#but i think we really get like. so doomsday around here about stuff. and like. it’s really not all bad

[dycefic]

Tom Saves The World

Everyone knows that it’s super-heroes who save the world. They fight the aliens, or the monsters, or the bad guys. And mostly, that’s true.

But not always.

I’m a psychic. The thing is, my range isn’t that great. I don’t have much detail more than about 36 hours out, 48 for something really big. I’d had a nebulous sort of bad feeling for about a week before this one finally hit, and it was big. Something very tough and very supernatural was going to come up out of the harbor of Nova Roma, and the death-toll was going to be high. Crazy high.

I did all I could. I told the Unaligned Supers Job Placement Agency, and they put the word out to everyone on both sides of the Line. The Henchman’s Union don’t like natural disasters any more than anyone else, and they’re often quite helpful against eldritch horrors and stuff like that. Things that don’t hire henchmen and ruin the property values.

The trouble was, nobody big was around. The only really big team of heavy hitters on the West Coast were away dealing with some sort of doomsday cult - I never was clear on what that was about - and Guarde and Dog Fox were out of touch and even Mx Frantique was out of town at someone’s wedding. It was going to happen in less than two days and we couldn’t find anyone to help and I was seriously considering calling in some kind of bomb threat or something to get people away from the docks, at least.

And then, about eighteen hours out, it just… went away.

Which never, ever happens.

My powers might be short range, but they’re reliable. I don’t get stuff wrong, and I hadn’t been able to find any way to prevent what was going to happen, or even been able to identify anyone who could. But someone did. Someone had done something to stop the threat, something that happened literally while I was opening my car door. When I reached for the handle, thousands of people were going to die. By the time the door was open, there was no threat at all.

At first I thought it must have been a ranged thing. Like, whatever I’d been seeing (all those teeth, I saw them in nightmares for months after) had been distracted by something tasty on its way here and gotten off track, that it’d come up somewhere up or down the coast. My range isn’t that big, either. Anything outside about thirty miles might as well be on Mars for all I know about it. So we kept a watch out, and warned the chapters of the Union and the Agency in other cities.

But nothing happened. Nothing at all. I couldn’t explain it, and I was really unpopular for a while. Supers do NOT like people who cry wolf. There’s enough freaky shit we have to deal with without someone panicking everyone with a dire prophecy that fizzles out.

Thank all the gods that Tunny showed up. Nobody’s really sure what Tunny actually is - sentient fish creature, some kind of really mutated human, an alien, or what. She changes her story a lot. But she’s pretty friendly, especially for a twenty-foot-long horror-movie-mermaid-thing with four arms, so when she came into harbor to pick up some supplies a guy from the Agency went out to tell her what I’d seen. I’d gotten a wharf and dock number, so she went down to check.

I don’t think anyone had ever seen Tunny scared before. Her English wasn’t good enough to really explain what she’d found hibernating down there, but it was something very old and very powerful and very dangerous, and if it’d been woken up my vision would just have been the start of the crisis.

She rounded up a bunch of whales to help her move it, once she was sure it hadn’t been agitated and wasn’t likely to rouse if moved carefully. They towed it out before dawn, not wanting to scare the civilians, and when I saw the footage from the helicopter the Union sent up, when I saw how big the swell was, how many whales were pulling, I swear I nearly crapped myself. No wonder I’d been getting hints a week in advance. Somehow we dumbass humans had built a whole fucking city almost on top of some kind of Ancient Old… THING, and eroded the sea-bottom until it was exposed, and if someone hadn’t done whatever it was we’d all have been dead long before Tunny arrived. And not just all as in ‘all of Nova Roma’, it could have taken out half of the continent... or all of it.

It took me years to find out what happened. YEARS. It turned into a kind of hobby, tracking everything that might possibly have come into contact with Wharf 38 on that particular day.  

And what I found, eventually, was a city employee named Thomas Briggs.

I’d found out early on that 38 wasn’t in good repair. Not that bad, but not great. It was old, things were getting a bit saggy in a few places, but there’d been no sign that anything was likely to fall off on the day. It had sat there for a couple of years after the crisis that never happened,, doing its job without problems then been rebuilt without any drama at all.

Entirely, completely, and totally because of Thomas Briggs.

The story, when I finally pieced it together, went like this.

There’d been some project or other to build some sort of high-budget science project over on the other side of the harbor, hanging it off’ve Pier 8, the furthest out on that side. Something about tracking sea-life or ships or something. My conversational English is near perfect, I’ve been here for years, but I don’t speak science nerd in ANY language. It’d all been approved, some university was covering most of the cost, it was all gonna be fine. And it was gonna be over on 8 because that side of the harbor is the shallow end. It’s where the sailboats go. All the big stuff that would block visual sensors and deafen the thing with engine noise was over in the thirties, in the real deep water.

They were almost ready to install the thing when a bunch of rich dudes suddenly got their panties in a bunch over having a big sciency tower thing ruining the view from their yachts, and tried to get it moved.

To, and I’m sure you guessed this, Wharf 38.

Which was completely insane. It wouldn’t be able to do its job over there, it’d be way more in the way, and (although they couldn’t have known it) the installation would definitely have woken up the Thing sleeping by the wharf and we all would have died. But rich dudes with yachts don’t care about that stuff. They’d bitched out and bribed up their friends on the city council, and those friends had done their thing, and the scientists had been left in the dark, and it’d almost gone through. They’d figured to install it right away, so that when the science guys found out it’d be too late and they’d either have to pay a lot to move it or just use it where it was.

Enter Thomas Briggs.

Mr Briggs, Tom to his friends, didn’t give a crap about the yachts or the science. He was a senior money guy for the commercial wharfs, the one who figured out things like how much money they’d take in in a quarter, and what the repair budget should be, stuff like that. He found out about this thing two days before the disaster would have happened, and sat down and did the math.

Then he sent out an email to the guys trying to push this through, and he ripped into them like they’d threatened to knife his mother. I got my hands on that email, and I didn’t understand a lot of it any more than the council guys would have. It was ALL numbers. But at the top he wrote it out in plain English. Pier 8 was new, and rated to handle the weight of the thingy. Wharf 38 was going to be scrapped in a few years, and it was NOT rated for that kind of structure. Pier 8 had plenty of room around it. Wharf 38 was already a tight fit for the big commercial ships, and adding a structure sticking out on one side would block off at least half of the wharf to those ships completely.

Bottom line, putting the thing on Wharf 38 would cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars more per year than putting it on 8, AND the city would have to eat the cost if 38 collapsed under it which it could easily do, AND the city would have to pay to move it in a couple of years anyway when 38 was due to be rebuilt.

And he cc-ed every important person he had an email address for, including the mayor, the anti-corruption people, and several reporters.

He must have sent that email right when I was opening my car door.

The whole plan collapsed right there, and some people got fired. There was no news story because the whole plan got killed before the reporters even got to the right office. The installation was started on Wharf 8 a few weeks later and I never connected it to a commercial wharf on the other side of the harbor.

One email, and a man who I never could have located in time, a man who had no powers at all, a man who was just conscientiously doing his job looking after the city’s money saved the city, and the continent, and maybe even the world.

Who could have predicted that? Not me, that’s for damn sure.

I can’t deny that I went home and got drunk off my ass that night. Just thinking about how close that had been made my hands shake. One man. One honest man who’d done the math.

I put the word out, once the hangover wore off. What had happened. That Thomas Briggs was the reason we were all alive and everyone better make his life real nice from now on, because he’d done what none of us could do and nobody but the supers would ever even know it.

He’s got a lot of luck coming to him, I can tell you. We don’t forget debts like that.

And I knew that’d freak him out, because honest men don’t like it when people start doing them a lot of favors for no apparent reason, so I tracked him down at the little bar where he likes to have a quiet beer on Friday nights before he goes home. Hell, I was the one who’d gone through it all, back then. I should get to tell him.

I sat down beside him at the bar and looked at him. I saw a thin, small, balding man who looked like he worried too much and didn’t get enough sleep, with lines around his eyes. Yeah, he looked like a man who’d do the math. “Thomas Briggs?”

He blinked at me through his glasses. “Yes? Do I know you?”

“No, you don’t. My name’s Barkhado Omar, and I’ve been looking for you for a long time.” I offered him my hand and he shook it, still looking confused. Which was fair, ‘cause I doubt a lot of seven foot tall Somali women came up to him in bars even when he was young. He’s got to be close to retirement now.

He frowned. “Looking for me? Why?”

I smiled at him. “Tom, let me buy you a drink and tell you about the day you saved the world.”

It’s usually us who save the city, or the world. We have all the intel, all the advantages, all the powers.

But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s someone like Tom Briggs, doing the right thing at the right time and never knowing that he changed the course of history.

Wild, huh?

--

This story is a direct result of me and my ex chatting about how different the entire Marvel Universe would have been if Jean’s first ‘resurrection’ - being found in a life pod under a wharf, IIRC - had happened at like... any other time. Earlier. Later. It would have changed SO MUCH.

And we speculated about how it could happen, how someone just puttering around in middle management might have unknowingly saved countless lives, prevented Madelyne’s corruption, the legacy virus, all of it, just by postponing that particular set of repairs a bit longer.... and I couldn’t resist writing a version of the story in which Tom does, in fact, save the world.

#short fiction #dyce's supers universe #comics inspired #sometimes something just goes right #horseshoe repair

[blueikeproductions]

The EarthSpark Expedition game came out, and since no one is really talking about it, I’ll toss around my two cents. Spoilers naturally.

So first things first, the game’s placement in the story. I think most of us were going to write it off as an adventure in a micro-continuity that didn’t fit with the show. Well that is thrown out the window. The game takes place after S1, with a small recap in the form of a charming RP game by the kids and Terrans.

The story feels like an epilogue, documenting the aftermath of what happened to Mandroid after his Doomsday Project went kaput. Well, he seemingly survived, though we don’t see him in person until the end of the game, and he’s giving the Doomsday Project another crack with the Energon Activator. This time he requires three relics to power the contraption, so naturally Bee is sent on a mission by Optimus to collect them, with Alex as Bee’s wingman.

The twist however is Mandroid has upgraded his mind control chips, having reprogrammed Skullcruncher, Skywarp, Nova Storm and Grimlock again, but also Optimus Prime, meaning Mandroid was playing 4D Chess to get Bee to essentially do his dirty work for him. It is kind of interesting Manny had to reprogram the jets since they willingly served him before, but then again after trying to obliterate (TERMINATE!) all Cybertronic life it makes sense the femjets wouldn’t want to anymore lol. Poor Grim can’t catch a break, but this time he seems to shrug off the experience, mostly calling it unpleasant. To my surprise, Skullcruncher can talk here. I wonder why he’s largely mute in the show (besides what I assume is budget).

Optimus being mind controlled is interesting. I know EarthSpark sorta dabbled previously, but it’s been fairly rare for Prime to be “charged with Evil” ala Attack of the Autobots. The Last Knight did it too, but well we all know how that went down financially. The point being after years of Prime being sort of rigid and untouchable, in what feels like heavy mandates from Hasbro, it’s refreshing to see some experimental stuff with Optimus again. EarthSpark’s strength with Optimus was returning to the well meaning, dorky sweater vest father figure from G1, and going farther with a AotAutobots/Dark Awakening vibe with Expedition is especially fun. Especially since it was a big defining moment for Bumblebee and Rodimus, so it’s fun to see it homaged here.

I also like the designs of the various henchbots Bee fights in the game. They appear to be generic Transformers, but I forget what their context was in game, but could we get toys of them, Hasbro.

