#but I think the basis for these traits is also in the game canon

[descendant-of-truth]

Another Sonic characterization thought(TM) that applies mostly to Sonic X but can work with other versions too - I want to see more of his independent attitude being both his greatest virtue and a notable flaw depending on the circumstance

A virtue in the sense that he's very true to himself - he doesn't care if people think badly of him as long as he's doing what he feels is right, and he has a way of inspiring that same self-confidence in others.

But a flaw in the sense that it can lead him to struggle with socializing. I think Sonic is so self-sufficient and values his own personal time so much that he's not always the most communicative, and tends to vanish on people without warning.

It gets to the point where Chris wonders if Sonic even likes hanging out with them (although this is still pretty early in the series)

The others assure him that this isn't the case, and I'm inclined to agree. But I also feel like Sonic might not quite realize that people want him around that frequently?

Not in a self-deprecating way, just in the sense that he assumes everyone else is as self-sufficient as he is. Sonic doesn't need to spend a lot of consistent time around his friends to know they care about him, so it just. doesn't occur to him that people are going to miss him that much, or that they'll interpret the lack of time he spends with them as him not liking them.

He's more of an "acts of service" guy when you get down to it, which isn't necessarily related to the independence thing but I thought it was worth noting. Like gee, no wonder he struggles around Amy sometimes, they show affection in completely different ways

I just think that's a really interesting angle for his character; the idea that he's this cool independent hero who lives by his own rules, but also doesn't know how to balance that with spending adequate time with his friends.

This also makes Knuckles, Shadow, and weirdly Big into good parallels to Sonic, seeing as they also prefer to be by themselves a lot and don't always make an active effort to hang out with their friends, despite caring for them and protecting them if they're in trouble.

In conclusion, give Sonic weird complex social interactions again I'm thriving on it

(Pictured above: Sonic, seconds away from ditching his friends to go pick flowers somewhere)

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic x #analysis #meta #And then no one explains to him that there's a problem #so he'll just show up with a plucky 'long time no see!' and everyone else is like 'why'd it have to be a long time though' #Again this is more noticeable in Sonic X because everyone's living together #so him vanishing all the time is something we see a lot more of #but I think the basis for these traits is also in the game canon

[pinktom]

What do you think pink about tomarry content creators getting abusive tomione asks suddenly? First obsidian, then I saw one more account getting and now seminar arts. Is it only one person doing all this?

Btw my jaw dropped with your no filter answer where you said that whenever harry comes the chemistry between to marry best tomione 🤣. I would love to hear more of your no filter thoughts

I have no doubt those asks were sent by trolls. I, however, am simply a hater—I see an opportunity to hate, justified or not, I pounce. x]

In ascending order, here are the reasons I think Tomione sucks.

PS: If you know this post is gonna piss you off and press "Keep Reading" anyway - that is entirely on you. Send me anon hate and I'll assume you're a masochist who wants me to spank your pert, round hinie and call you a naughty, naughty girl.

“Book nerd loves book nerd uwu” trope does not fit Tom Riddle, and I find it obnoxious.

Like I touched on when I was first sipping on that haterade, Tom Riddle values usefulness. By this logic, you could easily contrive up a scenario in which he wants to use Hermione’s skills for whatever reason. 

However, the route that is usually taken in Tomione is that Tom is … impressed … by her intellect. A woman… who is… smart? He’s intrigued. 😏 He’s never once met a smart woman in his life before. And certainly not one so independent and feisty. She doesn’t swoon over him like the other girls do (eye roll).

I never got the impression anywhere in canon that Tom Riddle cared much about intellectual pursuits beyond those which were immediately useful to his goals, so for the very basis of a relationship to be his interest in her brains – to me, it’s tedious and off-base.

And also icky honestly lkjdflkj. Hermione’s two crushes are on a couple of stinky smelly boys (Krum, Ron), where the hell do you go off acting like she wants some mysterious, twisted dark boy? I’m offended. 

Absolutely zero chemistry; once Harry steps in, it’s game over

Because these characters lack any common ground, shared values, or compelling circumstances that tether them together, there is zero chemistry. You can try to fabricate those things with a little bit of crack!cocaine, but then you’re forced to contrive a lot of additional personality traits and circumstances that diverge them from their canon selves. (Which yes, you can do, but it only works if you’re gonna do something really interesting.)

As much as people like to har har about how canon doesn’t matter, here’s the truth: yes, it does. Our communities only exist because we’re referencing shared source material. However much you can bend characters around, everyone knows each character has an essence that just “feels like them” on a deeper human level. 

As such, we all know Tom Riddle and Harry Potter are intrinsically connected to each other. In Tomione this presents a conundrum. I could cite dozens of fics, but I’ll stick to two very well-written ones I enjoyed.

In one of them, Tom was a criminal and Harry was a detective on his tail; no matter how many times Tom fingered Hermione, he was always more entangled with Harry, because the stakes and intensity between them were so much grander. Same thing with the other fic but amplified by the Horcrux bond. At their very first encounter, when Tom and Harry laid eyes on each other, they both immediately felt an arresting connection, with distrust and intrigue. Hermione instantly paled in comparison in both stories.

It’s just like the moment Harry steps into the frame, you see how transparent and superficial the “commonalities” between Tom and Hermione ever are. Books and cleverness - oh but Harry, there are more important things! Like being spiritually linked! And sharing unique and intimate traumas in common! 

Heterosexual Tom is truly disgusting to read about

Look–it’s a matter of taste. We’re all products of our environments. For me, no amount of feminism or fantasy can overrule everything I’ve seen and experienced in my life. ( ಠ_ಠ )

I don’t enjoy reading about women in relationships with men who are controlling, violent, and selfish. Even the way Voldemort treats Bellatrix in canon always makes me wince, because I see it like this … here’s this girl who grew up proud; who was beautiful, rich, extremely gifted and powerful; and she turns into this horrible sniveling creature. Say it ain't so! I wish she'd killed him when he broke her ass out of Azkaban.

But back on the topic of Tomione specifically — I think there’s another layer to it, which is the greasy self-insertion aspect which makes me uncomfortably aware of how much the author’s ginie is tingling at the idea of Tom Riddle lifting a brow and saying, “Is that so, Miss Granger?” while she scowls and tells him to fuck off !!!

It’s of course not the self-insertion in itself that’s icky. It’s more just that the type of person who wants to self-insert into that particular heterosexual scenario is, uhh, too basic for me and my big powerful fujo brain.

And I guess that's gets me to the very core of why I find Tomione basic, trifling, and underwhelming. 

Tom Riddle is allowed no faults whatsoever in Tomione

Oh, sure. He’s controlling. He’s mean. He grabs her wrist and says, “What were you doing talking to Malfoy?” 😠

But so... ? Tom Riddle is a deeply embarrassing, mentally unwell trainwreck of a person. He's so much grosser than that. Yet you do not get that feeling at all in most Tomione fics. His worst character traits are often there but they’re made to seem sexy and flattering at all times.

I’m not saying your run-of-the-mill Tomarry fic doesn’t suffer this fatal flaw too—but when it comes down to it, Tomione doesn’t allow for his unsexy fallibility, period. Because the sexiness of the ship really depends on heteronormative romantic tropes and fantasies, which tend to be quite rigid and narrow. 

And I understand and empathize with why this is; just look at Reddit, so many women in heterosexual relationships already must put up with mortifying, embarrassing, and unhygienic things (y’all know which posts I mean 🙁). 

That’s just not what I’m here for. I love Tom Riddle because he’s a superficial narcissistic lunatic with no self-awareness and emotionally stunted outlook.

I don’t want to hear how he terrified the orphans if I’m not gonna hear about how he pissed the bed and got his bare ass whipped by a mean, toothless matron for chatting in sermon. I don’t care to see him bossing around those wimps at Hogwarts if there’s not at least one student who looks at “ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEWARE” written in blood and feels tummy-churning secondhand embarrassment.

#tom #server #asks #offensive content #anti tomione #shipping wars

[inbarfink]

The interpersonal conflicts between the two Membrane siblings is an incredibly important part of Invader Zim’s comedy, and also its emotional core and the characterization of these two kids. With Gaz, this tends to be, like, the primary way she interacts with episode plots. For Dib, his interactions with Gaz tend to bring out his more Zim-like traits and are the main refutation for his Terminal Case of Main Character Syndrome. 

But, also, I see a lot of assertions about their dynamic in the show that are often… kinda not very accurate? Anything from ‘Gaz beats up Dib on a regular basis’, to ‘all of Gaz’s actions are Perfectly Reasonable' to 'Gaz used to be Perfectly Reasonable and then Season 2 Flanderized her'. So, I think I want to do something a bit more… comprehensive for them.

So here is...

My Big Overview of Dib and Gaz!!

I’m going to try and go over each and every one of their conflicts in the show, go over who was most likely (the most) in the wrong, how the other reacted to it, if there’s an escalation, if it feels consistent with other episodes, how I personally see their motivations… obviously like every analysis of a piece of media it’s going to be at least kinda subjective, so I would love to hear how your view of The Siblings differ from my own - but I’m going to try and be as comprehensive and well-reasoned and balanced as I can be. 

"The Nightmare Begins"

Gaz doesn’t get a lot in the first IZ episode, but she does get this!

Gaz: Dib drank the last soda. He will pay!

So, okay, it’s not entirely clear if Gaz has a good reason to be mad at Dib or not. Like, yeah, as we’re going to get to with other episodes - Dib might have a Problem of eating things that belong to Gaz. But the implication here is that this was everyone’s Soda, and she’s just mad that Dib finished it. But like, someone had to drink that last soda at some point, right? 

Gaz’s anger could be justified, if, for example, she explicitly asked Dib to leave one last soda for her or if Dib already drank the majority of it… but that's all speculation. From what actually exists in canon (which is just this one line), it seems rather unfair.

But also it doesn’t matter that much, because while Gaz expresses frustration and, like, a desire for horrible vengeance - she (as far as we know, at least) doesn’t really do anything about it. She just gets herself a juice and once Dib comes home she’s just talking to him like normal (that is to say, somewhat derisively, but not openly hostile).

So really, regardless of whether drinking the last soda is a legitimate grievance or not - all Gaz did was express a minor and petty frustration in a kinda melodramatic way without doing anything about it. She didn't even do it to Dib's face!

"Nanozim"

The first proper Gaz episode! And with it, a lot more Dib-Gaz interactions! And the introduction of one of Gaz’s major grievances with her brother… that she finds him annoying. 

Dib: Maybe they'll let me host the show. My own episode! Gaz: I'm only 13 levels away from finishing this game so I either finish the game or make you wish I was never born.

Now, Dib should have the right to be as Weird as he damn pleases. Buuut… Gaz also should have the right to be left alone and Not be Bothered by people she finds grating. So while getting mad at Dib for just existing and doing his thing near her would be unfair, Dib is explicitly trying to talk to her - and she’s got the right to not want to participate in the conversation. Especially if she’s also trying to do her own Thing at the same time. 

Note that she only really speaks out when the conversation really turns into stroking Dib’s own ego, that’s when she decides that talking to him is not worth risking her Gamer Time. And, much like with ‘the Nightmare Begins’, despite the harshness of her words - she doesn’t really do anything and Dib doesn’t really react. Making it seem like Gaz is prone to over-dramatic proclamations of vengeance but she doesn’t have much bite.

Hell, when Dib starts shoving his hands in her face while she plays. She’s not aware, or at least she doesn't acknowledge, that his behavior is legitimately out of his control. But all that leads too is… another empty threat and her leaving the living room to get away from him. 

