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andthebeanstalk · 11 months

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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

#hlep #original #mental health #my sympathies and empathies to anyone who has to rely on this kind of hlep to get what they need.#the people in my life who most need to see this post are my family but even if they did I sincerely doubt they would internalize it #i've tried to break thru to them so many times it makes my head hurt. so i am focusing on boundaries and on finding other forms of support #and this thing i learned today helps me validate those boundaries. the example with the milk was from my therapist.#the example with the towing company was a real thing that happened with my parents a few months ago while I was age 28. 28!#a full adult age! it is so infantilizing as a disabled adult to seek assistance and support from ableist parents.#they were real mad i was mad tho. and the spoons i spent trying to explain it were only the latest in a long line of #huge family-related spoon expenditures. distance and the ability to enforce boundaries helps. haven't talked to sisters for literally the #longest period of my whole life. people really believe that if they love you and try to help you they can do no wrong.#and those people are NOT great allies to the chronically sick folks in their lives.#you can adore someone and still fuck up and hurt them so bad. will your pride refuse to accept what you've done and lash out instead?#or will you have courage and be kind? will you learn and grow? all of us have prejudices and practices we are not yet aware of.#no one is pure. but will you be kind? will you be a good friend? will you grow? i hope i grow. i hope i always make the choice to grow.#i hope with every year i age i get better and better at making people feel the opposite of how my family's ableism has made me feel #i will see them seen and hear them heard and smile at their smiles. make them feel smart and held and strong.#just like i do now but even better! i am always learning better ways to be kind so i don't see why i would stop

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thanakite · 2 years

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How did no one at Vox catch this? Worst possible preview option for this image

#vox #did not check the preview well enough #bad choices were made

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chalkrub · 6 months

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it's mendel!

#my art #oc #mendel #anthro #furry #dragon #bringing back his sleigh bells because they kinda slay (sleigh)#i will revisit this i think. there's more i wanted to do with it but i wanted something to post before I leave for the next week so here...#watched the fnaf movie the other day for friend birthday and it was INCREDIBLY stupid and silly and bad but still a fun time somehow #the tonal whiplash was bizarre and the characters were incomprehensible and the dialogue was ridiculous and unintentionally funny #it's so funny this took 8 years to do what were they DOIN!!!! it cannot have been polishing the script!!!#but the animatronics and set design were incredible. even if they stopped being scary very fast i loved the funny murderous animals #playing elastica connection and iggy pop wild child was a choice that was made #anyway truly wild. i played the first four games and that's it so i can hardly profess to be the target audience #illustration

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demodraws0606 · 3 months

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What Cyberpunk DeadBoy Means and What it's Potentially Foreshadowing (aka very complicated analysis that makes a lot of sense and could happen depending on how colorpalet is feeling while writing the story)

Now I'm seeing so many people like running around wondering what this event could mean for the future for multiple reasons and like I've made like one post throwing my hat into the ring.

I've been frustrated with people's unwillingness to realise that this comm is prob foreshadowing because this is not the first time Colorpalet has hidden foreshadowing into comms weither subtely or not

Exemple's being :

-Akito's second comm foreshadowing his third event

-Lower's cover art literally foreshadowing what would happen to Mafuyu's phone in her event

-88 vocals being emurui and nenekasa foreshadowing the kind of dynamic the disbandement arc had with nenekasa wanting to move forward with emurui being scared of isolation

-Probably way better exemples that I forgot

I've seen people make Some assumptions which I don't agree with but there is one thing I think is true

There is 100 pourcent gonna be struggle between corporation/reality and WxS.

Purely because that's been WxS's entire theme since the beginning. They constantly bash you over the head with the theme of compromising with reality and the importance of dreams. In fact the pick of Maiki-P is not at all surprising as he basically has the same message WxS has just... well harsher.

The Big thing people have ignored however is by focusing on the lyrics, they've ignored something that's personally to me even more telling and that's the line distribution

We know for a fact colorpalet loves to mess around with line distribution, weither it's to make characters say lines that fit them or to kind of foreshadow their headspace.

Now something Big happens with the line distribution of Cyberpunk Deadboy that i've seen NO ONE notice and that's in the last chorus (that and also Tsukasa's lines which people have pointed out but it works less on it's own which is why I'm gonna analyse his lines afterwards).

