned and caused pain that can never be healed. And they did it all, knowing the results of their actions and the weight of them. (With the exception of Shiggy and Kurogiri who were brainwashed.)
They were hurt and that wasn't fair or right, they shouldn't have gone through what they did. But that doesn't make the pain they caused okay.
But as I've said, lov fans have no need to worry. Every single one of them (or most) will be saved by the heroes and their crimes forgotten.
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cartoonrival · 2 years
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i feel like people on this site cannot make up their minds about whether they want tumblr to make money so it can continue to exist as a site that isnt driven by an algorithm that tries to read your mind so it can sell Product to you every second it gets or corporations are never your friend and if you put money towards them youre stupid
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starvinginbelair · 2 months
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sometimes i just want to yell and scream about people who all "my character needs to be morally pure in all manners" because THAT IS NOT THE POINT! THE POINT IS HAVING NUANCED. CONVERSATIONS. ABOUT. WHY. THEY. ARE. THAT. WAY.
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thesublemon · 1 month
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best picture
For the first time in a long time, I watched all of the movies nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars this year. Partly on a whim, partly for a piece I’ve been working on for a while about what is going wrong in contemporary artmarking. I cannot say that the experience made me feel any better or worse about contemporary movies than I already felt, which was pretty bad. But sometimes to write about a hot stove, you gotta put your hand on one. So. The nominees for coldest stove are:
Poor Things. Did not like enough to finish. I always want to like something that is making an effort at originality, strangeness, or style. Unfortunately, the execution of those things in this movie felt somehow dull and thin. Hard to explain how. Maybe the movie’s motif of things mashed together (baby-woman, duck-dog, etc) is representative. People have been mashing things together since griffins, medleys, Avatar the Last Airbender’s animals, Nickelodeon’s Catdog, etc. Thing + thing is elementary-level weird. And while there’s nothing wrong with a simple, or well-worn premise, there is a greater burden on an artist to do something interesting with it, if they go that route. And Poor Things does not. Its themes are obvious and belabored (the difficulty of self-actualization in a world that violently infantilizes you) and do not elevate the premise. There’s a fine line between the archetypal and the hackish, and this movie falls on the wrong side of it. It made me miss Crimes of the Future (2022), a recent Cronenberg that was authentically original and strange, with the execution to match.
Anatomy of a Fall. Solid, but not stunning. The baseline level of what a ‘good’ movie should be. It was written coherently and economically, despite its length. It told a story that drew you along. I wanted to know what happened, which is the least you can ask from storytelling. It had some compelling scenes that required a command of character and drama to write—particularly the big argument scene. The cinematography was not interesting, but it was not annoying either. It did its job. This was not, however, a transcendent movie.
Oppenheimer. Did not like enough to finish. But later forced myself to, just so no one could accuse me of not knowing what I was talking about when I said I disliked it. I felt like I was being pranked. The Marvel idea of what a prestige biopic should be. Like Poor Things, it telegraphed its artsiness and themes and has raked in accolades for its trouble. But obviousness is not the same as goodness and this movie is not good. The imagery is painfully literal. A character mentions something? Cut to a shot of it! No irony or nuance added by such images—just the artistry of a book report. The dialogue pathologically tells instead of shows. It constantly, cutely references things you might have heard of, the kind of desperate audience fellation you see in soulless franchise movies. Which is a particularly jarring choice given the movie’s subject matter. ‘Why didn’t you get Einstein for the Manhattan project’ Strauss asks, as if he’s saying ‘Why didn’t you get Superman for the Avengers?’ If any of this referentiality was an attempt to say something about mythologization, it failed—badly. The movie is stuffed with famous and talented actors, but it might as well not have been, given how fake every word out of their mouths sounded. Every scene felt like it had been written to sound good in a trailer, rather than to tell a damn story. All climax and no cattle.
Barbie. Did not like enough to finish. It had slightly more solidity in its execution than I was afraid it would have, so I will give it that. If people want this to be their entertainment I will let them have it. But if they want this to be their high cinema I will have to kill myself. Barbie being on this list reminds me of the midcentury decades of annual movie musical nominations for Best Picture. Sometimes deservingly. Other times, less so. The Music Man is great, but it’s not better than 8 1/2  or The Great Escape, neither of which were nominated in 1963. Musicals tend to appeal to more popular emotions, which ticket-buyers and award-givers tend to like, and critics tend to dislike. I remember how much Pauline Kael and Joan Didion hated The Sound of Music (which won in 1966), and have to ask myself if in twenty years I’ll think of my reaction to Barbie the same way that I think of those reviews: justified, but perhaps beside the point of other merits. Thing is. Say what you want about musicals, but that genre was alive back then. It was vital. Bursting with creativity. For all Kael’s bile, even she acknowledged that The Sound of Music was “well done for what it is.” [1] Contemporary cinema lacks such vitality, and Barbie is laden with symptoms of the malaise. It repeatedly falls back on references to past aesthetic successes (2001: A Space Odyssey, Singin’ in the Rain, etc) in order to have aesthetic heft. It has a car commercial in the middle. It’s about a toy from 60 years ago and politics from 10 years ago. It tries to wring some energy and meaning from all of that but not enough to cover the stench of death. I’d prefer an old musical any day.
American Fiction. Was okay. It tried to be clever about politics, but ended up being clomping about politics. At the end of the day, it just wasn’t any more interesting than any other ‘intellectual has a mid-life crisis’ story, even with the ‘twist’ of it being from a black American perspective. Even with it being somewhat self-aware of this. But it could have been a worse mid-life crisis story. The cinematography was terrible. It was shot like a sitcom. Much of the dialogue was sitcom-y too. I liked the soundtrack, what I could hear of it. The attempts at style and meta (the characters coming to life, the multiple endings) felt underdeveloped. Mostly because they were only used a couple times. In all, it felt like a first draft of a potentially more interesting movie. 
