at some point in the future:

*non vegan reading about a new vegan leather*: psh. bet it has plastic in it tho.

*scrolls down and finds out theres 0 plastic. the non vegan gets angry since now theres finally a vegan leather they dont get to complain about*: psh, bet it doesnt feel like real leather tho.

*scrolls down to find out the creators of this leather spent a lot of time to make it more "like real leather*: psh, bet they exploit their workers tho

just say you want to use animal leather and you were never going to consider an alternative in the first place, bud

The world is fucking disgusting

Genuine question, how did you figure out or realize the whole being butch thing? What does being butch mean to you?

idk if it was like… figure out? more so just putting a name to something i’ve always felt or known about myself. i came out as a lesbian, then i came out as nb, then i was like well i want gender affirming care so that must mean i am Trans™️, & it’s like… none of those words or kind of… vibes (lol sorry) quite fit? i don’t feel like a cis lesbian, & i actually kind of despise non-binary as a concept (don’t send asks abt this i won’t answer them lol, do ur own thing if u love it that’s cool); i think for me personally Transness is a little too serious & intense & limiting to how i feel. & im a white afab person in a smaller body, & honestly…….. we are often the wooooorst demographic of trans ppl lmao so i just didn’t even rly like some spaces i was in. i got the most important gender affirming care i wanted, i moved & i got married, i got to work remotely etc

& so just sitting with all of that it was like. ok well a lot of neoliberal queer spaces piss me the fuck off; i’m not cis, but i’m not TRANS in the way a lot of ppl (very validly) feel; i do Not like nb. i’d read stone butch blues before, i have a degree in critical theory where i worked a loooot w queer theory, obviously i’ve written abt queerness for ages lol. so then i was just like ah. butch. dyke. YAH! sweet. 100/10 feels amazing i love it

& i think for me i love those words most bc they’re rooted in really radical belief that i have. they carry an ethic with them that, at its best & most intersectional ofc, i want to act on, all the time. i want to show up for people & be protective & tough & strong but i also so deeply want to be nurturing & nourishing. i want to allow myself to be nourished & cared for. i think it feels rly wonderful to have a word for transgressive gender that sums it all up bc people lived it before me. they made that very specific & particular space to experience femininity in a way that doesn’t feel like a noose.

i think also butchness is so expansive! something that never sat right w me abt the way we talk abt transness in the west is that i don’t think there are ‘pre’ & ‘post’ transition selves. like… i’ve never been Not Me? like i came out of the womb a dyke. all i did my entire childhood is run around in the mountains, catalogue leaves, play w my dog, read nancy drew, & avidly watch + play any women’s soccer i could. i loved to fish & mountain bike, i grew up in the desert so gardening to me was a miracle. i never cared abt gender at all beyond like ‘well i guess i’m a girl & the women i admire just won a world cup, they’re badass’ & that was it. i liked boys clothes bc they were practical & felt better, but i just. didn’t think about it. ppl called me a tomboy which was fine, i liked scout in to kill a mockingbird so whatever. but i never felt “non-binary” & i certainly never felt like a boy.

& i am… still just like that lmao. i hated my boobs, point blank day 1 lol, but that doesn’t have to mean i’m trans, or that i’ve somehow changed in a way that requires separation from who i’ve been my whole life. i HATE the language of ‘dead/lived’ name; i hate the weird expectation that u should allow the state to have all of ur gender stuff on record (no fucking thank you, y’all can keep my legal name & i will be flying under the radar lol). so i think western transness rly just. irritates me. doesn’t fit. hasn’t ever fit.

so butchness is like. i am 8 year old jude, i’m just older now. if this makes sense ur butch lmao but. it’s this rly free space to play w masculinity in a way that doesn’t necessitate western transness, & also doesn’t necessitate a separation from maternalism, which i fundamentally believe in. i don’t even rly think of my own care as “gender affirming” & more just like… essence affirming. i didn’t want top surgery so my body could be read as male; i wanted it so i could look like me. i want my clothes to feel & fit in a Very particular way bc that’s how i like them. it’s abt practicality, efficiency, comfort.

& lastly to me butchness has a remarkable space for tenderness that masculinity on its own just cannot hold. like. it’s abt being protective & strong, sure, but it’s in service of others. always always always. so sometimes that looks like communicating calmly, sometimes that looks like infinite small acts of service for ur friends or ur partner. when i think of settling into myself it’s more about returning to who i knew i was when i was a kid, when i was the only person my dog liked & how it felt to sit on the swings when the sun was setting after the monsoon; it’s allowing myself to love like that — caring, & quiet, & full.

ultimately to me butchness is about devotion, more than anything in the world. devoted to safety, devoted to community. no one is devoted the way dykes are bc it’s how we survive. it’s how we have always survived — the steadfastness, the faith, the joy, even thru suffering, to not be boxed in. to help each other. to be funny & kind & thoughtful & not reject the absolute best parts of womanhood for the sake of a western box. to demand care. it’s so beautiful. devotion.

tldr it’s the best

pmmm rewatch live notes: ep 6

my favorite part of this ep is kyoko playing ddr to the opening song (lies its all my favorite. this show is a masterpiece and every single scene, line, shot has meaning and adds to the story. literally this show is my everything)

Kyoko asks homura if they’ve met before when homura calls her by name and homura just says “perhaps, who knows” which should not be so funny to me

Homura tells madoka that if reasoning with a fool won’t work she’ll resort to more drastic measures which sounds like she is thinking about hurting madoka to meet her own ends but in actuality it means that she may be more forceful in keeping madoka out of magical girl business in order to save her

The opening ends with a scene of madoka and homura looking dramatically to reddish lighting 

Kyubey eats the fully black grief seeds which makes him at the top of the food chain the kyoko referenced

Wild how no one in the show comments on the fact that they collect food for him

They are like livestock to him

But livestock that raise themselves 

Magical girls becomes witches, different magical girls defeat the witches and fill the grief seeds with black, kyubey eats the grief seeds, and kyubey makes more magical girls

Kyubey even tells sayaka about how strong madoka would be and suggests that sayaka could ask madoka to make a contract to defeat kyoko for her which is so fucked up

Not important but it’s so silly to me how kyoko is dancing to the opening song at the arcade

Kyoko w a pocky stick in her mouth is such an interesting reference/allusion to cigarettes

She is corrupted, she is distinctly more adult (not age wise but mentally), she is a delinquent

Gold shines on the surface of the fight between kyoko and sayaka when sayaka returns the next day to try and track the familiar 

Madoka is always trying to get the magical girls to talk and work things out between each other because she believes that each of them deserve happiness and life

Sayaka so quickly jumps to being willing to kill kyoko which shows the instability of her ideals and morals once she is faced with the reality of the adult world

In this way madoka is more naive since she never loses her sense that all people are good and deserve to live

The argument madoka and sayaka have at the site of the fight is the first time we see sayaka coming to terms with and addressing the severity of the situation

She is overwhelmed by the badness that she sees in the world and becomes jaded, contending that she and mami are exceptions

Madoka cries and i think this is because she sees how sayaka is being changed not because she’s hurt (which i do think she is) 

When madoka comes downstairs that night to talk with her mom the lighting is green

A big difference between madoka and sayaka is that madoka believes that there can be multiple truths, both sayaka and kyoko can be correct and valid while sayaka believes that her view is the only morally just one

Which is why sayaka is so upset and spirals once she learns that not everyone ascribes to her philosophy whereas madoka continues to say that all the magical girls should try and work together

Madoka’s mom says that as you grow up the consequences for messing up get bigger and bigger which is ironic considering madoka is actually facing much higher stakes than her mom

The sky is yellow when sayaka goes to visit kyosuke and he is already gone from the hospital 

The lighting is red as she walks away from the hospital sadly and contemplates visiting him at his house