This is the only time the chorus is like that, the others have a much more even distribution.

In fact the distribution choice makes it look like the rest of WxS is Talking to Rui.

It's even more evident considering the lines they chose to make WxS sing compared to only just Rui

Emu/Tsukasa/Nene saying kimi (you)

Rui saying boku (i)

Which honestly makes me think this is colorpalet foreshadowing some kind of issue reguarding specifically Rui. Remember Emu's second event ? The story of Rilley whose imagination was crippled by the industry to the point where he didn't really have any artistic vision until Emu's grandpa helped him.

In fact remember how the flashback that showcases that has Rilley working on a film

Now we get to Tsukasa's line which have been pointed out to be kind of sus but it's not just his lines.

Tsukasa refuses to sing with Rui (unless it's a line they all sing together but i consider those exceptions). In fact pretty much everyone has a duo line with each other except those two.

In fact in the section where Rui has duo lines with everybody, Tsukasa is the only one he doesnt sing with and the visuals make it clear that it's something that we're supposed to find strange

And then we of course have Tsukasa's solo lines

Tsukasa is the only one that say "fuzakeruna" outside of Rui (of course ignoring entire group WxS lines) and i've seen some people pointed out how it sounds like he's saying it in response to Rui's lines. Which I agree with.

Then we got his big boy solo lines

These lines will make more sense with my theory/analysis but right now if we go with the idea that WxS in the last chorus were speaking to Rui and Tsukasa in this comm refuses to sing with Rui then this implies those lines are Tsukasa speaking to Rui.

And this is where the insanity begins because people have pointed out a concerning trend with Ruikasa that I know some people use for shipping fuel but for me kinda feels more so like foreshadowing.

IGNORING all the ARG ass weirdness of the Fixer 2dmv, this choice to switch Ruikasa's colors have to mean something in my opinion outside of just wholesome shipping influence especially considering the two songs they do this are less than jovial.

What this kind of color switching signifies to me is that, Ruikasa somehow are/or will switch places.

And with that let me bring back Tsukasa's lines

These lines stand out because Tsukasa before remembering his dreams was extremely shallow only doing things for fame and probably the money that would come with it.

Now if you think about everything I've layed out I think you can gain a pretty clear picture.

Of Rui falling into the trap Rilley did, becoming jaded and losing the true motivation of his dream (or at least starting to have doubts). Becoming stuck with the struggle of managing dreams and reality.

Rui's costume even has a mask which can be a metaphor for his artistic voice and individuality being silenced .

Which now you get into the line distribution where WxS is implied to be talking to Rui.

And you get to Tsukasa, who is refusing to sing with Rui and in fact seems to be arguing with Rui if we really want to overthink it. In fact almost switching their roles from the main story.

Because Tsukasa has grown now and how else to show that growth than to switch Rui and Tsukasa's perspectives/roles.

Now how this would happen really depends since there are multiple ways they can go about it with the time they have.

There is obviously mystery dude dude (who i know now is sakaki) who still gives me bad vibes. However there is actually two way they can make mystery dude trigger this sort of plot :

-Mystery dude is malicious and actively manipulates/confronts Rui to make him rethink his worldview

-Mystery dude isn't malicious but instead is just jaded/has been through a lot of industry bullshit which ends up rubbing off on Rui accidentally

But you can even just not have mystery dude involved with this at all (which i doubt but still) because you know what loose plotpoint is still lingering over WxS, fucking Asahi

Rui still has not talked about Asahi to WxS, in fact Curtain Call ends on an explicit cliffhanger which is never really emotionally concluded (at least in Rui's own events, technically the arc ender did but there are still a lot of loose threads from that arc). Why would Colorpalet make Asahi come back after Rui graduates, they could've just had him disappear into the sunset but instead they hint at his potential comeback.

Unless Rui will be forced to again confront similar feelings he did during Curtain Call this time with possibly an added layer of whatever happens during WxS's freelance arc.

Anyways yeah this is overly complicated but then again colorpalet is not being easy with us so...yeah.

