#longposts

wooo im on my ipad now. okay oaky okay. slimeknight fic idea GO........... under the cut of course because. because i said so (it's very long)

I'm at my fave cafe. I ate our favortire donut. I thought of you, a lot actually in the past days. I don't feel the same feeling anymore. I'm not affected by you, the way you affect me before.

This morning, I haven't thought about you. I'm slowly forgetting the feelings I had. The delusions I made about us. I would've given you everything but you weren't really there. I chased you like you're going to change if I showed you how much you mean to me.

People don't change, especially not for others. It's not a bad thing that you don't change. You're so hell bent on what you want for yourself and I'm so hell bent in pushing myself into cracks and gaps of you. I was so wrong to think that I'll fix you by forcing myself. Everything you want is not me. Everyday we're together, you never fail to remind me of that yet I still believe things will change for you, for us.

I'm writing to write off these thoughts of mine hooping someday, maybe, they'll be gone. I'll start anew, begin to see and learn to love myself, wholly, again.

I love the tenderness and consoling conviction from Yuji in this scene, but at this point, he's only known Nanami for a few days, and been 'dead' for somewhere between a month and a month and a week or two. So he'd really only known Megumi for like, a month, tops. He'd known Nobara for maybe a couple of weeks. It's unclear how long he'd known Ijichi for, but on-and-off through July, probably...most of these times are guesses, and due to the timeskips, I can't be sure how well or how little Yuji got to known all of these people during the times he could have. Gojo, his longest relationship out of the five he was thinking of, tends to get infrequent and small references to what he did or didn't teach Yuji at various times. There's another moment shortly before this page where Yuji thinks back to a scene we never saw², wherein Gojo apparently taught Yuji how to fight Shikigami users ("When fighting Shikigami Users...go for the User themselves.") But ultimately, the audience hasn't been able to spend more than a few moments' times to get an understanding of Yuji's attachments and his faith in the people he relies on. Nanami gets the most here (Junpei Arc, Chapter 26) since this was the arc he was introduced in, and has been closely mentoring Yuji, but as mentioned, this entire arc takes place in a small timeframe. As a result, the believability of these relationships can easily be called into question, and this scene didn't hit me as hard as it should have.

Culling Games has a similar issue with believability in character dynamics and pacing, largely caused by the frequent timeskips forcing arcs immediately after Shibuya to cram as much as they can into short timeframes. Junpei Arc can get away with this more due to its early placement in the story, but the cracks had been visible well into this arc and even beforehand.

In a very twisted way, the post-unsealing timeskip, from mid-November (somewhere around/after November 16th; EDIT, it's November 19th³) to December 24th, is not particularly unique, though it is one of the largest timeskips (that I can positively identify through information in the manga's pages), possibly only behind the mid-July (?) to September skip. I've mentioned it before, though, that JJK simply could not handle another timeskip of a similar magnitude (or one exceeding, perhaps, a week). This mainly comes down to the bloating of the cast and status quo changes in the Perfect Preparation Arc, the Culling Games Arc, and the aftermath of 212 through 221.

I really wish I could have appreciated his scene more, since it's lovely and well-executed in-of-itself. But since it relies on the preceding groundwork, the shaky foundation undermines an otherwise knockout scene.

¹I am here in my reread, so I'm a little fuzzy on any timeskips after this point.

²Using flashbacks to show the audience new scenes can be effective, but this method gets overused in JJK to fill in gaps caused by not devoting enough time to character-building and cast downtime.

³GUESS WHO FORGOT ABOUT TWO DIFFERENT PANELS IN 221 EXPLICITLY CLARIFYING THE DATE? Blegh, I'll have to be more careful when I eventually fully reread--I have only gone through most 146+ chapters once. Anyways, the panels:

This is probably the exact issue that prevented anyone from teaching me literature as a child: "I know he's struggling, so let's give him something with even less substance so he's even less motivated and there's nothing that can really resonate with him anyway"

If someone has a bad take on a piece of art you like my recommended approach is one from: 1) ignore them, roll your eyes if that's fun for you. 2) say "I think you're wrong, cos... etc." 3) block them if the take is odious rather than simply incorrect and or it's recurred enough times you'd rather not see more from them and risk missing out on any good posts they may have later. Just choose one as appropriate for your energy levels and investment in the topic or person. If your response to someone misinterpreting (or just differently interpretting) a piece of art you like is "huh I suppose we should gatekeep art" I suppose we should gatekeep having an unbearable sense of superiority, since you've shown you can't be trusted with it.

smbc link for reference:

Survivor with the most S Tiers:

Acrobat & Seer (4)

Top 3 Survivors with the most A Tiers:

Mercenary (13) Coordinator & Mechanic (11) Doctor & Gardner (9)

Survivor with the least S Tiers:

Lawyer (0)

Top 3 Survivors with the least A Tiers:

Professor & Antiquarian & Composer (0) Patient & Psychologist (1) Batter & Novelist & Weeping Clown (2)

Hunter with the most S Tiers:

Ripper & Geisha (5)

Top 3 Hunters with the most A Tiers:

Geisha (9) Ripper & Photographer (8) Wu Chang (7)

Hunter with the least S Tier:

Hell Ember & Mad Eyes & “Disciple” & all hunters released after Sculptor (1)

Top 3 Hunters with the least A Tiers:

Clerk & Hermit (0) “Undead” & Wax Artist & “Nightmare (1) Mad Eyes & Violinist & Sculptor & Breaking Wheel & Naiad (2)

asjlkd yes that is indeed an outdoor toilet! i’ll do a tour, but remember i’m like a full month ahead in my game, so some stuff might be different now :]