As for Mandroid, when he finally appears in person, the truth is revealed. The Mandroid we’ve been following is an AI backup of his personality made before Doomsday MK1. The original officially died. His current body is a giant misshapen Arachnimech with tv screens bolted to its body to show off his original human face. Inevitably, Mandroid looses and finishing him off, Bumblebee blows a hole in his body with a MegaMan style charged shot. Hashtag says Mandroid likely can’t revive again as the ruins of GHOST HQ, now overgrown with plant life curiously and looking like ancient ruins in a shot amount of time, has really cruddy Wi-Fi, so the AI couldn’t escape into another body. Bee nevertheless seems determined in case Manny DOES return, implying we COULD see him again in S2 in some capacity. That being said, the vibe I get also feels like Bertram from Family Guy. How he died in show following a botched attempt at killing Stewie via time manipulation, only to return in a Family Guy video game as the main villain picking up where he left off, only to die again with a nonchalant joke about how we’ll never see Bertram again after this. So 50/50 at Mandroid’s return methinks. For all we know, as of typing, the villains of S2 are COBRA as part of Energon Universe synergy.

Still the story was fun. Definitely very Furman, and kinda nostalgic as a result. The Terrans are all perfectly in character of course. The only thing kinda holding it back is the voice acting, as none of the actors from the show are reprising their roles. Though the actor who played Bee in Netflix WFC reprised the role here, and he’s definitely one of the better actors, when otherwise the acting is a little… subpar. Way better than WFC and Prime Wars, but having that amateurish feeling from Cyberverse… They give it their all though and they still feel like their characters so that’s good.

As said it feels like an epilogue, though while fun to see Mandroid back at it, it DOES feel a tad repetitive using the same Doomsday weapon but slightly different, and using mostly the same Transformers being “Robo-Smashed”. I feel like you could’ve gotten some cool gameplay using Shockwave, Soundwave (& the Cassettes), Bombshell, Starscream and Hardtop. Personally I’d have liked including some new Transformers, like how the TFP game was built around the Decepticons rebuilding the Unicronian Thunderwing, with him as the final boss. Something like that maybe, only Mandroid has unearthed a Combiner, a friend recommended the Masterforce versions of the Seacons, with the final boss being a Mandroid controlled King Poseidon. Ah well maybe for the sequel then.

#blueike productions #blueike #transformers #autobots #decepticons #terrans #earthspark #transformers earthspark

[headspace-hotel]

Okay I was planning on staying out of it but this is painful to watch.

To be clear, OP was being very weird and didnt at all need to say that. But it seems like hald the people since then have just been trying to explain what OP mewnt and doing it horribly, because I do in fact get ehat thry were saying.

Theres been a bug movement with online fascists thats like "modern society is too urban (see: diverse). Weve gotten too far from how we traditionally lived, and were so out of touch with nature. Kids spend all their time inside or in the suburbs and never get to see real nature." And its all a recruitment tactic.

The Start of that pipeline is often just "huh modern scoiety is extremely out of touch with nature. Kids grow up without the experiences I had as a kid running around in creeks and stuff. Kids cant recognize plants." And most of that is true and it Is bad, but they then often make a very quick leap to "this is a problem with Society." And from there to fascist talking points.

And like, if you squint, you can very easily draw similarities between the very start of that pipeline and your recent posting.

Again, this is Obviously incredibly stupid and anyone who actually reads anything you post can see that. But like, I can at least see how, if someone is primed to always look only for fascist dog whistles, and one of your recent posts crossed their dash, if theyre not smart, they could arrive at that anxiety.

Everyone since then has just been dumb about it.

...Okay I'm thinking the "cottagecore" discourse has just rotted people's brains out here. I didn't realize it until now but "posting pictures of a basket of freshly picked strawberries is a fascist dogwhistle" really was a Thing on here a while back. Okay. That makes sense now.

I know about the "trad"/fascist-adjacent 'homesteading'/off-the-grid doomsday prepper attitudes. Where I live, being a 'homesteader' often goes along with stockpiling guns.

But these people's attitudes are individualistic, it's all about personally escaping the "Modern" world and living in The Wilderness(tm) somewhere and being "self-sufficient" (lmao). Kind of a manifest-destiny adjacent fantasy (gross)

This is where the "cottagecore" discourse brain worms did immense damage—no one wanted to explain why the individualistic, intrepid settler homesteader fantasy was a problem, so all the well meaning people on the margins of the discourse went "oh, okay, wanting to reconnect with your natural world and consciously participate in your local ecosystems is a fascist/colonialist thing."

I have multiple posts buried deep in my drafts about this somewhere that I was afraid to post, because I was met with the "google is free" stuff when I tried to figure out what was going on, and Google was entirely empty of any material explaining the (alleged?) fascist and colonialist roots of cottagecore.

It makes my brain hurt because yes, actually, I *see* how "homesteading" is sometimes related to white supremacist and colonialist shit, and the fascist and "cottagecore" communities do have an overlap that is not purely coincidental. That's real. It's not made up. But. A lot of people on the internet have learned to recognize fascist "dogwhistles" instead of learning to recognize fascist ideas.

A lot of the work of recognizing fascist-adjacent stuff in the wild does rely on developing a sensitivity to such "red flags." I've talked about things that I consider to be red flags, and I sometimes respond strongly to them. But—it's crucial that you understand that the red flags themselves are not what fascism is. You have to be able to see and recognize the actual harmful components of an ideology instead of deciding that any similarity, no matter how superficial, Is Fascism.

A lot of colonialist and fascist systems of thought have "relationships with nature and growing plants is good" somewhere in there, but the actual poison here comes in a few forms:

unquestioned romanticization of settling/colonizing an Untouched Wilderness

deciding that some kind of stable, inherent 'natural' state of human existence is always good, and 'unnatural' things are bad

modern society is decaying and degenerate, "traditional" values and lifestyles are better (enter romanticizing the past as a paradise of moral and racial purity)

Yes, there were statements in my post that looked superficially similar to some of these. No, those statements were not even remotely close to communicating the same things.

And "dogwhistles" are not about superficial similarity. If you learn about 'homesteading' as a white supremacist fantasy being a thing, and you jump onto a post talking about growing native species like "Oh look I've found a fascist dogwhistle!" You've misunderstood the assignment.

[the-haunted-office]

( @grandgrief - Continued from here!)

Thursday had heard the story from Doomsday too, of course - well, her version, a version that included lots of pacing back and forth and waving her arms around, expletives, and generally just a lot of venting about how unappreciated she feels, not just by Nero and his crew but by everybody. She gets it. She and Doom are the same person, after all, and so she gives Doom the space she needs to verbally vent all her frustrations, even if she's only hearing one, possibly warped side of it as, knowing herself, she has a tendency to view things through a lens skewed by depression, anxiety, and years of being treated like a doormat.

Thursday sees it as her job to act as a liaison of sorts in this instance. More than that, she also sees Nero and his crew as friends, and she'd like to keep them as such and cheer them up on top of that.

"Ehhh, you know, wrong on both sides. Sometimes she needs a bit of a reality check. Not everybody is looking for an ice cream machine that insults you, right? I mean, I think it's hilarious and I would have laughed my ass off, but also, read the room, ahahaha. Not that I've never made that mistake, but yeah. Here," Thursday says, taking her notebook out of her hoodie pocket, opening it, and handing him a sticker she designed of a thumb's up with the words DON'T PANIC in large, friendly letters printed under it to place over the one Doomsday put on the machine. "What do you think of that? Classic! From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My bread and butter, and really, it should be yours too, Nero."

"Also," she says, closing her notebook and putting it away, "I think you should give her the moldy cheese. That'd be so funny. I mean, she's dead, it's not gonna hurt her, and she won't even notice. And why are you guys eating almost expired cheese?! Do you need some fresh food up in here? No wonder everybody's sulky. Why didn't you just say so? Can we like, have a Taco Tuesday? Or is that against regulations? Like, a good Taco Tuesday. How about that? I'll bring in all the taco stuff and we'll have a big ol' taco party in here every Tuesday! It'll be fun."

#grandgrief

[galacticfoundation]

Heya... Mars here. This is a little awkward, but Miss Cynthia seems to think it's a good idea, so... FAQ??

Q: Team Galactic? The doomsday cult?

A: It's not a cult anymore! We've been busting our butts in that court mandated therapy!

Q: Why are you still around?

A: We just want to fix things. The Champion and Cynthia did a really big favor, keeping us out of Forever Jail. Plus, some of us didn't have anywhere else to go. There's only about... 33 of us now?

Q: Why is Mars running this shebang? Wasn't she like, bottom of the totem pole.

A: Rude. But true. Saturn is technically in charge, but he's... not been doing too well. Can't blame him, really. It's a miracle he lasted this long. Jupiter went to Hoenn to work at some space place because we kind of ran out of money. So that leaves little old Mars! Jupiter thinks shes superior still, but I'm not the one with a live in Interpol agent.

Q: What do you even do?

A: Classic community service stuff. Also, working on reuniting stolen Pokémon. And cleaning up the lakes after the whole bomb thing. That was Jupiters idea, by the way. NOT mine. Oh, and about half the grunts have day jobs, for previously stated broke reasons. Saturn does some online coding stuff that I don't understand in the slightest.

Q: Is Cyrus alive?

A: I don't know.

cassini starts another blog, part... 11??? main blog @plasmaapologist blah blah blah. i could use this app to get an autism diagnosis i think

this blog is based on an au of my own dppt interpretation/au. it is canon based but not compliant. ye have been warned. blog will deal with heavy topics from time to time, all will be tagged

- the plot was that of platinum, for the most part

few things to note:

- this blog takes place very closely after dppt. only the events of kanto, johto, and hoenn have happened. asks relating to things in the other games will be answered, but will likely be met with confusion

- the start of this blog is 5-6 months after the events of the game

- charon does not exist. hes stupid and i dont like him. 👎

- lucas is the champion, dawn is the professors assistant

- dawn is probably one of my most heavily headcanoned characters. just a warning ♡

- despite being based on platinum, lucas failed to capture giratina. he later gained the trust of dialga, though their relationship is more of friends than pokemon and master.

- mars and saturn genuinely have good intentions. however please feel free to accuse them of otherwise. (jupiters only acting good to stay out of jail)

reoccurring characters blah blah blah. you know them but i thrust my headcanon upon ye

mars: she/her, 20. main poster. interim leader while saturn recovers. trying her best

saturn: he/him, 26. may occasionally post. not currently acting as leader after a mental breakdown, but still handles finances and does announcements when he can.

jupiter: she/her, 28. currently working at mossdeep space center in hoenn under the very careful eye of interpol. she never actually cared about team galactic, but its keeping her out of jail...

---------------------------------------------------

lucas: he/him, 14. current champion of sinnoh. has been helplessly busy since becoming acting champion. someone give this man a break, please. hes got a bit of a hero complex now. enjoys hanging out with barry and dawn when hes free, which often puts him around team galactic when hes with the latter.

dawn: she/her, 13. professor rowan's assistant. a quiet girl with a melancholic side; her real passion is art, but no one seems to appreciate it. has an odd but strong friendship with mars, and likes helping out.

barry: he/him, 14. impatient as ever. does not get why his friends want to help those galactic freaks so much!? why can't we beat them up and put them in jail forever?!?! main goal: blow up beat his father in battle

cynthia: she/her, 34. former champion of sinnoh. trying to enjoy her newfound free time, but she's been tasked with keeping an eye on team galactic. she secretly doesn't mind, and has developed a friendship with saturn. she wants to visit unova sometime soon, but she's just so busy...

professor rowan: he/him, old. early 60s? haven't decided. it's the professor, man. pretty much dawns main family, since her actual one doesn't seem fond of her. he doesn't really like her hanging with former terrorists, but also, doesn't want to control her.