#project sekai #pjsk rui #rui kamishiro #wxs #wonderlandxshowtime #project sekai theory #project sekai analysis #rui kamishiro analysis #wxs rui #wxs tsukasa #tsukasa tenma #rui #cyberpunk deadboy #i'm sorry if this giant wall of text makes sense to nobody but me but i need this to leave myt mind otherwise i explode #and also i'm not looking at twitter for theories of this event because twitter is the breeding ground of bad takes so idk if i'm the only #one but it's very interesting #anyways i really don't want any “but what if the comm is not at all related to the event at all” because we've had active confirmation #colorpalet describe events and give at least on sentence prompts to commissioners (which we know pinnochioP and the creators of Mr.Showtime #I believe) and again even if it WERE the case and it was a fluke or a rewrite or whatever #it doesnt change the fact colorpalet made an active choice to make the line distribution and 2dmv like this #this is the motherfuckers that foreshadowed an arc ender years before through a fucking song cover art #complain about their writing all you want these motherfuckers love little detail oriented shit like this for better and for worse

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royalarchivist · 1 month

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Fit: You know... There's a reason I'm a loner, that I'm a nomad, that I go from place to place. 'Cuz everywhere I go, people die. Fit: I'm just- I'm a walking bad omen.

I know Fit probably said this as a joke and it wasn't meant to be that deep, but I've got a shovel and I'm ready to dig, because this comment fits his QSMP cubito way too well.

[ Subtitle Transcript ↓ ]

–

Fit: I had nothing to do with any of this! I had nothing to do with any of this! [He notices the Allays trapped in a room and gasps] Ohhh– C'mon, get out of here– You're gonna burn to death! Get out of here.

Fit: This is why I don't walk into churches. This is why I don't walk into churches, for this reason. You know– 'cuz it- it would just burn down. It would just burn down if I walked right in. This is what happens. I'm an unholy man.

[The sound of villagers dying]

Fit: Oh yeah, they're all dead. They're f- they're doomed. They are DOOMED.

Dono: You showed up and the mansion burned itself down, made a crack about never walking into churches, then thunder happened? Your manifestation skills are too damn high dude.

Fit: You know– ok, I'm a little cursed. I'm a little cursed, as you can clearly see. You know... There's a reason I'm a loner, in Minecraft, that I'm a nomad, that I go from place to place. 'Cuz everywhere I go, people die. Ehh... you know? I'm just- I'm a walking bad omen. I'm a walking bad omen. Look at this sht. It's- it- ugh...

Fit: These things happen.

#FitMC #Fit #March 6 2024 #QSMP #He was actually playing on his personal MC server at the time #but he's made the church burning down joke before while on QSMP #so I'm like ''🤔 How can I turn this into lore? 🤔''#Spitballing here but I think it would be very interesting if q!Fit felt like he was cursed because all this bad luck kept happening to him #and the people around him #and people kept dying #So maybe that's one of the reasons he wound up in 2b2t #Either by choice or by force #edited #sorry for the back to back Fit clips #I have others I want to post but these were shorter and relevant to current events #not this one though this one I'm just posting for my own sake if I'm being honest #banger lines #subtitles

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lord-squiggletits · 4 months

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One of my favorite parts of phase 2 (and indeed one of the few moments I resonated with IDW Prowl) was when the neutrals were coming back to Cybertron and Prowl said that he refused to let Autobots be pushed aside and overruled after they were the ones who fought for freedom for 4 million years (the exact wording escapes me atm).

And I mean, that resentment still holds true even once the colonists come on bc like. As much as it's true that Cybertron's culture is fucked up, and as funny as it can be to paint Cybertronians as a bunch of weirdos who consider trying to kill someone as a common greeting not important enough to hold a grudge over.... The colonists POV kind of pissed me off a lot of times, as did the narrative tone/implications that Cybertronians are forever warlike and doomed to die by their own hands bc it just strikes me as an extremely judgemental and unsympathetic way to deal with a huge group of people with massive war PTSD and political/social tensions that were rampant even before the war?