Red lighting continues as kyoko confronts sayaka outside kyosuke’s house

Kyoko sas that if sayaka wanted kyosuke to have to love her she could just break his bones so he would have no one else to rely on 

Objectively kyoko is right that it would be a more straightforward way to get kyosuke to be with sayaka but all sayaka sees are the ethical concerns

Kyubey gets madoka to intervene in the blooming rematch between kyoko and sayaka bc he knows there’s a good chance he can get madoka to make a wish if something goes wrong

Madoka panics and throws away sayaka’s soul gem to stop her from transforming and fighting 

Homrua immediately panics and disappears to go after it bc she knows from past timelines that the soul gem is the entirety of their being

The shrillness and hoarseness in madoka’s voice as she begs kyubey to save sayaka is so painful 

Homura has been a magical girl through all these timelines, does she even remember what it is to have a body and be human? No wonder she doesn’t feel or act human anymore

Madoka’s immediate reaction is sadness and crying, while kyoko’s is anger and violence 

Highlights the coping mechanisms of the two of them

Homura silently retrieves the soul gem and revives sayaka

Just like she silently slaves away time after time to save madoka in every timeline

how did you arrive at your progressive punk christianity outlook after being immersed in conservative christianity?

ooh!! good question. see I don’t really think what I was immersed in was particularly conservative—in circles I’ve been around we’ve always dissed Americans for being conservative (kinda mean I know) and my dad used to take me to climate change protests in the 2000s and I was always taught the 6 days of creation aren’t literal, the rapture isn’t real, women in stem etc. idk how it was anywhere else but the part of sydney I grew up in was just Like That, there was encouragement to give to the poor to actually end poverty and people actually did even though none of us really had heaps and I guess I wasn’t raised to be okay with entitlement but simply be kind to everyone? And I didn’t even know what conservative was until I was maybe 17 (I thought it was a style of fashion for ages and then I thought it meant conserving nature and history). It was always just Christians are meant to be genuinely kind and not have sex til you’re older and preferably married yknow?? and work hard, like the protestant work ethic was def a thing but somehow in a non ableist way as much as this is possible— I get real impatient with people bitching about stuff getting taken away from them, not realising how much they have when I probably have less and I’m usually giving away as much as I’m able and as much will put me in a state of perceived danger. It’s definitely a form of rebellion against them to see how little I can survive on which I’m working on. I also didn’t even know that so many Christians were transphobic like I thought it was only the extreme theobros. I also had a really lovely geography teacher in high school who was also a Christian and used her faith to drive environmental action, my biology teacher was a Christian and stood up for trans rights and I also had acccss to the internet to read up on clobber passages and hear peoples stories and it was always like ‘oh yeah some Christians believe different things based on how they read this stuff’ and I don’t think it was until I was old enough to actually vote and saw what propoganda was going around I really realised the power dynamic behind it, with the rise of the Australian Christian lobby which felt like it was straight out of the US. I fully thought voting was just liberals if you like fossil fuels, greens to save the environment, and labor if you’re a people pleaser and like fun little rhymes like ‘Kevin 07’ and attempting to be feminist but not really getting anything done. I actually met Martyn Iles once and was like ‘damn this guy is a fake Aussie this isn’t how we do Christianity’. I also got super burnt out by how hard and how biblically I tried to love my classmates on top of the Protestant work ethic about my schoolwork I never really cared about for myself, and was well versed in theology enough to be like HA! Grace means that we don’t have to do all that and can just do our sustainable best, still thinking my view was mainstream. I went to uni to study enviro sci at 17 and I thought my convictions to not drive unless Absolutely Necessary were driven by Christian ethics (which they were, how rigid I was with it was a pda response though). Then over the years realised very belatedly how people often didn’t validate my views and experiences and I’d expect they would (bc they were biblically rooted) and got quite hurt when they didn’t. Spent years in different volunteer ministries trying to put together the kind of community talked about in books like Philippians only to constantly be let down and feel isolated and that only driving me to work harder, despite knowing God’s grace meant I didn’t have to feeling like I couldn’t stop while my earthly needs for connection were unmet, saying yes to things I’d previously said no to because I got a sense of temporary community and belonging every time I joined a new serving team. Tried extra hard to make places inclusive and expected everyone else to be working as hard on it as I was and feel the desperation like I did and got super hurt when they didn’t, oh I guess I’ll have to do it all myself then.

I’ve always struggled with the concept of hell, tbh I heard about it way too young and never had a drop of self preservation instinct in my body only didn’t want to let God down by saying no. I’ve particularly always struggled with the whole urgency motivation like I’m trying, I’m doing the best I can, I listen to people and actually speaking the gospel into their lives in a way that hits home for them (bc I was thinking about how to do this in an empathetic and understanding and autonomy respecting way from a Very Young Age like I used to attempt to evangelise on moshi monsters to get an idea) and shit, I’m like 19 years old at this stage and I’m tired. If only I could just have one last hurrah to change places with someone so they can go to heaven instead of me? Id take it. and I basically worked myself to the point of being that suicidal and kept fucking going because God made me good at science so I can save the planet and end world hunger, and I had this conviction to contextualise (this is what we learned at afes btw) the gospel to really be real to queer folk and indigenous folk and other people of colour and marginalised people (it’s easy to see oppression with my background and my neurotype tbh) and maybe I could make myself suffer now bc God wasn’t gonna let me do that for eternity? anyway eventually left afes bc I was being so stretched and getting so isolated and the work I was doing there wasn’t achieving any of these things and I realised if I stayed I might end up dead and I wasn’t ready to go to heaven yet when my work wasn’t done. or at least so constantly dysregulated I wouldn’t be as able to be kind to others and show them the gospel.

around this time I’m also putting together a pretty comprehensive framework for how to actually solve global problems in a productive way, I’ve unpacked the pride in a lot of Christian mission projects and how they often were a feel good thing but not actually respectful or effective and I’d come up with literally hundreds of ideas for projects I could do to actually help, none of which I obviously had time for I think I was working up to 3 jobs while studying and serving in church and doing my hobbies that kept me kind of sane as well? which was discouraging to say the least, driving a kind of rageful resentment. Around that time I also discover PDA and my whole life makes sense, I start on my adhd meds which I had to jump through a million hoops to get and realise maybe I can finish uni.

a pda framework as I dive more into that and how to be actually neurodivergent affirming and actually recover from burnout long story short makes me realise how ableist much of our concept of sin and holiness really is and how much we need to destigmatise sin and stop using it as a way to intellectualise actual things happening in our brains and nervous systems and maybe we’d feel a lot less hopeless about it like it’s some big mystery if we actually did unpack the fear and threat responses and trauma behind it. Which we always say we will do but practically, church doenst give a space to do that bc you’re gonna be shamed. even for the people who are non affirming I’d be like, but isn’t it a logical step to someone who’s not yet been convicted to celibacy (if that’s something they think they should be) and realised this whole thing is unrealistic, not because the bible is wrong but because people think you can control your own brain by simply trying and trying again every time you fuck up as if that’s not gonna drive learned helplessness or actually traumatise you when you so desperately want to do better? Either that or drive you to be numb about it which I realised is what usually happens, there are certain sins people are blind to in every congregation and they’re actually intellectually unable to be convicted of that as sin because they’re stretched as far as they can go covering all other bases and being like ‘Christ covers that I didn’t Choose To Sin I’m trying not to even though it doesn’t really work’ like I’m a solutions person. if something isn’t working we’re gonna think of a new method and suddenly I understand how my brain works and those of so many others especially those who feel marginalised by the church!