Gaz: I'm letting you live this time, Dib, but only because I'm still getting through this last level.

And when she shows up again, we have a bit of a Turnabout! This time, Gaz is the one trying to initiate a conversation and Dib is the one brushing her off so he can focus. 

Gaz: Is that Zim? Is this an online game? Dib: Gaz, please. I need to concentrate.

And actually, in that case, both of them were more ‘justified’. In the sense that at least Gaz was trying to talk to Dib on what she thought was a shared interest - a game he likes and she thinks looks interesting. In contrast to Dib only wanting to talk about something only he is interested in and how great he is and all the praise he’s going to get. And Dib obviously had very good reasons to take the ‘game’ very seriously and choosing to focus over small-talk with his sister.

The problem being that Dib's pride blinds him to the obvious solution of letting his über-gamer sister who can’t be hurt from the inside by Zim take the wheel. From Gaz’s perspective he is actually more reasonable than reality, because she thinks he’s not sharing a cool game he found with her because he want to play it, rather than risking his own life because he feels the need to be the one who best Zim.

And she’s being a bit of a pushy backseat gamer herself, but not really, like, more than standards for lil gaming kids. And she doesn’t actually do anything but ask to play up until Dib is literally unable too. Although she does push him aside.

Then she unknowingly saved his life, and knowingly helped him humiliate Zim. And… should we count Gaz calling the game ‘stupid’ when she thought it was actually very important to Dib as another example of her insulting him? I dunno, all-in-all both Membrane Siblings acted relatively grounded and reasonable in IZ Character Standards. Like, this is pretty standard Mildly Jerkish Sibling Behavior from both of them.

"Parent Teacher Night"

Gaz laughed at Dib when Zim splashed him with punch

Although she also laughed at Dib splashing Zim with punch. 

So really, this isn’t really specific antagonism against Dib - she just really finds petty minor acts of assholery funny regardless of who's doing them. Although I guess you can argue that she should 'side' with her brother.

"Dark Harvest"

Yet another classic example of ‘Dib bothers Gaz by ranting about something she doesn’t care about, and Gaz retaliate by being uninterested’

Dib: Incredible! You see Gaz, to defeat my enemy I must study my enemy, then become my enemy, then move in with my enemy, then wear my enemy's clothes then- Gaz: You're in my light.

There’s not even, like a toothless violent threat here this time, she’s just making it clear that she’s not interested in a way that's kinda rude.

"The Wettening"

Since I am here to discuss the antagonism between Gaz and Dib, I won’t go into much detail into this iconic scene

Outside of it being yet another demonstration of how often Gaz’s threats of physical violence usually seem more like toothless edgelordism than anything you should take seriously.

Gaz: If you wanna keep all your limbs, Zim, you will put me down, you will put me down NOW!

Our actual main focus here (outside of some mild snark from Gaz that Dib didn’t even pay much mind to)

Gaz: I'm leaving with or without you, Dib. Preferably without you.

Is what happens right after that Zim Umbrella Situation - Gaz is all set to actually make her threat a bit more than just talk

And then Dib splashes Zim and Gaz is caught in the ‘crossfire’.

And, y’know, Gaz doesn’t give a shit about Zim and Dib’s rivalry - she doesn’t see Zim as a threat and just sees Dib’s ‘fate of the world’ work as a selfish way to stroke his own ego. So while being splashed by a puddle is a relatively small slight (at least if you’re not Zim), it’s the reasoning and the fact that Dib shows no remorse or even really acknowledges what he did to Gaz that, I think, is what really sets her off.

Gaz: THAT was your fate of the world work!?! Jumping in a puddle!?! You do realize I'm gonna have to destroy you now. Dib: It was worth it. Score one for the human race! Score nothing for the Zim... thingy race. Gaz: I will destroy you.

So after this little threat, we don't really see much more antagonism from her outside of the usual snarky comments and general hostility to Dib trying to share his interests with her.

Until after Zim has delivered his ultimate defeat. That is when Gaz also unleashes her revenge.

Throwing a single water balloon at Dib.

This is really one of my favorite Gaz Revenge Moments of the entire show, because on one hand her anger is understandable and her way of getting back at Dib is technically perfectly proportional. He splashed her, she splashed him back. But the timing of when she does it just adds this angle of rubbing salt on Dib’s wounds that just makes it hurts so much more without her actually having to do anything extra.

"Battle-Dib"

Now, this is actually where you can say that there was a shift in Gaz’s character. Because while Dib eating her pizza right out of her hands was undeniably a Dick Move. I think that he clearly knew what he was doing since he did guess at that was what Gaz was upset about (he just couldn’t remember the food right)

Dib: Gaz! Help me! I'm sorry about your tacos or whatever, just help me...

It just feels like Dib thinks that being a ‘hero saving the world from the alien menace’ entitles him to his sister’s pizza, and Gaz - who refuses to see Zim as a legitimate threat to Earth’s existence and/or humanity's freedom - would obviously be enraged by this mindset.

And like, if you frame it as “Dib stole Gaz’s pizza, so she ruined his chances to get a permission slip from their dad”, it wouldn’t actually be all that bad. Again, Gaz doesn’t see Zim as a meaningful threat, and thus she sees Dib’s battles against him not as a heroic duty but a self-indulgent hobby. So she’s just screwing with the stupid thing he does for fun (and his own ego), not anything actually important.

But… the problem is that ‘ruining Dib’s permission slip’ wasn’t a one-and-done thing. In the process of ruining Dib’s attempt to get his permission slip signed, Gaz also got him tasered

And beat up in a variety of interesting ways

And dragged off forcibly by security.

So, like, even from Gaz’s perspective where Dib’s conflicts with Zim just Do Not Matter, this is way past the point that Pizza Vengeance can justify any of this. This is the first time we’ve got not just angry and snarky Gaz who makes a lot of threats but generally acts mean but proportionally so - but legit a ‘will destroy you over the slightest provocation’ Gaz.

Since this is still pretty early in the show's run, I wonder if this shift is just, like, what was always intended for Gaz’s characterization. Like, that from the get-go they wanted her to be this disproportionally vengeful and they just couldn't incorporate her actually fulfilling any of her threats into an episode's plot until then. OR if was an attempt to just make her more involved in episode plots and ‘wackier’ and more flawed (especially since this is a very rare occasion where Gaz doesn’t just deliver a Karmic Punishment, but also suffers one).

Especially, since this ‘change’ doesn’t necessarily stick to all, or even most, or her subsequent appearances. 

"Planet Jackers"

Dib: Gaz, there's an alien in the house! Gaz: You mean besides you?

Really just a tiny and pretty standard interaction, between these two. A snarky and mean-spirited comment against Dib when he bothers her about something she doesn’t see as important and doesn’t want to get involved in. Pretty much the baseline for these two.

"Rise of the Zitboy"

With this one it’s really clear that we’re back to the ‘classic’ Dib-Gaz dynamic despite the 'shift' in 'Battle-Dib'. Like, Gaz is trying to do her own thing, Dib is trying to initiate a conversation about the Thing She Doesn’t Care About (Zim) and she’s just trying her best to Not Engage. Only now, instead of her usual Game Slave, it’s a book!

If anything this is toned-down from her baseline, since she doesn’t even say anything mean or threatening, she just tries as hard as possible to ignore him and hopes he gets the hint (he does not).

"Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy"

Gaz is shown exacerbated by her brother’s actions during the first flashback, but outside of a light snarky comment to herself she doesn’t really do anything.

Gaz: Not again.

Now back in the present, we see a sort of inversion of the Dib-Gaz conflicts of “the Nightmare Begins” and “Battle-Dib” by having Dib complain to Gaz about her eating something he wanted to eat!

Dib: Hey Gaz, did you eat all the cereal? I was gonna have this for breakfast tomorrow, you know! Gaz: You think you own all the cereal. Well, you know what Dib? You don't. You just don't. Dib: Look, all I'm saying is if you're going to--

If the implication in these two previous episodes is that Dib eating Gaz’s food is a regular occurrence - then she is pretty justified by acting so appalled by his comment. It’s just plain selfish hypocrisy! Or… maybe this scene implies that the Membrane Siblings ‘stealing’ food from each other and getting angry at the other for doing this is something that they both do regularly. Which, like…okay, finishing a shared box of cereal before the second person could is still not anywhere near snatching a pizza a person was planning to eat right out of their fucking hand. But at the very least it makes both her reaction to Dib finishing the soda and her defensiveness here feel a lot less justified. 

And then when the time-shift happened…Well, I’ve seen some people suggest that Gaz’s non-hostile and even, like, kinda-audibly-concerned reaction to Dib’s questions about his past accidents suggest that in this timeline Gaz is a lot kinder to her poor injured brother.

Gaz: Tricycle accident when you were 3, don't you remember?

And while this is a plausible explanation. (It’s especially consistent with her ‘Enter the Florpus’ characterization. She says she’s Mean to her brother because she knows he’s strong enough to take it, but obviously Piggy Timeline Dib is not strong enough to take it). 

But I don’t actually think it’s a needed explanation. Like, even at her most extreme and petty - Gaz has always been mean in reaction to Dib. Whatever it’s just being Annoying at her or stealing her food right off her hands, and whatever this reaction is proportional to the slight or totally vengeful and unreasonable - Gaz’s meanness is almost always directed at Dib as a reaction to something. So I don’t think it’s that unthinkable for Prime Timeline Gaz to also react so amiably to Dib asking her a question that she doesn’t find horribly obnoxious.

Especially since even in the Piggy timeline, Gaz is still not beyond wanting to ignore Dib

Gaz: Dib, shhh. They're gonna show the bats eating a cow!

Or go for a snarky comment when he offers her an obvious opening.

Dib: And have my plans always been this lame? Gaz: Ooooh yeah.

Although it is maybe notable that the second Past Sequence where she is present

Is actually the closest we see of Gaz express, like, genuine concern when her brother is bodily harmed. Which is notable compared to other episodes, including…

"Bloaty's Pizza Hog"

Now, here’s a Real Proper Gaz Focus Episode, and as such, it’s naturally very important to her characterization. 

First things first, it’s the one to explicitly establish the fact that Gaz does not see Zim as a threat and therefore she sees Dib’s obsession with defeating him not as a serious world-saving undertaking, but as a frivolous hobby on kinda the same level as Dib sees her video-game obsession.

Dib: Don't you care that Zim's trying to destroy all mankind? Huh? Gaz: But he's so bad at it.

And that perspective, of course, informs a lot of my analysis of Gaz’s behavior through the post even before we got to this episode. I think it’s actually pretty interesting because you can totally see the internal logic that justifies that perspective - Zim is often the main person throwing a wrench into his own plans, and Dib’s motivations for positioning himself as a hero standing against his evil are partially self-serving (something that’s very easy for Gaz to see since she’s lived with him trying to play out self-aggrandizing fantasies all of her life). 

But from our wider perspective as the audience, we know that sometimes Zim can be a genuine threat to the people of Earth (if not legitimately dangerously close to destroying/conquering it, at least causing a lot of localized havoc and mayhem with his schemes) and that Dib’s efforts of stopping him are not entirely in-vain, and that his reasons are… not entirely just fueled by his own ego. And from Dib’s own biased perspective Zim is always a threat just one step from destroying all mankind if not for Dib's intervention which is obviously Altruistic and Heroic. So it’s very much a matter of their different perspectives and views of the Zim-Dib rivalry causing further conflicts between the two siblings. 

