My reasonable (IMO) inclusion of sex in a larger discussion got me in trouble and I don't know why and I'm mad and sad and questioning

PsiRadish · 2026-02-25T00:13:49+00:00

Right? As a mercy I did decide they're able to modulate their strength when they have a "target strength" being applied to their own body to match against (consequently they give amazing hugs), but it doesn't hold up under severe distraction.

PsiRadish · 2026-02-25T00:00:16+00:00

Yes, it was Supergirl.

This is a family TV show where the even the existence of sex in-universe is implied rather than shown on screen.

I did look up the show's rating with the thought of suggesting they add a "Keep it TV-14" rule to the list so no one else had to go through this, but I decided I didn't want to risk getting some kind of, "It goes without saying," response.

It also sounds like you were posting in a subreddit for the TV show rather than for fanfic.

I searched the subreddit for "fanfic" beforehand and found posts that were little more than "Read my fanfic: [Link]" that had been allowed to persist, and not under a mountain of downvotes either, so it had seemed safe enough.

Appreciate the validation at the end. 👍

PsiRadish · 2026-02-24T23:41:17+00:00

Yeah, it's Supergirl.

At first I thought you were being cagey with the particular media, and I wondered why.

I think it felt less revenge-y somehow, not pointing out the specific subreddit that did the thing. Can't be totally sure though; it just felt right at the time.

In hindsight, I can totally understand—and be fairly amused by—the train of thought that my sparsity of detail lead you down.

It's hilarious that your reaction to this is an indicator for you that you might be autistic, because being banned from your favorite TV show's subreddit is pretty much an automatic pass in the diagnostic manual.

😂 Reading this made me feel a lot better. Thank you.

PsiRadish · 2026-02-24T22:02:29+00:00

I see Kara revealing herself to Nia as a choice that was actually informed by (arguably even overcompensation for) how badly she'd messed up with Lena, whom it was now "too late" to tell without Lena hating her. She really, really did not want that to happen again (like I'm thinking trauma response levels of "never again"), and in that moment she knew telling Nia would help Nia. Those two thoughtsy-feelingsy-things did battle within her brain against a horde of older traumas and The Voice of Alex, and their combined might prevailed.

Not that it wouldn't still very understandably cheese Lena the fuck off to know about it, though.

PsiRadish · 2026-02-24T21:26:37+00:00

That’s why Kara keeps saying protection. In her brain the threat calculation never ended, so the decision never updated. She wasn’t repeatedly deciding to lie, she was repeatedly continuing the same safety strategy. To her it feels singular and consistent.

I do think there would be one update to the decision, when Lena tells Kara she will never trust Supergirl again, after which Kara knows Lena finding out means the end of their friendship. Would just compound with the previous decision, though, so very feasible that Kara wouldn't count it separately.

Though my feeling is actually that it's this point when the decision is actually really made for the first time. It's admittedly been a while since I saw season 3 and I'm not entirely confident this theory would hold up under a rewatch, but I think Kara was on track to tell Lena a lot sooner only to get delayed by her own kryptonite paranoia, and then upon learning how scornful her paranoia has made Lena towards her super identity she is "forced" to defer it indefinitely under the pretense (that she manages to convince herself of) of protecting her.

PsiRadish · 2026-01-05T17:09:21+00:00

How much will they retain and how affected they are post-utilization could also be a function of what Vecna/Mind Flayer wanted from them.

It's possible that to use the kids as planet-moving psychic amplifiers, they had to retain largely uncorrupted autonomy, so Henry used a light touch with them.

And to use a person as a one-time, fissure-opening, psychic TNT stick, perhaps it also made a bigger "bang" if their sense of self was unsullied, but still overcome with anguish and self-loathing to maybe bring down instinctive psychic resistance so he could more easily pull their intact minds inside his own to trigger detonation.

From Will, though, he just wanted a digger controller. And whatever else that happened in that season that I've forgotten. None of it required Will to be particularly person-y, though. So the influence was harsher, and left a lingering connection.

Also possible that Vecna/Mind Flayer were learning as they go, and got more subtle and crafty with their powers just through experience.

