#lengthy post

In some ways I’m disappointed with the finale and in others I’m not.

I appreciated the attempt to do something unique with the Choose Your Own Adventure-style hypnosis endings. I also appreciated the meta moments in the episode and the cute way they were able to do callbacks (ex. Jackie Daytona). I thought it was interesting they revealed this wasn’t their first documentary (shout out the Maysles brothers) but…that’s where it started to irk me a bit.

I knew the writers weren’t going to have the vampires change and grow too much; I was in the camp that keeping them dumb wasn’t a bad thing, but then they showed that early documentary footage.

To see that they were literally just repeating their days and events practically word for word with little difference surprised me because it neglected a very important aspect - Guillermo. They didn’t have Guillermo before. The addition of his presence in the house should’ve changed something about them even slightly.

Again, I didn’t expect them to change a great deal. I knew these dumb vampires were going to stay dumb, and that was good with me, but for them to not have changed AT ALL despite the influence of Guillermo’s clearly important presence in their lives?? That didn’t line up for me.

Also, even though we’ve established Guillermo’s not a familiar anymore, or even their official bodyguard, but rather a third option *cough* friend *cough* he was oddly relegated to his original role. The vampires acknowledged his feelings but still just wanted him to entertain them with a little dance. He helped prep Nandor for coffin. He called him Master…I guess it could show that like the vampires, Guillermo doesn’t change much either, but that feels…off.

He has changed. We’ve seen him change the MOST out of anyone! Yes, he knows now that he’ll never really fit in with the human world, and I knew he wouldn’t really leave the vampires, but seeing him descend with Nandor in that coffin elevator to a possible life of fighting crime still felt like a regression. Was it silly and ridiculous? Yes. But still a regression.

Dad's words are getting to me and my therapist told me about this yesterday...

Will we be okay?

I am not clairvoyant, so I can't make promises. But I do believe that humanity will survive this like it's survived everything else.

No matter how good AI gets, there are still things only humans can do. Designing and repairing machines is the big one here. You can ask AI to write code, but it can only code for stuff that exists. And it's bad at it. Unless something is tried and true, AI is gonna give you spaghetti code more often than not. And even if AI could code perfectly, it cannot manufacture. It has to be able to build machines to manufacture. AI doesn't understand what physical space looks like because AI doesn't have anything approximating a sensory organ or a way to interpret that data even if it did have access beyond "This is a shipyard because there are ships. which are an above average arrangement of blue pixels with sharp contrast to black and white pixels."

And more importantly: Let's say the worst happens. Amazon monopolizes everything and replaces every human with a machine or AI. Okay. Then what? If nobody is working, nobody has money to spend on anything. Not food, not housing, not crappy little Temu purchases.

Then the equation becomes: 8 billion humans versus one Bezos. Things have been bad for humanity before.

Don't get me wrong. It would be bad if Amazon did monopolize everything and put everyone out of work without humanity collectively deciding "Hey, so we're gonna call this post-scarcity and live in a utopia where we laze around and eat grapes and make art and just maintain the machines that do everything for "work" but 90% of the time we just goof off."

But humans have lived through awful nonsense before. Our greatest power is bonding together. That's how humans have survived every bad thing. Anything good we have, workers protections, the 9-5 workday and the 40 hour workweek, OSHA, safety standards, these were all things earned by a bunch of people whether a formal union or not, getting together and demanding change. Bezos can't fix hundreds of machines himself or write code for every new AI thing he wants to run. He's one dude. If the CEO oligarchs have any actual skill of their own, they only have that skill because they don't have to bother with the little things that make the world run smoothly. In which case, again the people hold all the power. 100 of us together already have more combined strength and knowledge than 1 Bezos. And it wouldn't just be 100 of us out of work with a lot of extra time if the "worst case" scenario happened.

And again, that would be the worst case. Bezos and Musk and all the smallfry tech oligarchs are already hitting resistance. Crypto is bunk and basically anyone wise knows well enough by know that the stuff is a scam. NFTs bottomed out. AI is just another shiny thing they want to stuff into everything, and when it doesn't grow their profits exponentially, they'll ditch it.