I mean, on a smaller scale that is why Gaz is so upset whenever Dib is bothering her when she’s trying to do something for fun. You know, kinda like here-

Both of these activities, fighting aliens and drawing little piggies, are equally frivolous in her eyes. But by constantly distracting her with talks about the Stupid Shit He Does for Fun Dib is kinda putting his silly hobbies as more important than her silly hobbies and thus his own needs above her own - which is what always gets her so upset. (But again, upset, but not doing anything but be a Bit Creepy About It).

But of course, the interesting thing about this episode is that this time, Dib’s Frivolous Hobby isn’t just interrupting Gaz’s Frivolous Hobby - it’s actually interrupting something a lot more important and with much more urgent stakes. Family Dinner Night.

Gaz: You know Dad's taking us out tonight. I picked Bloaty's. Dib: This is bigger than pizza, Gaz! This is the fate of all mankind! Gaz: You and your mankind... Dib: Uh-huh. Whatever. Look, if I'm not home in time, call this number and tell them the Mothman is caught in the spider's web. Dib: They'll know what you mean. But, like I said, I'll probably be back before the Mysteries theme song starts.

Even after being told that dad is taking them to dinner… I think Gaz is very much trying to imply “this is important to me, don’t mess it up” without being directly, emotionally honest about it. And Dib’s just totally not even considering it. Like yeah, from his perspective he is going on an Important Heroic Mission that must be worth anything else he could be doing with his time, but... he is also primarily worried about not missing his favorite TV Show and reduces the idea of Family Dinner Night to just 'pizza'.

And like, this is a very complicated family situation, isn’t it? It is understandable if Dib isn’t gang-ho about having dinner with his dad, considering what their relationship is like. And maybe the fact that he couldn’t take Gaz’s hint about this being Very Important to Her isn’t, like, entirely up to his sense of self-absorption but also to his general social inaptitude (and his Autistic Swag). But I can also understand why this is so important to Gaz and why she would still read Dib’s behavior as just pure selfishness and part of a pattern of disregarding her feelings.

(There's certainly some sort of Funky Neverending Loop of, like, Dib disregards Gaz's feelings, Gaz expresses her feelings about it in the most repressed, abrasive and/or mean way possible, Dib continues to Not Get It and disregard Gaz's feelings. Like, how much is Dib Not Getting It the fault of Gaz always letting out her feelings in exclusively in the form of snarky comments and edgy threats and how much has Gaz learned to express herself in this way as a coping mechanism due to Dib always walking over her wants and needs? It's hard to say)

So when Dib ignores (from her POV of the situation. Again, maybe Dib just legit missed the subtext) her honest desire to spend time with their dad for a change, she first reacts by… trying to abandon Dib. Instead of calling the Swollen Eyeballs as backup for him, she just destroys the number and tries to go to dinner without him.

Which… okay, this can be a dick move which is kinda way out of proportions of what Dib actually did. But remember that Gaz’s perspective refuses to see Zim as a threat. So she doesn’t see it necessarily as abandoning Dib to death, but just as an inconvenience. He’ll get out eventually on his own, he’s ‘strong enough to take it’, and that means she doesn’t need to bother with lending him a hand. “Well, if he doesn’t care about Family Night Out then he doesn’t get to go. And also he doesn’t get to watch his stupid ass show!”. Like she was thinking about it as wasting his time and not necessarily leaving him to die.

But also, like, this episode goes to great lengths to establish that Gaz is only saving Dib for the sake of her getting to eat dinner with her dad for once, and not out of concern for him. And while she might not believe Zim is actually capable of killing him, she is also pretty blasé about the idea that he’ll be harmed or tortured… unless it interferes with Bloaty’s with dad, of course.

Look at her big ol’ eyes, it’s not just an ‘eh, he can get himself out on his own’ mindset - she was looking forward to seeing him suffer horribly!

Dib himself is still being kind of a Jerk throughout the episode, even in an emergency he’s still thinking about how his little sneak-in plan will affect him in the most superficial ways.

Dib: There you are, Gaz! Looks like you'll have to tape the show for me, I made it in! 

Dib: Gaz, make sure you don't record over any old episodes.

Like, this isn't even a 'Dib thinks saving the world is more important than Family Dinner Night. But Gaz doesn't think the world is actually in danger so think this is just frivolous ego stroking even though we know Zim can be a genuine danger and Dib's goals are at least kinda genuinely heroic' thing when you consider these lines. Even in a dangerous situation where the world is at stake, Dib can still find the brainspace to worry about his silly TV show but not about the possibility he'd deny his sister the precious little time they have to spend with their dad.

You can argue that trying to stop Zim is actually more important than Family Dinner Night and Dib is in the right. But Dib's dialogue also puts Mysterious Mysteries as being more important than Family Dinner Night. Because that at least gets some sort of acknowledgement from him. Gaz's only chance to go to her favorite restaurant with her favorite person in the world doesn't even get a "sorry, Gaz, but I have an Important Duty to do!", he just totally ignores it.

And generally through the episode he's ignoring and understating Gaz’s desires - even after she did actually told him right to his face what she wants.

Gaz: Come home now, Dib! Your weird obsessions are not gonna mess today up for me. I just want to go out and eat with Dad, that's all! Stop playing with Zim and get back here.

Gaz: All I want is to have some pizza...hang out with Dad, and not have your weirdness mess up my day.

So at this point this stops being some sort of misunderstanding and really starts seeming more like Dib not even trying to understand his sister’s motivations.

Dib: Come on, Gaz! You'd sacrifice the entire planet just for some pizza!?!

Which… makes sense as something that will aggravate her, especially in regards to something as emotionally important as getting to hang out with her father for once. But still, letting him get tortured is, like, maybe a tad disproportionate as an outlet for these frustrations? 

But I think it's still notable that while the angle of disproportionate response to technically-legitimate-grievances is similar, in contrast to her very active acts of sabotage back in “Battle-Dib”, she only really ‘gets back’ at Dib here through inaction when Zim is hurting him (and maybe being a bit abrasive to Dib during her rescue, but Dib was also a very annoying rescuee so that one I think does kinda balances out.)

"Bolognius Maximus"

Okay, back to the simpler and shorter interactions now. We once again see Dib initiate ‘conversations’ with Gaz about subjects she finds annoying and uninteresting. 

Dib: They try and say it's just a regular mountain range on the Martian surface, and it's just a trick of the light, but come on! It is so a monkey face.

And this time all Gaz does is casually ignore him.

When things start getting odd with the dogs and all, she only reacts with a snarky comment. But at this point it’s not even entirely clear to Dib that something very very wrong is happening. So I dunno who would expect Gaz to be worried about this?

Now, later in the episode, when Dib is very obviously turning into a bologna, Gaz still doesn’t give a shit.

Which I think actually matches up very well with her ‘Zim is not a threat, none of the things he’s doing/planning to do will actually pan out’ outlook. Like, lowkey she is pretty sure that this new Wacky Zim Scheme is gonna go up in flames and return everything to normal so there’s no need for her concern or interest and she can just casually enjoy the free bologna. Which is actually a fun character beat because usually the show leans toward Gaz’s attitude being kinda right - but this time she was very much in the wrong.

And like, if 'Bloaty's Pizza Hog' gave me a chance to talk about how Dib's tendency to see the Inherent Importance of everything he is interested in over any of Gaz's needs and desires might not just be a difference in perspective or miscommunication but also has an element of trying to rationalize his own selfishness - I think it's only fair for me to note this can also go the other way around.

It's easy to see Gaz's total dismissal of Zim's threat potential as just her being... you know, grounded and rational enough to see things as they are. But there might be her own emotional bias in play in here motivated by her own resentment with her brother and her own selfish desire to totally ignore and disregard him. Maybe on some level, she just can't allow anything that Dib cares about to be actually worth paying attention to, even when it seems to be literally life-threatening?

"Game Slave 2"

Obviously this episode has a lot of Gaz content, some that can invite a lot of discussion about how proportionate or disproportionate her reactions are - but we are going to focus specifically on her interactions with Dib, of course. Starting with…

Dib: Come on! Bigfoot would never say that! Gaz: Why do you have to read that in here? I'm trying to play a game! Dib: Mysterious Mysteries is on in five minutes!

This is actually really the first time where Gaz is directly, explicitly annoyed by Dib just sort of being around here. Usually her exasperation is fueled by him trying to talk to her about all kinds of Alien Stuff she just doesn’t care about, or trying to drag her into his world-saving adventures against her will, or stealing her food - but here is just doing His Own Thing in her vicinity. Like, the living room is a Shared Space, he has just as much of a right to hang out there as Gaz does. 

If anything, he has more of a right to be there since he’s waiting for his show to come on while Gaz is playing her handheld video game. So if Dib reading his magazine and complaining that Bigfoot Would Not Fucking Say That is bothering her so much - then she should probably just go to her room. Then again, she doesn’t do much other than verbally complain once and it was probably more about venting out her frustrations about the game than Dib himself.

But then…

Dib: I've been waiting all night to see this! She can wait to get her stupid game! Prof. Membrane: Son, video games develop hand eye coordination, and make kids into better human beings! Dib: Okay... But only after the show is over. Gaz: You stink!

So on some level this is just the same sort cycle of conflict that is always going around these two. Both of them prioritize their own hobbies (and this time it IS Dib’s hobby, there’s not much subjectivity around this. This isn’t about saving the human race from anyone’s point of view, just about a show he wants to watch) and thinks the other one is frivolous and selfish for caring about their hobbies more. But also… in this specific context Dib is the One Being a Dick.

Just like before I sided with Dib because Gaz can play the game in her room…. We know the Membranes have a way to record shows on their TV. That came up in literally the previous episode! Dib could’ve just set his VCR to record and ‘Mysterious Mysteries’ will be waiting for him when he gets back from the mall - but Gaz’s console launch is an actual time sensitive matter. (Plus ‘Mysterious Mysteries’ is aired on, like, a weekly basis. Consoles do not release in this frequency). 

So Gaz had every reason to be upset with Dib when they did get to the mall and see, like Gaz and any Gamer watching could’ve predicted, that a-half-an-hour delay in getting to the big launch event can screw up a lot.

Dib: It was a… really good episode…

And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but Dib’s reaction also feels pretty telling. You know, instead of giving Gaz any sort of apology, he’s being defensive by saying that hey, at least the MM episode was worth it? Like it is still kinda centering his interests and desires over Gaz’s.

And Gaz’s retaliation for it is…honestly relatively mild? 

Gaz: Hey, Dib. I think I saw a Chupacabra or something going into that parking garage. Dib: A Chupacabra? But there isn't a goat to feed on for miles!

She just gets him out of her way so she can be left alone in line in peace, and probably hoping to waste his time on the fake Chupacabra - a tit-for-tat revenge for getting her time wasted. Which… okay, it’s unclear if she knew about how large and labyrinthine the mall’s parking lot actually was and about, you know, the colony of horrible rat people. But still, Dib was already out of the building by the time Gaz finished Murdering a Fellow Child.

At worst, he wasted like a couple of hours that he didn’t have any specific plans for anyways. 

Really, since this episode gives us a glimpse into how Gaz deals with People She Finds Annoying Who Are Not Dib... it actually kinda gives the impression that Gaz... like, not just that she doesn't hate Dib specifically and will aim a similar amount of ire at any random person who annoys her in a similar way. But also maybe that she goes easy on Dib, compared to how she delt with Iggins. Which is... probably the closest we'll get in this entire journey to an indication that Gaz has any level of care towards Dib.

"Battle of the Planets"

Dib: DAD! Gaz! Come see this! Professor Membrane: Please! No more foolishness, son! Gaz: Your voice is stupid!