The Zone of Interest.Wanted to like it more than I did. Unfortunately, you get the point within about five minutes. If you’ve seen the promotional image of the people in the garden, backgrounded by the walls of Auschwitz, then you’ve already seen the movie. Which means that all the rest of the movie ends up feeling like pretentious excess instead of moving elaboration. It seemed very aware of itself as an Important Movie and rested on those laurels, cinematically speaking, in a frustrating way. It reminded me of video art. I felt like I had stepped through a black velvet drape into the side room of a gallery, wondering at what point the video started over. And video art has its place, but it is a different medium. Moreover video art at its best, like a movie at its best, takes only the time it needs to say what it needs to say. 
Past Lives. I’m a human being, and I respond to romance. I appreciate the pathos of sweet yearning and missed chances. And I understand how the romance in this movie is a synecdoche for ambivalent feelings about many kinds of life choices, particularly the choice to be an immigrant and choose one culture over another. The immigrant experience framing literalizes the way any choice can make one foreign to a past version of oneself, or the people one used to know, even if in another sense one is still the same person. So, I appreciate the emotional core of what (I believe) this movie was going for, and do think it succeeded in some respects. And yet…I was very irritated by most of its artistic choices. I found the three principal characters bland and therefore difficult to care about, sketched with only basic traits besides things like Striving and Being In Love. Why care who they’d be in another life if they have no personalities in this one? It’s fine to make characters symbols instead of humans if the symbolic tapestry of a movie is interesting and rich, but the symbolic tapestry of this movie was quite simple and straightforward. Not that that last sentence even matters much, since the movie clearly wanted you to feel for the characters as human beings, not just symbols. Visually, the cinematography was dull and diffuse, with composition that was either boring or as subtle as a hammer to the head.
Maestro. Did not like enough to finish. Something strange and wrong about this movie. It attempts to perform aesthetic mimicry with impressive precision—age makeup, accents, period cinematography—but this does not make the movie a better movie. At most it creates spectacle, at worst it creates uncanny valleys. It puts one on the lookout for irregularities, instead of allowing one to disappear into whatever the movie is doing. Something amateurishly pretentious in the execution. And not in the fun, respectable way, like a good student film. (My go-to example for a movie that has an art-school vibe in a pleasant way is The Reflecting Skin). There’s something desperate about it instead. It has the same disease as Oppenheimer, of attempting to do a biopic in a ‘stylish’ way without working on the basics first. Fat Man and Little Boy is a less overtly stylish rendition of the same subject as Oppenheimer, but far more cinematically successful to me, because it understands those basics. I would prefer to see the Fat Man and Little Boy of Leonard Bernstein’s life unless a filmmaker proves that they can do something with style beyond mimicry and flash.
The Holdovers. Did not like enough to finish. It tries to be vintage, but outside of a few moments, it does not succeed either at capturing what was good about the aesthetic it references, or at using the aesthetic in some other interesting way. The cinematography apes the tropes of movies and TV from the story’s time period, but doesn't have interesting composition in its own right. It lacks the solidity that comes from original seeing. (Contrast with something like Planet Terror, in which joyous pastiche complements the original elements.) The acting is badly directed. Too much actorliness is permitted. Much fakeness in general between the acting, writing, and visual language. If a movie with this same premise was made in the UK in the 60’s or 70's it would probably be good. As-is the movie just serves to make me sad that the ability to make such movies is apparently lost and can only be hollowly gestured at. That said, the woman who won best supporting actress did a good job. She was the only one who seemed to be actually acting.
Killers of the Flower Moon. The only possible winner. It is not my favorite of Scorsese’s movies, but compared to the rest of the lineup it wins simply by virtue of being a movie at all. How to define ‘being a movie’? Lots of things I could say that Killers of the Flower Moon has and does would also be superficially true of other movies in this cohort. Things like: it tells a story, with developed characters who drive that story. Or: it uses its medium (visuals, sound) to support its story and its themes. The difference comes down to richness, specificity, control, and a je ne sais quois that is beyond me to describe at the moment. Compare the way Killers of the Flower Moon uses a bygone cinematic style (the silent movie) to the way that Maestro and The Holdovers do. Killers of the Flower Moon uses a newsreel in its opening briefly and specifically. The sequence sets the scene historically, and gives you the necessary background with the added panache of confident cuts and music. It’s useful to the story and it’s satisfying to watch. Basics. But the movie doesn’t limit itself to that, because it’s a good movie. The sequence also sets up ideas that will be continuously developed over the course of the movie.* And here’s the kicker—the movie doesn’t linger on this sequence. You get the idea, and it moves on to even more ideas. Also compare this kind of ideating to American Fiction’s. When I said that American Fiction’s moments of style felt underdeveloped, I was thinking of movies like Killers of the Flower Moon, which weave and evolve their stylistic ideas throughout the entire runtime.
*(Visually, it places the Osage within a historical medium that the audience probably does not associate with Native Americans, or the Osage in particular. Which has a couple of different effects. First, it acts as a continuation of the gushing oil from the previous scene. It’s an interruption. A false promise. Seeming belonging and power, but framed all the while by a foreign culture. Meanwhile potentially from the perspective of that culture, it’s an intrusion on ‘their’ medium. And of course, this promise quickly decays into tragedy and death. The energy of the sequence isn’t just for its own sake—it sets up a contrast. But on a second, meta level it establishes the movie’s complicated relationship to media and storytelling. Newsreels, photos, myths, histories, police interviews, and a radio play all occur over the course of the movie. And there’s the movie Killers of the Flower Moon itself. Other people’s frames are contrasted with Mollie’s narration. There’s a repeated tension between communication as a method of knowing others and a method of controlling them—or the narrative of them—which plays out in both history and personal relationships.)