Never forget. The point of introducing AI everywhere is to sucker investors into giving them more money to play with, and then to cut expenses by getting rid of humans that they have to pay. But overhead costs money too. They're not gonna get energy and maintenance for free even if they're subsidized. I think we'll reach a critical point well before that, but that alone would break the system. If you can't show off how much money the shiny new tech earns you, then you can't get new investors. And if nobody wants to buy your products because either they know you're an asshole that fired everyone to replace with machines, or they're just an apathetic everyday joe who can't afford to buy from you because all that tech you invested in ran them out of a job, eventually all the money in the world that you "save" by replacing humans with machines doesn't amount to anything because you're not pulling in money at all. Everything including overhead and maintenance starts being an expense. And then you lose investor money because that line stopped going up. And then you have to bank on someone richer than you bailing you out or you go under. Hell, businesses with STEADY cashflow still bottom out for the same reason. JoAnn Fabrics went under and got gobbled up by Michaels for the same reason. The line plateaued instead of going up. Imagine if profits started to plummet from boycotts instead.

These people listen to money. And everyone who's got two braincells already hates what AI is being used to do. They're going to plateau. That's my prediction. Enough people are going to get wise and the fancy new things AI can be "taught" to do are gonna seem a lot less fancy. Especially when half the stuff is going to need to be checked by a human anyway because AI is currently dumb as rocks. When people stop buying and investors stop investing, this junk will crash.

And, like I said. I can't see the future. So I can't promise. But people smarter than me have seen this stuff before and written stuff that's gone down in history. "When the poor have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich." When there's nothing left for the oligarchs to take, then we have nothing to lose by dragging them off their money hoard.

At the end of the day, it's systemic. Unless you own a business yourself, there's not much you can do alone to dramatically impact the fate of things. But there are small things you can do. Support unions and don't scab. If humans are fighting for their rights in the workplace, you don't cross that picket line and don't scab. Get involved. Community is our greatest asset. Not only are you more powerful as part of a group making your contribution more impactful, but people generally like their in-group. So if you make friends with lots of people and grow a community, you're all going to be more invested in helping each other out. Support other humans. I know we generally don't have much choice in where what we buy comes from or how it's made. There is no ethical way to survive under capitalism. But the more you put your money into the hands of real people, individual creators, the more you help keep money circulating down here on the human level. Take the extra time to go with a human cashier. Spend a little more to get something from a small business instead of Amazon.

But I won't lie. That's mostly bandaid stuff. Real change has to come from legislation, bigger movements, and systemic change. So know your candidates. Go to city council meetings. Get involved.

But it's a lot for one person to do and to care about. I know I can't keep up with everything. So honestly the most important thing is: Don't give up. No matter what. Surviving is the single most powerful thing an individual can do alone. Because as long as you're alive, you can be part of change. So even if there's nothing you can do now, because you don't know what to do or don't have the energy or everything's just too much, staying alive means that maybe you can do something tomorrow. Do not bow and scrape, do not hand your rights away, do not despair, and do not die.

If you despair and if you die and if you give your rights away before they are taken, you resign yourself to your own powerlessness. That's what they want. Because if you feel powerless, it makes it easier for anyone to manipulate you. Courage is the motherfucking magic that turns dreams into reality.

Being concerned is good and normal. It means you understand that things are moving in the wrong direction. But being panicked and expecting the worst is just giving up prematurely and letting your anxiety win. Find a way you can fight that means something to you. And if you can't, then by god, survive. Because the world's problems are bigger than any one person can fix, and the people trying to wring your life out of you for their profits KNOW this and WANT you to despair because it makes juicing you like juicing an orange. Be a goddamn green potato. Make them regret. Be a little bit ungovernable. If the No Kings stuff has shown us anything recently, it's that the people wanting to beat you down HATE it if you refuse, especially if you refuse while wearing a goofy inflatable frog costume.

Everyone wants to feel loved, and if they can't get that, they want to feel powerful. Don't give them that. Do everything in your power to make them look awful or ridiculous for trying to topple you.

I don't have all the answers. But I know for goddamn sure that I've got friends who have my back and I know how much I can do for myself. Step into your own power. You're a man. You're not a dog. You're not a worm. You're human. We're human. We have community. We are loved. We built everything in this world. We can rip it all down if we need to. We've got wits, we've got politics, we've got our goddamn determination. And Bezos and the other schmuck oligarchs just have real big bank accounts. You can't eat money. You can't hide behind it either. And a human with a big ass stick that knows what a breakerbox or an engine looks like can kill any machine.

In short: Things can get bad. Things can get terrible, even. I can't see the future. I can't promise any individual will be okay. But I can promise you that if you've got friends and won't give up, you've got as good a chance as anybody, and if we ALL stick together then we've got a much better chance than some guy with the goddamn infinite money glitch. Humanity as a whole will definitely survive, and our chances individually go up the more annoying we can be as a group. When Hungary said no more pride, the biggest pride turnout happened. No Kings Day was one of the single biggest protests ever. Our allies are everywhere. Nobody wants to live under a boot or sit idle while machines just print money for the 5 richest idiots.