Dib tries to get Gaz involved in something she doesn’t care about, she insults him. Pretty standard.

"Mysterious Mysteries"

Okay, so, the first thing I want to note is the lil’ babies scene.

It seems like a really inconsequential gag but this is actually, like, an extremely rare occurrence of Gaz being mean to Dib without anything even resembling a provocation. Like, at least in that little scene at the start of ‘Game Slave 2’ she was venting because of her frustrations with the game and it was just a light grumble. This is really like the most classic inarguable example of Gaz bullying Dib.

Especially when compared to both her version of the Story and her general behavior in the ‘present day’ of the episode. Like, is portraying Dib in her version of the story as a barely coherent moron kind of Mean? Yeah, sure it was. But is it any more insulting to the actual person that it’s depicting than Dib depicting Gaz as his helpless adoring sidekick? Especially as her interview implies that she did find Dib’s version of events legitimately insulting in it's inaccuracy?

Gaz: My stupid brother did drag me out to look for stupid Zim. He didn't make that part up.

Maybe Gaz deliberately exaggerated Dib’s (and Zim’s) stupidity in her version of the story out of spite of how Dib framed her on national TV. Maybe just like Dib seemed to be genuinely under the belief that his version of Gaz is a decent reflection of reality, Gaz literally just thinks of Dib as this stupid and annoying. Either way, it’s a really an equally-matched kind of sibling assholery. 

Also, speaking of Gaz’s version of events... obviously it’s not entirely clear what really happened - but I do think, when it comes to like characterization and the general tone of Invader Zim, Gaz's retelling is at least pretty reliable on two fronts; why she was there-

And why did the video cut out when it did.

So while Dib’s interactions with Gaz had that undercurrent of, like, him always putting his own interests above her own for a long time - this really is the most obvious example. Literally forcibly dragging her out of whatever she was doing for the sake of getting an extra ‘eyewitness’ to his video. And so she responded with a little force of her own.

Again, this is all from Gaz’s story, and she does tend to give out exaggerated threats of violence that she doesn’t always carry out - so I don’t think it’s out of the question for her to also retroactively make up/exaggerate the acts of violence she commits. But since this kick in the shins is by far the most probable cause for the video cutting out that we have, I am going to assume that it did happen in reality on some level. And it is a very notable example of Gaz actually inflicting direct physical violence on Dib - until now, her preferred methods of inflicting pain on him were a lot less direct. 

And while kicking people in the shins is wrong, it was still in reaction to Dib forcibly dragging her along - which was probably a lot less painful, but also took a lot more time. You can argue this still follows a sort of tit-for-tat logic that a lot of Gaz's retaliations do... but also, with Gaz's second scene in this episode literally being the most Unambiguous Case of her being Mean to Dib for Now Reason

In this episode more than anything, it might be fair to assume Gaz just wanted to hurt Dib and humiliate him on National TV and there's nothing more to it.

(Also, of course, Gaz refusing to corroborate Dib’s story is one of the main reasons why he failed in that episode. But as I mentioned many times before, Gaz refuses to see that rivalry as anything serious or with more stakes than her video games. In her mind, this is about as bad, or maybe even less bad, then dragging her out to waste time by participating in this stupid show in the first place.)

"Future Dib"

Okay, so most of the other Gaz and “Dib” interactions in this episode kinda follow a unified-if-winding thread of thought so I want to start with the one that I have kind of a separate Point about:

While Gaz’s reaction was very disproportionate and unnecessarily violent, I think it’s also interesting to note that the thing that set her off was “Dib” putting his hand around her. It’s actually part of a recurring implied piece of characterization that Gaz hates being touched. 

Dib: Everyone, hold hands again. Gaz: Yeah! Your lives depend on it! Poonchy: Okay! Hold my hand. Gaz: No way! Be serious!

Since Dib very very rarely ever touches Gaz, and, y’know, has known her all of her life - avoiding physical touch is probably an established boundary between them. So while that doesn’t fully justify the intensity of Gaz’s reaction, that does explain both why that set her off so much and why that’s really the moment where she starts to notice “Dib” is really acting strangely. He was really violating a boundary that he should’ve known by now.

(Going back for a sec, actually, her ‘dramatic re-enactment’ in Mysterious Mysteries also has the Dib Actor dragging the Gaz Actor by the arm. So that’s probably another reason why Gaz reacted kinda violently then as well)

So Gaz giving out more edgelordy threats to (who she thinks is) Dib is pretty standard at this point, but there is something very unique about it in this episode. This is the first time since ‘Battle-Dib’ where she actively acts on these threats to such a literal degree. And this is also combined with the ‘Mysterious Mysteries’ trend of being much more directly violent.

Like, Gaz explicitly only realized she was dealing with a Dib Robot Replica after choking it out so hard it’s eye popped out. All of this violence and pain, she was intending to inflict it on the real Dib. This is about as bad or maybe worse than everything she put Dib through back in ‘Battle-Dib’. And she's doing it with her own two hands this time.

Plus, the reason that she’s reacting like this isn’t because Dib was stealing her Pizza or being generally inconsiderate to her - it’s really just for being weird and annoying (which, in this context, means ‘start to scream randomly and freak out’). So that feels a lot less justified. 

Then, of course, her reaction to finding out that she has been beating up a robot half-to-death is to use it as a replacement for her brother. Which has several different implications going on here about Gaz’s relationship to Dib:

First things first, I want to note that this episode ends with the implication that Gaz left Dib to be stuck in that cell for, like, the rest of his life until he died of old age or something?

I mean, yeah, obviously it is a ‘non canon’ jokey ending that gets totally ignored by the next episode. But the way I always took these snapback ending is as, like, obviously they probably didn’t actually happen in whatever passes for ‘canon’ in Invader Zim - but the events are still indicative of what would’ve happened in terms of worldbuilding and character actions. So while this episode isn’t telling us that Dib has literally died of old age after spending his entire life being beat up by a monkey for Zim’s amusement. This episode is telling us that if that did happen, Gaz would make no effort to save him, ever.

This is notable because of how it contrasts with the previous episodes, or at least my interpretation of them. Like I said, my assumption has always been that Gaz doesn’t care about the Zim-Dib rivalry and sees it as frivolous nonsense because she doesn’t see Zim as a threat. And thus, her general refusal to help her brother was less about outright hatred of him and waiting to see him gone/hurt, and more about just thinking he can handle that walking joke on his own and there’s no need for her to waste her Precious Gaming Time on this. 

This is very much supported by ‘Enter the Florpus’, both in what Gaz literally tells Dib right to his face and in the sense that when Zim does prove to be a credible threat to her world and to her family - she joins forces with her brother with minimal complaints. But of course, ETF Characterization don’t always apply to 2001 Series Characterization so while I prefer this reading partially because it allows ETF Gaz to feel more consistent with Main Show Gaz - I also I feel that Main Show has enough implications to point to this characterization and motivations on it’s own and I want to draw attention to it. 

But here… this is Gaz theoretically ignoring Dib’s plight for literal decades. At this point this isn’t something that can be explained as ‘she doesn’t think she needs to bother with it’. Like, at some point it should’ve been clear to her that even if Zim isn’t a threat to Earth, he is certainly torturing Dib somewhere. This really seems to be direct evidence toward the idea that Gaz just doesn’t not like her brother at all and wishes that he was gone. 

And also I want to discuss what exactly Gaz turned the Robot Dib into - an abusable servant. Something that fulfills her needs while passively enduring her random acts of cruelty.

So… is this what she would like Dib to be? Like, maybe I’m just looking at it from the totally wrong angle. Maybe it’s just a matter of ‘well, if you have a Robot Servant, you’d obviously want it to serve you. And if you’re an angsty preteen with anger issues, you’d like to have something vaguely human-shaped but non-sapient to take your frustrations on’. Maybe it’s got nothing to do with Dib. But… like, this Robot is still Dib-Shaped. So I feel like the implication is that she’s using Robot Dib as a proxy of what she would also do with Dib if he was, like, mind-controlled or something?

And that’s… not really the vibe I’ve gotten from Gaz’s interactions with Dib so far? I mean, maybe I won’t go as far as to say that she actually likes him - but I thought about it more in the sense that she just wanted Dib to leave her alone most of the time. That for her an ideal situation would be more if he did his own thing and she did her own thing without his ‘weirdness’ barging in and bothering her all the time. 

This is just really… I think that might be the ‘Meanest’ Gaz has ever been in my book. Like I know that there’s Another Certain Episode that people often put up as “The One Where Gaz is Really Mean to Dib” but I think that it's more Complicated than some people give it credit for. So, like, I’ll get there when I get there. But here we actually have the Gaz who physically attacks Dib over the slightest provocation and, like, actively hates him. 

It’s really one of those things that make me, like, kinda question my analysis so far. I mean, is this meant to be another attempt to shift Gaz’s character because meaner and more violent characters are more fun and wacky to write? Is it just a matter of the IZ writers prioritizing wacky escalation and cartoon violence and Dib suffering over giving Gaz consistent motivations? Or have I been just totally overly generous in my analysis so far? Like, maybe I was totally off the mark trying to look at which of Dib's actions seem to set Gaz off?Maybe we were supposed to understand that Gaz was always beating Dib to a pulp off-screen since the start?

But... I dwelled on these thoughts for a while and I think that my usual read of Gaz’s character is maybe not consistent with this episode, but it is consistent with a majority of the episodes she was featured in. Which is not something I can necessarily say for a reading that just centers ‘Future-Dib’ above all else. This level of physical violence here is still very unusual for her, even in episodes where she is more cruel to Dib.

(And the idea that she just legit hates her brother and wishes he was gone… honestly, yeah, that can go either way...)

"Abducted"

Especially considering this is the very next episode with any sort of Dib-Gaz interaction! 

Gaz just walking off while Dib is being, well, abducted can work pretty well if you assume that Gazthinks that obviously whatever is flying this thing

Is some sort of incompetent idiot and she doesn’t need to bother with the annoyance of saving Dib because he can handle it on his own (and she would probably be right).

But… it can also work just as well if you assume she doesn’t give a shit about Dib and would be happy if he’s gone forever.

"Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom"

Dib: How I am I still the only one who sees Zim's an alien? I mean, come on! Come on! COME ON! Gaz: Why do you have to have a head? Dib: Gaz! I want you to see this. Today, things are gonna change. I'm gonna do… something! I'm not just gonna sit back and watch Zim get away with his… his… things he do! Dib: I mean— Gaz: "Things he "DO"? What's your problem?

And we’re back to Gaz not being directly violent or even threatening violence, but just being snarky in a kinda mean way. Still, there’s maybe less of the justification for her exacerbation with Dib this time. Because this time he wasn't technically bothering her at all! Dib was lecturing another kid before she started insulting him. I think the implication was that she felt he was embarrassing her, but I still feel like that's a lot less justified.

Still, it’s not like her words seem to significantly hurt Dib, and she is at least able to share a laugh about Zim’s ridiculous behavior with him. (although with ‘Parent-Teacher Night’, there is also the implication that she would’ve also laughed at Dib in any sort of inverted scenario).

"Tak: The Hideous New Girl"

So for Dib and Gaz’s first interaction in this episode, we have this:

And well, kinda like the ‘Wonderful Life of Doom’ interaction, what Gaz does here is pretty mild in the grand scheme of things- but her reasoning also feels not very justified.

I mean, yeah, she was annoyed by the sound of them yelling, that sucks. But Dib has a right to yell in the shared living space of his own house. But… also, I suspect that she sprayed him with the soda less as a punishment for being annoying and more as a direct result of what he said just before. 

