Choose Your Fav Fruit Snake

jumping on the trend with Kamba Miku :3

fuck yeah !!!!!!!!!

Every day I find myself getting more and more pissed.

Whether you like it or not, either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump is going to win the election. The voting population not for either do not have enough to elect a third party, especially since none of yall can agree on which candidate you want.

None of the candidates are actually going to stop Isreal, some might say they will, but the president doesn't work alone and if the other branches don't want to do it, it won't get done.

All you are doing by refusing to vote blue because "both sides are bad!!!" for either candidate is putting America in jeopardy. Trump wants anyone not like him dead or bowing at his feet. He can say project 2025 isn't his until he's blue in the face, but everyone knows the truth.

Yes, it is *kamala's* campaign you are hurting. Trumpies are incredibly ride or die, to the point where they are still desperately spreading that "immigrants eating dogs and cats" shit because they can't accept their beautiful leader would lie to them.

The American public has fallen into this state where if the ideal isn't happening, they'll throw their hands in the air and won't do anything. It's like this with tipping culture mist evidently. The people aren't being payed properly and rely on tips, so in retaliation people refuse to tip.

You are not going to get the ideal situation by putting your loved ones in jeopardy by throwing your vote somewhere it doesn't matter.

Change happens slow and with plans, not with one stint. Your revolt is litterally a common statistic of the election which has only become more relevant because of cultish behavior on the right.

A woman of color being a viable candidate for the presidential election is fucking monumental and you're all treating it like its nothing and demanding more. You're not gonna get more in the next month and couple days. Let go of your damn pride because nothing good will happen for Palestine, or Congo, or Venezuela, or anyone else if you let Trump get in.

Is Kamala Harris perfect? No. Is she even great? Not at all. But her even getting this close to the oval office is progress.

But no. Throw away your vote. It's fine. I'm sure all the Palestinians will love you once Trump gets into power and gives Netanyahu the go ahead to kill them all with no mercy.

I'm done being fucking scared.

I've been so fascinated with how the movie pulls off the emotional climax at Ozdust, because I think its not nearly as simple as is seems to a lot of people. Like you can reduce it to "Elphaba did something nice and Glinda felt bad" and then one dance routine later they're friends

I think its a lot more than that though, and I think the movie kinda trickles things in gradually to show it throughout. And that kinda reduces it down to Glinda's guilt motivating the entire friendship, which I don't think is accurate either. Its less "Glinda feels bad" and more "Glinda and Elphaba realized they were playing entirely different games and had entirely skewed their reasons for hating each other" which included making Glinda also realize that she was being a bitch for no damned reason

Like, even their reasons for their rivalry are different from each other and so are their reasons for "maintaining" that rivalry. Their first interaction was them both mutually embarrassing each other, though only Elphaba was trying to embarrass Glinda. Which, to be clear, I'm not saying puts Elphaba in the wrong. Elphaba is very clearly in the right for I'm pretty sure all of this, and even if Glinda wasn't trying to embarrass Elphaba, it doesn't make her promising to degreen Elphaba in front of everyone any better. It's just important to understand their different perspectives on what is going on to understand the different places they're coming from. Glinda was putting on a performance of being a good person, at Elphaba's expense which she didn't even consider. Elphaba was pointing out how stupid that was and embarrassing Glinda to prove she's unbothered and correct.

That is kinda that best summary of how their rivalry goes. Glinda is performing, while Elphaba is responding to that but specifically in ways to piss off Glinda and show she's wrong. But they don't realize what the other one is doing. Glinda is performing to look like a good person and maintain the admiration of her classmates. By putting on this front of suffering by having to be in Elphaba's presence, she gets an easy win with her peers. In What is This Feeling specifically, you see them over and over again validating Glinda for just existing in the presence of Elphaba.

And given the girl sings a whole song about how "its not about aptitude, its the way you're viewed," you can assume that putting on a good appearance to her peers is probably the most important thing to her, period. Literally nothing matters more than that, and Elphaba provides an easy win. But she also has some clear attraction draw toward Elphaba that is strange and unspecified (she's gay), because she doesn't just suffer by being Elphaba's reluctant roommate, but clearly goes out of her way to partner with her, to find her at lunch, to make a scene with her in class repeatedly. Like she almost doesn't even count just having to privately live with her, she needs to bring it out in public too and spend time around her even when she should be happy to finally not have her around.

And making it all the more clear to me that all of this is, in Glinda's eyes, just a performance, we have the "looks like the artichoke is steamed" line, which is definitely one of the meanest things she says to Elphaba, but the way it goes down is fascinating. Because let's look at how that goes down:

Glinda makes a scene because Dr. Dillamond mispronounces her name.