Humanity is all around you, friend. And the more of us put our foot down now, the better. So if you can muster it, get out there and meet people. Old people and young people especially. Because the old ones have been through stuff before and know the ropes, and the young ones have their thumb on the pulse of humanity's desires and have all the energy and anger to put toward a good cause.

Pick one thing and get stuck in. That's the best antidote to feeling scared and useless. Find some place you can affect change with others and make that your mission. Media censorship. Workers rights, local politics, unionize your workplace. Work your way up from there. Talk to those people about issues you care about and put your heads together and find out what else you can do together.

Research the stuff on the ballot before you vote and do your best to maximize your vote by weighing what you want to see happen against the candidates that can do it for you. Democracy is on the ropes right now but it's still one of the best avenues we have to directly affect change as an individual instead of as a group.

And make and keep friends. Humanity got this far because our greatest strength is working together. Other animals can cooperate, but humans can do that without a queen with pheromones to boss us around, and we do it in such large numbers that we're the dominant species on the planet. Cooperation got us here, and it can get us past the dark times.

and a mental breakdown afterschool. it was bad yall 💀

then i had to walk to school, to the football game to volunteer again. my friend said i looked cute!! i think the football game definitely got me feeling a bit better.

here’s me and twin with the chili fries and some dinner i got at yoshinoya. the guy was soooo nice and made sure to be generous!! they were about to close but he still let us order :’3

i guess i could take the time to explain a little bit about one of my self inserts for the donghua, throne of seal + also talk a little bit about throne of seal in general.

You collect yourself. You curse your luck. It really is busted, as you flip and flop and toggle all its little toggles. All backwards and no forwards. Luckily, you're no rube. You know how to repair a flux capacitor. But getting the materials in these ancient times is its own challenge. Namely a very specific crystal that did not enter the stage of modern science until about 2500. Before then it was only an extremely niche collector's item.

You find a terminal (computer) in this age's library (library) quickly enough. You figure out this age's bartering system (eBay) just about as fast, and to your joy you find a single listing for the crystal. You put down a bid. You wait. Anonymously, you are outbid. Sweating, you put down another bid. You wait. You are outbid.

More nervous, you leave the library and return to your motel. You wait, and wait, and wile away your remaining vacation anxiously waiting. You wait for days until the auction is almost up, and you return, and you put down a bid for all the 2000s currency you exchanged for your trip here.

You are outbid.

You curse at the screen, yelling and pulling your hair. It's fine. Maybe you can negotiate with the seller. You send a message to the seller, explaining that crystal is of extreme importance. You can offer a lot. Future information. Superbowl winners. Stuff that'll get you audited by the Travel Commission, but you're desperate.

Days pass. Your vacation is long over. You don't hear back.

It's fine. It's fine actually. Your flux capacitor will still send you backwards. You saw the winning bid amount. Just go back, pick up odd jobs in this age, accrue enough 2000s money until you can outbid that bid. And then win the crystal. Easy. Easy.

You crank the capacitor back two weeks, and you figure out what services you can offer for cash.

The listing is live. There is a single bid on it. You wait. You wait a bit. You bid over it. You wait. You are outbid. You wait. You wait days, once more, doing more odd-jobs, accruing more cash, until the auction is almost up. And then you put down your full cash-in-hand amount. $100 over the winning bid.

You are outbid.

You scream and yell at the screen, thocking the plastic beast until the librarian hushes you. Something changed. You curl in your seat and pull at your hair. You're very tired of the 2000s and all their un-automated manual labor odd jobs. If only you could reach out to the winner and offer more, but the bidding is anonymous. You have no username to go by. You have no leads.

It's fine. You go back further. You pick up more jobs. More cash in hand. You downgrade from a motel to a hostel. You eat rice and beans every day. You have 3x the winning bid amount in hand on the day the auction ends. Within moments of the auction's close, you bid it all.

You are outbid.

You wrap your hands around the monitor and haul it off the desk, tearing cords. You scream and throw it at the ground. Disappointingly, it does not shatter. But the librarian has fainted.

It doesn't matter. You're going back in time anyway.

You do it again. You don't eat. You don't sleep. You beg for money. You pick up every odd listing you can snatch off Craigslist. You do it more. You do it harder.

You wait until the near-close of the auction to bid everything you have.

You are outbid.

