I Love When Characters Lie To Themselves In The Complete Privacy Of Their Own Minds

like and share to help them carry their load 😔 🫴

i'm literally the priest's favorite sacrificial lamb because i am so docile and sweet and i hold very still when they put the rope around my neck and i trot along so happily while they lead me to the altar and they do not even have to tie me down because i lie so very still and only bleat once or twice in my lovely lamb voice and when the knife comes down it cuts through me like butter and i offer no resistance and i bleed so prettily all over my new white wool and my guts all unspool like the most beautiful shining yarn and my eyes are animal and dumb and hold no accusation and every time i die i come right back as another little lamb because the priest loves me so so much and he always chooses me for the sacrifice every time and he always places one hand on my small and twitching nose to calm me while he lifts the knife and he doesn't do it for the other lambs only me because i'm his favorite

the differences are also so..... [grips my fist]. au dante is the heir of the kingdom; his parents aren't dead. if they were dead, he'd be the king of the samsama kingdom, not a prince. generally, he's a happier guy. he's not from a place that he has to fight tooth and nail to support. people respect where he's from. au dante is a generous person open to peace. he's chill. he shows his hand first, he emphasizes the importance of "working together in good faith", he agrees to "watch over" eiden despite just having met him, he lets a gaggle of strangers ride in his carriage. this is a world where he could always afford kindness and his parents could always afford to be kind because the place they rule is wealthy and powerful. you can see a vague outline of how canon dante's parents might've ruled. there are some parallels with eiden's meeting with au dante and eiden's meeting with canon dante. rather than eiden coming to dante, au dante comes to eiden. he asks to buy eiden for a great deal of money (which turns out to be puffballs, but we can assume it would've be a lot of money (ᵕ—ᗜ—)) in chapter 9, eiden comes to canon dante and tries to ask for help. lowkey, he is asking to 'buy' dante in a similar way au dante was asking to buy eiden. au dante and chapter 9 eiden both want a fair partnership where they help each other out. ch.9 eiden specifically wanted dante's help with the fire altar and the way he was attempting to 'buy' dante was invoking dante's status as a clan member and his stewardship of the land around the fire altar instead of money. and this went...... super poorly. like... kind of poorly as it couldve there are a lot of reasons for why their meeting went poorly, but one of them is that canon dante has a very 'eh' history with contracts. his gem contract is functionally bust. when he was a child, he never had any access to the power of huey's essence. and then, when he became Sun Lord, the contract simply meant a stranger, the Grand Sorcerer, might one day arrive and force him into some kind of alliance. (this is one of the reasons early dante calls eiden his 'master' so sarcastically and why it's such a novelty for eiden to be his butler. the grand sorcerer has been hanging over him pretty much his entire life and it's pretty great (for dante) that it turns out the grand sorcerer is some weak guy who can't force him or solaria to do anything.) his contract with the elemental spirits of fire is... good! it's pretty beneficial for both parties. it got dante on his feet. it only took several gruelling trials to prove that he was worthy his contract, his deal with barbubble, worked! but... whatever happened there was later used to almost blackmail Solaria to great effect. eiden coming to dante in chapter 9 was kind of him asking to make a new partnership, a new contract. and dante was obviously unimpressed. canon dante doesn't believe in good faith, really. it comes down to this: au dante has always had resources. canon dante has had to fight for what he has. au dante is a dealmaker. he offers because he can; he can control the terms. he trusts that he and his partner will be fair. he has wealth and he comes from power and people are impressed by it. canon dante, for most of his life, has been the signee. he takes because he needs. he knows everyone has an ulterior motive. he knows he can only have what he protects and he must flex the glory of Solaria or no one will respect it.

alternate universe dante from journey to a nu world is really fun because you get to see that he is just like that. bro was born cocky. thats nature baby

I feel like we give too much credit to the inherent homoeroticism of things. In many cases, it's not inherently homoerotic at all, and only becomes so through serious and dedicated effort. People work hard to make that shit homoerotic, and frankly, sometimes the circumstances are not helping.

idol lovers 💙❤️

What a year this week has been.

milk-thistle is an example of a word where the tongue barely moves… basilica is an example of a word where the movement involved is like a seesaw. opium as a word is circular to say. to say a word like violence involves a bit of a forced pause in the mouth where the o connecting the syllables is. etymologists trace the word’s history, poets feel the word’s impact, singers listen to the word’s musicality, linguists tell the word to go this way and that way, and the word is gracious to all in return

escape

I mean surely we all grew up feeling like there was a wrongness inherently deep inside us that will endure for the rest of our lives