and so long story short when I eventually had to quit what I was doing at church because someone cared enough to realise I hadn’t been doing well for years I was like I’m gonna follow this urge of the Spirit or simply my own head and desire for true connection I often found In exvangelical spaces and hear as many experiences as possible and use it to shape my worldview and get a bunch of hope from people who yes they’ve been marginalised but the gospel is real to them. that’s my only criteria I’m not gonna judge based on theology and I’m not ever gonna think my theological takes make anyone else wrong I’m just gonna be open to listen and shape them so there isn’t any cognitive dissonance and the grace found at the cross is real and practical and doenst have weird arbitrary limits, and I’m also gonna listen to those hurt by Christianity who some might judge as being hard hearted but I know how trauma works. and I’ve been doing that ever since, gradually getting there more and more and I think the best/funniest thing is even in more conservative spaces literally everyone I still talk to has been super encouraging of it and if we have any disagreements they’re pretty minor compared to the fact that we all believe the gospel is for everyone and we all wanna invest in social justice too (which makes me question how conservative those spaces ever were tbh). like there’s def parts of my story I won’t always tell but I feel like I come with a perspective people respect these days no matter where I am, and that’s nice in contrast to being that weird kid trying to do adult things being told either not to worry or that I don’t understand.

finished da:o at last. thinking about my assortment of half-developed warden ocs who never quite gelled the way hawke did and i feel like it's partly that i never hit on a sequence of endgame choices that really felt like a payoff. da:o is a such a great build-your-own-blorbo kit, you get such juicy character concepts out of the origin choice & reactivity but i'd always get an oc to mid-late game and feel like they were a bit dressed up with nowhere to go bc the ending just doesn't... really cap their arc in a way that feels satisfying

there's some good crunchy episodic drama contained within the treaty quests but in terms of the overall structure, the warden hits their lowest point at the beginning and you spend the game powering up until you win, pretty straightforwardly depending on your choices. like yeah the dark ritual is edgy sexist bullshit but you need it, you need something there.

like the first 2/3 are a great arc. hero leaves home in exile, goes around finding friends & adventure, returns home changed by said adventures, confronts their past, wrenching emotional ordeal etc, moves on as their new actualized self to take on the big bad. which is great except everything pretty much comes up warden from there on out. you need some kind of climax crunch to test that actualized self, another pain point at the end

which they tried to do, it just falls a bit flat for me. i've heard the 'grey warden must die' twist criticized as feeling sprung out of nowhere but i don't mind that so much. between the whole 'in death, sacrifice' thing, duncan & jory, sophia dryden, etc, i think it's pretty well set up that this is an organization with dark secrets that their two bumbling junior recruits know way too little about. i do think it's a bit stock. 'will you die to save the world?' just isn't that interesting, there's a plain right answer both ethics & genre are pointing you to, which more importantly is not really tied to your character at all.

like say what you will about da2 but the ending pays the hell off bc it forces hawke to show who they are. a person could justify making either decision, so who your hawke is matters. every bit of character development is leading up to how they'll jump in that moment

and then after dropping the warden sacrifice on you, dao immediately offers you an escape hatch, which, unless your warden is really fussed about blood magic or whatever, of course you're gonna take. structurally i think this decision is leeched of a lot of potential by the fact that both options are coming as new information.

new guy we just met: wait! there's a problem! morrigan: don't worry i fixed it! okay! on we go then! thanks morrigan

(could've been cool if alistair knew a warden had to die from the start, so you're struggling to go on with this journey, knowing how it ends, really get some time to stew on that before morrigan drops her bomb. the full relief of a stay of execution, plus 'you're only telling me this now?!' gives the warden a somewhat more sympathetic reason to feel betrayed than like, self-centered dickishness)

but more than that, the options the game gives you to object don't acknowledge what's really so awful about it. like you get 1) dark magic scary. part of a pattern in how i think this franchise tends to (mis)apply blood magic etc as a narrative device, but, like, good option to have for roleplay. 2) is oldgodbaby a bad idea? valid question but doesn't really go anywhere (and is more or less locked into being an anticlimax, can't be world-shaking as a choice-dependent outcome)

but like that post that was going around. what it means for morrigan is so wrenching. is it what she wants for herself or is she still acting out her mother's will? can the warden know, or believe they know? if they ask her to go through with it, are they complicit in flemeth's abuse? or are they overriding morrigan's agency if they refuse out of concern for her? how does your warden's origin & personality frame how they see this - what they're entitled to, what they owe, what they believe about duty & autonomy & respect, they're relationship with morrigan, & with magic, & their own impending death.

these people who are so young & so traumatized flailing around hurting each other in their good intentions. the dark ritual as this awful act of desperation & mixed motivations & regret that tears this hard-won friend group apart (especially if alistair is involved). saving the world as a good clean victory over evil in the grand scope, at the cost of this cataclysmic sacrifice on the personal level - so intimate, so devastating, so small. THAT'S drama.

Director’s commentary for Pietro and Erik’s relationship in superposition! (I love love love everything we got to see of them onscreen; the “remember what I always tell you” “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism?” exchange in particular was so delightful, probably my favorite little moment of the fic so far)

ohhhh i love this one.

basically the idea came in the beginning to have pietro be part of the pit crew bc of his powers. then i was debating doing that bc i wanted him to be erik's kid, and we (me and percy who helps me with all my fics) were messing around with the idea of him being a little kid running around the garage or something, then it kind of all came together when i think he suggested we make him old enough to be on the crew *and* erik's son. so that's where erik being a teen dad came from! and once we landed on that idea, even though i knew it was going to be hard to slot into the story, i really super loved it. and we figured out a way around some of the logistical issues with erik not knowing he had a kid till he was 20, when he was probably already in f1, and us making erik a little older so it wasn't super outrageous.

they have an incredible relationship, there's actually a lot of lore that's not in the fic (yet, at least?). he found out about P when he was 20 and magda moved to england and got his number. he went over with his mom & she waited outside when he went in -- P was soo shy & didn't want to come out to meet him at first. he was so tiny and had erik's eyes and it was just surreal for him. he eventually got to say a little hello and go see some of pietro's trains and things and get to see his kid being a real four year old human and when he went back out to the car he just sobbed. he'll always be heartbroken that he never held him as a baby, tbh. he doesn't blame magda but he just wishes he could've gotten every minute with him possible. he takes being a dad more seriously than anything else and just loves his kid so much.

i guess it also hasn't come up that he stopped racing for a few years from when he was 20-22 because he wanted to parent full time, which is what led to him not winning his first championship until he was 25.

also, this bit you mentioned is a favorite of mine too, erik as a socialist who is also knowingly being a hypocrite because he's a multi-millionaire is funny to me lol. but yeah, these two are a great duo, erik does a good job!! there will be some bumps in the road bc he's parenting a 16 year old, but y'know. <3 thank you for loving them!

i'll add a deleted scene under the cut where erik opens up abt P a little more! (not very well written i'm sorry)

“I loved him from the moment I met him,” he says, quiet and honest. “He was small for his age, for a long time. And shy, if you can believe it. Magda had to coax him out just to say hello. I would’ve killed for four more years with him, back then.”

“And now?”

Erik shrugs. “It was hard at first. Toddlers don’t adjust well to change. And I think he… I know he wonders about it, sometimes. If I didn’t try hard enough to be there.” He swallows. He tries to keep that guilt tucked away somewhere safe. It hurts, and it’s hurt for the last twelve years. “But I just try to do everything I can to be a good dad, I guess. I don’t know if I’m getting anywhere with that one.”

He’s read so many fucking parenting books he could recite them. Raising mutant children, raising children with ADHD, explaining sexuality to your children, gentle parenting; everything he could get his hands on. But he still loses his temper sometimes.

He thinks of the first time he had to discipline Pietro, when he was little. He’d taken to Erik immediately, once he’d come out of his shell a bit, but Erik was a visitor, a friend who his mother had gently told him was his dad. They could play dragons together, visit the park, have a snack, and then he went back to his mom, who did heavy lifting.