The library patrons are almost fortunate to witness of breakdown of your magnitude.

You go back. You get a knife. You start emptying the wallets of people you can corner in back alleys.

You are outbid.

You go back.

You steal someone's identity. You take out a life-altering loan in their name.

You are outbid.

You go back.

You rob a bank. Three people die in the cross-fire.

You are outbid.

You go. Back.

You go back far enough to dedicate every waking moment of literal years to learning every exploit that exists in this age's "internet". You find a weakness in eBay's user interface and use it to inject an auto-bid that will trigger at the millisecond before the auction ends. You have millions to bid with all your ill-gotten gains from the ransomware schemes you invented.

The auction ends.

You've been outbid.

You

GO

BACK.

This time you hack into the crystal-seller's account. You'll hold it hostage! You'll get her information! You'll show up to her house and take the crystal by gunpoint if necessary. You'll get her. You'll get it. You'll kill her or everything or the whole world or these whole damnedable 2000s you don't care you don't care you don't CARE.

You're going.

To get.

The fucking.

Crystal.

You open up the bid page from the seller's view. Your hot righteous bubbling evil maniacal breakdown is dampened a moment. You stare at the history of bidders, no longer anonymous, now all unmasked. And stare. And stare a little longer.

...

Margaret Hallinger moves with the muted tinkle of windchimes dangling from her earlobes as she takes her seat. She stares over a set of bedazzled spectacles as she sips her chamomile tea in the dim lighting of her computer room which is lush with hanging plants. Leroy, her black and white cat, slinks into her lap and molds his head to the open palm of her hand. She pauses to smile, and pet him, and Leroy nudges closer. She scratches his butt.

Margaret is excited. She has an eBay auction ending soon for one of the nice little crystals she found in Auntie's attic. This one is truly exciting, because it has gotten a few bids on it since the other day. She knew people would like Auntie's crystals. She knew this one was special.

A flicker on screen catches her eye. She looks, and nearly drops her tea. A storm of bids roll through. A siege of notifications. They swallow the screen. Tittering up. Jumping hopping zigzagging up like a seizing stuttering single-breath scream. Margaret's eyes dart about to keep up, seized in the storm behind the pale white reflection in her spectacles.

On each bid is a username.

Each username is different

But only, at most, by one single letter.

Together they beat out a storm of near-perfect mimicry, like a few-dozen ever-so-slightly-off clones screaming out in unison to outbid outbid outbid outbid outbid outbid each other.

It ends all in a moment.

The auction caps out with an offer in the tens-of-millions.

Margaret stares. Margaret stares. Margaret sweats. Margaret's hands shake. Margaret has forgotten how to breathe. Margaret moves one hand forward to place on the mouse and move the cursor.

Margaret is forcibly logged out of her account.

The log-in page stares at her. Margaret stares back.

The tea drops from her hands and startles Leroy.

Margaret faints.

The spiritual successor to my King and Queen Divorce Masterpost. Similarly to that post, this will all probably be common knowledge to most of the fandom. But apparently, some people still exist out there who think King and Rouxls are a couple (or in some interpretations, that they used to be one, making them exes now), so I guess I gotta make this post to explain to you all why that is incorrect and they were never a thing together in the first place.

(Once again, apologies for the not-so-great screenshot quality. It's easier to grab it from YouTube videos rather than having to play the whole chapters over again for the dialogue, lol...)

Starting off with some shop dialogue from Chapter 1...

Rouxls is very insistent on not being related to Lancer. If he and King were romantically involved, that would make Lancer his stepson (or soon to be one), and therefore related. Then, the line "I placate you for your Father's sake!" refers to the fact that the King makes his subjects take care of Lancer. This makes Rouxls much more like a babysitter than anything, specifically one that Lancer latched onto as a secondary father figure because Spade King can't spend enough time with his son himself. In a way, you could see it as Lancer "adopting" Rouxls as a new dad, rather than the other way around!

And to clarify, the fact that King makes his subjects care for Lancer is established a bit earlier on, with this leaf-fanning Rudinn NPC.

Notice the use of the word "obligatory" here... The original definition of this word is "required by a legal, moral, or other rule; compulsory." So in other words, it seems that they are (quite literally) legally required to take care of the King's son, whether they want to or not.

And then, this last line from the Rudinn about Lancer is actually rather sad... But, looking at Rouxls Kaard's full dialogue about Lancer, we can see that he does genuinely care about the kid deep down. (The following screenshot is taken from the wiki.)

Perhaps this could be at least partially why Lancer latched onto Rouxls in particular over any other subjects.

