essek in the cr2 aeor arc (redeeming himself, surrounded by friends): oh no, all my spells are aoe :((( level 5 magic missile

essek in m9 animated (only getting worse from here): dark star and if my allies die they die

tgis is so fucking funny to me. they accidentally Rock Lee'd a retired racehorse

imagine youre a fat horse and your new neighbour is a personal trainer

horse that reads Marcus Aurelius

I was wrong. they didnt rock lee him. this horse is literally Gai. and i wish he was my dad

“gale is disabled with chronic pain” i say into the mic. the crowd boos and jeers.

“no she’s right” a voice calls from the back. i look up. it’s gale dekarios himself.

One of the many things I love about this game is that MOST of our companions are disabled in one way, shape, or form. This is appropriate for a story so much about bodily autonomy and its limits, a story that begins with a quest for a cure. Our companions' disabilities vary dramatically from more metaphorical to more literal, more chronic to more acute, disabilities of the body vs. mind vs. a bit of both. Likewise, each companion varies on whether the happy ending for them is cure for the disability or care for the disability and whether that disability is treated as inherently traumatic or as a neutral fact about the body and mind. The result is a game with a very nuanced and thorough exploration of disability, one that I think deserves more love. Some companion disability breakdowns under the read-more, because apparently I am obsessed with this.

in my mind "its not that deep" depends on how much the person is enjoying themselves, especially when it comes to fandom stuff. fans making lengthy character analysis out of a character with 2 seconds of screentime? theyre having a grand ol' time playing make believe in the shallow end of the pool and im not gonna stop their fun. people making discourse and starting fights over those same nothingburger characters? you are acting like you are drowning in an inch of water. stand up. youre fine.

essek thelyss you are such a stupid little guy. you love learning new stuff so much you commit war crimes for it. you're baffled by murder and torture mostly because the murderers and torturers are not following the rules of a proper scientific experiment. you like jewelry. you are so lonely you give the guy you know is evil an access to the tool that can literally destroy realities and teach him how to use it because he makes you a cup of tea and asks you about your mother. you're an atheist within a culture devoted to religion. you've been seeking intellectual challenge so bad and for so long you ended up in a very very hight position in government while being really young with a power over others a really young person probably shouldn't have. you're fucking mean. you float to places. you want other people to share the joy of discovering something with you so bad you become vulnerable to manipulation no matter how smart and collected you are. you fall in love with a suspicious dirt wizard even though you think having personal connections with anyone is an excessive risk. you love soup

My first friend

One time I was leaving a friend's place and an older lady with basically no English came up to me and communicated that she was very cold and needed a ride. She pointed to tell me where to go.

I got there and her daughter or granddaughter came out and was like omg her phone died we were worried

And then the older lady said something and the younger lady translated.

"She knew she could trust you because you have pink hair"

I thought it was funny at the time. But when I think back on it I think she was basically saying "you had a visible sign of not vibing with the system I was afraid of"

Be weird. Be colorful. Help random people.

the way caleb interrogated beau was a chef's kiss btw. not bringing his suspicions up for a long time until a very specific moment when he used the circumstances they all end up in as a way to make her extremely vulnerable and dependent on him if she wanted to survive. he did not tell anyone else about her sneaking away, because he did not trust them not to sabotage his plan or to even be on his side. he waits, and waits, and when the opportunity arises, he does not hesitate to show his ruthlessness. first he makes her almost miss the platform and fall, to show the power he has over her. then he makes her doubt with his calm and insinuating questions if she will even be able to come back on the ground on her own. others in the group are too busy to help, but he can, if she gives him the answers he wants. all because his safety is on the line.

it's such a small sequence of moments but it shows so well that the years of his training is not just something to remember in a brief moment of tragedy. he learned how to be this way, and he will be using those skills to survive no matter how horrible it makes him feel.

Somewhere in Aeor, post-campaign:

Caleb: Essek...it is time I tell you the story of how I murdered my parents.

Essek, eyes wide: woah...you too?

Caleb: ...what do you *mean* "you too"??? Patricide isn't a common crime!!!