#pkmn irl #rotomblr #pokeblogging #pokemon irl #pkmn rp #pokemon rp #pokeblog intro #rotumblr #pokemon au #pokemon au blog #pokemon au rp

[mishwanders]

OC Tag Game

Was tagged by @sstewyhosseini

Tagging whoever wants to join in, but the ones I know who also have multiple ocs are @thebisexualmandalorian @chocobothis @mydisenchantedeulogy (IM SO SORRY I KNEW I WAS MISSING SOMEONE) so dragging y’all in lol

Note: also adding in my three self inserts (No.031, Saint, and Moonlight) because they’re characters I love too and wanna talk about them.

Favorite OC

My beloved bioweapon cannibal who just wants a normal life and to love their malewife (wesker). My favorite because there is so much of me in them in regards to how they’re handling everything and the disability stuff I was able to write about - so yeah, favorite baby.

Newest OC

She’s so new, I hardly even know her yet. She came about because I wanted to make a ranger bestie for Link. That’s it that’s all I got lmao

Oldest OC

She was the first one I started writing with, she was a fully fleshed our character in my head since Re8 came out and she’s still my beloved baby. I just really like to put her through the horrors because that’s what the Winters family does baby.

Meanest OC

He is the meanest while also being the funniest. He’s a piece of shit, but he enjoys it. He is haunted by being turned into a bioweapon, waking up in the grave of his own siblings, and having to only consume flesh and blood now, so you know, can you really blame him for being an ass sometimes? He’s cranky.

Softest OC

I wanted to make a kind and gentle OC for The Fierce Deity because he needs some gentleness in his life. She traveled throughout time and realms for his cursed mask so they can be together for a time again. I am a sucker for the destined lovers trope lmao.

Most Aloof/Standoffish OC

Standoffish because I keep throwing them into more bullshit and taking away their memories/making them hide secrets to protect everyone. They’ve got BAGGAGE baggage if you catch my drift.

Dumbest (Affectionate) OC

I don’t think “dumbest” fits her or any of them entirely, but someone had to go here, so the cuntastic bitch goes here. Don’t get me wrong, I love her and her bitchy self, it’s why I created her, but MAN does she get herself into the worst kinds of trouble - as well as everyone else.

Smartest OC

Created a biblical text for the megamycete and was going to burn the manuscript so Miranda could never get her hands on it and it would forever be in their mind. Also was able to manipulate time and space in the megamycete realm to warn themself in the past and everyone around them in the future of the doomsday that was coming. Yeah, I’d say they were smart in that regard.

OC I’d Be Friends With

Ricardo, my sweet baby boy. We would have an absolute blast going to concerts together, talking about plants and witchery things, enjoying some horchata together. Yeah, we’d be the bestest of buddies.

#oc tag game #mish rambles #oc: no.031 #oc: Saint #oc: moonlight #oc: ricardo luis santos #oc: elena winters #oc: sorina spencer #oc: miles wesker #oc: matilda costache #oc: Tauriel

[spiritcc]

top 5 anime and why unironically

i havent even seen 5 animes in my whole live i think, so here it's truly whatever was on my plate at some point-kinda presentation. will probably say a lot about the Era i was in back in the day, strap in, whippersnappers.

bleach. maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. it's like, you know how spn fans know very well the show stopped being good about 3 seasons in but kept watching till the end? bleach is the spn of the anime world. yet i must emphasise that there is a galaxy-sized distance between the importance of bleach in my life vs every other anime on this list. if you're trying to get into it post-factum, it won't work, you know in advance it's a waste of time, it's only when you were there personally to witness its 2.5 WE'RE SO BACK over the other fifty IT'S SO OVER's, its biggest rise in popularity, its peak of fame, its slow loss of fandom, its return, its undignified death. it's only when you were there personally to see all of that and stay because there's no going back already, must just as well sink with the ship. what WAS so good about it anyway? those 2.5 arcs, yea, then you eventually switch to the manga and see that Kubo had the best style out of everyone ever and his backgrounds were popping too, PLUS he's the only one obsessed with fashion so the characters never wore one thing for generations. even when there are uniforms, they are customised to each character and change every time-skip. i took it for granted all these years, big mistake. basically Kubo never really wanted to develop a story, he just wanted to have bleach forever and that was taken away from him, thus its disgraceful fall, but the fall happened primarily because he just didnt want to let go in the first place and any chance he gets at some anniversary stuff, he immediately tries shoving some cliffhangers in as a chance to bring it back. well. the fans are here. we'd be there.

soul eater, which honestly i only watched bc it was initially very funny. kinda cool but primarily just very funny, which it stopped being about halfway through, and that's when i bailed. it also still has the best opening of all anime to this day. also what was funny is how anime ended years before the manga did and mangaka was sooo angy about how they fucked up the ending but then the manga ending came out and it was just the same shit minus some details, from what i've seen. i also have a keychain with several characters that i got in like 2009, it then lay dormant in some sarcophagus for most of the years until 2023 and emerged in perfect condition. no idea what kind of enamel this is but it's like it's brand new, and it's defs the more cool merch to show around than whatever i had of bleach.

kaiketsu zorro, aka yes, the zorro anime. so far i've seen less than 10 episodes but to me it's just the best zorro adaptation that ever existed. they grind diego's reputation into MOLECULES there's NOTHING left of his dignity it's honestly so incredible, plus we're shaping up a good dozen of characters that have overly dramatic fics about them so i'm already anticipating so many otps to root for. i just expect total mayhem and boy am i looking forward to it.

trinity blood. maaaan it's basically like... you learn that the anime exists, you remember that its whole fame is 90% cosplay community, you look into the origins of the cosplay designs, which leads to discovering the light novels, then the manga, and only then you watch the anime in hysterics of what it fucking did to the source material. but it all started because of the anime and we have to alas somewhat respect that. trinity blood is one of those things you get into as an acknowledged doomsday, since you will never see it end, the death of the author will always be on your mind because the event haunts all those narratives at every angle, and his final notes don't actually resolve anything. post-armageddon priests vs vampires vs biblical elements vs science is just the most teenage boy premise, but it Was cool... the light novels were two, ROM and RAM i forget which was which, one was 4 years prior, the second was 4 years after, so two narratives that i think by the end were meant to lock in one place, one day two chapters would come out where the flash forward ends the whole series in a grand armageddon i bet, while the flashback chapter ends the prelude that started the flash forward in the first place. you see characters in flashbacks become bitter people in flashforwards, characters that have great presence in the past being completely absent in the present, which immediately starts Thoughts, the concept of everything was neat. never meant to be, now good luck trying to find both novels past volume 4, the manga doesnt adapt the flashback novels, the fandom is dead, the anime isn't of any help. doomsday place, doomsday fandom.

eh fuck it, shaman king. the russian version of the intro was one of the best sounding ones and thats as far as i can describe it because i wouldn't be able to recite the plot even if i tried. like pokemon for ghost people, truly. it felt like it had 1000 episodes.

#keep em top 5 coming #TB is no joke i only got post vol4 information from Dealers and even then it was just quick recaps #of chapters that do very much exist and been existing for 20 years #now nobody finds out that francesco has a half-brother who is on catherine's side and lusts after her #AX vs inquisition was pretty nice as is but spicing it up with the imagery of francesco vomiting himself to sleep #over his brother wanting to fuck his sister is just something no one gets to experience now

[incompetent-witch]

My Complaints About the Witchy Community #1

When I first started looking at the witchcraft community, on Reddit, Discord, YouTube and TikTok, I was having fun, even though I was more of an observer and didn’t ever post anything except for one or two things. It was all new to me, so obviously it was very fun at first.

It took me only a month to realize there are are lot of dangerous and problematic collective behaviors in this community as a whole. Cause there are a lot of issues. Like we all talk about cultural appropriation, and I would say that that’s the number one issue for sure, but this series of posts aren’t gonna be in order of significance, but rather issues I have with the over all witchy community as I think of it. That and I’d rather do a lot more research on cultural appropriation in general before chiming in. There are lots of people smarter than me who actively talk about it too.

Guys, I came from an extreme evangelical christian household, with a concentration on doomsday. And obviously, they’re highly republican. So I’m gonna tell you right now, I know fear mongering when I see it. I was born in it, drowned in it, and came out the other side. (Thank fuck)

Like, most every creator out there will tell you to literally cleanse and ward every two seconds. Like, I get it, it’s an easy thing to do so really good for beginners to get started with. But that’s not really what’s happening, is it? No, everyone is paranoid as fuck. And our contemporaries teach us to look over our shoulder every second. How many times have I seen or read about people doing return to senders, because they just decided that someone they know casted a curse on them, based off of what exactly? For feeling a little tired lately? C’mon guys.

This cattiness causes people to throw reversals and curses left and right, use words like “Psychic Vampire” when whoever they’re targeting are literally not. Even if they were, that’s a legitimate magical practice. Like guys, they’re fine. They’re not scary, they’re not dangerous. Stop making weird-ass assumptions about other practitioners. Honestly, stop making weird-ass assumptions about random, normal INNOCENT people in general.

Why am I so upset about this? Because we have created a community filled with paranoia and even at times hysteria. It’s conspiracy theory level stuff, (I.E, starseeds, which originates in rewriting history, which is the definition of conspiracy theories.) which has no business being in witchy circles.

We have curse wars and people screaming on planes because they have decided that someone sitting behind them “Is not real!!” (NPC’s conspiracy has entered the chat) 🙄

And don’t even get me started on the constant, ‘evil eye’. Yeah, it’s a genuine traditional concept that exists in different forms across many different cultures, and I’m not saying it’s wrong AT ALL. I’m saying that this aspect of most of our practices is being taught to beginners so much that they just end up seeing everything as scary. More experienced and Influential creators included. PEOPLE WERE LITERALLY SUSPICIOUS OF THEIR OWN FRIENDS AND FAMILY BECAUSE THE DIDN’T LIKE THE SMELL OF ‘PROTECTIVE’ INCENSE….

There is nothing wrong with having a few wards, an evil eye necklace, or cleansing frequently. I personally love running around my room with a stick of incense. It’s fun. I’m not attacking any one individual here. This is no-ones fault, BUT as a community, this is a problem that I have not seen anyone discussing in a way that connects all of these elements together.

People are always screaming “SPIRITUAL PSYCHOSIS!!!” When that is a made up term, and completely disregards the fact that we have MADE THEM THIS WAY! They’re freaking out because we taught them they should be. There’s so many layers to the whole ‘spiritual psychosis’ thing. It in and of itself is ablest. (I’ll make a separate post about it, cause I’ve needed to vent about it for a while now.)

And you know what it brings me back to?

Exorcisms. Evangelicals claiming you have a demon inside of you. Abusive religious parents calling everything demonic. Attacking their own children for doing normal things, or just assuming they did something unclean or whatever and punishing them anyways. I’ve seen a lot.

Good old fashioned Religious-Fear mongering. Because spirituality is still a religion. Don’t make the same mistakes as the Christian churches have done.

A lot of us came from Christianity, and because of our resentment we brought with us none of the good. We only carried with us all of the bad, incorporated it into our craft, wrote about it, preached about it, and ultimately taught others to do the same. And it REALLY shows.

The witch community is just afraid of rebranded demons. STOP LOOKING FOR SCARY THINGS IN THE DARK. THERE IS NOTHING THERE.

And homies, I’m not talking about those curses, complicated rituals, or any spell or ritual that deals in dangerous entities or concepts.

I’m talking about those who do this for good luck spells, glamour magic, focus spells, all the little safe spells that isn’t going to kill you. None of these things are gonna kill you. Some people do these extra cleansing and warding because they enjoy the ritual. Some people do it for peace of mind. I do it because It get’s me in the mood for spell-work, and I find it relaxing.

Nope, I’m specifically talking about the people who do it out of fear from every little inconvenience. Which is just a symptom of a bigger problem.

If you’re gonna do a video, write a post, or a book that includes teaching a lot of cleansing, warding, banishing and reversals, it NEEDS to include clarification that you don’t have to do it. Remind people that they’re SAFE.