Like, imagine living in a society rife with bigotry and discrimination where you get locked into certain occupations and social strata based on how you were born. The political tension is so bad there's a string of assassinations of politicians and leaders. The whole planet erupts into an outright war that leads (even unintentionally) to famine and chemical/biological warfare that destroys your planet. Both sides of the war are so entrenched in their pre-war sides and resentment for each other that this war lasts 4 million years and you don't even have a home planet any more. Then your home planet gets restored and a bunch of sheltered fucks come home and go "ewww why are you so violent?? You're a bunch of freaks just go live in the wilderness so that our home can belong to The Pure People Who Weren't Stupid And Evil Enough To Be Trapped In War" and then a bunch of colonists from places that know nothing about your history go "lol you people are so weird?? 🤣🤣 I don't get why y'all are fighting can't you just like, stop??? Oh okay you people are just fucked up and evil and stupid then" ((their planets are based on colonialism where their Primes wiped out the native populations btw whereas the Autobots and OP in particular fought to save organics. But that never gets brought up as a point in their favor)) as if the damage of a lifetime of war and a society that was broken even before the war can just magically go away now that the war is over.

Prowl fucking sucks but he was basically the only person that pointed out the injustice of that.

And then from then on out most of the characters from other colonies like Caminus and wherever else are going "i fucking hate you and your conflicts" w/ people like literal-nobody Slide and various Camiens getting to just sit there lecturing Optimus about how Cybertronians are too violent for their own good and how their conflicts are stupid, with only brief sympathetic moments where the Cybertronians get to be recognized as their own ppl who deserve sympathy before going right back to being lambasted.

Like I literally struggled to enjoy the story at multiple points because there was only so much I could take of the characters I knew and loved being raked over coals constantly while barely getting to defend themselves or be defended by the narrative so like. It was just fucking depressing and a little infuriating to read exRID/OP

#squiggposting #and like dont get me wrong barber wasnt trying to make cybertronians the bad guys or whatever #it's just a problem with his writing where like. he has A Message he wants to send #and so he uses the entire story literally just for The Message even if it involves bullshit plotlines #or familiar characters ppl were reading about for the past decade being shit on by OCs made up to fill a new roster #like barber's writing tends to lean way too much on a sort of lecturing tone #without giving proper care towards including moments where characters get to like. fucking express themselves and share their side #sort of like how barber couldnt be bothered to write pyra magna and optimus actually talking to each other during exrid #and instead during OP ongoing pyra is suddenly screaming about how OP is unteachable #even tho she never even tried to teach him bc she and OP never interacted bc i guess barber couldnt be bothered #he just needed someone to lecture OP so fuck making the story make sense or like letting OP get to say anything in defense #this is the infuriating part of barber's writing bc i think he has incredible IDEAS and was in charge of the lore i was most interested in #but most of the time his execution sucks and he's basically just mid with a few brilliant moments occasionally #or like he has a message about the cycle of violence he wants to convey #but his narrative choices trying to convey that theme made his story come off as super unsympathetic to the ppl who suffered #to the point where barber actively kneecapped some scenes that couldve been super fucking intense and emotional #in favor of the characters lecturing each other or some stupid plot to criticize OP #that time in unicron where windblade screamed about how this is their fault and then arcee replied that her planet is build on coloniation #shouldve happened more often than literally the last series of the ocntinuity. like goddamn stfu about your moral superiority #when your own sins are right fhere lol

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lenreli · 1 year

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#please consider for your Hob/Dream

Tom Sturridge in A Waste of Shame | Ferdinand Kingsley in Venice Preserv’d

#dc #dcedit #the sandman #thesandmanedit #sandmanedit #dreamling #dreamlingedit #hob x dream #dream x hob #hob gadling #dream of the endless #mine #i already infected the server with this and there should be more #we were talking abt thirsty scholar dream and rogue merc hob #also hob in the leather pants while dream's in the pantaloons/tights *chef's kiss*#many thoughts were had #although a thousand variations are welcome tbh #yes tom made bad face choices with the hair. we ignore that #1k

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spacedlexi · 3 months

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people who think clem surviving makes no sense are so funny. "they were literally foreshadowing her death the entire season" let me introduce you to the concept of a red herring. she tells lilly she isnt lee and shes right. the narrative was forcing her down that path, a path she saw as an inevitable fate waiting to take her too, but its a narrative broken by aj, who is also his own person and not S1 clem

"it happened to lee, and itll happen to you" lilly tells clem she'll die protecting aj from some mistake he makes, when in reality his defiance of her will is what saves her life after she had already accepted her fate. he breaks clem free from the lee cycle and they get their relatively happy ending. good for them