Dib: Thanks, Gaz. He was really…

She wanted to make it clear that she was not shooing Zim out to help him. She did it for her own sake. Because Dib keeps making this mistake of thinking of Gaz as his sidekick and that her goals and wants align with his and obviously that causes her a lot of exasperation and wasted time. So I think she was more lashing out at this hypothetical future scenario than just Dib annoying her in the present.

Next up, we have the scene by the Evil Weenie Stand.

Gaz: Be quiet. I wanted to let you know that my brother is trying to break into this building through some secret entrance. Weenie Clerk: We... we have chili beans. Gaz: I just though it'd be funny to see him get beaten up by security.

So, Gaz actively trying to get Dib grievously injured just because it’s funny is actually... kind of an unusual thing for her. Like, as I’ve said previously, she’s usually a very reactive character. Even when her actions are at their most disproportionate and least justifiable, they are usually at least somewhat motivated by Dib’s actions… unless the implication is that the reason why she’s here in the first place is because Dib dragged her out here to be his lookout and she's looking at a way to get back at him for that.

That scenario feels most likely to me, and obviously that wouldn't justify ratting out Dib and enjoying his pain - to me it's kinda on the same level as getting Dib tasered and dragged off by security for stealing her Pizza... But also it's notable that this time, she actually gives up on the idea pretty quickly. If you wanna be charitable to Gaz, you can say she wasn't really serious about the security thing and was just making an edgelordy joke and honestly... with her characterization, I think it could go either way...

Interestingly, once she gets a decent look at Tak and her plans, Gaz becomes a lot more cooperative. I mean, she still grumbles about the idea of saving the Earth. But, like, she doesn’t argue when Dib says the disk is ‘theirs’ when she was the one who found it and she doesn't put up any resistance about joining Dib in seeing Zim’s base. Compared to how previously she’d at best be really abrasive about it and at worst would have tried to actively sabotage Dib and/or cause him physical pain as revenge for prioritizing himself and wasting her time. 

That works very well with the idea that Gaz’s whole problem with Dib’s obsession is that she just doesn’t see Zim as a threat. Obviously after coming face-to-face with Tak, she can see she is much more of a Legitimate Threat to Earth than Zim is. So even if she’s not necessarily emotionally invested in saving the world, she can tolerate it a lot better if she can see that it is indeed something more than Dib’s extremely self-indulgent ego-stroking hobby. 

"Backseat Drivers From Beyond the Stars"

Gaz finds Dib annoying, Gaz goes to vent to her dad about it, Gaz is told to give her brother another chance, Gaz finds Dib annoying again and just leaves. This is a very Mild Gaz compared to what we had in the previous few episodes, closer to my initial read of her. Like, she doesn’t even insult Dib to his face this time. She finds him annoying, so she leaves!

"Dibship Rising"

Well, I… have made the decision to not discuss Gaz’s attempt to destroy all mankind in length, even though Dib is, in fact, technically part of ‘all mankind’. I just think this scene is more about her relationship with her dad then it is about Dib.

Gaz: That didn't wipe out all life as we know it! YOU LIED TO ME, DAD!!

The actual crux of Dib and Gaz’s interactions in this episode are once again - Dib’s obsession with halting the Irken Invasion of Earth has led him to also inconvenience Gaz (this time, by causing a lot of noise and being late to dinner), and Gaz is, like, mildly abrasive as a result and ignores him a lot.

"The Voting of the Doomed"

Dib: Willy's a drooling moron! As sole defender of Earth, I've got to do something! Gaz: I wish Willy was my brother.

Yet another case of Gaz insulting Dib unprompted (since he was talking to himself rather than to her. She just happened to be within listening range.) And also another implication that her problem with her brother is that he’s embarrassing? I think that’s how we’re supposed to read that line? "Willy would be a better brother than you cause he's less embarrassing!"

"Gaz, Taster of Pork"

Okay, now this is the big one. This is the episode that I’ve seen a lot of people in the fandom cite as being, like, the One Where Gaz is Really Cruel to Dib. And, like, I’m not gonna pretend like Dib doesn’t suffer a Lot in this episode (maybe even past the point that I find it particularly funny to rewatch) - but also the dynamic going on is a bit more complicated than just ‘cruelty’? 

Because this is also probably also the episode where Dib is at his most asshole to Gaz as well. I mean, he literally used her as a guinea pig (... pun not intended) to experiment with a spell he thought might be beneficial but was worried about the consequences for himself if it wasn’t… but apparently did not extend that worry to his sister - and thus, the entire conflict of this episode. Like Gaz is entirely in the right to be mad about being ‘blessed’ with Pig-Sense without her consent. Both with Dib’s false narrative about wanting to give her superpowers for her own sake

Dib: No! I only did it to give you super powers because you're the greatest sister ever!

And when she does actually learn the truth.

Dib: cast the spell on her because I wanted to see what it would do before trying it on myself!

Like, maybe that doesn’t perfectly justify taking and destroying Dib’s personal property, or potentially shoving mashed potatoes into his eyes, or repeatedly threatening him with her man-eating plushies, or encouraging a Pig Demon to punish him in some terrible supernatural Pig Demon way...

(While it would certainly be too much to ask Gaz to forgive Dib on the spot and advocate for him when she just found out he’s been lying about his motivations all along and used her as a guinea pig. The dialogue implications of this scene is that the Shadow Hog wouldn’t have done anything to Dib without Gaz’s encouragement.)

It's still important to remember that what Dib did to her was pretty terrible on it's own and was entirely unprovoked!

Then there are a few other factors to consider here, like Gaz’s constant violent threats towards Dib. Which I usually just chalk up to being edgelordy venting unless there is a clear indication of Gaz acting or considering acting on them (like with the mashed potatoes example above) because in most episodes Gaz is mostly all-talk and Dib usually does not take them seriously. But here… although we don’t see Gaz do even like a quarter of what she threatened to do to Dib - we do see Dib acting as if the threats are 100% real and serious. 

Zim: I'm going to destroy you all, Dib! Today! I've got it all set up. Dib: Uh huh, that's nice, Zim. It can't be worse than what my sister's gonna do.

Which does make them feel a lot more 'concrete’ than in most episodes. Like maybe she would’ve beaten him up if they did fail to cure her or if the Shadow Hog wasn’t there to offer an Alternative Punishment Method for him?

But like… I think it’s closer to a proportional response than getting him tasered for stealing pizza or literally beating (a robot she thought was) him with her own two hands because he yelled in an annoying way? Like, what Dib did was really shitty and Gaz has a right to be upset about that on some level!

Then there is the other complicating factor - Membrane. Like, while Dib was Not Having a Good Time in that episode - up until that last sequence with the Shadow Hog, Gaz was suffering a lot more for a much longer period of time. The ‘Pig Mouth’ curse has cost her not just her ability to eat most foods but also most of her hobbies, her freedom, her privacy, her dignity. And it’s clear that she blames Dib - the catalyst of this whole event - for everything that has stemmed from it.

Gaz: You will pay, Dib! You will pay!

But even though what Dib did was certainly a Dick Move… like, it is Membrane and his scientist team that really did the worst by Gaz. Dib only turned to his dad out of a sincere belief he could help, Membrane was the one who decided to announce Gaz’s condition to the world and quarantined her for life and sold the rights to make a goddam movie out of her.

So if Gaz is lashing out at the mistreatment she suffered throughout this episode, she should be at least just as mad at her father as she is with her brother, right? But instead she seems to be totally chill with him, just eating pizza together. Even though his apology for her is honestly as shitty and self-justifying as anything Dib would’ve come up with.

Professor Membrane: Sorry about imprisoning you and turning you into a media freak, honey! It was in the name of science and... hey, where's your brother?

So I think that might imply that Gaz has a massive bias against her brother, causing her to channel a lot of unrelated frustrations just at him.

…Or maybe more likely a massive bias in favor of her dad. You know, she does love him a lot - to the point that ‘getting to actually spend time with him’ is like one of the few things that can get her motivated to get Involved in an episode’s plot. And she also has some serious reasons to be frustrated with him (in this episode especially, but also outside of it). And instead of trying to, like, untangle the complicated contrasting emotions she feels about her dad (a process which would be complicated and hard for anyone, but especially for an extremely emotionally repressed 11 years old), she just channels all of the negative ones unto Dib whenever possible.

Which, like, doesn’t make blaming Dib for things he didn’t actually do more justifiable, but it does make her motivations for doing so more complex than just “idk she hates Dib like everyone else does”

"The Most Horrible X-mas Ever"

And our very last Dib-Gaz conflict for the post! (I didn’t expect it to run this long I swear) Starring Bitey the Vampire!

Dib: You stare at that dog every Christmas, Gaz! Come on, already! It's creepy. Gaz: Three Christmases ago, that dog ate the head off Bitey the Vampire! You said so yourself! I haven't forgotten. Dib: Well, fixing an alien spaceship is hard enough without you distracting me.

The interesting thing about this conflict is how similar it is to ‘Gaz, Taster of Pork’. We once again have Dib being an inconsiderate dick to Gaz for the sake of an experiment and then lying about it to try and avoid her ire, knowing that her reaction would be both violent and extreme. Just this time instead of Gaz herself, it’s her treasured sentimental possession.

Dib: Okay, Gaz. I think it's time I told you. The dog's innocent! I used Bitey the Vampire for a teleporter experiment and switched his head onto a fly's body!

Which, you know, at least he isn't overriding Gaz's bodily anatomy this time but... like... Dib must've had so many other options for his 'Teleporter Experiment'! I guess that without specific details we can't know for sure, but I really can't think of any real justification why he would have to use his sister's doll for this experiment and not one of his own toys or even, like, buy something cheapo from the dollar store or something? Maybe you can come up with some explanation of why it had to be Bitey, but it really feels like another demonstration of Dib's thoughtlessness and inconsideration.

I almost wonder, if, y’know, the show wasn’t cut so short - if this was a deliberate attempt to emphasize this aspect of the Dib-Gaz dynamic for the episodes going forwards. You know, give some more justification and context to Gaz’s anger at Dib - even as her responses to it continue to escalate. 

Although I guess beating Dib up like that in retaliation to ruining one of her beloved childhood toys and then lying about it for years isn’t like… the most disproportionate thing Gaz has done? I mean it is kinda bad, but also she has certainly done worse during the course of this list!

Also a quick shout-out to Dib complaining about Gaz distracting him by just like… standing in his vicinity quietly - when Gaz’s most common problem with Dib is him distracting her by talking at her constantly and generally being actually disruptive to her concentration.

(Some more general points in this episode are Gaz once again trying to abandon Dib at what he feels is mortal danger. Which, like most of these interactions could be read as her just underestimating Zim and thus not thinking he is in actual danger... or just legitimately not caring if her brother lives or dies. And Dib trying to take credit for Gaz repairing the ship, and threatening him with More Violence over it. First one is a pretty common sight at this point and the letter is a pretty quick interaction when they're both pretty jerky to each other.)

So… what is the main thing that I feel like I’ve learned from making such an extensive analysis? Well, I think in a way, all of those General Fandom Conceptions of Gaz that I talked about at the start… none of them were fully accurate, but also none of them are, like, entirely inaccurate either. 