The first time he’d taken Pietro overnight and needed to put his foot down, be just a bit firm (the first of thousands “no ice cream for dinner” arguments), Pietro had been completely distraught. He sobbed for what felt like hours, like Erik had broken his four-year-old heart.

He’d ended up burrowed into Erik’s neck, whimpering softly, while Erik whispered nonsense to him. It was the first time it dawned on him that if he just really fucking loved the kid, that could be enough.

These days, he isn’t sure.

Mainly a Ratchet Character Study but also: Parallel between the Ineffable Husbands and Transformers Dratchet (mostly IDW)

Obligatory Spoiler Warning: just don't read unless you've finished or heard about the last 15 mins of Good Omens S2E6 bc the spoilers (yes, the same moment you keep seeing everywhere) are there but honestly it's not descriptive enough imho.

Short ver. is at the bottom since this is pretty lengthy <3

Ratchet Character Study

The end of Good Omens S2E6 reminded me of Ratchet and Drift/Deadlock from Transformers for some reason. I think it's bc I've accepted the fanon idea (a lot of what's below is fanon/HCs, some canon to it though, but reader discretion and all that) of Deadlock likely offering Ratchet the chance to run away during the war (perhaps after realizing Megatron was starting to lose it and the Con cause was not the same one he initially fought for/corruption, conquering, domination, lunacy, etc.) with the promise of *them* and security with Ratchet no longer having to deal with the stresses that being the Autobot CMO carried and the damage that no doubt did to Ratchet's psyche and over-well being over the millennia. Esp. since Ratchet was so idealistic and bright before the war, and while still opinionated and fierce, was a youthful "party animal" with plenty of optimism, determined to do anything he could to see his hopes of a peaceful Cybertronian society through.

All Ratchet seems to want is the best for his planet, the best for other mecha, hence why I've always believed that Ratchet is a "people person" (further backed up by his past as the "party ambulance" ;D). He just has all his walls up 24/7 (sarcasm/sardonicism, gruffness, anger, etc.) to protect this soft, emotional part of himself, similar to how he keeps his walls up so that he can compartmentalize and perform his job efficiently as CMO even when surrounded by tragedy. He's a "people person" with a job that revolves around death. That shit definitely took a toll, but I don't believe it ever broke him necessarily. And Drift/Deadlock, so afraid of the war actually breaking Ratchet, wanted to do everything in his power to protect him from the war. The possibility of Deadlock presenting this offer, to me, sounds absolutely plausible.

When offered the chance to "run away", of course Ratchet declines, stating he knows his place and that is wherever he can decidedly do the most good and help the most mecha. Even though he'd love nothing more than to be free from the pressure and, most importantly, be with Drift/Deadlock instead of sneaking around throughout the war and having their relationship be so ethically complex. Ratchet understanding why Drift did what he did in becoming a 'Con and everything else, understanding that even though Deadlock went against Ratchet's code of morals, Deadlock was inevitable given Drift's beginnings in the Dead End. Hence why later in LL Ratchet seems to "blame himself" for how Drift became Deadlock, because Ratchet may believe that he should've "saved" or "fixed" Drift.

Then again, Ratchet knows the complexity of that, knows that it isn't "that simple" and that converting/ensuring Drift as an Autobot wasn't much better than having Drift become a Decepticon because, realistically, Autobots were doing things nearly just as bad. Of course, as the war went on it became clear that Megatron was going off the deep end and the Autobots truly did become the "Good Guys", if one could even call it that. Really, they were the lesser of two evils, or the arch-nemesis of the Decepticons that put a stop to their wrong-doings, but regardless, the Autobots themselves were far from innocent. Esp. from other civilizations/planets' perspectives.

When the Decepticons began, it was mainly in an effort to change Cybertronian society for the better, to gain equality for all Cybertronian mecha and get rid of the corrupt government and caste system, and I believe Ratchet (esp. seeing the corruption from the medical malpractice POV) low-key sided with them when this was their original goal. Drift/Deadlock is what makes Ratchet truly acknowledge this millennia after the war (either during the LL which it is hinted at or sometime before then during the war they may have had disagreements about this), but he'd known it deep down since the beginning.

Ratchet mostly went with the Autobots because of his own personal ties (friends like Orion Pax), his position in said hierarchy (he was the chief of medicine for descendants of the Prime and really, would Pit mecha really be accepting of the Senate's CMO in their ranks?), and as seen in the IDW comics, various other reasons.

In the end, Ratchet practically stumbled into becoming an Autobot. He really didn't want to be with any faction, but as an Autobot he believed he could do more good, esp. since he tended to end up helping both sides' soldiers anyways. Being an Autobot just meant he had access to better supplies/tech/etc.

I also personally believe Ratchet was too proud of a mech to admit this to Drift/Deadlock's face until the LL. Admitting that Ratchet was originally on the wrong side, helping the wrong side, this whole time would be a blow to his own mental, it would (and does) cripple him with guilt. Again, all of this is just my personal head cannons and fanon ideas that I've seen, but I like to imagine this is pretty generally accepted.

I feel like younger Ratchet is torn between sides. Having started clinics for the "lower class" mecha in areas like the Dead End, providing care free of charge to those who couldn't afford it as long as they promised to change themselves for the better, conveys to me that Ratchet was empathetic to the struggles of lower class mecha, despite starting off as a forged medic and becoming the Chief Medical Officer for the Senate. Yes, Ratchet started off and lived a comparatively privileged life, but he has never turned a blind eye to any other mech's struggles and does his best to understand it regardless. Ratchet's "golden spark" so-to-speak is something I believe Drift sees and cherishes, and thus it's what Deadlock wishes to protect. The Prime's doctor willingly decided to save the life of a drug addict grifter in the Dead-End and continued to see value in and, most importantly, care for Drift's life, even after Drift became Deadlock and turned to a life of killing mecha that Ratchet may have considered friends/allies/etc. I full-heartedly believe that Ratchet still looked after/patched up Deadlock even though he was with the 'Cons, esp. since I believe Deadlock kept watch after Ratchet even though he was with the 'Bots. Regardless of their conflicting morals, these two never stopped looking after and caring for one another.

I can see their "argument" or discussion over this proposal going so many ways, but ultimately, as with a certain Angel and Demon, Drift/Deadlock wanted them to become their own "side" and Ratchet, for a multitude of reasons (pride/empathy/guilt/loyalty/desire to help or "savior complex" depending how you see it/arrogance/etc.) decided to stick with the life he hates. He despises the war, the life-loss, the pain, the pointless-ness of it all (aren't they all Cybertronian in the end?), but Ratchet is an emotional mech deep-down and because of his complex feelings and morality, he turns down Deadlock's offer.

The Parallel:

As with a certain Angel, Ratchet can't just sit on the sidelines and do nothing, he has to help. As CMO and a close friend of Optimus, Ratchet is shown to have a lot of push/pull on Autobot command and their decisions and not always but often in various comics/shows/media, we see Ratchet propose the more compassionate and ethical, while still cruelly (realistically) logical, decisions.

Like Aziraphale, Ratchet believes that by being in a position of power/control/leadership and by being a determined son of a bitch, he can "save [their race/people/planet/universe/the balance/etc.]" for a lack of better terms. They put aside their own happiness/freedom/peace/etc., no matter the repercussions for them or those in their personal lives, to make the decisions and take the actions that they believe will do the universe, as a whole, the most good. That's really all they want.

Short Ver.

Aziraphale still believes that there can be good and that Heaven can be "fixed", and additionally, having Crowley back with him on Heaven's side would make *them* and everything else so much easier. Easier to protect Crowley, easier for Crowley to be happy because Aziraphale himself would also be safer, everything would be better if Aziraphale could "fix" things and the balance. Make Heaven "good" again and Hell "bad" once more, un-blur the lines, despite Crowley knowing it was never like that to begin with ("I think I understand a lot more than you do"). Additionally, all the trauma and manipulation that Aziraphale has experienced in Heaven no doubt plays a role in all of this.