Like, seeing all of this, with no one addressing it… I almost left because the similarities between christianity and the state of occult based spirituality was uncanny. And that was scary.

Well, someone had to say it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna burn myself on the stake.

#witchcraft #Incompetent-witch vents about her own community #paranoia #fear mongering #tw; abuse

[dream-meister-translations]

Outside HOLIDAY EVENT PART 3

━

DASTE : Hey, Emma! EMMA : ....!? EMMA : Daste! What a surprise! What in the world is going on so early in the morning .....! DASTE : Do something about this guy! DASTE : I can't sleep at all because he keeps hanging around me! EMMA : Scar! When did you get out of the key?

DASTE : He sang "Doomsday Song Part 2" or some crazy shit at my bedside! I just want him to shut the fuck up! SCAR : Ha ha, you at least woke up feeling good, didn't you? Scar is a black fairy with the heart of a child, although his words and actions are often highly disturbing and incredibly dangerous. He's been in contact with Daste for quite some time now and seems to see him as somewhat of an older brother.

DASTE : As I was saying, I don't want this guy following me around all the time. DASTE : Force him to go back into the key. SCAR : ......Emma, do I really have to go back? EMMA : (Scar has kept his promise not to open anyone without permission since he came to the island. It seems wrong to punish him when he’s behaved so well...) EMMA : Daste, won’t you stay with him? EMMA : Scar was so happy to see you yesterday. He just wants to play with you for a little bit... DASTE : Am I hearing this right? You want me to babysit? EMMA : How can I get you to play with him? DASTE : You pay for everything during my stay here on the island; My food, my drinks, my hotel, everything. DASTE : Then, well, I'll think about it.

SCAR : Daste, is that a promise? Will you stay with me until we get back from the island? DASTE : You heard me. SCAR : Yay! DASTE : ......... I don't know why that makes you so happy. DASTE : Well, I'm leaving today anyway. So I might as well hang out with you for a little bit. EMMA : Uh, ......It might be a little difficult to leave today. DASTE : Wait, what...? EMMA : Ferries only come and go from the Island once a week, and we only arrived yesterday. So... The next boat won’t be here for another six days. DASTE : What the hell! You guys have gotta have another boat, right?

EMMA : Ehh... We've been trying to fix a boat at Passionate Ocean’s secret base, but...Yesterday's explosion damaged most of it, so it’s being repaired right now. I doubt it’s gonna work for a while. DASTE : You can't be serious... SCAR : Wow, and you promised me, as well! I’m never gonna leave Daste’s side!

━

ELMA : Good morning, Emma! Me and Searle are gonna head to work soon! ELMA : Daste! Why are you crumpled up on Emma’s floor...? SEARLE : He’s trembling, but he seems fine~....? DASTE : Fuuuuuck this!!

━

A FEW HOURS LATER Unlike the boys, I wasn’t scheduled to work today, so I got changed into my swimsuit and went for a nice walk along the beach. STELLA : This morning's act was quite brilliant, exploiting your opponent's lack of knowledge to get what you want. It was a vicious ploy, just the way I like it. EMMA : I really wasn’t trying to set Daste up. YAMANE : Either way, Daste seems to take his promises very seriously.

━

DASTE : Ha, I'm back on track. If everything is free, I'll enjoy it to the fullest. No Shiharu here, either. Just right for letting out my daily frustration. Let's go, Scar! SCAR : Kay~!

━

EMMA : (Please at least keep things within the reimbursement limit of the federation..... I don’t wanna pay for this stuff myself.....) I was suddenly pulled out of my internal pleading by a hand blocking my vision. ?? : Fufu. Guess who~?

#Yumekuro #Yumekuro Translations #Dream Meister And The Recollected Black Fairy #Dream Meister Translations #Dream Meister #Dream Meister And The Recollected Black Fairy Translations #Yumekuro outside holiday #Yumekuro event #Yumekuro event translation #holiday3

[the-firebird69]

Our waiting for the video to pull up on Trump trying again to get immunity where it does not apply we thought

He mentioned that he is guilty of several crimes and he admitted them on TV you said that he committed fraud already and everybody decided to put some put them on some sort of trial.

-he's standing there but seems like forever because the computer is sitting there trying to load and they're messing around a simple process so I posted in a separate Tumblr cuz he's got the computer up what the supreme Court decided

-it's a lot of decisions being made about what to do with you guys here within a qualified to make the decisions or not they're doing it because you are a stinkers and losers and mean and you're just idiots going around in circles not accomplishing anything except for ruining what they've done for years and that is coming up and that topic quite a while they're going to ask you because of it I'm pretty hard it's happening today and I went through a bunch of you not that many and started evictions they're going to begin a new pretty soon and large numbers of them in Charlotte county in Florida all over the world really and we're going to begin doing it too reducing teams out to arrest you when you start breaking the law

Thor Freya

The more like a pouring into the tunnels they've eaten up about 5% of their population remaining they'll probably go for another 5% tonight. There's a whole number of things that they're doing wrong one of them is they're not tracking the robots and they put them all over the place and it makes it easier for people to grab them those different parties are grabbing them and they do take the hardware and software out and Trump hits the silicon about a year after they already made them. He's a massive bum and a loser.

-we do have more to say the sun is just pleased with the treatment and wants you people to shut up and get often and you refuse and you're driving around saying all those dumb crap you said stupid crap about his idea it was your idea you're saying you're the inventors and our son said so let it roll tell people that and you have to tell me I guess and got into a lot of fights and big fights too and people are coming down on them telling them just to shut up and he doesn't say anything all the time and here you are screaming it and started a big fight and yes bja and Jenna are going to step down before the elections well no they're playing on sticking it out and they found Trump snickering and toadling and laughing and he says no you know and it changes things in a sense is no that's not how it works but so you said laughing and said okay how does it work cuz you trying to take my apartment key and everybody's trying to kill you and they are killing your people until they can get to you and got hit because he turned around and started blabbing other people picked up on it and started hitting him he's going to be a wreck and he's going into a couple movies and people are going to beat him up and bring him down what are the movies is going to be Mick ultra and that's after I am the cheese and before Superman and Doomsday and Batman and it is going to be a hell of a fight they're going to kill each other and Trump is going to get decimated and he will be attacked by Brad for what seems like a month of solid attacks and finally Trump kills Brad and his client gets Trump killed and in Tunis and it's over all sorts of dumb things but there's a lot going on there's a stuff called fire and there's several warnings today about the woods out there being dry and a part of it caught fire and they're putting it out and it's happening intermittently all over the place if you figure it out it's only a quarter of the place but it's going to be a blaze tonight I'm planning on sending 20 more now there's only 100 households and actually we said 110 but he's right we said it was 100 but it's not. And they're going to go out there and we think that people get hurt it's not a real smart thing to do but that's what they're doing. And the other side are getting as many people together by this next morning they will be weaker than kittens we're looking forward to that but the max are going to strike tonight and they're going to hit the morlock because they're going down into the tunnels and they're going to trace it down and hit where they're coming from and they're going to hit a lot of them it's going on tonight. You're going on he's more like going north with a huge Force and it will be there momentarily it is gigantic it's too big they're going to get their asses handed to them and they'll be up there in a couple hours everything is going to start in a couple hours and we're going to hear from them screaming and yelling and their AI boy and we can care less if they keep saying this stupid and they're hilarious looking people by the way they look like really dumb and so dumb that you really want to stop them from being near you and Dave was trying to do that he didn't look so smart either but he was squished it down and he was diminutive for his size our son is a child and he looks a little bit odd too but not that odd he says that you should have him drive your car because it affects and really John remillard will go after this like a shark after a seal our son is really only about 5 years old and that's his head and his brain and his body is about a 3 year olds and he's like that guy the mask to you guys when you're actually mature and he's not very bright but our son is a lot smarter than you are it's just as smart as Mac and Mac is always surprised but really he's an underage driver. They also say he has a disease and not supposed to drive around no that doesn't matter... Tell me to see what happens there

-my son and daughter actually says he thinks it was her and it was and she came and mentioned that some guys using a money order and then he can combine a reference number and the money order number and we'll try and place the cash that they use and force them here that's what it all means and some people sent thousands of dollars. It's not a grant or a will and you can make a will that's what the living will is you're alive and you're saying that this person can have this truck if he starts a pool company and tries to do it for a month at least. John son says that's a great idea and he's going to make pools that are like beaches at the house and you wait into it and you can have a little wave thing and title pools and is going to take Trump and give him a consultant job in the company name will be Beach bum so people might try that but there's some big wigs doing it and they have a lot of their troops doing it and it's all kind of on the same line there's maybe 20 major groups. . Two of them are foreigners and they're going to try and get it going for real.

We had trillions and trillions today way too many to mention they're doing it and they say it's cold from their end and they're trying to get stuff together to become powerful

This function is causing people to get into the game and we needed it very badly and it's forcing us to sign on is a giant movement

Couple more things

-I don't appreciate you dragging me around and our son and a cheapskates still going to drag you around and take all your money one effect is most of the people that use the checks they're trying to trace us down and they are getting very messed up they're not going to make it... We found one group but sent out the same code 27 times from 27 different locations all them within three states there's a big group a couple hundred million letters all the more money orders sent to our son so they're saying Jim Morrison you want to go there area and close people off so they're going to try and get Jim Morrison there and take it for a ride for everything is worth and it's not Justin he's not doing it either a lot of people are saying wow and it is that way that's incredible stuff

We're going ahead with what we're doing now and we are getting stuff together and we're moving out but there's a huge amount of stuff happening these people are nuts they're going around doing dangerous things and we don't want them near our son they're idiots they get killed once or twice a day each it's over they're r forces are going up and are diminishing very fast more and later

Thor Freya

The panel idea has taken four companies are trying to make them for specific cars mostly Mercedes BMW Audi cars with bigger motors and some of the American cars mostly Camaro Corvette charger Challenger there's only a couple sedans the Kia sedan the big one that our son had but the high performance version and you know there aren't many more that they want to do it too and our son said the high performance speed shops could try and order the panels for supercars no it's for the hypercars and super cars to make them more impregnable and even different rating for a fly car with some different panels so there would be a couple levels and they're going to try and look into it but we have four people doing it for a regular cars there are several people who are looking at their trucks and wondering if they could do it and our son says the truck with a high performance package of an increase in horsepower and talk to and some torque and it's true and could pull the weight and it's actually probably a wiser thing in SUV a large one is better than a small one but so many people have the small ones that have actual power it's about the explorer sized. The reasoning is that you can carry stuff and it won't get destroyed or destroy you and is more chance of it surviving cuz they do in case it so they figured out something it's pretty Sharp and they are going to town on it and it says don't forget to make an enclosure for the gas tank and they laughed and said that's a good idea that you can provide answer your shielding for your motor and such it's simple stuff on the inside of your grill and put a louver that's out of steel or even out of the metal and they agree so they're going to go ahead and try and make these packages and they're getting excited because they do understand what he's saying you're going to be making these and you're going to make it so many they also need vehicles with right now their vehicles are getting destroyed and our son and daughter say that we build those and we're interested in that and they want to talk to us because we can build them fast and we pretty much have to no they're building them as fast as they can and it's just not fast enough and we need that kind of thing for a little bit of heat and the max we're doing that to us our entire life and I'm going to put it forward is it been a very valuable talk and we hope to do more later and yeah he's itchy again

Thor Freya

Olympus

Wow you mean I can walk up and buy a truck from you and our friend says you have to use a little more caution than that that we're going to talk about it with certain people and we are going to sit down and discuss it and she probably have a show car show equipment show you can have a smaller one so it's not ridiculous and he says a big one isn't bad it's true too the question is where and Max is laughing that's a good question and our son says Florida and it's a joke but it's not big probably in California and it's a good idea and to have a car show because our cars have the metal on them and most of them have a rating of eight or nine already and their standard cars and you're going to go around armor in your cars for no reason except you can armor them more with titanium panels or titanium alloy I'll give you about a 12 or 15 so they're thinking about it now

Thor Freya

Olympus

[bouncehousemortgage]

I think the things that have been most difficult for me to work out are just how fucking angry I am, getting defensive and wanting to be harsh. And like not seeing understanding of that reflected back to me from the things I see online and the ppl around me aren’t like…in it with me.