You know, sometimes Gaz’s reactions come off as mostly harmless edgelordisms, and sometimes they’re totally disproportionate and/or violent, sometimes her behavior comes off as reasonable or at least understandable, and sometimes she’s just another person in Dib’s life who wants to punish him for being weird. And there was an escalation in her actions over time, but it wasn’t really just in Season 2 - and it coincides with a whole lot of factors that make it more complicated than just ‘Flanderization’; the increased focus on both Dib’s negative traits and the comedy of his suffering, a general need for escalation with newer plots, and a need for her to be more involved in narratives - especially as her initial role as Someone Dib Can Talk To has become kind redundant as the writers have become more comfortable with the idea that Dib can just talk to himself like a weirdo. 

The most… uncharitable reading is that Gaz’s characterization is just plain inconsistent. The writers didn’t have as clear of a vision of who she is compared to Zim or Dib, or maybe they just didn’t care enough to keep her in-line with the vision of what she was supposed to be - so her level of meanness, violence and hatred towards her brother just kinda fluctuate depending on the needs of the narrative or the joke, or what aspect of Dib's character they wanted to highlight. 

Y’know, even though this was always meant to be an analysis of both Dib and Gaz’s relationship with each other - it also became a bit of a Gaz Character Analysis along the way. Because Dib’s slights against Gaz can fluctuate on levels of intensity, but they are very consistent in terms of reasoning and motivation. It is pretty much always a result of Dib’s Terminal Case of Main Character Syndrome … but also about his social isolation and general inability to communicate with others and the fact that Gaz, even at her meanest, is still more likely to tolerate him talking about his interests than basically anyone else in the world

You know, I do want to emphasize that Dib’s inconsiderate attitude can also be understandable and relatable in his own way, just like Gaz’s reactions to him. I ended up focusing on Gaz more and more as I was writing this post because I kinda assumed Dib’s motivations were more self-evident in the fandom both because he’s more of a main character and because he’s more open about his emotions compared to Gaz. And also… because it would’ve been too repetitive to go over “Yeah, Dib has a problem remembering other people have needs and interiority but he is also deeply lonely and desperate for positive attention” for basically every episode. Meanwhile, Gaz’s reasonings seem to… fluctuate a lot more. 

I think my reading of the situation is a bit more positive than just ‘Gaz was written in a careless and inconsistent way’, because inconsistency… can also be a deliberate character trait. You know, a lot of people are kinda inconsistent in their reactions to things. There’s no reason why Gaz can’t just be characterized by her capriciousness. Especially when you consider the angle that she’s misdirecting some of her anger at her father or the world in general at Dib - so you’ve got maybe like a baseline of mild annoyance which is what she actually feels towards her brother in a vacuum. But every so often she is so much crueler because she is using him as a vector for a bunch of other frustrations and stress, some vaguely related to him, some not at all.

I think even the kinder Gaz we see in ‘Enter the Florpus’ can fit into that, if you take her words here not as just a statement of how she’s been all this time…

Gaz: Oh, uh, normally, you crying on the floor is hilarious, but come on. Dib: It's all my fault, Gaz. Why aren't you saying I told you so? Gaz: 'Cause making fun of you is no fun when you're this sad. You're my brother, man. I only torment you because I know you can handle it. I've done way worse than throwing you in a space prison. This is nothing. Get up!

And more of her, now seeing her obnoxious brother at his lowest point, suddenly coming to a realization that she doesn’t hate him as much as she thought she did.

And… okay, another challenge in analyzing all of these interactions is… I’ve been trying to look at all of the Membrane Sibling’s faults and flaws from as balanced a perspective as I can muster - but it’s also important to remember the context in which they exist. When I call out Dib or Gaz for being assholes, this is not necessarily a condemnation of their character. ‘Invader Zim’ is a show all about Flawed Messed-Up Assholes. And it’s also fundamentally a comedy show about the entertainment value in cruelty. If Dib wasn’t sometimes a selfish little egomaniac and Gaz wasn’t an asshole prone to violent acts of ‘revenge’... they just wouldn’t be good ‘Invader Zim’ characters, you know?

Really, between all the different episodes and all the times Gaz was more or less justified, more or less cruel… I think the overall picture that is painted of two very imperfect kids having understandable-but-also-shitty-reactions to the bad hand they were dealt by the world. Dib’s sometimes selfish disregard for Gaz’s interests and wants is maybe understandable considering how basically no one cares about him so… he might as well care about himself, right? And Gaz’s frustration with this disregard and constant egoism is also understandable… but also at some point it becomes kinda disproportionate. And sometimes it becomes really disproportionate.

And that’s just like… that’s just what the Membrane siblings are.  

#invader zim #iz #iz analysis #dib membrane #iz dib #dib iz #dib invader zim #iz dib membrane #invader zim dib #gaz membrane #gaz iz #gaz invader zim #iz gaz #iz gaz membrane #invader zim gaz

[saintsenara]

If you’re still doing the ship game, what are your thoughts on Voldemort/Tonks? (Inspired mostly by the comparisons between Tonks and Bellatrix in the most recent chapter of One Year in Every Ten.)

anon, thank you so much for this ask - which has, to be quite honest, upended my world.

because i'd literally never thought about this ship before, but now i realise that i'm not only in line for a passport to vonks nation, i appear to be an accidental vonks sleeper cell...

i always write both bellatrix and andromeda as having personality types which map on very closely to the tonks we meet in order of the phoenix - funny, clumsy, cheeky, charismatic, bright, a bit naive, and possessed of an outrageous fashion sense.

there isn't a shipping reason behind this. it started way back when i was planning nor all that glisters gold and thinking about andromeda, and i realised i've never vibed with a fanon tendency to make her this incredibly haughty ice queen, and to suggest that all of tonks' vibrant or insincere personality traits are inherited from ted.

obviously - yes - andromeda doesn't come across as massively welcoming in her only canon appearance, but i think she can be forgiven this on the grounds that harry and hagrid have just destroyed half her garden, revealed that her daughter might have been murdered in a surprise death eater ambush, and shouted at her when harry mistakes her for bellatrix.

but nor, actually, does ted. and so i think it makes much more sense to imagine that they're both a bit curt because of the enormously dangerous situation they find themselves in, and that - outside of that context - andromeda is just as likely to be a great laugh as he is.

i should also say that i am really not a fan of the sort of "omg aristocrats are so brooding and mysterious" way of writing many of the pureblood characters in the series. and one of the things about this which i don't like is the way it reduces characters to gendered stereotypes, while rarely seeming to think critically about the actual gendered conventions which govern their lives we get a hint of in canon.

pureblood women are often reduced to descriptors such as "haughty", "mannered", "prim", "icy", and so on - and, yes, all of these are traits which are implied canonically about bellatrix and andromeda [and narcissa, sirius, and regulus as well...], but they are not traits which have to exist separately from ones we would associate with tonks.

because bellatrix is - canonically - both haughty and theatrical; both cruel and loyal; both in thrall to voldemort and willing to answer him back [it's always overlooked, i think, that, in half-blood prince she reveals that she's told the dark lord to his face that he's wrong to trust snape - that takes a pretty strong nerve!].

she's clever but not particularly cunning [she's a blunt instrument - subtlety is not her strong point]; incredibly charismatic [harry always notices her whenever she's in a room] but also quite artless interpersonally; entirely committed to her prejudiced beliefs and also clearly a little bit naive... her anger when harry says that voldemort's a half-blood in order of the phoenix is really striking when compared to the fact that lucius malfoy doesn't bat an eyelid - i have always thought that more of the death eaters are aware of voldemort's birth name and background than dumbledore believes, which malfoy basically confirms, and so i really like the insight this gives us into what bellatrix is unwilling to move beyond when it comes to the version of voldemort she has in her head.

and she's also someone who is clearly very affection-starved - and who can be written on the basis of her canon personality to be something of a hopeless romantic, and for the vision of romance she has to be quite idealistic and a bit girly. and this doesn't prevent her being a sadistic bigot who knows exactly what she's doing in the slightest - it just adds another layer to her character which i think is really interesting to explore.

i really like the complicated dissonance of her being proud to be the loyal lieutenant of a terrorist kingpin she believes is capable of magic beyond her wildest dreams and who rewards her for her service by not murdering her, and also her wishing to be wooed and sent roses and taken out dancing by a man who has never had the slightest intention of doing any such thing.

tonks also has that idealistic romantic streak - after all, she takes one look at the giant red flag lupin's waving and says "you son-of-a-bitch, i'm in" - and she also has the brains, charisma, bluntness, theatricality, loyalty, and ruthlessness of her aunt.

as an aside - i also really like these tonks-bellatrix comparisons because they undermine one of the series' lazier narrative conventions when it comes to writing women: that straightforwardly bad women can never have anything substantial in common with straightforwardly good ones. petunia has to be nothing like lily, for example, because lily is the series' central pinnacle of womanhood and petunia is a bitch.

the idea that tonks gets all the fun parts of her personality from her father is an offshoot of this. but i really like the fact that realising she is very like bellatrix would force harry et al. to actually reckon with the reality of what bellatrix did and to think critically, in contrast to the ministry's view that everything's fine with voldemort dead, about the conditions which enabled her radicalisation.

[i've written something touching briefly on this - everlasting ink - in which harry and ginny end up adopting delphini and discover she's both her mother's daughter and the reincarnation of a woman they adored.]

but to return, dazed and bleeding, to the vonks agenda...

it's an incontrovertible truth that voldemort mainly likes bellatrix because of her fanatical devotion to him, which enables him to use her freely as a tool for his own gain.

but this is not - i think it's reasonable to argue - the only reason he likes her. after all, she's not the only death eater who goes to azkaban rather than betray him, but he's not going around calling rabastan his favourite...

and her slight bolshiness evidently does contribute to his fondness for her.

the canonical voldemort clearly thinks of himself [even if, let's be real, he's wrong] as someone who doesn't like sycophants. he has no interest in hearing nott sr. gab at him following his resurrection; he is perfectly happy to be told by augustus rookwood that the way he's being going about trying to retrieve the prophecy is wrong; one of the things which drives his humiliation of lucius malfoy in the dark lord ascending is that he's fully aware that the malfoys hate having him squatting in their house, but that lucius would never have the backbone to tell him this. his trust in snape is implied, particularly in deathly hallows, to be connected to what he perceives as a frankness in the way snape speaks to him - him telling snape that he "sounds like lucius" just before he kills him is a way of him letting snape know that he thinks he's being shifty [which - of course - he thinks is because snape knows he's the true master of the elder wand].

he is also theatrical, charismatic, interpersonally offputting [in a context where you weren't afraid of him, think how annoying his tendency to witter would be], clever, strangely loyal [i talk about this a lot, but the fact that he berates wormtail for betraying james and lily - even though this is exactly what he wanted - is really striking], transcendentally attention-starved, and so on. and he clearly respects the idea of constructing one's own identity in defiance of social convention - his favour permits bellatrix to behave in a way which is clearly unusual for a woman of her social class and snape to be ranked higher than richer purebloods who should look down on him, for example.

and he's also - in his own way - a little bit of an idealist too. the elaborate fantasy he's shown to have constructed for himself as a child - that his father was a wizard [who, i presume, he imagines will reveal himself after dumbledore's visit, now that it's safe to do so], that his mother wouldn't have died if she'd mattered, that his father doesn't emerge because he's also dead [he doesn't realise he's alive until he visits morfin!] - is something he uses to self-soothe, and he's hugely rattled by anything which undermines his belief in this dreamscape. just as bellatrix is by any hint that he's not an almighty pureblood god.

and, above and beyond this - even though this is a much more controversial thing to say - he's also capable of being a hopeless romantic himself when he wants to be... it's astonishing to me that we as a fandom don't make more of the fact that he thinks that his parents were in love, that tom riddle sr. was responsible for naming him [even though he's shown in chamber of secrets to know that merope chose his names], and that his father only abandoned his mother because she revealed her magic to him. there is absolutely no chance that he heard this from either morfin or tom sr. - he just makes it up! - and yet he clearly believes, even as an adult, that there was a world of happy families he was denied by his father's lack of chivalry. and i think this adds a really interesting dimension to his obvious loneliness which is tremendous fun to explore.

in a context where the fact that she's an order member is insignificant to him, then, i think it's entirely plausible that he wouldn't hate tonks - which is, for him, essentially a proposal of marriage - on the basis of her similarity to his erstwhile fave.

and tonks, for her part, clearly has a horrible weakness for cruel, emotionally-unavailable, self-loathing men who are cheerfully capable of murder.

i don't not back it...

as a postscript, my two favourite tonks-voldemort moments in canon: the fact that, in the middle of planning a coup, he's taken time out of his day to learn that she's married lupin [it's giving xoxo gossip girl!]; and the fact that her wasting away from unrequited love in half-blood prince is exactly what happens to merope.