Now, my next point... In-universe, Rouxls has some fans.

This specific Rudinn NPC, as well as Clover (or at least her friendly middle head), both appear to have crushes on Rouxls, referring to him as a "hunk". If Rouxls was already taken, I'd imagine that they would have mentioned this in their dialogue, since dating the King would probably be hard to keep a secret (especially when Rouxls seems like the type to brag about dating someone in power)... So, to me, this dialogue seems to imply that Rouxls is single.

Bonus fact: Clover's fondness of Rouxls is referenced in Chapter 2 as well, with "Rouxls" being one of the correct answers for choosing a thing she likes during her rematch challenge in the Party Dojo. (Screenshot taken from the wiki again, with Rouxls highlighted for clarity since, uh, there's a lot of options listed, hahaha)

And on the topic of Chapter 2, it also has its own evidence to share.

Throughout Chapter 2, Rouxls is shown to be very fixated on becoming Queen's minion. A post of mine compiling all of these moments can be found here. While it's not entirely confirmed yet to be with romantic intentions, it really seems to me like it is implied as such. Especially with Rouxls thrusting a flower vase bouquet onto Tasque Manager because he thought she was Queen. If this is the case, then it should be safe to say that he is not already in romantic relationship with anyone else canonically when he is going after someone else in this manner.

Now, time to address some potential counterarguments...

A small number of people seemed to have interpreted this line as King and Rouxls being exes as well, instead of just King and Queen. However, I believe Rouxls Kaard's choice of words here is only meant to be in reference to King and Queen's divorce, rather than implying that he had a past relationship with King himself (aside from simply working for him). Describing himself as Queen's "nyew (new) Man about Towne (town)" implies that King was her "old" one. And although Rouxls apparently never met Queen back when she was still a part of Card Castle (since he mistook Tasque Manager for Queen as mentioned before, and Queen certainly doesn't recognize Rouxls either), I imagine it wouldn't be difficult for him to figure out on his own that King and Queen are exes, assuming he was eavesdropping on their conversation before butting in during this scene.

Then, King telling Queen that Rouxls is Lancer's "Lesser Father"... This implies that Lancer has referred to Rouxls as Lesser Dad in front of King. I can only imagine how awkward and embarrassing that must have been for King to hear his son let that nickname slip. And he certainly does not look happy about it here, most likely annoyed by the fact and by Rouxls Kaard's antics in general. So, why would he introduce Rouxls this way to Queen? Well, the answer is simple. If Lancer let the nickname slip in front of King, then it is very possible he could refer to Rouxls as Lesser Dad in front of Queen, too. Remember, Queen came here in the first place to tell Spade King that she is going to take care of his son from now on. So this explanation by King provides her with context in case Lancer starts talking about "Lesser Dad" to her.

Now, I'm almost done here, but I'd like to go over one more thing: Why King and Rouxls are simply not compatible with each other.

Starting with Rouxls, he is not a very loyal person. He constantly switches sides throughout the game so far. From King, to the player, to Queen, to the player again (when all the NPCs help you create the giant mech to fight Giga Queen), then back to Queen in Castle Town.

His shop dialogue is a great example of this. After completing the second K. Round fight, he starts sucking up to you, brags about always being on "the winning side" (gee, I wonder why /s), and even claims that he planned to overthrow the King all along. And even before the K. Round fight, Rouxls's dialogue about King isn't exactly respectful, calling King "cruel and terrifying" and noting how he only got to become the Duke of Puzzles because every other option was fired and/or imprisoned.

Now, moving onto Spade King... He has some pretty bad trust and abandonment issues, to say the least.

His entire reason for hating the Lightners in the first place is because they abandoned him and his kingdom, and when he is overthrown by his own subjects at the end of Chapter 1, he gets very upset and even starts shouting death threats at them.

Although King is much calmer in Chapter 2 (at least towards the Lightners, ironically enough, as he still loses his temper at Queen), he still isn't exactly fond of you. So it's safe to say that he would still not take kindly to traitors, either, even if he might not react as extremely as he did in Chapter 1's ending.

So, considering both characters' details here, I can only conclude that they would make a terrible match for each other. Rouxls is the exact type of person that King is known to despise, and trying to claim otherwise would require stripping away some very significant traits of both King and Rouxls in order to make this disaster pairing "work". It would either be an extremely unhealthy relationship, or an extremely out of character one. And in cases of the latter, at that point I think you should just make your own OCs instead. This ship is not canon, it never was canon, and it never will be canon.

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