Like, this has been going on my whole life and I’ve been yelling about it my whole life. I was a little kid then but I remember 2006, my cousins were in the south of Lebanon and they had to flee, there was no support for them from the American government even though they’re American citizens. And the IOF shot my dad, like this is personal for me. The IOF has hurt my family for generations now. Every Palestinian, every Jordanian, every southern Lebanese can tell you how the IOF has hurt them, has hurt their family.

And growing up, not only was I subjected to that classic post-9/11 Islamophobia and antiarabism, but literally everyone around me was pro-Israel, pro-Zionism. I live in Texas, surrounded by Christians, of course they were like that. And then all of the first encounters with Jewish people I ever had in real life were with Zionist jewish people, and they’d say that my dad deserved to be shot by the IOF—my dad was a child when he was shot. One of the Zionist Jews who said this to me was my teacher, a grown man, and I had really liked him, I really trusted him. He said that to a kid, about the kid’s dad….

And I remember being really heartbroken about all of this because I was never taught to believe that Jewish people are all Zionists. I had believed that Zionism was for doomsday Christian right wing freaks and right wing Israelis. So amidst all of the Islamophobia and antiarabism, being surrounded by Christians, I was always—and still am always—delighted to meet Jews. Because we didn’t have many Muslim students or people of other faiths, it was most Christians and then a handful of Jews. So I was always excited to make friends with Jewish people because I was like hey! We can bond over this, not just being religious minorities but also because our culture and religion are similar.

And then they’d turn out to be antiarab, Islamophobic Zionists just like everyone else I knew. And I think it stung more coming from them because I thought they’d understand and I wanted so badly to be friends.

And I don’t think that any of those experiences turned me into an antisemite, like I still would try and try, you know? Like I figured maybe they just didn’t realize how bad things were. And I was also on tumblr and I learned a lot about Jewish cultures and traditions and a lot about antisemitism on tumblr and then I’d go do extra research. Like, I don’t think westerners realize that the kind of antisemitism here is different and kind of specific to the west. So, like, I just didn’t know. And neither of my parents are antisemitic, they’d just tell me historical stuff and that was that. My mom, a white lady, seems to have an affinity for Levantines, her first serious boyfriend was Jewish and she got on with his family and everything, and then she married my dad. So there wasn’t any of that at home. My grandparents don’t speak English super well and I think they do maybe carry some antisemitic sentiments, but for them I think it’s just confusing “Jews” and “Israelis,” but if you’re Lebanese then how many non-Israeli Jews are you ever coming into contact with? And never any kind of blood libel, or secret evil cabal that controls everything, or whatever. Just that Israel is violent and supported by the US.

So I had to learn all of that stuff from people online mostly. And so I was still pretty hopeful because, even with each new wave of violence, and even though I’d had these bad encounters with Jewish people, I was aware that it’s not everybody and I knew about JVP and groups like that. My dad made damn sure to show me that there are loads of Jewish people who don’t support Israel, and he’s a skeptic so I think he also has an affinity for rabbinical Judaism I think he really likes seeing what the debates are because he’d watch a lot of Rabbis having these discussions, and I like that too.

And I had this wonderful coworker when I worked at the office supply store. He’s an elderly man and he converted to Judaism when he married his wife. And he had seen my name when I started working there and then he saw me and he was so excited, the first thing he asked me is “are you Jewish?” It was cute, he was like “I know I’m not supposed to ask, but I saw your name and I’m the only Jew here.” He was hoping that I was Jewish so he’d have another Jew to talk to. I told him no but I’m Lebanese and raised Muslim, and that was good enough for him. He made sure to tell me, not so subtly, that he isn’t a Zionist. And we got along wonderfully because we really understood each other, he told me about this Christmas assignment his son had gotten in school and how he’d refused to do the assignment because he’s Jewish and doesn’t celebrate Christmas. He’d tell me about learning Hebrew and the drama going on in his faith group, he and his wife were very active in the Jewish Sunday school so there was always a lot to talk about. We’d compare things between Jews and Muslims, compare words between Hebrew and Levantine Arabic. I told him about the whole “KH” phlegm debacle and how I think it’s funny to hear people speaking Hebrew in the same cadence as English bc every now and then I think I recognize a word but it’s being said in such a way that it makes no sense to me, he thought that was funny and he also noticed the phlegm thing. We talked about kosher and halal and which rules we agreed with and which ones we didn’t like. We talked about how dumb it is that everyone thinks Hanukkah is just Jewish Christmas, and I lamented that Islam doesn’t have enough fun holidays.

And that was my first irl experience with a non-zionist jewish person, and it makes me sad that it didn’t happen until I was 20, but I still think of him all the time and I’m very glad to have met him and been able to have that friendship with him. And I think that despite everything else, people like him and JVP and having learned so much about Judaism are the things that really buoy me. And I always have to keep those good things with me, especially at times like these because it’s easy to get angry and lash out when I’m in pain and I see people supporting Israel under the guise of protecting Jews and fighting antisemitism.

[daisylikesmedia]

Christmas Special 2: The Runaway Bride

"What, there's like a secret base hidden underneath a major London landmark?" "Oh, I know. Unheard of."

Hey everyone, today we get to watch Donna Noble's introduction into the whoniverse! And holy heck this episode is funny.

Like, god after the heavy ending of Doomsday getting some goofball DW is exactly what the audience needed. Donna is such a breath of fresh air and just oozes character from the moment she's on screen. Her ability to call out and challenge the Doctor on so much is so refreshing. I am definitely biased here because Donna is my favourite companion in Dr Who history, but she is so fun in this story. This episodes fuses comedy and character so effortlessly it's awesome.

And alongside this The Doctor, despite being able to roll with the comedy bits, gets really dark in parts of this episode. He's still got the fresh wound of Rose, and he nearly wipes out the Racnoss, with Donna being the only one around to stop him. This balance of goofy stuff and sad character times is a difficult one to balance, and if done wrong could make the entire episode a tonal mess. But this episode understands how to pace these moments, and so it pays off and makes this episode a banger.

The ending of this episode is particularly amazing. The way that this ending sets out so many of The Doctor's new arcs going forward for the rest of his run: .His unhealthy relationships and disconnection from others after what happened to Rose. (see him dipping on xmas dinners from now on, or how he treats Martha next series)

.Him needing someone to "stop him", otherwise he will go off the rails. (see Donna's speech about exactly this)

.His sheer power as a time lord being a thing to fear. (The Doctor almost deifies himself near the end of his run, and it gets scaryy. I'm trying my best to not mention certain episode names here because I'm terrible for always referencing this one episode of who so I shall shush, place an * here, and once I get to that episode you'll know ljsfhg)

I think the only thing I don't like is that the goofy xmas special vibe is not a vibe I like that much? I'm not v festive and santa robots do come off as just a bit goofy. I do find the Racnoss queen to be a very bombastic character as well which I feel is a shame cause there could've been some fun stuff to explore between two anciest last of their species. But nah instead we get overacted spider lady cackling which tbf is fun it's just I think there was some lost potential here.

TL:DR/Overview: Whilst The Runaway Bride suffers from some christmas special-isms, the introduction of Donna (my favourite companion) and the arcs that the 10th Doctor will proceed to go through for the rest of his run, are both done incredibly well. The comedy is on-point, and doesn't take away from the darker moments of the episode. High A tier episode, I was sleeping on this one.

Next thing you'll see outta me will either be the start of series 3, or the series 2 tier list symposis thingy on youtube. Either way, it'll be a blast. Have an amazing day everyone <3

#daisy reviews media #doctor who #10th doctor

[naynay5155]

C!Tommy’s Storyline With C!Dream Is A Very Concerning Depiction Of Abuse

Wild Title 

Okay, I’m sure that this probably isn’t too new information for anyone paying attention to the overall story of the DreamSMP, especially C!Tommy’s storyline, but I figured I’d give my two cents for this anyways. 

C!Tommy is an Abuse Victim who has gone through horrific stuff at the hands of C!Dream. This is not an arguable fact. regardless of if C!Dream had reasons for doing what he did, if C!Dream also later gets abused, or if ultimately the abuse portrayal could be considered in some ways flawed or unrealistic, that stuff doesn’t ultimately matter. Because we’ve seen what happened to C!Tommy during Exile, have seen the physical, emotional, and mental abuse he was put through. Just because they won’t call it Abuse doesn’t mean it isn’t Abuse.

Now, C!Tommy being an abuse victim is an interesting idea from a storytelling perspective. It has a lot of potential to lead to genuine character development, or to affect relationships and story beats in interesting ways. And it could be an interesting way to really say something about abuse and coping with it. 

And to an extent, an argument could be made that it has, though I’d argue the exact way those are handled in canon, but not the point. The point is, abuse is not just something that you get to gloss over. If you want to include themes of abuse in the story, a story you are making available to the public for millions to see, then there needs to be a clear and obvious message being portrayed with including abuse in the story. Preferably, that abuse is bad, and can have majorly negative effects on anyone, especially children. We don’t always get that lucky, but whatever. 

But, from my months of watching the story of the DreamSMP, and trust me I’ve been here a long while, I haven’t seen C!Tommy’s abuse being handled very... well. I could, of course, be wrong in some aspects, and maybe be misremembering stuff since this dumpster fire has been happening for a year now, and feel free to correct me or bring up more points if you know something I don’t. But, I still think that overall, I have a point of view that should be considered. 

So basically, C!Tommy is an abuse victim, right? this is easy to see, very obvious in the way he acts and behaves. Or... is it? 

Abuse is a complex topic and one that, in real life, presents itself in all sorts of forms. Many abuse victims were raised in unloving homes and ended up becoming more vulnerable to abuse later on in life as a result of that. Others never properly learned how to express emotions or turn people down and got taken advantage of. Others were abused from the start, and develop various ways of coping and dealing with that, even ways that they might not be fully conscious of themselves. Abuse is not a one-way street, it could hardly be considered a street at all given how diverse and differing the people who experience it end up developing into are. 

So I’m not saying that, if C!Tommy were a real person, that he isn’t “Being traumatized enough” or that “Why isn’t he more like what I expect him to be like?”. That is not what I’m saying at all.

What I am saying, is that C!Tommy is a fictional character who exists within a narrative, a story. And in a good story, consistency is half the battle. I, as the audience consuming the story, need to be able to look at C!Tommy and pick up on and understand the effects abuse has had on him. And these effects need to be consistent, otherwise, as an audience member, I’m going to get confused and start having questions about why he acts one way here but doesn’t somewhere else.

I also need to be able to clearly see and understand, by being given narrative stepping stones, if something is changing for his character.

As the saying goes, “Show don’t tell”. C!Tommy can’t just say he “Goes to Puffy for Therapy” offhandedly one time, as a means of handwaving away why he doesn’t really consistently act as traumatized as he used to even though it’s literally only been a few weeks, or months at most. To explain how he can jump back between being really sad and depressed about something, to joking about Women and Twitter. It seems weird if he’s able to just so seamlessly, so effortlessly, go back and forth. Almost as if he’s bouncing between OOC and IC, but that’s a whole other discussion. 

Sure, C!Tommy is representing real mental health issues, but he is, ultimately a Fictional Character existing in a story. I need to be given signs, proof, foreshadowing, to explain when he has certain reactions and behaviours in order to understand his character. And these need to be consistent, otherwise we get plotholes and general confusion.