#asks answered #asenora's opinions on ships #vonks #tom riddle #lord voldemort #nymphadora tonks #unhinged and deranged ships #obviously #and yet sign me up i'm hooked #oyiet answers

[rassicas]

(I don’t feel like rewriting it cause it mostly gets across what I’m trying to say but the first paragraph is just a rant stemming from liking splatfest law as an idea, preferring a more malleable understanding of cannon, and how even good non contradictory things the NOA translators do are often discredited for not being simply 100% accurate [cause it’s often more interesting when it’s not imo] so sorry in advance)

I get being the jp translation lore purist and translator is like your entire brand but I feel like some of the “misconceptions” are just popular headcannons or not bothering to check the NOA translation against the JP one for every line. (Revising this it’s literally only splatfest law this gripe applies to I was just feeling ranty) I get really hammering on the “no there aren’t any more mammals” one because that is an important contradiction but when they don’t directly contradict (like splatfest law [again this entire paragraph is just the product of me thinking splatfest law is a fun idea and specifically disliking it being framed as a “misconception”]) it feels kinda weird to treat taking the translation you have at face value as a “misconception.” (Specifically when it doesn’t contradict established cannon or alter characterization in a major way [this has actually just become a mini rant about how treating any information exclusive to translations as non cannon on the simple basis that the JP translation is the only true cannon is something that I personally am conflicted on {wow the mentally ill genderfuck homestuck prefers a mailable and more flexible idea of what is “cannon” who would have known}]) <=(writing these parentheses sets made be realize I’m kinda just spinning a word salad over one specific gripe)

I also cannot view the Frye thread yet so perhaps there’s more of a thesis to it than Frye not being confirmed to be a vampire squid like them being some other species of squid but it seems like a stretch to include that as a “misconception.” Is your underlying argument is that no cephalings inherent traits from specific aquatic ancestors? Is this just to say the art books and interviews have nothing that directly confirm it? (All of that to say what was the reasoning for including it on the misconceptions list?)

Looking back at the list now those two specific ones are the only ones I’d like to know the reasoning for including (this was not well thought through before I started typing it) all of the other ones I definitely get including and have solid sources to back them up and are good to put out there as definitely not backed up by cannon. The list is over all very swaggy and a great resource I’d just like to hear expanded thoughts and reasoning behind these two being it.

The reason for the "splatfest law" inclusion is how often i'd see it brought up among fans, taken seriously, and incorporated into genuine theories about the future of splatoon's plot (i saw this in theories about splatoon 3's plot, and now i see it with side order).

if it's just a localization funny moment then the odds of it potentially having bearing on the plot/worldbuilding of a game made by japanese developers is next to zero. for people like me who put highest importance on the JP side and want to seriously speculate on and understand splatoon's canon, people want to know what is and isn't just a product of localization! funny thing, i was also a hardcore homestuck fan but i am Like this (obsessive over the established Lore) and have always been. i think its my brand of autism LOL Different pieces of media are going to have different standards to how they treat their canon. individuals will have their own standards to how much they want to adhere to that canon and how they define it. splatoon is looser in some places but parts of it less so once it becomes plot relevant. "splatfest law" is objectively funny and if you believe it based on how you perceive what is splatoon's canon i cannot and will not stop you. i personally choose to believe its not actually part of their legal system and something people will say in-universe as a joke. as for the frye thread you should read it before jumping to conclusions about what point i was making with it. I'll go and post it after this. What happened was that right after frye was revealed in the nintendo direct, someone made a thread speculating that frye was a vampire squid, with points of evidence being that she has fangs (all inklings have fangs and weve seen different shapes of them) and long ears (we've seen normal inklings with different shapes of ears), and then the rest of the "evidence" being based on stuff that was intended to be based on her connection to eels or indian culture. this thread blew up and soon after people were stating, with certainty, that frye was 100% intended to be a vampire squid. it is one thing to headcanon something, but its another thing to tout it as fact, which is what was happening.

#asks #splatoon lore #splatoon headcanons #frye

[thrawns-backrest]

Listen, what do you think about how the fandom perceives Ronan? This may be a strange question, but I saw post here about how Thrawn is an ambiguous character, he does both good and bad things, he is not an innocent kitten, etc. And I completely agree with this. But it seems to me that in relation to Ronan, the opposite situation very often manifests itself. If Thrawn is sometimes too idealized by the fandom, although he is a more complex person, then Ronan often appears as some kind of universal evil in posts and fanfiction. And…I don't know, it just doesn't seem right to me. He has a adverse nature, that's true, and his loyalty to Krennic sometimes pushes him to do not the best things, but there are enough moments in the canon that show his good traits too. At least he is really loyal man and not as stupid as he might seem. I just saw your post recently where you talked about him, so I was interested to ask your opinion!

Thank you for your attention and sorry if I disturbed you :c

please don't apologize, I love asks like this!!! If anything I should probably apologize because this is about to become ridiculously long :D I really like Ronan as a character, he's one of my favorites from Treason. He's entertaining, competent, somewhat churlish and has that posh attitude where you really want to ruffle his feathers to see what he'll do.

Those last two are part of the reason why it's fun to make him the butt of the joke and why the fandom does it so often. But having said that... you're absolutely right. I've also noticed that the fandom tends to be excessively antagonistic towards him (as it is with some other similar characters but more on that later).

And you're right to bring up Thrawn because he's the golden child here, him and Eli, and any character that disagrees with or doesn't like him automatically gets blacklisted. Which is odd to me since Thrawn is supposed to be controversial and Zahn does a good job of portraying that by giving us different characters' perspectives and reasons for liking/disliking him.

Sadly for Ronan he's very unfriendly towards Thrawn and Eli and ends up making a decision that goes against Thrawn's goals which now garners him a lot of hate. An interesting development given that Thrawn himself doesn't begrudge him for it in the books and even trusts him enough to send him to the Chiss. Which honestly means so much coming from Thrawn? It's as close to a stamp of approval as you can get from him, be it of Ronan's trustworthiness or simply his skills.

So if people really hold Thrawn in such high esteem, they shouldn't forget that his own assessment of Ronan was ultimately positive. No matter what role he plans for Ronan to play in the Ascendancy (even if that role is for Ronan to come to specific conclusions he can then take back to the Empire, ie feeding him some kind of information) Thrawn trusts him enough to, again, send him to his own people. People with lost of secrets that make them vulnerable.

And it's honestly a shame because as you say, Ronan has so much going for him as a character. The very idea of someone who's loyal to the Empire while being critical of Palpatine is so cool. It's literally something that can get him killed yet he's ready to face that danger if it means adhering to his principles.

Of course loyalty to the wrong party makes him pretty culpable but regardless, there is a good basis for him to grow as a character. As already mentioned he's loyal, he's competent, he disapproves of Palpatine and all the petty political games that dominate the Empire's higher echelons. He feels guilty for tricking Eli despite believing that he's a traitor. He even comes to respect Thrawn's skills by the end and modifies his answer when reporting to Tarkin so as to ensure Thrawn isn't accused of treason.

So very good foundation to build from. There's still his loyalty to Krennic (who is a pretty damn morally corrupt guy from what I've read) but an overzealous attitude like Ronan's understandably makes him liable to blind idolization so we can't really say for sure that he has a nasty motif for admiring Krennic.

From what Zahn tells us, Ronan seems to admire Krennic for his, quote, leadership, competence and brilliance and he does so to an excessive degree. He sounds pretty starry eyed is what I'm trying to say. Enough to cloud his better judgement perhaps.

Moral or immoral though, he's still a pretty cool character. Which is the same thing you can say about Thrawn. Funnily enough they're almost parallels of each other - Thrawn has honorable end goals that he pursues through corrupt means and Ronan (unwittingly or not) works toward a corrupt end goal but is pretty morally upright in the way he does it.

And come on you can't tell me he doesn't have one of the coolest descriptions (like Savit noting his eyes look older than he does) or some of the coolest inner monologue (like the "half a victory is still half a defeat" line). I also love how he hates politics yet ironically those political mental gymnastics are exactly what he's good at.

But I digress. My point is that you hit the nail on the head when you said the fandom idolizes Thrawn to the point of having a skewed perception.

Another character that I personally like a lot and whose standing in the fandom is very similar is Thurfian. Thurfian doesn't do anything overtly evil in the books and yet he's very often demonized as some kind of villain. Which I bet you is because he's in opposition to Thrawn and other fan favorites like Thalias (something that annoys me because people tend to victimize Thalias so much in their dynamic when she's actually a very brave and resourceful character. Who once held Thurfian at gunpoint might I add).

The thing is, people need to stop the whole pigeonholing characters into 'good' and 'bad' categories. Because especially with Zahn, things are rarely so black and white. Our prejudices as readers can be influenced by both limited and omniscient povs.

In Ronan's case, seeing him from the pov of beloved characters who he opposes is what paints him in an overly negative light. In Thurfian's we forget that these characters don't have the same insight into Thrawn's motives and logic as we do and that Thurfian is perfectly justified in thinking that Thrawn will one day overthink and overplan to the detriment of many. And if those words sound familiar it's because that's what Ar'alani herself says to Thrawn at the end of the book.

But to cut a long story short, I don't think Ronan deserves the hate he's getting. He's a very interesting guy - he's got a good foundation of principles, a quick mind and an amusing personality. Sure, he's prone to extreme bias, both positive (Krennic) and negative (Thrawn, Eli) that can cloud his judgement but barring that he's displayed an impressive amount of competence. Impressive enough to catch Thrawn's eye and we know Thrawn has a good sense for these things.

So basically love Ronan y'all, he's really neat. Even if he's not some paragon for moral goodness which honestly few of Zahn's characters really are.

(Thank you for this ask, I had a lot of fun answering it! If I get my act together, I'll hopefully finish my fic about Ronan where I plan to explore more of his motivations and how he could potentially find a place for himself in the Ascendancy. So fingers crossed for that!)

#thrawn #thrawn trilogy #thrawn ascendancy #thrawn treason #brierly ronan #mitth'raw'nuruodo #thurfian #this turned into a love letter to ronan #and honestly I don't regret it

[resonancewitness]

an attempt of making sense of being a RPfan reconstructing an untold story

using this space as I intend to, to make sense of my own experience in writing

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, way back when neither ao3 nor the Journal of Transformative Works yet existed, a dear friend of mine wrote a PhD in Fanfiction Studies under the advisorship of the very one and only Henry Jenkins. 

The new notion that she was exploring in her work was the notion of “charactereme”, an invariant of a character description that makes the character easily recognisable. What makes a Snape? What makes a Hermione? She based her research on HP fandom, very strong and popular at that time.

