30-something fangirl, posting about cute animals, Tokyo Ghoul, Attack on Titan, Yurikuma Arashi, and other junk. Beware of falling Memes, Video Games, and Social Justice stuff.
RIP Marjane Satrapi, author of the amazing graphic novels Persepolis about living during the fundamentalist revolution in Iran in the 70’s and 80’s. She also created the animated movie based on the graphic novels, which is where these gifs come from.
Reblogging in honor of Marjane Satrapi, one of THE great graphic novelists. Her comic Persepolis was a crucial text for shaping my belief that comics can deeply explore identity, culture, politics, and history.
I don’t know if this is an obvious take or a hot take, but I think people need to start re-framing feminism as the fight for body autonomy as opposed to whatever this second wave revival gender essentialist bullshit we have going on right now. Once you reframe it in this way, it’s easier to understand intersectionality and why cis women are not the only people who need feminism. The lack of body autonomy effects cis women, trans people, intersex people, disabled people, poc, homeless people, sex workers, etc. and your feminism needs to include and prioritise all of these groups of people (which will include men btw) because feminism is about autonomy, not about establishing a matriarchy. Body autonomy is the biggest threat to the patriarchy, both with reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and even the right to not be drafted into military services. Once body autonomy is established for everyone, the patriarchy no longer has a leg to stand on.
And body autonomy does include things that you don’t personally like either. I was prompted to write this post after a series of bad takes from progressives, but one of them was re-hashing the Sabrina Carpenter album cover drama with “I don’t think it’s conservative of me to think that the album cover is a bad look when we’ve seen images of women being abused in this way” because I do actually think you’ve failed to understand feminism by projecting your morals onto a woman who was consensually expressing her own autonomy just because she expressed it in a way that you didn’t like or that made you uncomfortable.
Body autonomy also means unhealthy choices. Body autonomy also means regret rates. Body autonomy also means freedom of sexuality. Body autonomy also means mutilation. If you believe body autonomy has limitations and exceptions, then your feminism is most likely surface level.
TERFs are some of the biggest opponents to body autonomy, and if you find yourself thinking “oh people can do whatever they want with their bodies as long as it doesn’t harm them or make others uncomfortable” then you are far more susceptible to TERF propaganda than you think.
Just a couple other things I've been continually thinking about after playing the patch:
A Moment Lasts Forever
Although Pantalone started testing the elixir of immortality before he was 38, Anomalous Tree Marrow I confirms that what made the elixir incomplete for so long was that it had no impact on brain aging--that is, Pantalone was already staying young in body, but mentally and neurologically was still aging. It took all the way until Zandik's death (and the elixir being perfected from his autopsy) for Feofan's brain to stop aging, so we can technically say:
The day Zandik died was the day time stopped for Pantalone. 😭
This is also important because it's a central part of the theme shared between both Dottore and Pantalone: The segments were fixed "slivers of time" who effectively could not grow or mentally/psychologically develop beyond the age at which they had been separated off. Unlike the original Zandik, who remained mutable and human and therefore changed his views and feelings over time, Omega and the other segments had no freedom to grow as people.
And after Zandik's death... neither did Pantalone.
Just like the segments, his brain became fixed, frozen.
Hear me out, Dottore comes back as a pyro character for the symbolism.
Feofan isn't the same as a segment, but functionally having one's brain development stopped in time suggests the same exact inability to move forward, to give up the feelings of that moment...
Pantalone is an extremely tired 72-year-old brain inside a 45-year-old body that's nevertheless still kicking almost 400 years later.
No wonder the guy has black circles.
Order of Operations
Second thing: I'm not going to speculate in full on the Lizardtorre theory because it's been talked about enough. I don't know if the lizard will actually turn out to be involved in Dottore's situation or if they'll just pull an "Actually, a brand new character who can spy through animals has been following you all along, Traveler!" out of nowhere, but anyone saying that lizard isn't going to be relevant in some way, shape, or form to the upcoming plot is probably huffing their own copium at this point, because even if you're not into literary analysis you should be able to spot obvious an obvious Chekhov's gun when the devs literally pick it up and wave it in your face lol.
Buttt anyway, one thing I did want to talk about is that I've seen people debunking the lizard theory by saying that Anomalous Tree Marrow III proves the lizard was just another experiment from Dottore and its only role in the plot was giving him the information on how to transfer souls.
Except... the idea that Dottore only started his experiments in soul transfer after going to Nod-Krai makes no sense, because he had already drawn up the entire plan with Pantalone, split his soul, turned it into a data back-up, and left that data back-up in the Northland Bank with Pantalone all before going to Nod-Krai.