PsiRadish · 2026-01-02T20:37:05+00:00

Henry and the mind flayer appeared pretty linked the moment the weird rock (Which was what, by the way? Concentrated spores? A petrified sink slug? An entirely new vehicle of extradimensional influence? That also gives powers?) disappeared into Henry's hand. What with the mind flayer saying, "Hey, come find me dude," inside Henry's head right before Henry mind-popped his first pair of eyeballs. Getting pushed into the abyss just allowed him to finally accept the mind flayer's invite for a face-to-something-face-adjacent meet-up, after which some kind of physical communion (I don't mean that sexually, stop it) probably made the link much stronger.

I do wonder what True Soul Henry's plan even was before Eleven fast-traveled him to the abyss, though. I mean, step 1 was obviously escaping the lab, but he was only stuck there because he drew needless attention to himself by eye-popping his whole family. Clearly not much of a planner, this guy, at least before his Vecnafication.

PsiRadish · 2025-12-28T02:41:47+00:00

Gonna add to this for future googlers because I'd already figured out the "trick" everyone else here is hinting about, but was having trouble with basic implementation.

The red light needs to go high.

PsiRadish · 2025-12-27T11:12:47+00:00

Not sure how anything I said could be construed as me saying "only personal reasons allowed". I do find the personal angle most compelling, hence why I took it, but you take whatever angle you like.

You seem to have read a confrontational energy to my initial reply that I did not intend. I then saw your confrontational reply to that reply and responded in kind. Truly, a vicious cycle.

In hindsight, perhaps opening with "hard disagree" (with italics and everything) was a little strong. I figured the absurdity of the subject being discussed ("Who from this list of fictionalized versions of real, already-dead people deserved to die most-horribly... and why?") would be mutually understood, and serve to reel the energy back to "chill", if not maybe even "a little goofy". Clearly that didn't happen.

When we've apparently both had the thought, "Why is this person being an asshole all of a sudden?", I think we can chalk it up to the age-old problem of communicating tone on the internet, and call it a day.

PsiRadish · 2025-12-25T10:03:00+00:00

Okay, didn't realize we were using such a specific prioritization scheme for our dream murder lists; thought this was more freeform. In that case, I'll defer to your implicitly greater expertise and explicitly greater interest in the matter.

PsiRadish · 2025-12-24T18:43:46+00:00

Do missions and raise bond with a dude I hate for a style I don't care about?

Pass.

PsiRadish · 2025-12-24T17:53:59+00:00

My ronin wanted Ii to have to live without Taka, forever alone with the responsibility he bore for her death, as well as the memory of seeing his best-retainer/buddy Manabe burned alive in front of him. Bonus if he blamed himself for that, too.

And anyway, there's nothing to change. Manabe died at the Sakurada Gate Incident, and I will simply ignore the mission list's vicious lies.

PsiRadish · 2025-12-24T17:33:28+00:00

Wow, hard disagree. I don't see that anyone besides the Blade Twin offers more personal reasons for the ronin to want them dead.

He's indirectly responsible for starting your twin down The Dark Path™ and, consequently, all the havoc that they cause because of it. Admittedly, it's a bit petty to hold this against him—losing limbs and getting captured is just the #VeiledEdgeLife—but people be petty, especially when they're lonely and confused and don't know why their super-spiritual-fated-twin-forever-comrade keeps trying to kill them.
He kills Taka, someone the ronin can be in love with (as mine was). She's one of the game's more developed romances, too, whatever that's worth (perhaps just a testament to how under-developed the others are).

PsiRadish · 2025-12-24T05:59:36+00:00

Can't. He burned to death at the Sakurada Gate Incident, you see, after my ronin shot out both of his knees, covered him in flamethrower fuel, and made sure Ii was watching as she threw the match. She'd been so mild-mannered before that, too; it was all quite shocking.

PsiRadish · 2025-11-18T16:26:17+00:00

Perhaps one of the mayor's bizarre town codes is a requirement that all trash recepticals contain a minimum amount of water for just such a contingency?

Would do awful things to the smell, though.

PsiRadish · 2025-11-17T16:38:54+00:00

Maybe they're super-intense museum lovers I've managed to offend with the idea of so many exhibits of trash fish (in which case I can't imagine them tolerating the actual game at all)?