Or here’s another example: When Mollie and Ernest meet and he drives her home for the first time, we see their conversation via the car’s rearview mirrors. This is a bit of cinematic language that has its origins in mystery and paranoia. You see it in things like Hitchcock or The X-Files or film noir. By framing the scene with this convention, the movie turns what is superficially a romantic meet-cute (to quote a friend) into something bubbling with uneasiness and dread. This is not nostalgia—this is just using visuals to create effects. It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen anything that uses the convention before, although knowing the pedigree might add to your enjoyment. The watchfulness suggested by the mirrors and Ernest’s cut-off face will still add an ominous effect. It works for the same reason it works in those other things. Like the newsreel, it is a specific and concise stylistic choice, and it results in a scene that is doing more than just one thing.
In general, the common thread I noticed as I watched these nominees, was the tendency to have the ‘idea’ of theme or style, and then stop there. It’s not that the movies had nothing in them. There were ideas, there was use of the medium, there was meaning to extract. There were lots of individually good moments. But they tended to feel singular, or repetitive, or tacked on. Meanwhile contemporary viewers are apparently so impressed by the mere existence of theme or style, that being able to identify it in a movie is enough to convince many that the movie is also good at those things. The problem with this tendency—in both artists and audiences—is that theme and style are not actually some extra, remarkable, inherently rarifying property of art. Theme emerges naturally from a story with any kind of coherence or perspective. And style emerges naturally from any kind of artistic attitude. They are as native as script, or narrative, or character. A movie’s theme and style might not be interesting, just like its story or dialogue might not be interesting, but if the movie is at all decent, they should exist. What makes a movie good or bad, then, is how it executes its component parts—including theme and style—in service of the whole. When theme is well-executed it is well-developed. Contemporary movies, unfortunately, seem to have confused ‘well-developed’ with ‘screamingly obvious.’ A theme does not become well-developed by repetition. It becomes well-developed by iterationand integration. Theme is like a melody. Simply repeating a single melody over and over does not result in the song becoming more interesting or entertaining. It becomes tedious. However, if you modify the melody each time you play it, or diverge from the melody and then return to it, that can get exciting. It results in different angles on the same idea, such that the idea becomes more complex over time, instead of simply louder.
Oppenheimer wasprobably the worst offender in this regard. Just repeat your water drops, crescendoing noise, or a line about ‘destroying the world’, and that’s the same as nuance, right? Split scenes into color and black and white and that’s the same as structure, right? That’s the same as actually conveying a difference between objectivity and interiority (or another dichotomy) via the drama or visual composition contained in the scenes, right? When I watched many of these movies, I kept thinking of a behind-the-scenes story from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The story goes that Joss Whedon was directing Sarah Michelle Gellar in some scene, and when the take was over he told her how great she was, and that he could see right where the music would come in. And Gellar replied that if he was thinking about the music, he clearly wasn’t getting enough from her acting alone. This conversation then supposedly informed Whedon’s approach to “The Body,” a depiction of the immediate aftermath of death that is considered one of the best episodes of television ever made, and which has no non-diegetic music whatsoever. Not to imply that music is necessarily a crutch, or to pretend that “The Body” is lacking in other forms of stylization (it is a very style-ish episode). But more to illustrate the way that it is easy to forget to make the most of all aspects of a medium, particularly the most fundamental ones, once one has gotten used to what a final product is supposed to feel like. 
And that’s why most of these movies don’t feel like movies. They create the gestalt of a movie or a ‘cinematic’ moment—often literally through direct vintage imitation—without a sense of the first principles. Or demonstrating a sense of them, anyway. Who needs AI when the supposedly highest level of human filmmakers are already cannibalistically cargo-culting the medium just fine.
[1] “The Sound of Money (The Sound of Music and The Singing Nun).” The Pauline Kael Reader. (This book contains the full text of the original review, rather than the abbreviated review that I linked earlier.) 
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thrawns-backrest · 11 months
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I've never heard anyone talk about this theory on tumblr, but I was curious to ask you. What do you think about Ronan becoming a Grysks spy? I saw such an idea in one fanfic, but there they made Ronan just an ambitious and stupid villain. But I thought about and decided that given its canonical nature, such a development of events also seems to be probable to some extent. It seemed to me so, because look: Ronan in Ascendancy is even more vulnerable than Eli, who managed to build good relations with at least Vah'nya and Ar'alani, he obviously needs a lot of time to somehow get along with at least a brother-in-misfortune, and already especially with someone else. In essence, he is alone, and his character also repels the Chiss from him, which leads to their distrust and unwillingness to explain anything to him. A person who communicates little with anyone and understands little is easy to take advantage of, besides, attachment to some things or people is something that the Grysk are only too good at pressuring, with intimidation or cunning. And Ronan is attachmented to Krennic, to the Empire, to the Death Star, so in theory they have something to hit. In addition, if he is faithful to someone, then he is faithful, as we see, almost to the end. And if someone else could become for him a figure like Krennic to whom he "swears" - this person could push him into many things.
If anything, I'm not saying that this is a full-fledged theory and it will be so in the canon. These are just my thoughts on one of hundreds of possible scenarios. I was wondering how likely you think this is?
Oooh... honestly, as much as I love Ronan, I think that's very likely. I think it's even likelier when you consider Thrawn's suggestion to Ar'alani about feeding Ronan the right kind of information because they know he's a potential traitor.
Looking at the book, it's hard to tell if they mean that in the sense of feeding the Empire information through him or using him to misled the Grysks but both scenarios are kind of sad because neither assumes an eventual assimilation into the Ascendancy (which I'm trying to fix in my fic lol).
But yes, as you said Ronan is a very likely target for the Grysks. Ar'alani herself points it out and if something isn't done to prevent it, Ronan could easily be converted into a Grysk agent. The moment he realizes Thrawn didn't send him on some secret mission to find Chiss jedi, he'll grow even more distrustful of him. And if his experience in the Ascendancy is as negative as we assume it'll be, there's plenty of dislike there for the Grysks to feed and exploit.
In a way, characters with a lot of zeal and extreme views always have that problem. They're just... unstable. Kind of like Anakin in the prequels, because they feel so strongly about something they're open to manipulation and their loyalties can be exploited with the right kind of nudging.