Essek: okay to be fair I didn't murder my dad--I just was responsible for his death. I did have to stab my mom to death, though. How'd you kill yours?

Caleb: ...I set my family home on fire WAIT STOP GO BACK HOW DO WE HAVE *THIS* IN COMMON WHAT THE *FUCK---*

I love the fact that Molly is introduced having extremely advanced people skills and easily sussing out everyone's strengths and weaknesses and you think he's that way cause he's just a nice guy. Nope. He's that way because he's a former cult leader who forgot he was supposed to be using these skills for evil.

THIS JUST IN : the dynasty wizard you've been manipulating for months shows up and nearly kicks your ass. Ah shit, he's not just an academic!

you can start anytime.

you can brush your teeth in the middle of the day. you can wash the dishes at 2am. you can do things outside the normal times assigned by society.

Even if there is something you can't do at a time—for instance, if it's the middle of the night and you live somewhere where you can't go shopping (because you don't have a store open nearby) or vacuum (because your neighbors would be bothered by the noise)—you can usually take steps to make it easier when you can do them.

You can write a grocery list in advance, tidy the place so you can just take the vacuum and get to it, dusting the shelves or mopping the floor doesn't make much noise... Also, you can vacuum half of the place today and the other half tomorrow. Would it be better if you did it all at once? Yes. But doing it in multiple parts is still better than not doing it at all.

Chores around the house usually have multiple parts (this complexity is exactly what makes them so difficult to do sometimes) and by breaking them down and doing preparations whenever you can—when you can spare the willpower or energy—, you make them smaller and easier to do when you wouldn't have the means to do them otherwise.

THRILLED to know that Trent has feared for his life once thus far and it was when Essek Dark Star'ed him

culturally a supernatural blog but non-practicing . i do celebrate the holidays though

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

There was also just like, an insane amount of weird news proliferation that night. It was like someone opened the castle door and all the bats flew out. Poll results were coming in haphazardly. States that seemed like they would take five minutes to count took days. States that were historically Republican were turning before our eyes. This was all happening very late at night for most, keeping people glued to tumblr later than many of us had been in years (hearkening back to the era of "nightblogging"). In the middle of all this the New York Post started a rumor that Putin was stepping down. And then. THEN. Destiel dropped, the most unexpected news on top of a day full of unexpected news stories. It was like the most beautiful icing on the loony cake.

Also, to be clear: this was all going down during lockdown. The first vaccines weren’t available at all until December 2020, and not available to the general public until March 2021. So you literally could not do anything other than wait for the election results to come in and doom spiral. I remember going to bed that night having spent a couple of hours browsing Google for resources about immigrating to Ireland out of sheer desperation.

Imagine spending hours tied to a railroad track, having no idea if a train is going to come down or not, and then you pass out exhausted because you just can’t stay up afraid anymore, and the first thing that wakes you up is a fucking clown car honking at you from the road with its fucking clown horn.

That’s what it was like finding out Destiel was canon in as like in November 5.

you know I am willing to give luo binghe massive amounts of shit for being totally deranged because he is such a dick but also like, his very favorite person in the world did open their relationship by abusing him for actual years and then just turn on a dime and start spoiling him

and since he never got an explanation for any of that, even before he got thrown off a cliff into hell he had to choose between rejecting one of three positive personal relationships he'd experienced in his entire life (and the only one where he was getting as much support as he needed) or structuring his understanding of personal interaction so that history was actually cool and okay somehow, and like

literally anyone in that situation would have come out with some fucked-up norms about relationships and boundaries. i can only blame him so much for not knowing where lines ought to happen! his dataset is fucked.

the wide variation in fan depictions of Binghe on account of him being 1) not the viewpoint character and 2) pretty impenetrable in terms of his precise rationale for most of his actions even without the unreliable narration, even when you can track his motives pretty well

and 3) going through not only a lot of character development but having two canonical character development paths that both happen effectively off-page

very fun.

appreciating in the AO3 also that basically nobody is leaning into the reading that our boy actually made Binghe gay by being nice to him because firstly that's absurd and secondly (more relevantly considering he's fictional even within the work of fiction) pretty damn sure that's one of the danmei tropes getting affectionately lampooned.