Pantalone explicitly tells us this in-game:
The only reason Pantalone even went to Sumeru at all was because he had already signed a literal will directing him to take Dottore's data and inject it into Irminsul. If Dottore came up with that idea after starting his showdown with Traveler and Co. in Nod-Krai (upon which he promptly died), how would Pantalone even know that plan, let alone have a signed document from Dottore telling him to do it? 🤔
Did Dottore zip back to Snezhnaya in the middle of Nod-Krai's plot to go like "Hey man, I know we signed an agreement already for you to bring my soul piece to Sumeru but I'm gonna need to borrow your computer real fast--"
To be honest, this could just be another plot hole due to Genshin's notorious "don't think too hard about this" stance towards all of their timelines (Flins being simultaneously in Snezhnaya and in Nod-Krai for the Cataclysm comes to mind lol), but if that's the case, this seems like a really obvious and dumb mistake for the writers to have made, because this is all information from the same patch--they didn't bother to do a single check of their own timeline even just for 6.6's events?
tl;dr: It makes no sense for Dottore to only have learned how to transfer souls during Nod-Krai's plot, because Nod-Krai's plot happened after Dottore had already signed off and finished preparing his soul-splitting and injection-into-Irminsul plan.
Well That's Not Ominous At All
I know the common takeaway from the patch seems to be that Zandik died of (relatively) natural causes, that he fell and just no one helped him up, possibly had heart failure, etc.; the prevailing take seems to be that the segments' involvement was mostly just standing by and watching him die.
But personally, I'm more inclined to say that he was pretty much murdered by Omega.
Sure, we get this particularly threatening flash during the cutscene, suggesting Omega was about to errrr... hurry things along:
But I think the more ominous statement is actually from Anomalous Moon Marrow III, where Omega writes:
The second half of the note being specifically about "fantasies of immortality" all but confirms that the drug he is talking about is the elixir of immortality. They've had a "deficit" of effective live specimens for trials of the elixir, so Omega decides to persuade himself [Zandik] to "comply."
The second half of the note being such a disdainful take on mortality and human life suggests that we're supposed to read this as Omega's thinly veiled hatred for Zandik in particular: Human Zandik is "fleeting," "too fragile," and, like other mortals, "pathetically trapped by their own limitations." Omega is the superior unit; he's stronger, younger, more powerful, immortal. Why should he be held back from achieving his goal any longer by this pathetic crumbling version of himself?
The fact that they added this note into the tree marrow suggests to me that we were supposed to see Omega's role in Zandik's death as significantly more calculated than originally thought. He wasn't just casually taking advantage of Zandik's natural death; he had been actively plotting and planning for that death to make human!Zandik into the last "specimen data" he needed to complete the elixir.
Far be it from me to ever suggest that any of Freud's theories were actually right but... this is all pretty Oedipus Complex-y. Omega hated his creator, the original Zandik, viewing him as a symbol of the pathetic human traits the segments had long since moved beyond--therefore a symbol of Omega's own, deep-down weaknesses. Zandik was a walking, talking manifestation of Omega's inferiorities, his limitations... How could Omega not hate him, seeing him parading around their failings for all the world to see?
And yet Omega clearly also envied Zandik, the only one by virtue of his humanity who could truly claim to be "the original." Omega burned to seize that status, thinking of all the other segments as just "me, myself, and I," putting himself in the position of being the actual harbinger, THE Il Dottore, while everyone else in their collective was just "help," and even all the way to the end, Omega was coveting the name "Zandik"... Even while embarrassed, mortified of his human limitations, Omega desired everything Zandik had that Omega lacked.
He didn't just want Zandik gone for the elixir--he wanted Zandik gone so he could entirely supplant him, finally becoming the "real" Self.
I'm not saying this theory remotely works in real life (as it was never based on any actual science in the first place), but in media and storytelling there's certainly been a lot of leaning on the idea, and I don't think it's accidental that Omega very much plays Freud's entire Oedipus Complex out line-by-line: Hate and envy the "father," view him as a rival, covet his place in the world, kill him to assert yourself as the superior version, seize the wife, profit.