That said, making Ronan's motivation ambition and depriving him of his intellect is just... dumb. Ronan genuinely believes he's on the side of the greater good, that the Empire is doing good, etc. I can see the Grysks convincing him that the Chiss are the bad guys in the grand scheme of things, maybe that they're planning to betray or attack the Empire and use his loyalty and inflated self-righteousness to pit him against them.
The thing about Ronan, I think, is that he has an eye for detail and is good at noticing things and reading people (e.g. realizing that Vah'nya is force sensitive) but he's not as good at using that information to come to the right conclusions. Sometimes he does and that's when his skills shine but sometimes his takes are just so far off it's funny.
Whether it's because he tends to overthink or because his biases skew his thinking, it's still a flaw and one that could be exploited.
My only hope for Ronan resisting the Grysks' manipulation is that he's already seen what they're capable of. There's this moment in the book where he gets a very strong reaction to seeing the bodies they've left behind ("Ronan nodded silently from his seat at the conference room table, trying very hard not to be sick. [...] He tried to remind himself that these men had been thieves who’d stolen from Stardust and the Empire, and that they deserved punishment. The rationalization didn’t help.")
At the end of the day, Ronan isn't cruel and doesn't have the stomach for cruelty. And that could be the only thing stopping him from trusting the Grysks who don't have a problem openly showing their ruthlessness. But, of course, if he's already in a bad place and vulnerable to manipulation, that might not be enough to save him.
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tinsnip · 10 months
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okay but listen though, listen listen listen two books. ok? two stories.
one: pride and prejudice. two proud people who are, by society's standards, not appropriately matched. and it's the one who's technically lower down who refuses the offer of the higher up. yes? yes. and it's because of pride - which aziraphale and crowley have in abundance - and prejudice - which they also have in abundance. "of course you refused hell. you're the bad guys." "heaven? you're better than that!" no concept that there could ever be any give there. so what comes next? time apart. and a Big Rethink. and maybe mister collins, ho ho.
two: the book of job. one of my faves. an absolute clusterfuck. someone who tries very hard to do everything right, who is by all appearances (inwardly and outwardly) a gem of a person. and they get absolutely fucked over because god can. and they don't blame god. they blame themselves. 'what have i done? how have i so badly misunderstood what's required of me? i'm a failure. i deserve this.' and then - then - they get told that congratulations, lol, god wasn't actually mad at you, it was all a test and you passed! that thing you sometimes told yourself? to survive? to stay sane? it was a true thing! and now god is going to give you more than you ever had before! not the same stuff - better stuff! so wow - the person was right! all along! and obviously the stuff they had before can't have been all that good? yes? and if they want it back - well, that's not up to them, is it? come back when you can make a whale! there's got to be a greater plan! the kids who died - well - they're part of it! the love you lost - hey! all for the greater good! and doesn't it feel better when it's all in someone else's hands? someone greater, who had a plan all along? isn't that a lot more palatable? it suuuuuure is. safer, too.
parallels motherfuckers. parallels.
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Tell me some of your favorite headcanons for the boys ?
I mean... I'm afraid of answering this for BDOR spoilers, because I have put all of my favorite head canons into that fic, obviously. Oh well, I figure most of my readers don't follow me on tumblr. So here's my head canons both for LU and my specific story Blood Drops on Roses.
Twilight -- used to have "anger issues" when he came back from his quest as a teen that was really just him being hurt and lashing out (I already had this idea, but it evolved a lot with your fics where he gets overwhelmed @somer-writes XD). He just... feels a lot, and feels it genuinely.
Sky -- I think this guy has gone through some /trauma/ compared to the other heroes. With his sunny nature and calm disposition---I think it's borne of a greater understanding of himself and his own limits. I do kinda hate the "trauma made them stronger uwu" trope, but for Sky that's true, because he put in the work and chose to be kind after all the horrible things that happened to him. Also, he's not bad at cooking traditional Skyloftian meals, like hot drinks.
Wind -- I think that he doesn't have all the inherent qualities, especially bravery and self-sacrifice, that the others have because they were "destined to be heroes" while he was not. Now, he's learned them, sure, but I think that jumping into battle still doesn't come as easily to him as it does to some of the others. But that also comes to my HC about the Triforce and its effects on its wielder (I've also got a fun thing for Wild on that one).
Hyrule -- I think that his healing magic isn't exactly... light. A lot of people HC that his magic is fairy magic, and I think that's partially true, but for him to be able to transform and access it in human form... I think there's something else going on there. But yeah, I've changed this guy's backstory a lot, I hope I don't have the Hyrule stans coming after me XD
Legend -- I think that he's a lot more chill about Koholint and things being "not real" than a lot of other people HC. Sure, it's always there in the back of his mind, but he'd rather have helped and fought and even fallen in love and it not be real than to hold himself back from that for fear of getting hurt again, because he's tried that. Also, I think he's slotted Time into the Uncle role in his mind, but that's not really plot important (or is it?)
Time -- @needfantasticstories >:D you know what's up with this poor guy. But yeah, I HC (and I've said this before), that he and Wind met in Mario cart, sometime before this adventure for Time, and sometimes after for Wind. There's not a lot of evidence for that, I'm just making up stuff as I go. Watch out for an author's note for that on the chapters near Too Quiet I'm tryna set up a joke XD
Warrior -- I think he's so teasing of the other heroes because he wants to hold them all at arm's length. He's still a bit traumatized from being betrayed, so he keeps that charming front of his up and keeps anyone from getting too close and seeing the real him. I think even Time (or at least, what we know of him) hasn't seen that genuine side of him, at least in a while.
Four -- I can't say that I have anything unique for him, when it comes for head canons that differ from LU norms. He is good at interpersonal conflicts, I also think he's good at self-reflection and helping others through their emotions. I do think he has four people in his head at all times, but they work around each other. I kinda go on and off about whether his eyes change color. He does have blue screen moments if he's startled or confused, and the panic of needing to move suddenly or choose quickly just makes it worse.