Aziraphale only wants to do the right thing, but his headspace and how he decides to go about it are just so seriously warped by both himself and from his experiences of being an Archangel of Heaven.

Ratchet just wants the war to end. For the fighting to stop and there to be some peace. He still believes, despite everything he's witnessed and been through, that the war can end. He continues to hope. Ratchet, despite how gruff and jagged his exterior may become, no matter how cynical and pessimistic he acts, still has a spark of gold deep down. He still wants to do good and he believes that there can be good again, even though Deadlock knows that there was never any good to begin with. Why save Cybertronian society and the way things used to be if they were never any good before? Moreso, why save Cybertronians when they were never any good before? Shit's always been fucked up and messy, where does this bleeding hearted CMO get off in trying to save all of them?

He gets off nowhere but he's still going to try regardless because it's worth it. Cybertron, Cybertronians, mecha, are still worth saving. If Ratchet is anything, it is stubborn and after everything he's been through, he'll be damned if he gave up now.

Side Note: I still believe there was a miracle in Aziraphale's coffee ;) but in case there's not take this comparison I randomly drew from the S2 finale <3

I also don't consider the anti-grisha sentiments to be something that would just go away. It in natural for humans to fear (and envy and resent) this more powerful species. Grisha are a group of people and just like humans, some of them will do bad things- on impulse, by accident, due to malicious intentions etc and their bad things are capable of being entire tragedies for humans with tremendous loss to life and property. A few Grisha would not will away this very natural, very human fear. Another very human thing is curiousity, expansion of science and animal experimentation. Of course they are doing the same to Grisha, to get to the root of their power, understand it, to control them, maybe even get a way yo manufacture that power for themselves. Not to mention entire religions are built on grisha hate and as someone who lives in a community with religions at war every other day despite the numeroussss changes being brought and people of 2 different religions aren't even different the way grisha are from humans. This will never just completely go away let away so soon. Even with grisha unrelated tragedies, they will be blamed. Fire burned down the village? Must be an inferni etc. I don't think any amount of change will be ever to remove human nature from humans. So fear works. But i do think it works Alongside other things. Ensure your safety with fear but well continue helping them and proving how useful grisha are. But to completely rely on their gratitude and not use fear at all is stupid and I don't think would work.

yeah, there's a lot of different facets to anti-grisha sentiment, which I think we can split into about four parts

the fear of grisha

the resentment of their apparent special treatment

religious prejudice

scientific curiosity

call me an optimist, but I actually think that it would be possible to change these attitudes

idk if you've read the kos duology anon (spoilers ahead of you haven't!!) but I find the solutions presented there to be really compelling and realistic

the way nina and the rest of the hringsa deal with fjerdan prejudice is soooo clever imo - by spreading the belief that grisha are blessed by djel, they allow people to consider that their religious beliefs don't necessarily exclude grisha (I've previously compared this to the belief held by progressive xtians that god created gay people and therefore queerness is acceptable from an xtian perspective, which I think is a reasonably accurate analogy)

the treaty made between ravka and shu han is also very clever, bc as far as I can tell, shu han isn't actually particularly anti-grisha - they don't hold the same fear or resentment that we see in ravka, it's just the government's wish to experiment. it's definitely an exploitative way of treating grisha, but I believe that in the industrial period the grishaverse seems to be entering, more ethical ways of experimenting with grisha power would become available. due to the nature of industrialization they'd also be more effective and efficient, so even from a purely utilitarian perspective, I can see the harm done to grisha being reduced considerably in the few decades following canon

as for the fear and resentment, I think integration is the only way to tackle this issue. by integrating grisha into ravkan society as a whole (instead of using the little palace and second army to keep them separate) otkazat'sya would see that grisha are human like them

ofc this would need to be a gradual process (we see this in the kos duology - the second army still exists as a separate entity, but there are also integrated military units which have both grisha and otkazat'sya soldiers) but it's necessary nonetheless imo

and lastly, yes human nature is to look for something to blame when things go wrong, BUT the grishaverse is entering a more industrial age, and I believe that the dawn of scientific thought would reduce the superstition surrounding grisha!

Hey! I was summoned by the tags you put under my post bc I also very much enjoy discussing ethics. I might make this into its own post so I'll try to not elaborate too much...

I think that I can't just decide for everyone if the difference between doing good for the sake of goodness or in order to save oneself matters, but for me, in most cases, including Dazai's case, it doesn't.

I like to believe that morality is a choice one can decide to make, and I don't think it's fair to take that away from them, regardless on how they might feel on the inside. It's a wonderful thing to act morally because it's your "natural" tendency, but I think people also have the right to do so deliberately, for a reason that they choose, without their choice being minimised. They're two different processes for sure, but if the outcome is good, then the action is a good action, and, if being moral is a choice, then I don't think I have the right to decide that only one intention or emotion that will lead there is good enough.

Also, doing good for your own sake and for the sake of others are mutually exclusive at all. One feeds the other, and if we were to put every person's actions under such scrutiny, we would ultimately run in circles.

So, for people outside the story, I would say that the debate does matter, but for the sake of the people involved, it doesn't, because the outcome is the same, especially since Dazai is so opaque as a character, and what he really feels about the things he does is so hard to read, so at the end of the day all most of them experience is his actions.

[Post this is referring to] Thank you for your elaboration, I loved hearing your opinion on the matter!!! That's close to consequentialism, isn't it? The consequences of one's actions, how much good they produced, are telling of it being morally right or wrong. I don't necessarily agree, but that's definitely a valid way to see it!!! I personally believe one's intentions are the most relevant aspect to take into account when judging whether and action is ethically rightful or not. Note that that is judging the moral of the action itself, and not giving a judgement on the person; people can have a million reasons to act selfishly, and in my very “humans are always inherently good” worldview more often than not it's caused by society rather than an actual preference to not be altruistic. But that doesn't change the fact that even a good action, if it isn't moved by good intentions, won't ever be passable of being morally right to me. Besides, then, wouldn't the other way round work to? Someone well intentioned, who's however incompetent, and ends up with their actions putting more bad in the world– as long as they're acting with a true desire to help others for the sake of it, their actions can't be considered morally wrong for me.

To clarify, with reference to your ask; I don't think people who do something for selfish reasons, and end up doing good, are morally rightful; but if they decide to do good, well, isn't that a well-intentioned aim itself? Then I think they stop being selfish to the extension that they consciously decide they're going to do good. That's not morally reprinandable at all.

Now, regarding Dazai... Honestly, I don't think Dazai is a good person. Because he never meant to do good for the sake of it. But now, the thing is, I don't think anyone in bsd is meant to be interpreted as good or evil– nobody, not Atsushi, not Mori, no one. When it comes to bsd– I do think bsd expresses a more or less nihilist worldview. And I know pretty much everyone else disagrees with me on this, I know, I'm sorry. But I do think there lies an undergoing message that good and bad are ultimately the same, and equally meaningless– it's there in Oda saying “Neither good nor evil mean much to you”, it's there in the way it makes you root for mafiosi like they were the good guys, it's there in the way Dazai never even considered to make amends for the bad things he's done (because they were never bad to begin with, because good and bad mean nothing anyway), it's there in the way it constantly shows good people doing bad and bad people doing good in a way that basically equalises them. To me there's really no point in discussing whether Dazai is good, because he is most evidently not, but that's only because he was never meant to be interpreted as such to begin with. Please refer to this post for further details; it's not surprising at all that Dazai switching over to the “good side” didn't come with a radical change of heart, and that he basically stayed the same, because how could he become good when that's no different than being evil, and those both mean nothing anyway?