I criticize the inconsistency and the offscreen handwaving because it’s generally not very good writing. It’s the same reason I disliked Eret’s basically off-screen-sort-of-redemption-arc. It’s the same reason people dislike it when Villains of previous seasons suddenly come back as fully reformed good guys for seemingly no reason. There is no arc, no development, no progress is shown to us. 

Because when you’re telling a story about a character having some major change or developing in some way, or having an important character trait, if I don’t see it on screen, then it didn’t happen. How am I supposed to root for C!Tommy’s progress, or understand what he’s doing to progress, if a never see his coping mechanisms? His therapy appointments? 

You can’t just say something, or inconsistently portray something, and expect me to jump through hoops to connect these nearly transparent dots that keep getting thrown around. 

Show don’t tell. Show me Tommy getting better, because otherwise you’re just telling me he made character development, and showing me this completely different character as proof. No, last I remembered C!Tommy was having panic attacks and yelling when C!Dream was even mentioned. You can’t tell me that a day later he can interact normally after days of being in the prison and a month of being dead.

Or, if you are gonna have him flip flop back and forth, don’t have it be so sudden and jarring, give an explanation. Is he faking being fine? Does he have memory issues? C!Tommy doesn’t read to me as the type who’s good at suppressing his emotions, he wears his heart on his sleeve. So you’re going to have to explain, clearly, in a way that isn’t ambiguous, what’s happening with C!Tommy here.

You’re not really saying anything about the abuse C!Tommy goes through, if all of that trauma is automatically wiped from the story when the writers get too lazy or too scared to keep it in. At best, you are showing abuse and trauma for the sole purpose of showing it, with no intention of properly dealing with and addressing it in the story. At worst, you are basically just doing torture porn. 

Pain, Hurt, Trauma for the sake of it. Not with any goal in mind. Just for the drama of it, or to hurt the audience. 

And then your audience is just supposed to take that content in uncritically, and they gain no true understanding of how abuse victims survive and cope after their traumatic treatment.

Exile Arc sure did a good job at making C!Tommy suffer. But as soon as that arc ended, a lot of the stuff that happened in it went completely glossed over and unaddressed for a long while. That might have been fine in the lead-up to Doomsday, since a lot of plot stuff had been going on and stopping to handle C!Tommy’s issues might (Might is heavily doubted cause it certainly isn’t impossible) mess with the pacing a bit. But then after Doomsday, there isn’t really any excuse to put it off. Because nothing was really happening for a good while, and nobody had anything to do plotwise. 

And this became even more true with C!Dream being locked in Prison. Nothing was really happening, so what was stopping the story from taking the time to properly discuss and deal with this stuff?

Well, nothing really. So, the Hotel Arc happened. And oh boy, was it a mess. 

So, C!Tommy being angry at C!Dream for the abuse and trauma he has suffered at Dream’s hand isn’t an issue. It’s an incredibly common thing for victims to feel angry at their abusers, and to even go so far as to wish for vengeance against them in some way. And that’s a totally valid and fine feeling. 

You’re hurting, you’re scared, you’re in pain. I get that. When we’re hurting, we don’t always act rationally or healthily.

But, ultimately, that rage, and hurt, and want for vengeance is not a healthy thing to hold onto. In many circumstances with an abuse victim wanting to inflict pain back on their abuser, we run into various problems. 

For one, getting vengeance on your abuser is quite frequently going to give you more emotional pain than it will fulfilment. Especially if you are young, or are letting this want for vengeance take over your entire livelihood. It does you no good ultimately, to attempt to bring pain to the person who hurt you, because not only will you often be unsuccessful, you frequently won’t find emotional healing and stability in that. 

(The only exception to this rule being if ignoring them or moving on from them isn’t an option for you right now.)

Actions have consequences, and if you invest more time in that person who hurt you, then you have no time to work on yourself or the relationships around you. You have no time to heal, and this can become self-destructive.

Spending time around an abuser, as a victim, is in all likelihood just going to upset you more. You’re retraumatizing yourself by spending time around them, and as you make attempts to give them their comeuppance, you could possibly end up internalizing the methods they used on you, and just end up perpetuating the cycle of abuse again. 

And even if you have no problem with doing that to this particular person, consider how fully internalizing these abusive behaviours could affect your friends or family. Frequently, even when they don’t mean to, abuse victims can internalize the things that they went through and then use those same behaviours against people in their life later on. Being shitty to your support system because of what you went through isn’t a good move, for you or them.

Basically just, an Abuse Victim has more to gain from working on themselves while finding ways to heal and overcome their trauma and abuse, than they do spending their time and energy on the abuser. Its frequently unhealthy, distressing, and self-destructive to indulge in that too much.

(Of course, I don’t speak for everyone, but from what iIve looked into and seen, this is the healthiest method of actually healing from your abuse. That doesn’t mean you just... leave your abuser alone and never address or talk about what they did, you don’t let them get away with it, of course not. It just means you don’t waste your mental well being and time obsessing over someone, especially someone who has hurt you so much.

You deserve better than that. You deserve to heal.)

Now, let’s get back to C!Tommy. 

C!Tommy, instead of finding a proper means of coping with his issues (proper therapy, diagnosis for his issues, forming and maintaining healthy support systems, focusing on things he loves, etc) is shown to repeatedly focus back on C!Dream. When he was making Big Innit Hotel, it did seem like he was to an extent finding ways to cope with his shit. He was still kinda shitty and his hotel was not exactly made and run by the most morally great standards, though I suppose I can’t expect too much when he is a very traumatized teen and doesn’t really know what he’s doing. 

But, ultimately, this all fell apart when he got locked in Pandora’s Vault with C!Dream. Arguably, it was already falling apart the moment he decided to keep pursuing C!Dream even when he was locked up.

See, the thing is, C!Tommy can never just… have trauma. Having trauma that he can healthily and methodically work through is something that for him as a Character, is basically impossible. His character is an angry one, one built on spite and childishness, and who holds the mantle, unfortunately, of “Spunky Male Protagonist In A YA Novel”. So, his mental health issues can never just be a struggle he has to cope with, especially not when the DreamSMP can never seem to have anything between “A lot is happening right now omg” or “Literally nothing is happening and nobody is playing on the server at all omg”.

Instead, his issues have to be seen as a battle, and they fuel the narrative of the story. Him having been abused by C!Dream cannot just exist as a thing that he as a person has to work through slowly with the help of others around him. It has to be seen as this Epic Triumph Against Evil, another battle of Tommyinnit VS Dream on the DreamSMP, a classic Villain versus Hero fight.

This, of course, isn’t too great. By C!Tommy’s abuse plotline being framed in this manner, it makes it so that C!Tommy is constantly obsessing over his abuser and recklessly throwing himself into dangerous and triggering situations is some attempt at an “Epic Battle With Evil”, rather than this being treated like the self-harm it actually is. And yes, it is self-harm, a form of it. 

C!Tommy uses his trauma and issues as fuel for the story, making it so that its impossible for him to truly progress and a character, and the moment he does start growing, he has to get retraumatized again so he goes right back to where he was.

C!Tommy does not become a better person when he’s around C!Dream, nor does he find any form of fulfilment in being around him. He gets shaky and panicky at just the sight of him. He regularly has violent and explosive outbursts at just the mention of him. When C!Dream talks to him, he gets nervous and basically can’t help but listen due to conditioning he still listens to. 

When C!Tommy went to go visit C!Dream the first time in Pandora’s Vault, he brought with him stacks of TnT. He did it because he wanted to mimic what C!Dream had done to him in Exile, where he would take all of C!Tommy’s newly gained items and blow them up underground for dramatic effect. 

C!Dream did this for control over C!Tommy, to manipulate him, for his suffering.

And C!Tommy wanted to do this to C!Dream, because he was feeling vindictive. 

When C!Tommy got into the prison, he mocked C!Dream, hit him repeatedly, and tried to boss him around. He made him write ridiculous books and verbally berated the man. He did this in a feeble attempt to gain some feeling of control over C!Dream. This, evidently, did not work. At best his success was momentary. And this sense of achievement he gained was gained through projecting his abuse trauma onto someone else.

He repeated the cycle. 

After he got brought back from the dead and let out of the prison, he was much much worse. C!Tommy was now paranoid, anxious, constantly thinking about C!Dream, and had his mindset solely on getting revenge on him, by killing him. 

It got so bad, he ended up doing lacklustre “Exposure Therapy” to help himself not panic when he went into Pandora’s Vault to kill C!Dream. It got so bad he dragged C!Tubbo and C!Ranboo into this, putting them in danger and putting more pressure on another two teenagers’ shoulders. 

It got so bad, that Ghostbur died, C!Sam closed off even more, and C!Wilbur came back. 

Objectively, C!Tommy leaving C!Dream alone would be the better thing for everyone. And yet he keeps repeating the cycle. Because C!Tommy is not meant to grow, learn and heal. He is made to suffer. 

The problem is not so much showing an unhealthy depiction of a mentally ill or traumatized person. Because trauma and mental illness and the effects of abuse are not always pretty, and they shouldn’t always have to be portrayed and pretty or sympathetic to be accurate. 

It becomes a problem when you get this depiction of C!Tommy’s coping being presented uncritically to an audience of a lot of underaged and young people. 

Nobody in canon, whether they be adults or fellow teens, has ever tried to question C!Tommy’s methods for coping. C!Ranboo and C!Tubbo just limply went along with his plans for Exposure Therapy with no consideration of if this was a good idea. No adults really offer to genuinely step in and help C!Tommy deal with his shit, and the ones that do leave him or get corrupted in some way, often leaving him with more trauma as they do. 

C!Puffy’s therapy methods are dubious at best, and the most we ever see of her actually helping C!Tommy is her humouring his toxic behaviours, and C!Tommy making offhanded mentions to vague therapists appointments we never see. 

C!Technoblade stopped giving a shit as soon as C!Tommy walked off the screen. C!Wilbur was dead, and now that he isn’t he certainly isn’t helping C!Tommy. C!Phil isn’t C!Tommy’s dad and has no obligation to do anything for him as a result. C!Ranboo has the backbone of a chocolate eclair. C!Tubbo is too busy repressing his own trauma to help C!Tommy with his. C!Sam is being ruled by the prison and C!Quackity. C!Quackity has become an Ancap. 

Nobody in this story is a reliable or trusted person to C!Tommy, who could properly tell him his methods are unhealthy and give him better alternatives. And as a result, nobody is able to tell the audience that C!Tommy is wrong 

Unreliable Narrators are only effective when the narrative in some way has their unreliableness pointed out or proven to the audience. If you go into a story with the assumption that everybody watching will be able to see past C!Tommy’s POV and not take him at face value, then you are naive. Especially when this fandom is made up of many teens and children. 

I only know C!Tommy’s methods are unhealthy because I care way too much and do my research. A vast majority of the world doesn’t have the same understanding and education on these topics, especially not children and teenagers. A good chunk of people, especially neurodivergent and mentally ill people, could very well take the story at face value and automatically assume that what Tommy’s doing is actually a good coping mechanism because they don’t know any better.

There is no clarification or safety net for preventing misinterpretation. And being of the opinion that “Well, they should know better than to trust a bunch of Minecraft Youtubers for this stuff” or “We can’t expect them to be psychologists! You expect too much” is just… not helping. 

Because I shouldn’t have to explain why children and teenagers, especially those that are using these people to cope, are not always going to make level-headed and common-sense decisions. They will be influenced by these Content Creators, whether we think it’s “Stupid” or not. 

And I can say with certainty that, while yes, this might be a bit much to expect from a bunch of British/American white guys who play Minecraft to handle, may I also point out that nobody fucking made them put this stuff in the story. There are ways to write a story without stepping outside of your realm of true understanding. Nobody begged these MCYTs to go and make torture porn for a 16 year old, nobody asked them to touch on topics they have no fucking clue about. 