#anyway in the commentary they talk about how they Were going to have a death ending but didnt like the idea of the good/bad ending #and how people would moreso try to avoid the 'bad end' which i understand and appreciate bc thats usually what happens #so instead they gave us both :) idk why some people seem to have such a huge problem with that #they broke the cycle :) the ericson kids broke the cycle by being a loving community :) they all break the cycle by refusing the delta #lilly and minnie were both lost to the cycle. lilly with her dad and minnie with lilly #minnie couldnt let go. clem almost did the same and it would have killed her too. but aj makes a Choice and it saves her #god even tho clem is noticeably happier in s4 shes still so gd depressed and Tired. she accepted it so fast im so glad he saved her #like idk you saw her come back on screen after that massive fake out and you got Mad?? i was crying twice as hard #i know ive made this similar post before but like i still see this criticism in 2024 and i just have to laugh now #it speaks #twdg #i just love the narrative threads of S4 bro.... seasons 1 and 4 are two sides of the same coin and i love that. its satisfying

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cimicherrychanga · 1 month

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Complicated Relationship with God (As Seen Through Lyrics in the Character's Playlist)

#my art #wc #weirdos class #seth #hes SO weird abt religion it drives me insaaaane every time i listen to his playlist im like aughhhh #the complicated relationship is basically 'god never answered my prayers im done trying to believe. i shall take his place #and burn this whole place to the ground to create a new world' hes not okay if u were wonderin <3 #anyways. this collage is an epic rama vulnerable moment ( i am very reluctant to share what music i like beyond certain bands)#(its bc i got made fun of so much for my bad taste </3 so now im embarrassed abt every single thing i like)#showing someone music i enjoy is like. such a big thing for me its like. im entrusting u w rama secrets...#and if ur mean or dismissive i WILL be sads forever. that applies here btw <3 #if any1 is mean abt my lyric choices ill. delete my blog and disappear off the internet forever. okay?#HOWEVER on the same vein. ur invited to tell me if u know the songs...and if u know more than 5 of them we shall have a summer wedding

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ageofzero · 2 months

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Yuna is the antagonist of a potential Final Fantasy X-3, thank you for coming to my TED Talk

edit: okay I'll put it under a read more since it'll be a long post (but not as long as my entire conversation was), but what's promised is due.

Now that I have to make the post for real I had to do some wiki reading on what the actual Things going on in the novella were, and… well, a lot of my theorycrafting was based on incomplete and kinda inaccurate information. BUT I can’t read Japanese, the book was never released here, and I am going to go with rule of cool for a little bit of this even as I keep the stuff that sounds kinda dumb on the surface. I’ll be the first to say that Tidus exploding from a bomb he thinks is a blitzball is dumb (true), and Chuami thinking she’s Auron’s daughter is a dumb plot beat (petty), but I’m weaving this bridge and I’m not going to rewrite those. I am going to change some contexts and make them exist in a narrative that I hope is compelling. That’s my disclaimer, now I’m gonna get into it.

SO.

The scenario from the novella and audio drama is thus: Tidus died again in an accident, and Yuna brings him back. But he’s not back in the same way that the Fayth gave this dream a real living body at the end of X-2. The official term for it is “beckoned”, but I probably won’t use that to describe him based on my previous understanding. No matter if he’s beckoned or not, or whatever terminology you want to use, the thing is that Yuna summoned him back. She’s holding him to life, and he can never know. It’s been a year since the moment Tidus died, and Yuna has seemingly regressed into patterns that put her into what was once Yevon’s circle. Tidus is looking injured/weakened (“Chuami: It wasn’t just [Tidus’s] words that felt hollow. When I shook his hand, his grip felt weak and lifeless... I think he’s injured. Or maybe he’s sick or something.”), and people are looking to Yuna for help or information regarding the strange not-quite Unsent (the beckoned) that are appearing in places in Spira. Help she is not capable of giving. Wakka and Lulu are protecting her as she prays in Besaid Temple. The world is seemingly acting out, with a second shoopuf appearing in the Moonflow and its energies overflowing and drawing more illusions into reality. (“Yuna: The Moonflow energy is responding to the will of the living. It’s as if… we’re in the Farplane.”) And it’s more vivid than what the Farplane is capable of, even breaking the rules of “beckoning”. This is something new, something worse. Something worse enough to bring back Sin (which I thought was just me extrapolating a potential, but they actually mention it in the audio drama that it happens). Yuna promises the people that she will defeat Sin, but Wakka tries to keep her from being made to promise such a thing at first, which is an interesting choice (“Wakka: Yuna, let’s go back to Besaid. They’ll push this all on you… Sin is for summoners, in their minds.”).