so instead, the 2 main interpretations i've seen tend to be that original timeline Binghe with his hundreds of wives was either

1) gay but in super denial or, much more fun

2) demi romantic/sexual and gay, but he had 0 positive relationships with men ever in his life, canonically, so he literally had no way to know this about himself.

i don't know why but i find the second option absolutely hysterical.

probably because it fits the text so neatly and is ironic and kind of tragic in framework, but also it just really goes back and underlines how much 'stallion novel protagonist with massive harem' is not a normal expression of sexuality, that is not something most actual straight dudes would really want even if they could afford it, there is something fundamentally deranged about collecting 600+ wives even if you do need to have ludicrous amounts of sex to power your plot device.

so you get an ace-spectrum guy with a high libido and a Fuck Sword in the Fuck Dimension and he's compulsively seducing beautiful women constantly and has never been attracted to anyone in his life ever, but has no basis for comparison. so he thinks this is just normal.

tell me that's not the funniest thing you've heard all week.

"but he had 0 positive relationships with men ever in his life, canonically, so he literally had no way to know this about himself."

god, I'm thinking again about how shen jiu's history with men fucked him up so badly he would literally leave the mountain to go sleep surrounded by women so he could feel safe

and then you turn that narrative lens on bingge's lifestyle and like... oh. did he ever feel safe or comfortable around a man for the rest of his life? did he acquire hundreds of wives so he could have somewhere to sleep that felt just a little safer?

One of my favorite manifestations of how crunchy this whole discourse is are the variations on Airplane's role in this whole thing. Did he set up an intentional commentary on the stallion novel genre that devolved when he lost his outline, dooming a character whom he originally wrote eventually gaining an understanding of himself and his desires? Did he, despite being luo binghe's actual creator, not understand him or his sexuality? Is he some kind of unaware interdimensional observer who just wrote what he saw and, like the rest of us, had to guess from the outside at the protagonist's internal motivations?

I'll confess that my favorite version is when Airplane wrote og!binghe as a straight male power fantasy, but from the perspective of being, himself, a gay man who was either closeted, unaware, or a delicious mix of the two. Yeah of course this guy is super badass, he has 600 wives. What do you mean 'is he attracted to any of them', I've written 1500 more characters of explicit sex and added another inch to his dick so please stop asking me that!!

i'm honestly increasingly compelled by the specter of Truly OG Luo Binghe, tbh. the one Airplane planned to write; the one who died stillborn with the lost outline. talk about haunting the narrative!

the protagonist whose blackening arc was the centerpiece of an explicit tragedy, who was supposed to die alone, without ever having had a love interest at all; for whom hating shen qingqiu displaced everything he might have found to live for.

the man who was supposed to find out what happened to his parents, what happened to shen jiu; was supposed to choke on the irony, on the inevitability of the cycle of abuse and the way his revenge quest had never really been anything but letting shen qingqiu keep controlling him, just as shen qingqiu before him had let himself be ruined by his own abusers.

anyway there's no real reason, if bingge is out there in the multiverse available to do crossovers, that this binghe!prime shouldn't be also. i would like to see it.

#presumably he still had a childhood crush on ning yingying #*probably* he still had the weird kinda coerced sex with qin wanyue that seeded bingge's stallion arc #though interesting if he did not #in what it says about how airplane's trash fire developed #no-love-interest-dramatic-suicide binghe prime is not subtle #as an arc for a #deeply closeted man abandoned by his family to give his projection fantasy self #like. airplane has a powerful will to live. he was not gonna lie down and die. #but the *fantasy* of itof the realization that it has all been so grotesquely meaningless and empty building to a crescendo #so the despair at least carries some meaning #some dignity #something the audience will acknowledge and identify with and care about #real normal of airplane pour one out #murder-suiciding the universe is binghe's Actual Destiny #sqq's insistence on dying all the time fascinating in the context of this being a world #built to narrow toward that point #he thinks it's a papapa world but that's just set dressing #actually suicide world