They put that in themselves. And we have the right to point out the problems and flaws in it, and criticize them for not handling this stuff better. 

You don’t start applying for a job you don’t meet the requirements for. You don’t start an expensive project you can’t finish. 

You don’t include elements in a story you aren’t willing to fully go through with and address in a proper and sensitive way. 

#hope this makes sense #dreamsmp roleplay #dream smp critical #dreamsmp #dream smp #character analysis #c!tommy #c!dream #tw abuse discussion #tw abuse #negativity #dsmp critical #critical dsmp

[infaethable]

the bad kids and whether or not they’re a gay who can drive, a list:

gorgug: canonically can drive, does most of the driving in sophomore year, no qualms about gorgug driving. all around normal driver. my only note here is that gorgug definitely still has one of those velcro binders of cd’s in the backseat of his car, and it’s got such a hilarious mix of music. one page is all of zelda’s heavy death metal and then the next is every single taylor swift album.

fig: to ask if fig can drive is the wrong question. we should instead be asking, “should fig drive?” because the answer is unequivocally “no.” fig certainly has the ability to drive like a normal citizen. however, she will not. fig is the type of driver to take you on a shortcut that’s three times as long but she really feels like going 90 so she has to take the highway, and you’re grateful, because at least this time she’s not going 90 not on the highway. 

adaine: i think that adaine could, with some practice, learn to drive, in most senses of the word. adaine’s biggest issue would be that she’s too careful. you know when you’re just starting out, and you don’t quite have the experience and reflexes necessary to gage whether or not you should stop at yellow lights? adaine always stops at yellow lights. she gets cut off at stop signs every single time because she takes too long. adaine refuses to drive on the highway because she’s afraid of merging. however, unlike new drivers, she literally never grows out of this. 

fabian: refuses to learn how to drive. he has a sentient motorcycle, why would he ever need to learn to drive? it’s not like he’s ever going to need to put luggage somewhere, or drive more than one person beside himself somewhere, or be in a situation where you need a vehicle that doesn’t make a lot of noise, or need a vehicle that you can have a car seat in, or-

riz: born to be a ball forced to have a license. he refuses to depend on his friends for rides because he has capital i issues, and can’t afford uber all the time. elmville in no way has a reliable or regular bus system, so riz gets a beater he cherishes at the end of junior year. the type to doomsday prep his car. his trunk is literally nearly full, because of all the stuff he might possibly need in the event that they get stranded and have to live in the woods for three years. but, when he’s not considering what he’s going to do in the event of the apocalypse, he’s pretty solid! 

kristen: no.

#listen to my riz can drive treatise. do it #also spot which traits i put in that are just me klsjadh #if i doomsday prep my car and have a cd book no i dont <3 #the bad kids #adaine abernant #riz gukgak #fabian aramais seacaster #figueroth faeth #fig faeth #kristen applebees #gorgug thistlespring #fantasy high #dimension 20 #d20

[businessbois]

“you’re the most orphan child i’ve ever met” an attempt at analysis of c!phil and c!tommy’s relationship

this is entirely an analysis of c!phil and c!tommy’s relationship. im not gonna be talking about morals or terrorism or really even wilbur or fundy because those are whole other points. just these two and the convoluted abyss of “canon”

title quote from technoblade here

manburg war- november 16th

doomsday- january 6th

butchers army day- december 16th

i mean phil’s first day, the manburg war, itself implies a lot of history and relationships with these characters. tommy shouts “philza minecraft” in joy and recognition when he sees him. phil says these two lines that confuse the hell out of me. “whatever tommy and tubbo do, i’ll follow them” and “i gotta take care of my kids.” again, “my kids” doesn’t have to mean biologically, he can just be a father figure, see them as his kids, but i suppose we retcon these? because of the relationship they imply that doesn’t really line up? “i’ll follow them” is a statement of devotion, loyalty. i’m not saying his goals couldn’t have changed from these, i’m saying that in order to have this goal of “following tommy and tubbo through whatever” in the first place, he’d have to really love and care about these kids. that doesn’t line up with how people are claiming he doesn’t know them or owe them anything. im okay with retconning these because this was when i think cc!phil still believed the family dynamic was canon.

but the thing about decanonizing something big like that, is that, okay, maybe we can get rid of the conversations and lines, but then we have physical things like friendship emeralds and tommy slippers. he visits tommy in exile and gifts him these things. a friendship emerald isn’t something you give to a random kid, it’s something gifted to ghostbur—his son—and techno—his best friend. i guess you could say he was just being nice to this strange kid? but then like, he could’ve stopped at the slippers? why the emerald? the emerald is a Big Thing, no? and we can’t decanonize or retcon, like, all of phil and tommy’s interactions, especially something with physical items involved because that’s beyond spoken lines and can’t be dismissed as easily. but then it also leaves us with this utterly confusing narrative. there’s the line from the butcher army day, “carls okay. technos okay. tommys okay. thats all i wanted to know.” do we decanonize that too?? it’s a statement of deep care “that’s all i wanted to know” and he includes tommy in it. (tommyinnit haha) with interactions and lines like this, you can’t just say “they’re not biologically related, so they don’t know each other and phil doesn’t have to care about this kid.” because he did at some point. a lot. and these lines prove it. you can’t decanonize every moment like this. (i mean, i guess you can, i cant stop you) not when tommy and phil’s interactions are littered with it. not when tommy keeps a friendship emerald in his special chest right next to phukkit (a prized gift from tubbo) to this day. 

moving on to tommy.

cc!tommy is very smart and very good at what he does. he’s studying film in college, he got a 9 on his english gcse, he’s got every cc he’s come into contact with singing about how clever he is. he makes character choices deliberately. i don’t wanna write off too much of this as him just doing bits and faffing around because tommy’s literally always in character. i am down to decanonize the supposed mishap of shouting phil’s name when getting locked in prison, though honestly, it doesn’t necessarily seem like an out of character action for tommy who has a history of calling for phil when he feels upset. see: “where’s dadza?” (this instance is strange too because “dadza” is a strange slip up to make. it feels purposeful. i don’t think cc!tommyinnit calls his friend “dadza” outside of roleplay. and honestly the whole delivery and head shaking is very much in-a-character) and @/my-stupid-fandoms said some smart stuff about it here. but anyways, sorry, i’ll take what’s surely canon. in the manburg war we have “AND PHIL’S HERE,” incredibly excited from him and tubbo. familiarity. they know him. look up to him. we have the heartbroken "philza minecraft?"s from doomsday, indications that he trusted phil and feels hurt and betrayed. then, we have some lines that are very interesting coming from Big Man “i raised myself” TommyInnit which are as follows “I want to go ‘Philza Minecraft, I built that hotel.’ Even though it’s a lie, it will feel true.” “And then I get to go ‘Philza Minecraft, I made this house, I made this house. Are you impressed?’ And he’ll go ‘Yes.’ And then he’ll pat me on the back and then he’ll teach me how to ride a bike.” “TELL PHILZA” “AREN’T YOU PROUD?” tommy loves phil. wants phil to be impressed with him. wants phil to be proud of him. during his encounter with the egg, he says “it didn’t hurt any of the other boys. it didn’t hurt phil.” he wants phil to be safe. cares about his well being even if this is not reciprocated by phil. he follows his “it didn’t hurt techno” with an “not that i care about techno” but there is no such denial for philza. and now, immediately after being dead and pieced back together, tommy asks after five of his friends. phil is third after tubbo and jack who are tommy’s Boys™. phil is also called for the most, four times to tubbo’s three and everyone else’s one. it does seem like everyone got the memo about phil not being tommys father except tommy. 

there’s a theory around that like, wilbur found tommy and brought him home and so tommy grows up looking up to phil but phil doesn’t reciprocate. this gets to keep the kind of found family on tommy’s end but maintains the “loosely connected strangers” thing for phil. i think maybe this holds more credence than anything else, but also, “loosely connected strangers” just doesn’t add up with the stuff i’ve mentioned before: friendship emeralds, “tommys okay,” there had to be some reciprocity to their familial-ish (or at least caring) relationship. he visited him in exile. he gave him the emerald. he said all those lines. there was a relationship there. of care. of trust. where tommy saw him as someone to look up to, to protect him. at any rate, i like the theory and since we simply have No Backstory for canon sbi at all, it works just fine even if it still just doesn’t fit.

closing

honestly i don’t know what this is. this is all the evidence, all the information i have. there’s no way they were strangers. tommy obviously definitively looks up to and cares about phil. this was reciprocated to some degree beyond “i kind of know you.” i’m a big defender of c!tommyinnit and that surely comes across here. i mostly just did this to get everything i have about c!phil and c!tommy’s out and to figure out what i actually make of it and all the confusion about it. this is here and the clips are linked, draw your own conclusions that are smarter and more concise than mine.

#tommyinnit #c!philza critical #dream smp #mcyt #dsmp #dsmp analysis #wanted to get this out before the stream just in case #other possible titles were 'father? i hardly know him' #and 'schrodingers daddy issues'

[whentheynameyoujoy]

The Airbender Extermination Is Dumbo and I Refuse to Accept It

So I’ve been thinking about re-watching and finally finishing The Legend of Korra, weighing the pros and cons of subjecting myself to that frustrating jumble of half-baked ideas all over again. And while I was doing that, I remembered the precise moment when I went “no, you know what, fuck it, you people lied to me, the show in fact doesn’t get better, it’s doing the exact same thing it’s always done and I’m fucking tired of it.”

“Oh, why would you ever say the protagonist is a static reactive disaster who never learns or progresses or stops being jostled around by the actions of others while the narrative keeps praising her as a wise empathetic person who eventually makes the right decisions? BTW, the last decision Korra made with no thinking whatsoever was a doomsday level of apocalyptically bad but it did bring airbenders back, somehow, outside of anyone’s control or intentions. I mean, it’s not like this was ever on the table and Korra had to purposefully think about whether to bring back airbenders in exchange for infesting the world with uncontrollable spirits, or keep it as was, with no spirits and only three elemental nations. But in case you were wondering how in the hell can airbenders returning be chalked up to Korra being a good Avatar and not a monumental fuck-up, here’s Tenzin praising her for the umpteenth time!”

And as I was rage-quitting the show, I kept thinking, “Man, they really screwed themselves over with the worldbuilding all the way back in ATLA if this was the only way they could think of to bring airbenders back.”

Because while the majority of ATLA’s problems is rooted in the developments of Book 3, there’d been some questionable stuff baked into the show’s fabric right from the beginning.

Like the idea that there having been a complete extermination of Air Nomads bar Aang is totally plausible and shouldn’t be treated by viewers as a red herring for an eventual revelation there’ve been pockets of them hiding around the world the whole time.

So let’s run down the list of things which needed to happen in order for the notion to be even remotely acceptable, shall we?

1) The nation of nomads had to be mono-cultural and mono-racial

I’ve touched upon it once before here where I briefly mentioned how the idea that the four nations flat out didn’t mingle and mixed babies weren’t a thing until Aang founded the city of Let the Fandom Forever Argue Whether a Massive Ethnic Cleansing Would Have Been the Moral Narrative Choice just isn’t sustainable, especially in the case of the Air Nomads. I’d like to correct myself: it’s not sustainable if you want to portray Air Nomads as morally unproblematic good guys.

Why is it natural to assume the existence of mixed and multi-bending families? Because mixing is how humans work. There have always been relationships between people from different villages, different tribes, different cultures, different religions, different countries, regardless of their war or peace status. The notion of peace = sexual separation is at best ahistorical bullshit and at worst racist twaddle. For as long as we have been separated by borders, there have been people having sex right on it, even in times when those relationships were explicitly forbidden. It’s just human nature.

And the show acknowledges this.