Elphaba defends Dr. Dillamond and tries to embarrass Glinda.

Artichoke comment.

everyone is laughing at Elphaba.

To Glinda, this is what they do. They poke and poke at each other in public until one of them folds and wins, and if its her she gets public approval. But, what makes this clear to me that this is a performance is Glinda's immediate actions after the artichoke comment. When everyone is laughing, she exchanges a look with Elphaba, and the look is not mean at all. She doesn't look like she's gloating or like she just won, she just kinda nods and smiles and it seems like a genuine acknowledgment of...something. It's unclear what, but she doesn't seem like she's overly proud. It's like she's nodding to someone who just played a good game against her, but lost and she wants them to know they played well. It's bizarre the look here and fascinating.

And even more bizarre because Elphaba seems to acknowledge it as well and seems like she understands and almost smiles in response. But I think this also illustrates the disconnect in them for what their rivalry is.

So looking at Elphaba now, her approach to her rivalry began with her embarrassing Glinda, as mentioned before, and continued with her embarrassing Glinda. Most of what she is doing is trying to intentionally embarrass Glinda, which as I said before, isn't really wrong because Glinda is as far as we ever see, the one who is in the wrong and who starts the whole thing by embarrassing Elphaba. But as I said before, embarrassing Elphaba isn't the point of what Glinda is doing, she's trying make herself look better and is just using Elphaba, but literally how would Elphaba know this and why would it matter?

We see that Elphaba has been targeted and mocked her entire life, and that is basically what Glinda is doing to her now. But its also different with Glinda. Because before its always like, groups of people banding against her, with Glinda its personal. She certainly has her minions and all, and basically the entire school hates Elphaba just because they love Glinda, but Glinda isn't really using them. She's still doing everything herself and seems to actually go out of her way to go against Elphaba herself.

That, as far as we know, is different than any bullying Elphaba has experienced before, and what also makes it different is that Elphaba has an advantage of having something Glinda wants and something that prevents her from being pushed aside. Elphaba is basically going to be at this school however long Madame Morrible wants her there, and Madame Morrible also hates Glinda, so Elphaba can't be pushed away and she also has this one thing to hold over Glinda, because she's the one getting the attention that Glinda actually wants. And she's also potentially the only one that might help Glinda get it.

In a really weird way, this rivalry with Glinda might be the closest thing to a friendship that Elphaba has had from someone that isn't her sister or her nanny. Because its both of them personally going after each other and they both also have advantages over each other. And its clear that Glinda could be using her peers to target Elphaba but isn't. And Elphaba also makes it clear that she can ignore people she doesn't like, and yet she doesn't ignore Glinda. Because both of these freaks enjoy poking each other nonstop forever too much. There is something that draws them together (homosexuality) even when they supposedly can't stand to be around one another. Glinda is performing, but Elphaba is having the time of her life sparring with someone in a way she probably never has before.

Which takes us to the hat.

Elphaba approaches Glinda because, according to Nessarose, Glinda did something nice for her. We don't know specifically what Elphaba was going to say to Glinda, but it seems like its something she isn't comfortable with. Maybe she was trying to figure out what Glinda's motivations were. Maybe she was just going to thank Glinda for what she did. Either way, we don't know because Glinda interrupts her by giving her the hat and really talking up that damned hat too. Not only giving her the hat, but specifically inviting Elphaba to go out with them. Elphaba has probably never gotten anything like that before.

Elphaba, who has had the time of her life being antagonistic with Glinda up until this point, now thinks that Glinda is doing nice things for her and for her sister, for seemingly no reason. So she returns the favor and makes Madame Morrible accept Glinda as a student and tell her that night. That night, because this was going to be best night for Nessarose, maybe for Elphaba too now, so let Glinda have something too. Maybe this rivalry was turning into something else and maybe Elphaba was glad for it.

Only, Glinda wasn't being nice.

Glinda getting Boq to ask out Nessarose wasn't to be nice to Nessarose. She wanted Boq to leave her alone. And she didn't give Elphaba the hat and invite her out to be nice, she wanted to embarrass her after receiving validation for the idea from Pfannee and Shenshen.

What you need to know about Glinda here, is that she does not think about other people. She will throw a fit at Dr. Dillamond mispronouncing her name because he physically can't say it right and then repeatedly call Boq by the wrong name. She doesn't know if Nessarose wants to go to the dance or if Elphaba wants her to stop mocking her. She doesn't even consider these things when deciding to do something for her own benefit. She is doing as Glinda must do to perform as she needs for her audience (the entire world).