Wild -- currently multiple emotionally stunted gremlins in a trench coat. No, I will not elaborate :D
I'm turning the question back on you @wanderlustmagician and anyone else who wants to join in---what are your head canons for the boys?
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gith-egg · 7 months
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I've seen a few posts now condemning fandom treating Karlach as a "golden retriever girl" and I appreciate that she's not some flawless innocent baby but. Personally I think she can be and is a big puppy AND a violent person with anger issues and trauma and a track record of falling in with the wrong crowds.
In particular I've seen people say she's selfish, seemingly in refutation of her being treated as good and altruistic, and I really think it's a case where both of these things are actually true. Character analysis ramble below.
A key aspect of Karlach to me is that she's all about looking out for herself AND the people close to her. Her instinctive perspective is not and has never been the wider, greater good, even if she does certainly care about that on a theoretical level - it's been devotion to and protection of her friends, family, loved ones.
Working for Gortash she was obviously young and naive, and I don't think she saw the scope of the evil things she was contributing to, but I don't think it was pure genuine ignorance either - she looked the other way, justified things to herself because she'd found something good for herself and didn't want to lose it, and because Gortash had become one of Her People. Karlach attaches to people and then is loyal to them provided they don't betray her or the other people she loves, and has trouble confronting bad things they do that are abstract to her.
In Avernus we see an interesting development to this - she has nobody, she's surrounded only by terrible people out to hurt her, and so she finds the least abhorrent among them and attaches to her as a friend anyway. She's not in denial of Florenta being nasty and doing awful things, but she's desperate for someone to be anything but outright hostile to her, so she makes friends anyway. Talking to her about this in the game makes it clear she's not proud of it but that she did, regardless, genuinely care about Florenta.
To me that's if anything the epitome of "golden retriever" behaviour. You don't expect a labrador to be weighing all her choices against the greater good of an entire nation or world. She's giving her strength and loyalty to her family, sometimes even when said family aren't the best people.
Is that selfish? Absolutely! She's prioritising the people she cares about over everyone else. It's also, from a different perspective, altruistic - giving and forgiving and loving and supporting and believing in those in her immediate circle almost unconditionally. To me it's just such a compelling trait for a character to have - to really want to do good and save the world but get caught up in loving the people you've bonded with, even when sometimes they're doing the exact opposite.
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one thing i'm really really fascinated by is the fact that everyone in the modern pokemon world seems to consider the deities a power source, nothing more. the games generally imply that knowledge of the legendaries has been lost to time and legend and only preserved by a select few who keep to the Ancient Ways but i don't really think that sounds likely. i think they might be common knowledge people just don't seem to. conceptualize them as greater than in the way that we generally think of them. "this is a divine force that underpins reality and has been worshipped since antiquity" is not a thing that seems to have any problem coexisting with "i'm going to put this thing in an engine and make it my tool." and it's very frequently the baddies doing this which maybe weakens the point a little but very rarely is the point of contention with the bad guys "hey you shouldn't do that to god" that's kind of like, never the part of their thing that people object to. it's always their motives, never their methods. when the Good Guy (local ten year old) catches god and makes it their new partner, nobody has a problem with it! and people joke about this but i'm saying it might imply a way deeper facet of society than people give it credit for.
and is this maybe trying to force the round peg of pokemon legendaries into the square hole of actual religion. very possibly! the games aside from pla certainly seem only very occasionally interested in treating these creatures as gods or godlike or worshipped in any way, and far more often just want to treat them as regular pokemon But Stronger. so it's maybe not reasonable to try and say these entities are deities. but the problem is they are! it's not like this isn't supported textually, it's just... not a part of canon that canon is actually interested in. dialga, palkia, the lake trio, kyogre, groudon—these things are gods. canon can mince words and call them legendaries and "worshipped as deities maybe sometimes" but when you get to the point where you're discussing something that represents a fundamental force governing reality and/or can end the world on a whim then idc what you call it. that's a god.
but the problem is that they are gods and also pokemon, they're both simultaneously. and people in the pokemon world seem to have worked this out, and have had the collective realization that the gods are truly not exempt from their own rules. they can be captured, they can be subjugated, they can be used. this also ties back in with the whole anarchism discussion obviously but it's just the fact that like. it goes way deeper than everyone being fine with the ten year old putting the lord of time in a ball. the entire world operates on the premise of "eat your gods."
does that like... contradict worship? can you be faithful to something knowing it's been used as a tool?
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foozle-woesies · 3 months
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Hey bookie I got a question for u
Say Dottore manages to get a partner somehow god knows how 👀 what if said PARTNER 👀 finds out about his crazy kookoo human experimentation ring and maybe kinda doesn't like it? What's he doing.
🪲💉Amenhotep discovers that Dottore experiments on people and thinks it’s lowkey a little sick and freaky and NOT in a cool way.💉🪲
So because of REASONS 👀👀👀👀👀👀
I’m going with Amenhotep for this ask. Not a “dottore X Reader” Deal! Sorry if that’s what ppl want :( but I like my oc and I know u do too LMFAO
So yea! This is my oc. Amenhotep. I posted about him recently.
Warnings: hints to human experimentation and also like. Manipulation and lying. Because it’s Dottore.
Amenhotep was never in the loop about his husband’s job. The living quarters and lab were very separate- both areas were soundproofed (mostly to let amenhotep relax since his senses are heightened), so Amenhotep never really knew what was happening behind closed doors. All he knew was that Dottore was a doctor- he performed odd and new “procedures”, sure, but it was for the greater good… right?
Of course, he never learns about the lab’s happenings from Dottore himself. Sometimes the fatui will have elaborate dances or work parties for the harbingers to socialize like rich people do. Amenhotep, being quite intimidated by the other harbingers, tends to hang around Dottore or the other harbinger’s spouses.