You might, might get away with portraying the nations of Avatarverse as mono-cultural in the case of the Fire Nation and Water Tribes, seeing how they’re island countries without an established history as trading hubs (already too much to ask but we’re devil’s advocating this baby). But you can’t tell me there aren’t scores of tiny airbenders being born to Earth Kingdom women left and right or that female Air Nomads aren’t having little Boulders every once in a while. Because unless Air Nomads adopted the British mode of travel and refuse to interact with locals, period, they’re meeting lots of people over the course of their nomadic lives and spending a lot of time with them while outside their own community.

There’s no way this doesn’t result in sex and thus in babies sooner or later.

Unless you’re ready to knock the Air Nomads from their Bryke-provided pedestal, that is.

By all accounts, there should be airbending citizens of the Earth Kingdom and earthbending members of the Air Nomads. Moreover, there should be swaths of non-benders being born to Air Nomads, forming entire acolyte-like communities. But there aren’t. And the only way this makes any kind of Watsonian sense is if the Air Nomads are ordered to be celibate when around outsiders.

This is about to get rather yikes.

Not to put a too fine point on it: in their quest to portray the Air Nomads as the bestest wisest spiritualistest tribest tribe of them all, Bryke made them extremely plausible to interpret as hardcore into racial purity. Because see, it’s established in canon that every single Air Nomad in existence was an airbender. Every. Single. One. The reason why they don’t produce any non-benders is, to quote the Avatar wiki, a “high level of spirituality of their people”.

This, to put it the most politely I can, is complete and utter horseshit. To accept this as an explanation, you’d have to ignore everything about genetics and accept there is a connection between spirituality and one’s ability to produce a bender, something debunked by canon multiple times. Moreover, you’d have to accept bending as a higher form of being.

See these people? None of them are shown as individually spiritual or occupying a spiritual role in their culture. With the exception of Ozai they’re non-benders yet all produced exceptionally talented benders. And vice versa, you have spiritual people in the show who nonetheless have a non-bending child. Why’s not Yue a waterbender when her parents trusted in spirits enough to let them save her as a newborn? Is genetics applicable only to non-airbenders? What, is Water Tribe spirituality not enough?

(Doylist speaking, it actually isn’t as it’s well-established that Bryke don’t recognise different kinds of spirituality as equal and valid and instead interpret the very concept as a pyramid where airbenders occupy the top floor, sorry.)

So how do you get a nation full of benders? Simple: by policing who can procreate when with whom. And how do you get a nation full of airbenders? By forbidding Air Nomads to have sex with non-airbenders. And I’m being kind by assuming nonbender babies aren’t born anyway and the Air Nomads don’t bash their heads in with a rock to keep the bloodlines pure, even though it would clarify how come the Fire Nation was able to run through the Air Temples during the roughly thirty minutes of supercharging provided to them by Sozin’s Comet.

This, btw, explains everything about Pathik. He grew up with Gyatso and is a well of knowledge of Air Nomad spirituality while not having much to add in regard to the other nations so clearly, airbenders were his primary source. He’s also the only Air Nomad-adjacent nonbender we know of, yet the philosophical outlook he teaches Aang revolves around the unity of people, not separation, which is Avatar, not Air Nomad stuff (unless of course you want to go the Bryke route of pretending there’s no difference).

Look, you might try persuading me Pathik isn’t the result of a fling between an Air Nomad and an Earth Kingdom peasant or that his mother didn’t hide him so that some helpful monk wouldn’t drop him on the head or that he didn’t develop his philosophy in response to being made to feel lesser throughout his childhood, but I’m telling you right now I don’t believe you.

The story of this guy must be fascinating. And by fascinating I mean full of child abuse.

So there you have it: The only way an extermination of the Air Nomads is possible is if there isn’t any airbending DNA outside their group which is only possible if they have rules against sex with outsiders and strictly manage their procreation and the only way you’d have that is if the Air Nomads are a nation of fucking supremacists.

Enjoy the next rewatch, I guess.

2) The nation of nomads had to have all its mono-cultural mono-racial nomadic members stationed at four locations at the exact same time

Fine, so Air Nomads are structurally racist and avoid relations with members of the other nations even though there’s no connection between spirituality and ability to bend, so the only reason they’d ever be doing this is if they were mighty concerned about the purity of their bloodlines.

Interestingly, this is presented as the marriage motivator of the main bad guy.

So far so logic.

What’s very much not logic is that the narrative asks you to take it as a given that the entirety of the nation found itself at the temples at the exact moment when Sozin was in the mood to commit some heavy genociding. And by entirety I mean every single member, even the babies just born to a nomad half the world away. Because unless you’re leaving the door open for there being some wayward airbending DNA which would eventually produce an airbender, making Aaang not the last one and thus disqualifying the genocide from being an extermination, then every nomad had to nomad their way to the temples at a single point in time.

Except for my boy, another proof of him being a pariah, as if I needed another.

This is too much to assume of a non-nomadic people, let alone a nomadic one. There are just two explanations I can come up with as to how this is possible. One, Air Nomads aren’t actually all that hot and bothered about nomading and the Temples are more of a Jonestown scenario where few ever leave. Or more plausibly two, living as a nomad for months on end, quite possibly on your own and with no sexual outlet, would be hard even on the most committed celibate. If the instruction which prevents an airbender from having sex with members of the other cultures isn’t regularly reinforced, accidents are bound to happen.

Case in point

You’d need to brush up on the celibacy programming sooner or later for it to remain in effect. Additionally, airbenders practice strict gender segregation, with half the temples being assigned to men and half to women. This strongly implies ritualised procreation even at times when you are allowed to have sex.

Ergo, behold! The Annual Airbending Fuckfest, held annually every year at the temples, gathering every airbender from all over the world for them to get their rocks off, produce racially approved babies, and for Sozin to easily discover when the Air Nomads would be at their most vulnerable.

I like to imagine him striking in the middle of a nation-wide orgy but that’s just me.

3) The Fire Nation had to be able to attack the temples at the same time

OK, so we established the Airbender Regional Conference, full on with swingers parties and obligatory lectures on the evils of race-mixing. Very nineteen thirties Germany, don’t know how it could pass a preliminary discussion on worldbuilding but let’s roll with it.

Wanna know what I’m not going to roll with? This.

You might have noticed something about the Air Temples. Like that they’re spaced pretty far away from each other. As in “North, South, West, and East” far away from each other. Meanwhile, the Fire Nation is placed on the far left edge of the map, the “western” edge if you will. Meaning, Sozin couldn’t benefit from a central position and needed different amounts of time to move his armies, getting everyone in position for a highly coordinated attack on the Air Temples to take place.

And he needed to do this without anyone in the world noticing, otherwise he’d blow his moment of surprise. Which gets pretty tricky when it comes to reaching the Northern and Eastern Air Temples, seeing how there’s something called the Southern Water Tribe and Western / Southern Air Temple blocking the way.

But Joy! you might be saying. Don’t be silly, the Avatar world is round! Couldn’t Sozin use little-known routes to mount a surreptitious attack and not risk his plans getting out?

First of all, while “the world is round” may or may not be common knowledge in the Avatarverse (and I sure hope it is because how else do you explain Wan Shi Tong’s planetarium), no one acts like it. The conquering of the Earth Kingdom progresses from West to East, with no indication of there being both an eastern and western front. Ba Sing Se is seen throughout the war as an impregnable jewel of the campaign which it wouldn’t have been if Sozin had realized the city was literally in his back yard and a naval attack was very much a possibility. And up to the final episode the characters travel as though they think of their destinations as points on a flat surface. The age of discovery doesn’t seem to have occurred. For all we know, the people of Avatarverse are operating on a notion there’s a Unagi-infested ocean west from the Fire Nation, impossible to cross.

But all right, let’s pretend there was a Magalhães who discovered a direct route from Caldera City to Ba Sing Se for Sozin to clinch the Air Temples from all sides at roughly the same time. Cool. Slight problem, though. Sozin also waged simultaneous attacks on the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes. I don’t care how strong the comet makes you, at some point there’s just no way you have enough people to man your ships, let alone launch a victorious attack on every single country on the planet.

Moreover, remember—Sozin needed to attack simultaneously to make full use of the comet, i.e. the whole reason why he was launching a mass assault in the first place. And he was on an especially tight schedule because in the Avatarverse, Sozin’s Comet lasts some thirty minutes. Which implies a need for some next-level coordination. Yet somehow I don’t feel all the Hawkies in the world were going to hack this. And that’s assuming perfect weather, with no ships sinking and nobody noticing huge navies moving all over.

It’s impossible no matter how you look at it. Either the plan would leak out and the Air Nomads would hide or mount a defence, or the Fire Nation forces would run out of time and have to fight without the benefit of the comet, especially in the harder-to-reach locations.

But you know what? I’m going to be nice for once. I’m going to steelman the hell out of this. Because remember those four Air Temples? Only one of them bears any visible marks of Fire Nation soldiers ever coming there before the show starts proper.

Additionally, if you think about it, organizing the Aerial Swingers Party at four otherwise gender-segregated locations sounds like a logistical nightmare. So let’s assume the Southern Air Temple was the lucky one stocking up on lube in 0 AG, with the rest being completely abandoned and everyone travelling south. This means that Sozin needed to attack a single Air Temple, along with the Southern Water Tribe and Yu Dao, all located more or less within the same general unobstructed area. Seems rather doable, no?

So now for the final reason why the notion of airbenders being exterminated is still utterly coconuts.

4) The flying nation of flying people with flying pets had to forget how to fucking fly

All right, summing up: for the extermination to have any chance at success, Air Nomads must have practiced strict genetic purity which explains why there aren’t any outside enclaves which could have or produce airbenders. All Air Nomads must have been present at a single location at the same time. No one with the exception of Pathik’s mum had ever sex with outsiders, meaning no new group of airbenders was produced and the Southern Air Temple held the entirety of Air Nomads when the genocide happened.

Cool? Cool.

So what you’re asking me to accept here is that the offensive Fire Nation force which didn’t learn how to use aircraft until after one hundred years when the Mechanist invented it was able to come and in the thirty minutes afforded to it by the comet exterminate however many hundreds or thousands of people who had the distinct advantage of being on their home turf on the top of a mountain, complete with impenetrable hiding places, and were

Fucking

AIRBORNE!

The temple stuffed chock full of airbending masters, a single one of whom managed to kill dozens of soldiers before dying, was no match for the army of slow-moving tanks or a couple of rocketbenders and had no choice but to lie down and croak.

No way. No fucking way. I can deal with the implied racial supremacy and enforced celibacy and annual boinkfests and Pathik being ostracized for having the wrong sperm donor but I refuse to accept that when the fight went south no airbender was able to slope off through the little thing known as the fucking sky, on their own or using one of those huge furballs they’re bonded to for life and which are portrayed throughout the show as essentially impossible to shoot down.

Forget Game of Thrones, try getting this baby

I don’t give a shit how OP Sozin’s Comet makes you, this is just not happening. Even assuming the best conditions for the genocide as I have been throughout this meta, someone would have escaped. You’re telling me no one loaded the kids onto the sky bison, at least? There’d be dozens of people forced to go into hiding and give up their culture and roleplay as Arya driving Nymeria away, sure. Maybe some would seek help in the Earth Kindom and be given over to the Fire Nation. Perhaps there’d be skirmishes erupting over the next few years which would further decimate the population. But some would survive.

A factual extermination of Air Nomads, however you slice it, is logically and logistically impossible and only makes sense as a) a Watsonian exercise in Fire Nation propaganda, and b) a Doylist sleight of hand. Regardless of whether you prefer surviving Air Nomads to hide in complete seclusion and not reveal themselves until after Ozai is defeated, or assimilate with the other nations, it makes no sense for there not to be people who can eventually produce airbenders.

Well what do you know. Looks like eighty-sixing season four in favour of that stupid movie wasn’t a good idea after all was it.

#atla #Avatar The Last Airbender #anti bryke #anti lok #anti korra #atla critical