They cut off usda funding from Minnesota, which includes wic and snap. Please consider donating to food banks around the area or food drives. Many immigrants are too scared to leave their homes to shop as well and a community member is doing great work.
something about zenos that i havent seen anyone mention so far: his recurring move, to the point it is as (if not more) representative of his character as his obsession with The Hunt & dueling with the warrior of light, is that he 1) funds a team of cutting-edge evil scientists that serve as his personal support group 2) sics them on those of his underlings who Failed Him despite their potential. there is true scientific curiosity and apathetic cruelty here, with rational and cleverly thought out schemes.
we have fordola, given one last chance to serve after she failed to prevent the resistance from encroaching upon imperial territory (which she readily accepts), and put through a grueling process to give her a modified, artificial version of krile’s echo. we have grynewaht, who is played as the recurring gag of the expansion, but who has pretty much the same background as fordola, and is subjected to a horrifying “enhancement” process which turns him into a literal chainsaw man, just so he can claim his revenge on the warrior of light. i personally posit it was made to put zenos as a parallel to omega (ruthless but disaffected, scientifically-minded psychological and physical torture in order to produce the ultimate fighter)
and obviously it explains his collaboration with fandaniel. literally the ultimate Evil Mad Scientist! i guess it’s because we don’t really see things from the garlean army’s perspective that we don’t generally consider it as essential to understanding zenos’s character, but still, it says something that even gaius “tinkering with forbidden allagan technology is my passion” van baelsar was horrified by his actions. turning his father’s remains into the monstrous Anima makes sense in this way: it’s the culmination of a character arc which was introduced and developed since the first events of stormblood! and In from the cold, too, fits with this tendency: he is essentially doing to the wol what he’s been doing to others this entire time. it’s all about entitlement, an apathetic kind of cruelty born from perverted curiosity, and a total refusal of considering others as people (despite, once again, his echo being based on krile’s echo, which is literally Empathy Beam 90000). technically speaking, by endwalker, he doesnt *lack* empathy: the story goes to great lengths to show that he literally was infused with empathy (to a great human cost, as dozens of people died to supply the necessary resources, not to mention krile’s literal torture). zenos does have empathy, he simply refuses to learn from his newfound abilities and change until it is way too late.
in light of this tendency of zenos it’s striking that as far as i can remember, dr. lugae is like the only member of the telephoroi we meet besides zenos and fandaniel who isn’t just a tempered thrall being used as a puppet or a human shield
it’s even crazier that it keeps being relevant in the Whacky Looney Tunes Timeline (Hildibrand dimension). like this is REAL real theyre truly hammering it home here