Which is how we end up here, at the emotional climax of the night. When she discovers that Elphaba did one very nice thing for her after she did something specifically to humiliate Elphaba, its not just guilt for this one moment, right? Its guilt for every little thing that she's done that she just assumed wasn't actually affecting someone else. Her mocking Elphaba and doing all these things wasn't actually about Elphaba, after all, it was about Glinda looking well. Because she didn't even really think about Elphaba, or how she might be interpreting what their dynamic is or that she might actually have been hurt by the things Glinda does. It was all a performance to Glinda.

But is was something else to Elphaba entirely.

And so we look at all the times, like the artichoke moment or their introduction, where Elphaba didn't seem all that upset and maybe Glinda realizes that wasn't always the case. She just wants people to think she wasn't. She was performing too, just not in the same way Glinda was. She was enduring the disapproval of others because she was maintaining this dynamic with Glinda, whereas Glinda was getting approval from others for enduring Elphaba. They were playing different games entirely and Glinda didn't know until Madame Morrible gave her the wand. It wasn't just the cruelness of the hat that she realized, it was the cruelness of single thing she's ever done to Elphaba.

And looking from Glinda's perspective, it makes sense if you see that she's forced to reckon with the fact that she's a terrible person and doesn't like herself, but look at what the situation is from Elphaba's. To Elphaba, Glinda is the first person that saw that she'd hurt Elphaba and then reached out to comfort her and try to help fix it instead of laughing or getting upset or doing nothing. Like I said before, the dynamic she has with Glinda before this is maybe the closest thing she has had to a friend, which is fucked up. But also part of me wonders, based on how they're seemingly drawn together when they could just ignore each other and based on Elphaba's reaction to Glinda's sort of nod after the artichoke comment, AND based on how quick Elphaba was to approach Madame Morrible, part of me wonders if Elphaba was just hoping for a moment when their antagonism would end the whole time. And that's why she's so willing to accept that once Glinda does something that Galinda is not supposed to do and makes a fool of herself to support Elphaba in front of all of the people she's supposed to be putting on a show for.

Which I think, makes Glinda joining Elphaba in the dance that much more important. Because, and I love this for the movie, she's not getting praised for doing so. Shenshen and Pfannee tell her to stop. The initial reaction she gets once people realize she isn't mocking Elphaba is scorn. For like, this one little moment they're on the same page. Glinda is getting disapproval for being with Elphaba here. And it ends in them being accepted by the party, but that almost seems to be unimportant. They hug before they realize that everyone else has joined in, and once they realize it, they leave the party together pretty much immediately. Their relationship has been a show in public for so long and so what happens next when they stop performing happens in privacy, just for them.

This season of arcane is about switching roles.

It's about growing up to the be the thing you hate, the thing you feared, the thing you worshipped, the thing that would save you, and it's about the roles of people being repeated, reversed, flipped, and it is fascinating.

The most obvious one is Vi, who finds herself in a situation where the choice she makes - and it doesn't feel like much of a choice, but remember there is always a choice - is to become an inforcer. Even if it's only temporary, even if it's only to track down Jinx, she does it. She puts on the uniform and the badge and raids the arcade hideout, just like the inforcers did when she was younger, and this time Jinx has no one to turn too, this time she is scared of Vi. Vi has become the monsters that hunted them.

And then there's Caitlyn, who stares down at the city, who was willing to shoot even though she might hit a child, who is mad with grief and rage and who understands now why it is so easy to hate them - and she puts on the coat, and she looks like Silco. Because she is drowning, because she feels afraid, and hateful and angry and destroyed, and she is willing to lead the forces against the other side, no matter the cost.

What really gets me though, is the parallel of Viktor and Jayce's transformations. Jayce has become Viktor, has slept in the lab, has become obsessed with hextech and Viktor's equations and notes and finding something to help him. He wants to quit the council, he wants to spend all his time with Viktor in the lab. Jayce has become what Viktor needed to save him. And Viktor, in turn, now looks like the mage that saved Jayce as a child, with his cane as a staff and his blue cloak, Viktor has become the magic Jayce has always been looking to create.

This show makes me INSANE

hey ao3 why do i keep getting forced to log out every time i try to comment

edit: anytime i do anything ajdjsjdks

NOTICE: As more and more fanfic writers are using generative AI for their works (you uncreative dweebs), I hereby swear on everything I hold dear that I have not and will NEVER use generative AI in ANY of my written work. Everything I post will be organically and creatively my own.

ARCANE, S02E08 | Mel Medarda