And I know most people see bsd's core theme as finding a reason to live, and maybe it is, but even then I think that wouldn't be by denying its nihilism, but rather accepting it and finding a reason to live in spite of it: to me all of bsd really sums up in “that, at least, is a little more beautiful”.

Unit 10: Nature Interpretation's Role in Environmental Sustainability

Describe your personal ethic as you develop as a nature interpreter. What beliefs do you bring? What responsibilities do you have? What approaches are most suitable for you as an individual?

It is hard to believe that we are at the last blog as this means we are coming to the end of the semester. Coming from England as an exchange student, I have wanted my time here to go as slowly as possible, so it does not all rush by. Luckily I have another semester here to enjoy as much of the famous Canadian nature as possible. It is after all, one of the reasons why I picked this country.

Simply, my personal ethic as a nature interpreter would be to get other people as excited about nature as I am. I feel I have done this job well in the past with friends when we go on holiday. They are usually determined to stay in the bars and drink the week away, but I have encouraged them to go on hikes to actually see the country itself. Call me old or boring like they do initially, but afterwards, they are glad they have done it. Last week I visited a friend doing his exchange year in Victoria, BC, and I had to convince him to walk through a park instead of just going to the pub first. While we were out, we managed to see deer and an eagle which is a bird we never see in the UK. We both ended up very glad we did that, and not start drinking earlier.

I watched an interesting video the other day that summed up, said when we are gone, we will eventually be forgotten and our possessions like our car or house will either be used by someone else or destroyed. This may seem daunting, however, the point of the video was to say that when we are here, we should not worry about 95% of the things we waste our time thinking about. At the risk of sounding corny, I believe that by appreciating the world we are in, particularly the nature side like the mountains, coasts, and wildlife, this is how I believe we should live our lives. Through nature interpretation and passing down the knowledge and passion of the natural world, is the best way for this.

For me personally, the best parts of a trip away are the outside activities (only if it is not raining) like walking and beach activities if it is that type of holiday. I believe each country is unique or in this case, each state or province is. My ideal approach for nature interpretation would be to be involved in filming a show or film that involves nature in any way. I do not necessarily have to be the one holding the camera or be in the shot, but to be involved in any way would be enough for me at this stage. I really do not want to be stuck in an office job every day. If I am able to travel and in some way be part of spreading the knowledge and love for nature, I would be satisfied.

After watching the video of 'David Suzuki and Richard Louv at the Art Gallery of Ontario discussing how to reconnect to nature', this further supports my approach to nature interpretation. As I said earlier about wanting to be part of filming, this links to the idea of when they discussed technology in the video. Children these days rely on technology even more than we did which is a shame but understandable with all the changes going on in the world. They explained that it is harder for children to appreciate the nature especially if they are in growing urban cities. Therefore, it is through technology that they can get some sort of experience of it, until they are older hopefully when they can go out and experience it for themselves like we do. This would be another reason to do what I want to do through filming etc. In this modern world, this would be one of the more effective ways to share nature interpretation.

Thoughts on the blindspot that Steve can get, where he has a hard time seeing that Tony is having a hard time. And if it’s because of wishful thinking, stubborn refusal to accept the reason Tony isn’t doing well, situational blindness, or a flat out denial, does them getting together actually fix it? Or is Steve’s willingness to take Tony at his word and Tony’s tendency to downplay any troubles he’s having continue the habit?

mm this is some good thinky thoughting, my nonny nectarine. here are my thoughts, coming from the background of: i know and love someone i would say is quite like how i characterize steve - in anger and in belief in other folks and in tenacity to a moral stance or cause.

steve is complex and thinks he's not.

so as a short answer to your question, it's a mix of a lot of things, i think, yeah! most of the things you listed! his brain works very fast and his emotions come to him a month and a half too late. (tony's brain and emotions work at the same speed. chaos, my poor meow meow, etc), so there's always steve being like, you're my partner, we're in this together, look how good we are doing in the team, in small moments, etc. he's headstrong and narrowly focused when on a mission, professional or otherwise.

not to quote myself but, he doesn't recognize how wildly he swings to balance his own beliefs.

i don't know that canonically we are still at 'steve's willingness to take tony at his word,' because i think there's been a lot of doubting it and like all relationships, the amount you're willing to take someone's word really does depend on their consistency and reliability in the most pertinent past.

but steve does accept generally take tony's word and tony does generally downplay his troubles.

why?

bc i think sometimes it genuinely doesn't occur to steve that tony is doing unwell lol. i think steve wants to believe in the best in tony, even when he doesn't, he wants to. he's very unbiased about this guy, has too many pent up thoughts and lifetimes of history and that colors his ability to objectively be like is it logical that tony is doing good rn?

and tony puts up a good front and steve's hypocritical enough to be like?? 'why would you put up a front if you feel bad, just be honest.' and when tony is like 'i don't know' it means, last time i tried to tell you i wasn't doing well it came out all garbled because i wanted to choke the words out of my own throat for having the weakness to try and speak them and also you didn't want to hear it, you think the world should have the knees you do - to get up and get up and get up but not everyone has knees and not everyone lives on stable ground.

so i think tony says that he's doing okay, NOT in a lying sense (it's not really lying to him! i could write an essay on this) but in a HOPEFUL sense. in a - if steve believes in me and believes me here maybe i can channel that belief and i can then make that a reality, i can be that, be okay, i'm good at turning dreams into circuit boards, i'm good at routing my energy, right, right?

and steve actually believes him on almost the same level - i want to believe him, i want him to do well, the world is such a better place for the goodness of tony stark, my world is such a better place, he's strong i know he is, he knows i hate lying, he likes being believed in by me, i should believe him, i know him, he's surely doing well, right, right?

which is literally the same coin.

(sidenote for steve also has a lot of fucked up internalizations about ableism and labor capacity and work ethic and mental health and PTSD. he's often projecting because it's his ~defense mechanism)

but yeah, real eyes realize real lies ! steve and tony's problems aren't as a result of them being too dissimilar, it's as a result of them being too similar!

this would not change with them being in a relationship together, because being in a romantic relationship only strengthens the ways in which you want your partner to be well, to succeed and to be honest with you in the doing of it. but i do think if they were entering the relationship genuinely looking for it to last it would become evident quickly that they can't do that without working on their similar, burning instinct to give each other what want. and they would genuinely have to face the ways in which that instinct leads to their own individual and their combined detriment.

i wrote a line about it in are we satellites? that i always always think about:

Their problems have always been here, not in the ocean breaks where their lives and loves and morals meet up, but in the shore tide where tiny difference in their density intensities build them to choking foam.

the ocean is the ocean, even at different densities, but when the ocean meets the earth, how it behaves is entirely different - particle to particle, even as it stays strong and salty.

Previous anon here

I've also seen the 'taking care of yourself/your own happiness is selfish and bad' in activism/progressive spaces too. Actually, that comic you rb-ed about the guy buying a videogame and donating to charity, and then being 'called out' for not donating all the money, was the thing that made me send the original ask

But yes, you are right in saying that that mentality is also very prevalent in religious morality. (Makes you think doesn't it lol)

ironically, thats exactly how i meant it too. being socially or perceptually 'progressive' does not stop you from absorbing religious (or just generally controlling, chicken and egg on historically which leads to which) morality from context or culture. how many people these days, even those opposing capitalism, know that its literal roots is protestantism? think of all of the discussions about 'conservatism/puritanism with a gay hat'. - "i dont want to see gay sex bc sinful" and "i dont want to see gay sex bc what about queer kids" are the same statement. "white and black people shouldnt date bc of racial purity" and "white and black people shouldnt date bc power dynaimcs" are the same statement.