Hello - ModLucy here! First off,  I’d like to extend a tremendous ‘thank you’ to everyone who has participated in our Meeting-Time Survey so far. Your input has been very valuable in getting ALGAE’s first group Meet-Up underway. (And if you haven’t had a chance yet, don’t fret! There’s still time, and we would  love to hear from you!) Beyond pinning down a suitable time for everyone, ModLars and I have also been organizing the actual meat of ALGAE’s first Meet-Up. Together, we’ve concluded that one of our biggest goals, is for ALGAE members to get to know one another. Build a rapport. Break the ice - if you will. And what better way, than with some ice-breakers? Now, without the luxury of having everyone in one place (maybe one day~) these activities will require a little tweaking, and, some input on your part. Here’s what we have planned, and what we need from you:

ICE-BREAKER 1#: “Two Truths, One Lie”

What better way to get to know each other than with attempts of deception, lol? How to play: As is in its name, “Two Truths, One Lie” involves one player giving three facts about themselves, two true, and one false. It’s the job of other players to correctly identify the lie. What to Bring: Come prepared with three facts about yourself, two truthful, and one a lie. They do not need to be extremely personal or incriminating! And if you’re having trouble coming up with three facts, consider using: 2 Lesbian/Gay stereotypes you fit, and 1 you don’t - as long as you don’t tell us which!

ICE-BREAKER 2#: “Nice To Meet Shoe”

Okay - you got me. I made up the name of this one for the pun... How to play: Names are hard to remember, and profile-icons can change - but a picture, is worth a thousand words. This game involves players sharing a picture of a benign article of clothing (in this case a shoe), that tells other members something about themselves. What to Bring: A picture of a shoe that can tell us something about you! Take us for a walk in your shoes (I must stop).  Once again, this does not have to be personally incriminating. Google Images are perfectly acceptable. Don’t be afraid to get creative - here’s the image I plan to use for this game:

ICE-BREAKER 3#: “Drawn Together”

Lesbihonest... I like puns, okay? How to Play: To not ruin the surprise element of the game, I can’t say too much here. What to Bring: A means to draw - whether that be a pen and paper, a drawing program on your computer, or the Sketch function in your phones ‘Notes’/’Memo’ application. Also, a means to share your drawing (camera, file-sharing, screenshot, ect).

~Final Notes~

I. Thanos’s universe motivations don’t make sense

So a thing about Infinity War is that Thanos’s motivation makes completely no sense. The motivation they decide to give him is that he wants to destroy half of life in the universe basically to deal with overpopulation problems. This makes no sense.

The universe, aside from not actually appearing to be running out of resources as a whole, is not a general interdependent system here. Individual worlds or groups of worlds can be having resource shortages, but they’re not a unit together, they don’t actually connect to each other. There might be a world with a huge resource shortage and a world with a huge resource surplus and they’ve never been in contact or known about each other and have nothing to do with each other. Neither do they affect each other’s reproduction rates or whatever. Etc. ‘The universe’ isn’t a coherent/unified/single entity with respect to this, and it doesn’t make sense to treat it like one.

‘Population outstrips resources’ is a problem of growth rates. If it is a problem, you can’t do things to it by destroying a bunch of people – if you don’t do anything about the growth rate thing, you’ll just get the problem again.

Killing half of everyone, whether by massacre or disappearance, is not actually going to cause happy thriving and great food yields in the other half. It will in fact cause a huge mess, lots more death, and exactly the opposite.

If you have enough power to just destroy half of life, why don’t you just make more resources or something.

II. The Titan story can make sense

Conversely, the story told for Titan specifically can make total sense. Titan is a unified entity. If they were having an issue of war etc caused by resource shortages, addressing growth rates wouldn’t fix their immediate problem, which they’d still have. The ‘kill half of people, at random, rich and poor alike’ feels like something that could show up as a (probably fringe) local position (which to be clear doesn’t make it like, ok. But it makes it coherent).

Resource conflicts and shortages tend to come down hardest on already vulnerable people. Saying ‘we’re heading toward a lot of uncontrolled death where the vulnerable suffer most. Instead, let’s make it controlled and organized and fairly distributed, and then with the acute problem dealt with we can make plans for the longer term’, is, again, coherent in context.

The infinity gauntlet and resources on that scale aren’t in play at all – this is a local issue. And if they arrange this as a plan, then whoever held this position could state that they would prepare ahead of time to avoid chaos and make the aftermath work how they actually wanted. (Again, that’s not likely to work, but it makes sense that someone could think that.)

III. From one to the other, with weird Star Trek computers

Star Trek (and probably other things) give us the trope of a robot or other such system programmed and set to a goal by its creators, that ends up outside the context of what the creators were thinking of, but keeps trying to carry out the goal.

So: Titan. Upheaval and the brink of disaster; a faction with a fringe position. They build a system. (Or, come to think, make themselves into one, somehow). The system has a motivating aim: arrange to destroy half of the population, at random, to, in their philosophy, secure a better life and future for the world.

On Titan, their faction never succeeds. Titan falls, with no or barely any survivors.

But the system survives. The system survives, and the system leaves Titan, and the system encounters the larger universe (which come to think Titan probably didn’t know about, since it didn’t seem like they were considering that as a place to look for resources). And the system is still running its program. It can’t reevaluate for a new context – it doesn’t have that capability. It can’t consider glaring issue with its approach – it doesn’t have that capability.

It has a motivating aim, and an increased scope. So – it goes to do its work. It gathers resources. It puts plans into action. And when it finds out about better resources that would make it so much more able to pursue its aim – it pursues those.