On Sight
Okay, anyway, ending with something much cuter and significantly less low-key horror:
For me, the most under-rated aspect of 6.6 was finding out that canonically Dottore is the "fell first" in the "who fell first vs. who fell harder." The fandom is just notttt talking enough about the fact that absolutely none of Zandik's behavior towards Feofan makes any sense unless you assume that he was so impressed by their very first meeting that he was completely sold on Pantalone instantly. Ride or die from ONE CONVERSATION. Feofan had him hooked within the first five minutes; Dottore is weakkk omg. If you think too hard about this it loops back into really sad, so uhhhh just don't think too hard about this.
Because really, the crazy thing is the dates on the reports.
We jump from 20 to 26, and Feofan is still not a harbinger yet Dottore is somehow his attending physician? A civilian is getting treated by a harbinger for routine altercation wounds?? Where did he get this kind of privilege???
The fact that Dottore was already providing Feofan's medical care even before he rose to the position of harbinger suggests that, by any outsider's perspective, Il Dottore himself spent at least six years maintaining a friendship with a no-name member of the Fatui who wasn't even a combatant. Feofan was just a bank employee???
Imagine if one day Slenderman started showing up at your bank but all he wanted to do was chat up your coworker.
Like, think of how absolutely gone on Feofan Dottore must have seemed to any outsider looking in:
Feofan walks into the Northland Bank. He's not even a Fatui member yet. He no longer has a penny to his name, a home to go back to, or a resume he can even show to prove himself because his last business literally failed. He was a test subject two weeks ago and now he's handing over a letter of recommendation from Il Dottore, second of all the Fatui harbingers.
Imagining being the guy running that bank. I M A G I N E.
Also, Pantalone insists that he rose to the position of harbinger on his own merits; however, he also says "Your recommendation alone wouldn't have been enough," which means that Dottore did talk his bestie up to the Tsaritsa. We don't (yet) have any record of Dottore encouraging the Tsaritsa to elevate anyone else he knew to the status of harbinger, which implies that this was completely out of the blue behavior for him, and at some point he absolutely walked into a harbinger meeting and just went "Pierro, I'm going to tell you about Feofan now. Let me list out all his admirable qualities--" such that an entire room of people was forced to listen to at least an hour's worth of simping disguised as a totally-objective-not-at-all-biased "harbinger recommendation," after which they almost certainly wanted to kill both Dottore and themselves.
In took Pantalone 10 years in the Fatui to become a harbinger, and Dottore knew him and maintained a "friendship" with him that entire time, despite the massive gulf in their ranks. You KNOW Feofan was getting hit with those "sleeping his way to top" allegations and you KNOW Dottore constantly made them worse by being completely uninterested in bothering to correct the driveling gossip.
"I've already stated many times that Feofan is my partner--"
"Zandik... Please..."
It's just so cute.
The speed at which Dottore latched onto Feofan... The complete disregard for social hierarchy or rank... Number 2 and the random bank clerk simply "being friends" for years without Dottore ever bothering to be concerned how others would perceive that... Absolutely shamelessly using nepotism to try to help his "friend" get promoted so they could work together on the daily...
It's so, so endearing. I need 13435894596 "just watched that freak who stole my kidney flirt with my fellow teller at the bank and guys I think my coworker's into it" fics, statttttt.
Hey Rooster Teeth fam, we got someone in the community needing a little help. This time the person is Jen Brown’s mom, Cynthia Brown. Cynthia is a lovely and loving m woman I had the pleasure of meeting at RTX in the past. She has a GFM. I donated a little, and hope we can come together and help her.
Hello, my name is Cindy. I have found myself in a financial crisis. Fi… Cynthia Brown needs your support for Help Cindy with Medical Bills a
it's really funny how the entire world basically just blew the fuck up six short years ago and nobody wants to admit that that may have had some lasting consequences lmao
like so much of Everything today is premised on the idea that the earth-shattering catastrophe which happened within living memory of everyone older than a third grader has had no meaningful material or psychological effects on the general public and i don't think that's good, lol.
"(some of) the top-line economic indicators (sorta) recovered (in most places) so everything is fine and we don't need to talk about it" is not a sustainable framework for interfacing with reality
And this is why we keep fucking losing. Because the center-to-left side of the aisle are so quick to eat each other, nothing will ever be good enough.
Meanwhile, you can be a literal child rapist, serial adulterer, lifelong financial criminal that fucks over businesses and working people for a living, a rampant racist and misogynist that constantly insults and belittles the military and our global allies, have questionable personal and financial connections to Russia, and all of that is fine as long as you run as a Republican.
Y'all are peak "Cutting off your nose to spite your face" and it's so self-defeating.
origamiaround
jbbartram-illu
germansingergirl
vaporwave
baratheonpilled