"woke" or social justice language has seeped so deeply into discourse that people are cloaking their every statement into it, theyre expressing their emotional baggage or inclinations with it. they've found a "progressive" way to state every personal beef they have with the world, and by doing this have made it very emotionally taxing to dispute them in good faith. if its easier to make an analogy with fandom on the fandom blog - antis think of themselves as progressive too, but they're parroting conservative rhetoric that they have absorbed, that makes them feel good, is intuitive, and they dress up their arguments in sj terms because that's what's marketable in their sphere. they probably even believe it's true - the same way some people genuinely believe in "selfishness" - but that doesnt change that the ideology itself is founded on conservationist, traditionalist, controlling beliefs.

i hate to bring up 'cultural [christianity/religion]' because that term has been twisted into nothing by social media, but this is what it actually means. even if youre not religious, the morals and the cultural background (ethics, interpersonal norms, rules for raising children) still seep into your understanding of the world just by Living In Society, by proximity, by your relationships with people who also live in that cultural environment (yes even if they themselves arent religious). opposing the norms, and sifting through them to find what actually is useful and makes sense, and what is "peer pressure by dead people" is a conscious effort. Identity alone cannot do that for you. Coming out, being queer, visiting counter-culture spaces can be a start but it is not automatic. The same way a lot of queer people have to unlearn homophobia (be it internalized or not), rooting out 'intuitive' (ie learned since childhood by socio proximity) beliefs and judgments of others is also a lot of work and involves challenging a lot of what you automatically think when faced with a problem or difference or deviance. (of course this doesnt apply only to religion per se, [some] americans and their 'what would the forefathers think' fall directly into this way of thinking. tho i might argue that's kind of pseudo-religious but thats a whole other discussion)

long thoughts i had while listening to dreams 🤓podcast🤓

obsessed with the idea of saving time like with the wayback machine and traveling to select saved/marked/preserved moments like that

get me in the ring coach i wanna talk to dream about it. gonna hit em with the "yeah we can but Should we" just to see what he does

im a big advocate for putting together an ethics committee cause we're only gonna need one More as time goes on and hardware/SOFTWARE advances.. especially software

cApItAlIsM LeAdS tO iNnOvAtIoN yeah when they want to empty the clouds before a big sports event, but the simultaneously dumbest and most important question here is whos gonna pay for using it where people Need it not that they Need that when there are simpler tech options to fix stuff like world hunger and global warming literally we could solve every single problem listed right NOWWWWW its just that NOBDOY WANTS TO FUCKING PAY FOR ITTT CAPITALISM IS SO GOOOOOOD .. OBVIOUS SARCASM ...

hes talking about technically everything being useless except for your brain.. yeah dream the only reason thats the case is we dont understand how the brain works. if we understand how the brain works we wont even need the biomass there too

im allowed to say dreams dumb because im smarter than him and i also love all these topics

"DIE EARLY I DONT CARE"

hfjgj hes just wow'ed by the possibilities open to us huh... hes also totally stuck at step 1 bc chat is so so miserably stupid

well. having muscles and spending the energy to move around helps regulate our system. its like when you go onto space and 0 gravity ..

i mean yeah you can drug yourself with endorphins too. is that as valid a way to live as any?

why do we need all this? it CAN be made but there are so many more things to consider than just innovation innovation innovation fast fast fast. a genuine question to consider is, when does convenience start cutting out things that can't be calculated? but yknow what AI struggling with soft sciences is like the whole big question right now so im gonna move on

"METEORITES"

that seems so painful to have to crack open meteorites to fulfill future water demands. why cant we just maintain the cycles instead? i mean like yeah i can think "ai does the math automated controlled detonation system" but thats doing too much. i'd just occams razor that bitch. earth has its own system why do we have to make our own less efficient system other than just to just be able to say we did it. like its cool but inefficient you might as well program your grocery delivery bot to perform a musical number before it lets you touch your food. its dumb

climate change fixing, actually i was on tiktok and someone made a video about how they fixed the acid rain from the 60s i think. which was deincentivizing companies by putting a cap on pollution levels, giving them buyable passes, allowing them to buy them from Each Other, and then making it more monetarily profitable to invest in green energy and sell off their pollution passes. like. thats FUNNY. and that WORKED.

trueeee change and development takes time but it also takes money. time for the people below, money for the people above 🤓🥸

i personally want horses to come back.

like yas i hate gas cars

bring back the horse

its true that prices lower as tech gets less and less expensive to make and mass produced, all ethics on THAT topic aside, but this makes me think of going to the store and seeing massive, beautiful tvs that would have been thousands in 2010, selling for 400 just sitting on the floor. the opulence of this fucking era occasionally hits me when im in a grocery store surrounded by food just sitting there...

empathy huh.. off topic tangent, but i'm a firm believer in that hereditary inherited trauma/genetic memories, i completely believe thats an actual thing, and when i have to think about humanity i think about how we're all beings made up of layers upon layers of ideas that Worked. if it didnt Work we would not have Been here. thats how evolution works, yeah? if we were to program a robot to feel empathy and to have consciousness, would we follow that same process to have it generate its humanity? how else would we create consciousness? or maybe we could follow the octopus format of having multiple computation centers that communicate.. is that any less or any more valid a form of consciousness than anything else ... i wonder what dream would say on these topic. and yet ALL OF THIS is totally moot once ai develop to think faster and bigger than us because i cant

i think ai would have as many limits as humans do. its a hardware vs software situation just like everything else

i wanna be like "living as a robot is just another way to live, chase your happiness" but do i really wanna get into the social when dreams already moved on in the podcast okay

ROBOT REPRODUCTION.. ELIMINATE BABIES ENTIRELY .. though i agree, there's still developing to do even if you could download worldly knowledge and experience directly into a newborn's head.

oh he circled back around to it, but i also really appreciate having the option to do it even if i dont. or to Not do it even if i Do. just on principle. but that's MY view on the world

life purpose and meaning huh ...

i like that dream optimistic, though. its one of the things that makes him matter so much to me.

the people who are causing climate change can be MADE to care, though. it's possible.

well. asking this question to the universe but do we really have to hit rock bottom before anything gets done? why does everything have to be a tragedy? cant we just solve the problem before its the World End? why does it always have to be this way?

i hope dream is enjoying his ice 🥺

i agree. humans are cockroach-like. we really are the biggest threat to ourselves.

disaster events always gets everyones priorities in order. but i really wish it didnt have to be so dire for that to occur. why does this always have to be the case

OH HERE WE GO AGAIN. GHOSTS ARE SCIENCE

THATS THE PROBLEM DREAM BELIEVES IN HEART BUT HE DOESNT BELIEVE IN SPIRIT. "they could. anything's technically possible i dont think my view is the only right view but based on my worldview i dont believe in ghosts because theres no evidence pointing to it whatsoever so i dont have any reason to believe it" YOU'LL SEE. YOU'LL ALL SEE

"so whats up" nothin much man whats up with you

the fucking word hunt sounds im crying

okay post over thanks for reading guys

put me in the ring coach id love to talk with you!!!!!!

waaaahhhhh takaaaaa. wait a fucking second is he behind that fucking tree help me what the fuck.

im actually in tears the first time i played this i didnt realize he was there at all. what is he doinggg.. god hes so silly i adore him hes my favorite hes so unserious

THERE'S ALWAYS A CHOICE... There's always always always a choice i promise you i promise i promise you.. You can’t let this stupid ass evil evil world rob you of your spirit man dont let them do that to youuuuuu!!!!!

im so SAAAAAAAAD im actually a little warm in the eyes he makes me so fucking sad taka

this exchange always fucks me up in like a narrative sense too. like there's very very clearly something going on with him in a parallel to the player especially with their whole "destiny" thing where they're both arceus-aligned but taka is forced toward the "damned" side of the spectrum where the player is forced toward the "savior" side.