Where does the world go in this present circumstances? Why IS Yuna seemingly content to do what chafed her in the Eternal Calm short movie and stay praying in Besaid and helping the elders who are lost now that Yevon as they knew it is in shambles? Why are Lulu and Wakka enabling and protecting her in that? Why is Tidus looking injured and weak and why is Yuna keeping him at arm’s length? Why does she tell him that she’s fallen in love with someone else?

I know the typical story beat interpretation is “Yuna told him that and pushed him away so he wouldn’t be in danger for what she needs to do, bc defeating Sin caused his death last time”. But hear me out. Yuna knows Tidus isn’t alive. She knows that revealing that information to him will cause him to disappear again. She’s actively summoning him back to life and he has no idea (but he must suspect something is wrong, even before Yuna formally pulls away from him, he’s weakening and he probably doesn’t feel right in his own skin). I posit that her maintaining Tidus’s life is what she’s really doing praying in the Besaid Temple. She doesn’t want to get involved with the Moonflow situation, the shoopuf or the overflowing energy of the Moonflow itself. She doesn’t even really act when seeing all the ghosts in the crowd, and actively stops Kurgum from acting (plausible deniability: she and everyone else decide that sending them in that moment would be the wrong call and riots would break out, but that density of ghosts means that’s a significant amount of pyreflies that could become fiends at any moment).

I posit that Yuna’s powers are working, that people close to her think her powers aren’t working (Lulu and Wakka), and she’s hiding it from everyone else. That her powers aren’t working because she’s currently using them to maintain Tidus’s existence. And this maintaining is breaking the Farplane in half, because she’s powerful but has no idea what she’s doing. (Why would she really know what she’s doing or the consequences? Who has any information of what she’s doing and what will happen if she does it?) I posit that Yuna’s love for Tidus is so strong that it corrupts her sense of right and wrong. X-2 is Yuna largely going on a personal quest, and incidentally helping people but separating herself from the title of High Summoner and doing something she wants to do. Rikku encourages her to do something for herself for a change right before she agrees and runs off to become a sphere hunter. She still saves the world, this time from an ancient danger Old Yevon buried and an Unsent is threatening to use (for love, notably), but she did it in the course of looking for Tidus. Who the Fayth return to life, who she hugs and is so so relieved to have in her arms again.

She’s not going to let him go, she couldn’t let him die again so much that she called him back to life.

(side note: I never truly knew how this happened so I had to consult the wiki page on the novella, and I suspect what original information I was working with was misrepresented and misinterpreted. I openly admit that the wiki page doesn’t really help me fully understand what happened, aside from explaining how Tidus ended up in proximity to a bomb. My understanding from someone’s explanation was that an Unsent summoner on the island Yuna and Tidus got washed up on after a storm told her she could call back the dead if she wanted, as a summoner. They’re all made of pyreflies, Aeons and Fiends and People and Unsent alike, and summoners are in the business of manipulating pyreflies. Either calling them from the Fayth to form an Aeon, or Sending them to the Farplane so they do not become Fiends. A summoner with enough power could summon someone back from the dead, could they not? And this Unsent summoner knew how it worked, and told Yuna how to do it. But I don’t know how real that scene could be, or how accurate it is to what’s written in the book. It’s my rule of cool moment, though, and I worked with that as my understanding when I made this theory. We have to make our peace with that, if you’ll allow me this extrapolation of Spira’s rules and a summoner’s powers.)

(The meme is Tidus kicking a blitzball and it turned out it was a bomb and his head gets blown off, but wiki says they ended up on a vision of a Besaid from 1000 years ago, and the bomb was something neither Tidus or Yuna had seen before and to them it looked like a blitzball. So, Tidus approached what he thought was a blitzball, wondering who’s ball it was, and it exploded as he reached it. I still think that’s really dumb but I’m not editing it out bc Tidus’s death creates very interesting consequences.)