At one of these parties, Amenhotep was standing with the other spouses, seeing as Dottore was busy talking about business with Pantalone. These other spouses were all tipsy and getting into gossip. This ends up with Amenhotep learning that his husband kidnaps and experiments on people… and he doesn’t think that’s a very good thing. OBVIOUSLY.
He feels off for the rest of the night, which Dottore notices quickly. Dottore was always able to detect Amenhotep’s emotions right off the bat- to try and help him, Dottore left the work party early, and inquired about what’s bothering Amenhotep on the walk home.
Amenhotep reluctantly admitted that some of the others had told him what Dottore does for his job. Dottore, who was never one to show much emotion, jumped and seemingly became slightly panicked. This upset Amenhotep even more.
“It’s for the greater good! I don’t just harm or take people! I’d never do such things! I take in legitimate patients! I only do things to cure them!” Are all things that are along the lines of what Dottore would tell him. And Amenhotep would fully believe him.
Dottore had never lied to Amenhotep before- why would he start now? He couldn’t ever see Dottore being a bad person. Hell, Amenhotep had some odd disease that Dottore had never seen before- he never did needless operations and every. Single. Thing. Dottore ever did was to genuinely try and improve his quality of life.
Amenhotep and Dottore’s marriage was happy. They treated each other well, they were fully open and honest to each other- really, they were in the perfect relationship. But Amenhotep realized how little he truly knew about Dottore’s work life. He caught himself shooting an extra glance at the lab doors when he passed them, straining his ears to hear any odd sounds from those rooms, and trying to determine what Dottore had done that day through vague questions.
Amenhotep knew what the fatui was. He couldn’t marry a harbinger and not know. But it had never occurred to him that Dottore would do bad things, even if he was certain the other harbingers would.
In the end, Amenhotep fully believes Dottore is doing things he truly views as “good”. Whether said actions are objectively good or bad, he’ll never know. The thought never fails to unsettle him.
The truth is, Dottore does believe his work is for the betterment of humanity… for the most part. He knows what he’s doing. He knows it’s awful. He’s just a man who prefers to keep his personal life and job separated. Everyone needs a place of normalcy to return to, no?
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thedeafprophet · 5 months
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🐍 for Jamie/the Captivating Princess and ⚰ for Alex/Fires!
🐍- Do they ever see each other in dreams?
Jamie's dream are often convoluted and weird, but it's no matter of measure to say that the princess absolutely haunts them. The terrors that Jamie saw at the palace alone were enough, but the fear has only increased as her predation towards them followed. Those red eyes are constant in thr back of Jamie's mind on some of the nights they wake up, gasping for breath, pulse racing, hours spent after aiming to calm down.
.....she also likely appears in some...other....types of dreams. Which sometimes are also nightmares. Jamie's internal thoughts are very confused.
I wonder if the princess even sleeps and has regular dreams lmao. Perhaps she does, perhaps she doesn't. Who really knows.
Given the way she normally 'sees people in dreams', let's hope that she never does, hmm.
⚰️- Have they ever witnessed the other die?
Oh Fires saw Alex die quite recently :)
Alex did his little heroic sacrifice at the end of the starved war, and had his closest call to permanent death that he's ever experienced. And Fires was right nearby :) perhaps even close enough to see. Curators Do have particularly good eye sight....
It was a matter of their argument in my post event fic, Confliction. Alex angry at Fires for showing up late, Fires angry at Alex for putting himself in danger.
I think the whole thing fucked Fires up a lot more than it's willing to admit tbh. Being faced with the potential of permentantly loosing its.....loosing Alex, absolutely terrified it. I dare say it's at a greater risk of pushing more of alexs boundaries in the future due to its fear of loosing him.
It would never let that happen.
As for the other way around, Alex has obviously never seen Fires die lmao. Except in the one Bad End Skies Au Fic I suppose. New power imbalance unlocked: only one has watched the other die.
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huevokinder24 · 1 year
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Morality in alchemy of souls:
I'll try to make this as brief and concise as possible cause I got a lot to say about this lmao.
People can be divided into four main categories in the story.
First, the villains: the prime example of this is obviously Jin Mu. Morality? not found. To him all that matters are his own interests. People are puppets to manipulate and tools to use and then discard once they're no longer useful.
But that's to be expected, he's the villain after all. The thing is that he doesn't make excuses. He's evil, he knows it. He doesn't care and has never tried to pretend to be anything else.
Then, the "good guys": people like Park Jin and Jang Gang fall into this category. They claim to be the good against the evil the justice of the world, the keepers of peace, when what they're actually doing is protecting their own interests. They lack empathy and are willing to look over injustice, even going as far as concealing it themselves for what they consider to be the greater good.
Where was that justice when Jang Gang spread rumors about his adulterous wife when her body hadn't lost its warmth yet? When was it when he ruined his son's life and told Park Jin to do the same for him? Was that to protect UK and for the greater good as they like to think or did JG not want to take responsibility for his fuck ups?
Park Jin's treatment of Uk sometimes borders on psychological abuse under the guise of protection. When was that justice and goodness he defends when, even knowing Naksu had been used and sacrificed by Jin Mu, he told Uk to get over her death and not look for vengeance? He even went as far as to tell him that everything that had happened was his fault, crushing what little was left of his emotional stability.
AH, but what happened when Seo Yul's life was in danger? He rallied Songrim's mages to back him up. Was it because it could create conflict or because Yul is the heir of a prominent family and someone dear to him?
In the third category we can find Master Lee and Yul. I've already talked about them in a different post so I won't dawdle. Out of all the characters, they are the ones who truly do things for the greater good, and they are willing to go far, but they will do it truly believing they're doing it for the sake of the world.
Up until this point we have people who see the world in black and white.
And then there's Jang UK. He has a strong sense of justice, and he follows his own beliefs. He doesn't see magic and people as either evil nor good. What's important to him is the intention behind the spell, not the spell itself. Why is sorcery bad if it can be used to save someone? Because Park Jin said it? PFFFTTT right.