neither of you can fight your narrative role. especially in the player's sense where you have literally no resources to fight, all you can do is Move Forward. its also very obvious that taka uses the player's actions as a sort of fuel too. "you'll keep fighting", in a sort of 'you're not giving up, so I can't either'. i think its really telling that your decisions with him decide the route.

i can't really explain this super coherently right now but it means a lot to me that you can't redeem him, but you can be there for him. bc he was always good. ethics of bystander effect aside he always had a good heart and he always wanted things to be better.

even in ZRoute where he could decide to go and live his lie as long as he wants to, but all of this has changed him and he can’t abide by it anymore. In RRoute, he’s lost that lie, but you’re his friend—or he believes you to be—and he turns to you for help because he can’t do it alone and he trusts you enough to ask

its not as simple as waking up one day and deciding to change things in a bad environment but you can try and you can try and you can try… anyway it goes without saying that I am hopelessly dependent on the bird guy

ep46 (3/3): this is what it's all about. but I talk about surgical policy and jc's innumerable issues for several paragraphs first

this is legit one of the most achingly tender scenes, maybe the moat romantic and beautiful until the very last shot. or even more so. debatable. I really love the last shot. but we're starting with...torture

so in order to wrap my head around the truly absurd prospect of someone being awake for 36 hours straight AWAKE given that the pain and physical stress of surgery would cause way more issues, I'm going to assume that the pain wen ning refers to is only partially physical. the rest is what he describes above - the spiritual pain of tearing out the core and feeling that life and energy drawn out of him until he's empty and cold inside. that makes sense to me. the ramifications of having a blood-and-guts awake operation for that long is dizzying. that is straight up torture

ALSO saying he couldn't have painkillers and had to be awake is such a blatant angst-milking from mxtx. usually the story toes the line just enough for believability but this (and wwx living on the streets as a 4 yr old too, tbh) really stretches the imagination. not that homeless young children don't exist but it seemed like wwx really had NOTHING and he hadn't starved to death or frozen or been mauled despite frequently being attacked by wild dogs so idk it seems like a lot to accept. ANYWAY

god this is so depressing for wwx. so I don't want to critique wen qing because modern medical ethics around surgeries were decades in development and it was kind of an unusual situation, but I really don't think wq should have done the transfer. wwx was a healthy individual with a very high risk of death from this procedure. according to some googling (I know), the highest risk for a non-emergency surgery is an exploratory belly case, with a 47% chance of death.

surgeons can and do refuse to operate if the risk is too high (which is partially about surgeons maintaining their numbers, but still). and jc didn't medically need this surgery, so there was no risk of death on either patient. wwx pestering her to try shouldn't have even mattered...like not to deny his bodily autonomy but that kind of medical decision would never fly today. also jc didn't consent blah blah but actually he did? it wasn't fully informed but he knew he was getting a gc from somewhere. also you could argue he wasn't in his right mind but I'm not the surgery police so whatever.

obviously that's not the point and I'm not castigating wq for doing a favor for someone she felt she owed deeply and probably preventing jc from like killing himself, but I can't help analyzing it from a modern periop perspective bc that's kind of what I'm trained for

god, I kind of wish jc had died though. sure it would have been rough and wwx probably would have been hounded by guilt forever and the jiang clan wouldn't have been restored bc jyl would have never gotten the kind of support she would have needed, but ummm maybe wwx could have married lwj + convinced him to help the wens and jyl could have married jzx and it would all have been fine? no, that's silly. jgy was still out there, and if he'd killed jzx and broken jyl's heart then wwx would never have let the matter go. well it's nice to dream

btw I read a fic once where he died and it was a really boring modern AU. jc is a really great rich character I would miss him I'm just SO sick of him these days. start weeping again IDIOT

*glares at the fanfic that made wwx say he would rather die than be ordinary*

REGRETFUL FLASHBACK TIME!!! strictly speaking lwj didn't NEED this the way jc did because he always changed his ways but he wouldn't be lwj if he didn't take it hard. and he's already been supportive but I can see this making him even more caring and attentive bc jesus christ what a thing to learn

aw yeah the elbow grasp. I love this shot. so many point of contact

wwx bitterly reflecting on what a brat jc's always been - petty, looking to hurt, brash, saying anything as long as it gets a reaction. you'd think he'd grown out of it but wwx seems to be resigned to the fact that he just hasn't grown up at all

...so THERE fanfic author that make him react happily when jc insults him! canonically he dislikes it and is annoyed that jc can't grow the fuck up! it's so annoying when fics make jc the mature one to wwx's silliness bc that's literally the opposite. jc being mean and harsh doesn't mean he's mature and it's really bizarre to see people take him so shallowly. and if reconciliation is to happen jc HAS to get over this he HAS to mature a bit and not act like a bitch when he's mad and take out his rage irrationally on other like that!!! even if he blames wwx for jyl it makes zero sense to blame lwj for his parents he just wants to cling to a justification bc otherwise his life's tragedies have made zero sense. anyway he has issues

awww he was worried about lwj! dw baby I don't think he cares what jc says about him

oh my god it's shijie 😭 the music going I'm going to cry. he sees her in the woods he sees her in the water he loves her so much he misses her she was everything to him love and safety and parent and stability and affection and family and he's never going to stop loving her or missing her is he! I'm miserable

and of course wen ning is like ? and then she vanishes and wwx feels so lonely and empty and sad he just repeats what he used to say to her bc she understood when he needed comfort bc showing love and family through food is such a huge theme in this series

here's what I don't get. why did wwx do this himself and then have lwj scold him?

that isn't very tender lover of you lwj!!! who cares if the lake has an owner, wwx is hungry!!

god wn is so funny here sitting with his lotus seeds <3

what they should have done was have this happen FIRST! lwj sees wwx is hungry and reaches down, breaking the stem and the precepts in one fell swoop! anything for his beloved, who he's just realized has been through even more terrible suffering than he could have imagined! I like to think they get there and he's still not used to this, but come ON writers!

all else being said, it IS a very romantic scene. even if wwx looks flabbergasted like that. like, touched, but also very confused

and HE LOOKS TO WN FOR CONFIRMATION I love that moment and wn is like nodding like yeah young master wei! it's okay! he loves you! yeah it is a surprise he did that isn't it! but it's okay! let's eat some lotus seeds! what a sweetheart

nice shot of wwx looking happy for once in this goddamn episode. happy ending to this awkward yet very sweet impromptu comfort food-stealing boat ride

omg I forgot that it's from the jin clan. fics will have the lans use these ALL the time.

and this is so funny too he gets so excited the boat rocks and lwj has to steady him

I always loved this opening shot for yunping! so so colorful

I had to delete some other shots bc I love this so much. excited about being remembered like this

and then so happy!! this is one if his most enamored looks. sappiest. most in love, even

personal highlights: this is such a delicious episode. SO satisfying

all of wwx's longing looks staring at the ancestral shrine. gutting

wwx sideways acknowledging just how much myu punished him

jc really pressed all of my buttons but in ways that made the response from lwj and wn really satisfying, so I guess he was a team player for that one

that one shot where jc looks just like his mom? their mannerisms are SO similar

wwx stopping lwj with a hand an inch from his pelvis region. awkward and yet very intimate

lwj pushing jc away from wwx very roughly and then so so tenderly bringing wwx to safety

wen ning's passion + excellent memory

jc sobbing. YESSS CRY

"let's quickly take young master wei away from here'

my epiphany that wwx's surgical pain is partially spiritual. it's still pain but do not take this away from me I can't understand it otherwise

elbow grasp 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

wwx complaining about what a terrible personality jc has always had

'I'm hungry' 🥺 and after an awkward stumble lwj came through!!! yess that's what wwx needs

wwx's adoring and pleased little smile at the very end. he's in loovveee