So, if Yuna is summoning Tidus back to life, and she desperately doesn’t want him to find this out so she avoids him and pushes him away through any means necessary, but he’s still weakening and fading enough to be noticeable by people… perhaps also himself… Yuna returning to Yevon in some capacity could just as likely be her looking for a means to keep feeding power to this summoning she’s doing so she doesn’t lose him. And what kind of consequences does it have to do this? He’s being summoned, but he’s not actually an Aeon. He’s not an Unsent, he’s not just being beckoned. He wasn’t even real, he was a dream in a summon held together by the raw power of Yu Yevon turning into Sin. The Moonflow overflowing and seeing a long-dead shoopuf is the least of the consequences. The Farplane is delicate, it requires careful maintenance, and here Yuna is shoving her foot in the door and holding it open for a solid year! And no one knows she’s doing this! Spira’s past is full of history, some of that long-buried secrets that no one was supposed to find again. Sin wasn’t supposed to be able to come back, but the ghosts aren’t staying ghosts anymore (“Lulu: I mean Sin came back, right? What’s to stop anything else from coming back?”).

Even people who only know her by reputation seem to think she’s acting strangely (“Kurgum: I thought Lady Yuna was… a righteous person.”), because something is wrong and no one can put their finger on what. Who would have the pieces to put any of this together, and who would even suspect Yuna in the first place? She’s actively not getting involved in politics, she’s locked herself in Besaid, she seems reluctant to answer someone she worked with and should be amicable with now (Baralai).

I think the story should follow down this path, I think it should find Yuna at the end of it, once savior and now destroyer. She’s willing to let the world rip apart in order to keep Tidus, and I think that’s a compelling premise for X-3. The past surging forward like ghosts, vengeful and lost and wanted and terrifying. Who sides with Yuna (Wakka, Lulu) and covers up the problem? Who bands together to face down the High Summoner (Tidus, Rikku)? Who doesn’t know where to place their allegiance, or who changes sides when they realize the extent of what Yuna’s hiding? What does she do when she’s faced with her friends, and the person she loves so much, telling her to stop?

There’s a line in Eternal Calm where Yaibal (named in X-2 but not in the movie itself), after asking about whether or not she’d be joining one of the factions, if she’d be making a faction of her own. And I think in this potential X-3, she’s making her own faction through the actions of becoming antagonist. She’s made Wakka cover for her, she acts in a way that make Lulu and Wakka both protect her regardless of whether or not they know what she’s doing. I think it would be so fascinating to make this a conscious decision on her part. Things have broken so utterly, and she’s desperate to hold them together, and becomes the antagonist in the process.

Squeenix would never do it, they’d never be so bold as to make Yuna the antagonist and follow through on this trajectory of her lying to people to hide that she’s the one breaking the world in half (up to returning the ghost of Sin itself to terrorize Spira). Sin isn’t the final boss in this one, it’d have to be Yuna, we have to stop her and fix what went wrong. It’s not ever gonna happen, but I still think Yuna should be the antagonist of X-3.

#Final Fantasy X #Final Fantasy X-2 #Final Fantasy X-3 #FFX #FF10 #meta #theorycrafting #personal #Let me weave you a really compelling bridge out of the malarky I know of post X-2 content #I promise you that Yuna is the antagonist in this scenario and Squeenix are cowards who’d never do it #Tega writes #it's under the read more #I did not go whole hog into the entire plotting out I did I've just introduced the premise #I had a deep conversation with my RBB writer involving my interpretations #He introduced other ideas that were rad #I don't have an exit strategy though #as in I have no idea how the game would resolve in this projected scenario #or how I would WANT it to resolve #I came up with a ''good'' ending that's tailor made to feel bad about your choices lmao #but that's not what I think the true ending would be #anyway none of that is specifically about how Yuna should be the antagonist #it's more like the delicious possibilities while the plot leads you to that conclusion #there was a lot and I already wrote nearly 2k words just to explain this much #I have to sort out the rest still it's stream of consciousness discord messages

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