He doesn't believe in the system he grew up in because it was incredibly unfair to him. Unlike the others, he sees the world in shades of grey. He decides for himself what's good for bad based on facts, not rules, not self-interest. He sees people as they are. While everyone else sees either the bigger picture or themselves, he sees the world as it is.
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fantasyfantasygames · 6 months
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Narcissist
Narcissist, Aetherco, 2004?
One of my favorite brain-bending games is Continuum (sometimes written C°ntinuum, but the degree sign is not great for accessibility). It's a game of "authentic" time travel where the past cannot be changed, but that doesn't excuse you from going back and doing what needs to be done, because you've already done it, so go do it. It's heavy on terminology, demands a fair amount of records-keeping, and is absolutely fascinating.
Continuum was intended to be the first of three games, with the other two being Narcissist and Dreamer. Dreamer hasn't come out yet. Narcissists are the bad guys of the first game (good guys in their own minds, of course) who skip across dimensions in addition to going through time. I have a 0.7 pre-release from a convention many years ago, and things have changed quite a bit since that draft.
While Continuum is all about protecting the "one true timeline" from damage, Narcissists have noped out of a world that was never kind to them in the first place. They don't believe the Inheritors' obviously self-motivated claims about the sanctity of the timeline. They generate paradoxes to squeeze themselves out of our world like a pumpkin seed and crash into another.
The system in Narcissist is mostly similar to Continuum, but cleans up some of the early-game issues so the whiff factor isn't as high. The late game still goes up into the elder-god levels of psychic and physical power, dovetailing into the Antedesertium supplement (which I'll cover in another review). The tweaks to the system definitely help it scale better at both ends. The art is ok but kind of surreal in an unhelpful way.
The setting for Narc (what an ironic nickname for the game...) starts off in our world, which they call Swarm Prime. As a starting character ("Drifter") you're mostly focused on fixing what went wrong in your life, but the world you end up in is never exactly what you wanted. In the midgame you leave Swarm Prime behind and join the greater society of Drifters, seeking meaning through belonging even if you can't admit it. Some people help other Drifters break free of Swarm Prime or nearby worlds; others twist timelines to find weapons to use against the Continuum or seek to understand the strange, ghostly time loops left behind by failed Drifters. The endgame pits you against the Inheritors, time-traveling transhumans who are the endpoint of the Swarm Prime timeline. Your eventual goal is to fracture that world into an infinite array of solipsistic worlds where everyone gets their own heaven exactly the way they want it. What that means for everyone in those timelines who isn't that particular Narcissist is hinted at darkly in several places.
Narc's paperwork is not in time-and-place tracking, but world-tracking. Every time you spawn a parallel world it starts drifting away from Swarm Prime. The farther it drifts, the safer it is from Continuum influence, but the faster time moves there. You can use up years of your life in very distant worlds and come back to find that almost no time has passed. Every change you make has knock-on effects for every world you've already visited. Every change may spawn another Narcissist who's out to get you for ruining their life.
One terrifying truth about Narcissist is that you never actually visit the same world twice unless it's Swarm Prime. That's the only one where the timeline is sufficiently protected. You never meet the same person twice unless you're there. Every world-hop generates a paradox that forks a timeline. Your Drifter allies are just echoes who look and talk like them. The enemies following you are just shadows of the ones you made. They only find you because there are an almost uncountable multitude of them. Where Continuum requires... well, a continuity of the events in the world, Narc explicitly denies one. The GM has an obligation to drift NPCs personalities as you meet different versions of them across time and dimension.
There's a lot more to it; these are deep games with a lot going on. You can probably tell that I'm a fan. I love time travel and dimension travel in general, and a lot of games use them purely for changes of scenery. Time and Temp is one of the few other games that really does time travel well. Narcissist sets a standard for a completely different kind of dimension-hopping game, and I hope it doesn't go overlooked.
Narcissist is a little harder to find than Continuum, not that getting a physical copy of Continuum is that easy. In fact, the physical copies of Narcissist and Antedesertium that showed up on my doorstep are the only final versions I've ever seen. I'd gladly pick up another if anyone has a source.
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shortest-jorts · 1 year
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Scary isn’t a villain.
I had to say it somewhere.
<S2 EP25 SPOILERS AHEAD>
I’m writing a character analysis essay on this, so I’m not posting my full thoughts here just yet, but I have to get this off my chest.
Scary Marlowe is not a villain. She’s a tragic figure. Albeit, her tragedy is biblical in proportion, and it’s a bit hard to sympathize with her as a character, but she is still tragic in nature. By definition, a tragic hero is a character who faces difficulty and eventual downfall at the hands of some intrinsic fatal flaw within. While I don’t think Scary is going to face literal downfall - after all, she’s still one of four main characters in a long-running podcast - I do believe her flaws and weaknesses need to be seen in the greater context. Scary’s fatal flaw is her hostility and her wallowing, I think we can all agree on that; she’s a lonely figure who seeks out someone, anyone who will understand, and she lashes out to the ones that don’t get it. She hurts the people she loves because she projects her self-hatred onto others. Simply put, it’s hostility rooted in self-loathing, rationalized by the idea that anyone who thinks her worthy of love must themselves deserve repercussions for their poor judgement. She refuses to be empathized with because she refuses to let her guard down, knowing that she’s already so broken that the smallest chip in her armor will make her shatter like glass. She drives people away because deep down, she knows whoever actually will understand her must be “dark and twisted” like her.
And what do you know. William Stampler. Dark, twisted, morally bankrupt, the most detestable villain I’ve seen in a while. As if being abusive and hateful wasn’t enough, he exploits a young girl that he can see weakness and naïveté in. He knows she’s impressionable enough to get her on his side with enough emotional bribery (and magical bribery too). I think sometimes fans forget that Scary is a fourteen or fifteen year old girl. She’s a kid. Not only does she not know better, she finds comfort in shutting out the ones that do. Though she may be hostile and contemptuous, it is Willy that fueled the destructive flame. She’s a victim of manipulation, and her clear need for help is answered by the worst possible human to help a child. He uses her, and it was never the other way around.