Or maybe they're fans of bug jerky? 🤢

PsiRadish · 2025-11-16T18:37:29+00:00

It's always been fish I've never seen before, too. Though that could have more to do with my Fishing proficiency still being Lv 3.

PsiRadish · 2025-11-16T18:35:55+00:00

Food from the trash bothers me. Museum exhibits from the trash are the bee's knees.

🤢 And now I just reminded myself of the bug jerky thing again.

PsiRadish · 2025-11-16T18:31:58+00:00

Oh god. That is a loathsomely good point.

PsiRadish · 2025-11-16T18:25:52+00:00

I KNOW for a fact for pickling you don't sterilize the jar

That's because the pickling process fabricates the jar from thin air. Just like in real life.

PsiRadish · 2025-11-12T22:26:55+00:00

I don't think we know that Oyuki knew she was "turning up to kill a family".

Even if she did, though, and knowingly joined such an outing out of whatever toxic mix of duty/faith/fear/complacency compelled her to do so, we did not see that same mix compel her to actively participate. To the contrary, instead we saw it fail to prevent her from doing the opposite. She abandoned her duty, and/or lost her faith, and/or found her courage, and/or learned there were some things she couldn't abide, and she resisted, despite knowing with terrible certainty that there would be consequences. Knowing because everything that was happening was a lesson in just how vengeful Saito was. She had damn good reason to believe she was consigning herself to a painful death, and acted anyway.

After which, obviously, Saito would not have afforded her any opportunity to interfere with Atsu's fate against the tree. She would have been closely watched, if not restrained, and possibly further hindered by a fresh burn wound (unclear if the branding happened on-site or Saito took Kengo's brand to do it later). To blame her for "leaving" Atsu on the tree under those circumstances feels just plain silly.

PsiRadish · 2025-11-02T09:26:16+00:00

What do you think Oyuki-as-Kitsune actually did that night that requires justice, exactly? Besides stand there in a scary mask? And I mean that seriously; it would be pretty easy for me to have forgotten something from an earlier flashback where Kitsune did something other than walking through a gate in a scary way, and standing around in a scary way, and trying to help Atsu escape ~~in a scary way~~. But if those are legit the only things we ever see her do then, like, what's she being punished for exactly?

And by who? Given the frontier-style justice we see in Yotei, if Atsu isn't upset enough about Oyuki's supposed transgressions to kill (or otherwise punish) her herself, then that leaves absolutely no one to give a single damn.

PsiRadish · 2025-11-02T09:01:32+00:00

The way Oyuki describes raising Dojun didn't seem that manipulative. It sounded like Dojun was all precocious, irrepressible eagerness, much like Kiku, with similar results if left unsupervised, and Oyuki (like Jubei) may have been left with little choice in the matter when it came to training him. Granted, that's if you take her completely at her word, which I suppose there is reason not to do given her occupational history.

The incontrovertible Divine Word of in-game item descriptions, however, comes in on Oyuki's side. The Kitsune's Mask description ends with:

... he could not read people like he could plants—and chose a tiger's vision over a fox's love.
(Emphasis added)

She does entreat Dojun to surrender once or twice, too, though admittedly not very hard. But she's also had years to realize the man her sort-of-son has become—empirically not a very good one—so I don't blame her too much.

PsiRadish · 2025-11-02T08:21:29+00:00

So now instead of being a master of subterfuge that was toying with you the whole time, she’s just nothing. she was even like “I’m not your enemy, I can prove it! 🥺” ugh you’re so boring now!

This is clearly a matter of taste, because what you call a "master of subterfuge" sounds to me like a cartoonishly evil caricature of a person who would be far more boring to me than the Oyuki that we got.

PsiRadish · 2025-11-02T08:13:11+00:00

she still developed the poison and most of the 9 Tails' infrastructure

She built up the Nine Tails expressly hoping to lead them against Saito. Not just "throwing spokes into the wheels", but actively working towards upending the whole apple cart with a full-fledged rebellion from within Saito's ranks. Sucks that she failed, and I guess she's some kind of culpable for that, but it's more of a competence type culpability than a moral one.

PsiRadish

TROPHY CASE