Her relationship with violence is obviously harmful on a good day and massively destructive on a bad one, but it’s worth noting that she often is short-sighted when it comes to consequences. Whether she means to hurt or kill anyone she’s done so too is really up to interpretation of the nitty gritty, but it’s clear she doesn’t fully understand the repercussions of her actions. She thinks she’s in the right, and I’ll admit that anyone who commits violence thinks they’re in the right. Scary is really a matter of nature and nurture, being fed only the idea that violence can solve her problems and not that there’s a functional better way. The one person who actually did, to his credit, fully understand her, used it to take advantage of her. She’s correct in saying that no one understands, but this doesn’t discount the fact that she makes herself hard to understand. She fears being perceived in a way that won’t validate her hostility.
Scary is not just one thing. She’s not a hero, she’s not a villain, not a victim or a perpetrator or a redeemable figure. She’s all of it at once. Scary is complex and should be allowed to be such.
Stay tuned for my extremely nitty gritty and over-complicated character analysis essay about Scary, because when they say brain rot is a disease, they mean it’s debilitating.
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tigirl-and-co · 4 months
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i wish i was good at art so people would be interested in my ocs.
except that's a lie. i don't even really enjoy making art besides doodles. what i love is writing. so i think what i actually want is for everyone to fall in love with reading.
and like obviously i get it. im weird. i spent a large part of my youth reading wikis for games i never played, shows i never watched. i still do tbh. i have always loved seeking out superfluous information. bc it was *like* reading a story, except you only had the separate pieces and had to put them together like puzzle to get the whole story
it's a bit like history, now that i think about it.
and i LOVE finding somebody who has OCs with thousands of words of backstory. that's the fastest way to get me interested. a simple doodle and then a wiki entry of information.
idk. i guess im just venting a bit. it feels a bit unfair. every pro-OC post is geared towards artists. people who love to draw. but I just don't. i mean yeah i like making little doodles, but frankly it's about the same enjoyment i get from solving basic math equations.
and fucking obviously i love and treasure all my artist friends. if you are seeing this and you love to draw your OCs, I love you. I would never begrudge you your happiness.
it's times like these i wish forums hadn't really died out. i want a community. i want to make that connection. but i feel ignored bc my talents don't align with the current state of things in the greater community.
whatever. whatever. i just hate venting bc i worry about making people feel bad but sometimes I feel bad. and ive never been able to talk about feeling bad without getting yelled at. Which isn't healthy, of course, and I know that, and Im slowly trying to break the habit of just shoving it down. and Ive had a drink so im willing to be more open so uh. there, i guess. i feel like dogshit that i have neither the energy nor the inclination to draw my OCs and that it's literally fucking impossible to get your OCs noticed through writing. nothing really to be done about it. that's just how life goes. not all hobbies are meant for all people.
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Athena. Goddess of wisdom, strategies blah blah blah.
My new hyperfixation (or rather, a re-ignited one because she’s always intrigued me).
I’m going to admit she’s my favourite goddess not because of how nice or incredible she is- she isn’t. She’s a horrible person/goddess (no offense). And I think part of the reason why shes so intriguing is she actually has many layers to her and how different people interpret her is always so interesting.
People who know the myths will start to think she’s horrible and incredibly petty, always out for vengeance and stuff, yeah they’re not wrong.
“Canon” Greek Myths:
One of the most iconic myths about Athena is obviously the myth of Medusa. But if you’ve been hyperfixating long enough you’ll know that there’s so many versions of the myths. The original one was the Medusa was born a gorgon, Ovid’s version was that Athena got jealous (some even more recent interpretations) / mad at Medusa for breaking her vow of celibacy then turning her into a gorgon. Or Athena turned Medusa into a gorgon to protect her. They sound like very different goddesses. Other gods always seem to have straight forward personalities, Hermes a prankster always mischievous he delivers mail sometimes, Apollo he does music, drives a cool car. Of course each god has minor differences when it comes to version but never as jarring as Athena’s.
My interpretations/headcanons:
(Hot take)In my head, Athena is a bad person. She believes she’s being wise, she’s doing things for the greater good. Sometimes she fails to notice whether things are for the greater good or her good. She’s selfish. She’s delusional. Maybe even a bit of a narcissist who refuses to believes she can be wrong. Which makes her even more fun to imagine!!!
Modern retellings/greek mythology ‘fan fiction’:
Aka Percy Jackson. Her show and book version is already a bit different. In the book, she can be seen as a bit of a deadbeat parent, absent, a perfectionist. But ultimately someone Annabeth looked up to (at the beginning, at least). In Mark of Athena, we (I) see her to be a bit of a bully, kind of guilt tripping Annabeth to do stuff. In the show, however, she’s hasn’t even made an official appearance and she’s already so cruel. Not helping Annabeth because she ‘embarrassed’ her. This slight change did make her more similar to the more popular myths, but slightly altered reader’s impression of her.
Which is what makes her interesting.
I can go on and on about stereotypes (what’s the definition of wise?), societal standards, the change in people’s attitudes towards different things as time passes, how time passes. Heck, if I keep going on I’m certain I’m going to end up talking about the scale of time and our insignificance in the grand universe. But I’m not going to because that draws away from the main point of the blog. Greek mythology.
To me, Greek mythology is something that is timeless and up for interpretation all the time. I love debating about Greek mythology so come debate with me 🥊 (ignore my headcanon part tho leave that niche part of my brain alone).
If you noticed anything I got wrong (or maybe this post is utterly wrong in your eyes, do tell but maybe word it nicely sorry 😅) , tell me cuz I’m always up to learn more about other people’s opinions and different Greek myths!
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