As far as I understood her line of reasoning, the charactereme consists of the canon (books) core or expanded canon (books + movies + games + interviews by JKR) core, and of the fanon addenda, the conventional agreed info. Say, Snape’s title is the Master of Potions (canon), heretofore he has a Master’s degree and for that he would have had publications in peer-reviewed journals (fanon) (and from this we can infer that Hermione, being Hermione, probably read them). 

Other than that, the individual traits, experiences etc. can be brought in, inferred by any given fanfiction author on the basis of their preferences and personal experience. For example, we do not know if Snape can sing or play a musical instrument, this is not mentioned in canon as far as I remember. Abiding by the charactereme makes the specific rendition of a Snape-in-a-fanfic either “in character” or “out of character”. The non-mentioned accidental traits (like singing) can become the plot-driving devices in some fanfiction stories (for example, “The Phantom of Hogwarts”). 

In this particular fandom where I am currently in, the canon is still in the making, as well as fanon, as well as the individual reading-into in personal reconstructions of the untold story. I find it extremely fascinating, especially for myself to delineate the boundaries between canon, fanon and individual inferences. For me canon is first-person utterances and other performances of identity claims (taking into account that the narrators sometimes are unreliable, as in obfuscating or outright lying) and the unedited videos of not-playing-a-known-role, especially when something bursts through an established mask/ social or public persona; fanon is conventions on existing interpretations (non-washable candies + rumours that eventually got somewhat confirmed); the rest is individual readers’ inferences and preferences. 

As a writer, I can totally understand the urge to reconstruct the untold story in writing, inferring and reading-into the motivations and inner experiences of the protagonists that make certain actions, however odd they may seem, inevitable, the only ones possible in the situation. 

But here I am thinking also about the demarkation line between attempts at “unauthorised biography” — and true fanfiction, where we take the charactereme and put it in a “what-if” situation of somewhat different circumstances — and see how they, being themselves “in character”, would deal with it. 

And also I am thinking about the difference between “imaginary character fanfiction” and “still alive real people fanfiction”, which for me is mainly an “ethics of perception/ ethics of publication” issue. 

Am I capable in my mind to keep separating the “image of the protagonist(s)”, the characteremes that exist and keep developing in my mind along with the developing canon and fanon, from the fact that these protagonists are derived from real people whom I don’t know and most probably never will? 

Say, the Hermione Granger that I know and love is not exactly the same Hermione that JKR presented to us, but this makes no difference whatsoever, in the wider scope of things. I know that I read-into the image of Hermione something that would make her more relevant to my own personal experience; she would be a perfect mould for the “self-insertion of the author” (me). As my friend wrote in her PhD, self-insertion of the author is needed either to "be the protagonist" or to "be with the protagonist". Very good for me, isn’t it? I can take the charactereme of an invented character and play with it to satisfy my own needs, no harm done to anyone. "In writing this piece of fanfiction, no Hermione Grangers were harmed".

But reading-into the images of real people something that I want them to be to satisfy some of my internal need? What being aware of this means to me? Can I keep separating and allowing to co-exist my playing with their images with genuine respect to them as people? What inner stance I need to take to keep witnessing something precious, to keep reconstructing the untold story, to be touched and transported by it, sometimes in a form of creative writing of attempts at unauthorised biography excerpts, never to be published, — and still maintain mindful awareness of this being what I am doing, no more, no less?..

#long-winded reflection #this is canon in the making #fanfiction #rpf

[jade-gemstone]

Why I think Eden is probably definitely the Mastermind of drdt

Spoilers for everything up to Chapter 2 Episode 11 in DRDT and all of the cannon games (especially V3)

So, I've made quite a few fangan concepts in my time and think I know how to make pretty good mastermind characters. There are a lot of general patterns I've noticed with Eden that make me think that she's a mastermind.

I'm going to start with my weakest evidence and work up to my strongest evidence.

Weakest Evidence (basically just minorly suspicious shit that might have no basis)

She is the first person Teruko meets besides Xander

This one may seem random, but if I recall correctly, in V3, Tsumugi is the first character besides Shuichi that Kaede meets in the prologue. If Eden were to be the Mastermind, it would be an interesting parallel.

Her ultimate is based in proficiency with complex machinery and attention to detail

When building a mastermind character, giving them these traits through their Ultimate makes it easier to explain the construction and maintenance of the monobots and how to game happens without that much going wrong.

The Game and in universe show is called 'Despair Time'

A game called Despair Time with an ultimate clockmaker mastermind just sounds right to me. Also could be clever foreshadowing.

Medium Strength Evidence

Starting drama with Arei in chapter 1

Not 'inviting' Arei to the baking thing in chapter 1, while presented as an accident, also brought out the worst in Arei. It also started the chain of events that led to Arei wanting to be nicer to Eden. This eventually led her to being the victim in chapter 2. As a mastermind, Eden could have planned this in order to keep the game interesting and moving quickly.

Strongest Evidence

She is the ONLY one to actively defend Teruko in the chapter 1 trial

While this could be seen as a demonstration of her kind and naive nature, it is strange that she only brought it up during the trial.

This line from Hu implies that a full group discussion took place, and that everyone was fully in agreement. Why would Eden only begin voicing her concerns about Teruko's side of the story during the trial? And while she does do the same for Min later on in the trial, this is after much more evidence has been stacked against Min, and is done much less insistently.

A mastermind would want to keep their game going, and the participants voting the wrong culprit in the first trial would completely ruin it. Her defending Teruko is not outside the realm of believability for the persona she puts on, making it not suspicious for her to do so.

The chapter 2 opening

The opening of chapter 2 is literally Eden monologuing to the camera. None of her dialogue is internal, as it is shown through white text, and we are likely seeing this from the canonical audience's point of view. I think it's weird that this is an outward monologue instead of an internal one. Unless you consider that someone needs to open this new segment of the show in context. And who would be best at it and know exactly what to say? The Mastermind.

Possible Detractions

Her emotional arc and heavy involvement in chapter 2

Masterminds are not usually heavily involved in cases or possible culprits, nor are they likely to have emotional arcs. Her involvement in chapter 2 does go against this trend. However, this is simply a trend and not a rule. It's entirely possible that Eden is an exception.

The Entire Literature Girl Insane mv

At this point, David is such an obvious mastermind red herring that I feel kind of sad for people who think he's the Mastermind. No one has their mastermind go batshit before they're revealed as the Mastermind. I do have a different theory about his role in the story that I think is more likely that I might share one day that I believe is supported by the LGI mv.

The Personal Reason I think Eden should be the Mastermind

Autistic Lesbians deserve to be a little bit evil. As a treat.

I am tired of getting all of my insane character representation in characters like David. I want to be able to tell people that I kin Eden and have them completely grasp that I am fun and nice but also a little crazy.

These are just my personal opinion and observations. Watch the Mastermind be like Arturo or something.

#I'm so normal about this theory guys i promise #i honestly think the mastermind whit theory is just as valid as this one which is why I didn't mention it btw #drdt #danganronpa despair time #eden tobisa #drdt eden

[bluegekk0]

25 for PK?

Also: I have finished a bit of fpk AU writing… are your DMs open so I can drop it in? Just making sure I don’t bug you by randomly showing up.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

unfortunately i fell victim to all the fandom jokes, and saw him as a saw obsessed horrible father that tossed the vessels into the void if they weren't pure. but i remember watching a video on him one day, i can't remember what it was exactly, but it went into more detail about how the vessels actually hatched from within the abyss, something i unfortunately missed while playing the game, and it made me think more about pk as a character. there was also all the fanart i saw of him that went outside of those tired fandom jokes and actually explored him as a character, and i found that fascinating. didn't take long for him to become my favorite

and, well, you can already see where i am now. my au version definitely evolved way past the canon, there's so much that i personally projected onto him and that makes him very special to me, in the way no other character before him was. he brings me comfort, i love drawing him and thinking of all kinds of scenarios with him involved, but it goes beyond all the fluff. the morally grey nature of his character, the guilt and shame he feels, and all the traits that i gave him that go alongside what the canon implied, they give him that little bit of angst that helps build his character. if it wasn't for what happened in canon, i don't think i would have made him struggle with his confidence to such an extent, and so i wouldn't be able to relate to him nearly nearly as much as i do

i may not enjoy a lot of the fandom interpretations of him anymore, it's nothing personal, i just have such a clear idea of fpk as a character that it feels wrong sometimes. like, it's a whole "he would NOT say/do that" thing, and it makes me unable to engage with it as much as i did before the au was created. it has its moments of frustration, but it just makes me get even more attached to fpk. he's my guy now, and if anything happened to him i would kill everyone in the room and then myself

---

as for the second part of the ask. if all the porn/spam bots messaging me on a regular basis are anything to go by, then i'm pretty sure my dms are open. so sure, go ahead haha

#ask stuff #feral pk au #ask game

[egg-emperor]

do you consider sage a child mentally or just a fully developed ai with the appearance of a child?

Definitely not a child mentally and that's canon too. I get confused by the popular take of fanon Sage acting like an actual toddler because she wasn't like that at any point in the game. I see her being infantilized a lot with people saying she's just a poor little baby that needs protecting despite her being very smart and mature and literally being created to be Eggman's protector instead lol

Because Eggman obviously didn't create or code Sage to be a child because he wasn't looking to create a daughter, she was an AI program built to protect him, an "it". He didn't see her as such for a while after creating her. It would just be weird and random if Eggman decided to make his AI a child when she wasn't even going to be like a daughter to him in her creation, it doesn't make sense.

Plus I'm in the belief that Eggman didn't design her appearance at all and that was a way Sage just took form by her own choice or something like I talked about here. Because in the prequel comic, intro, and post credits, she's just a disembodied voice like an AI program would be. Plus she doesn't look like his typical style of design for his creations.

And with this Sonic Channel art caption of him not liking how Sage looked without shoes so he gave her some in it, that also gives the impression that he didn't design her because he could've just created her to have those in the first place and made her to his preference otherwise. So yeah there's quite a lot of basis for him not having a hand in it.

Because making Sage his child wasn't the intention behind her, the most childish she could be is if he unintentionally coded his childishness into her as the manchild he is. XD But it seems she only reflects his genius and intelligence in the way he really wants for with her smartness, loyalty, and efficiency and was actually more mature than him in some moments.

He wouldn't purposely program her with "negative" traits and if she did show childishness instead of smartness, loyalty, and efficiency then she would lose her appeal to him, as that's specifically what made him like her so much. She's supposed to be reflecting how much of a genius he is and her acting like a child would only do the opposite and he'd be unhappy with that.

Her being superior to organic kids conceived through traditional procreation and birth by being made with code and electrons instead like a true genius would as Eggman put it in the memos, and also smarter than the average child with her intelligence, are things for Eggman to brag about for how it reflects his own genius as her creator, just like he bragged in the memo.

So it just wouldn't make sense for Eggman not only to design her to be a child, which I don't believe he did as there's stuff than can be used to support that theory, it also especially wouldn't make sense for her to be coded to be a child mentally either and if she did turn out that way somehow, I think Eggman would alter and fix that as her maturity and intelligence are the things he values.

So yeah I see her as an ageless artifical intelligence program that happened to take the appearance of a child but that's the only sense she is one, she's designed to be ageless and with the intelligence of the adult middle aged man who coded her lol. I see people making her act like a toddler on Charmy and Cream levels (not to say they're dumb but I mean in terms of behavior) but really a closer match is Tails for her behavior and intelligence

#asks #sage the ai #sage robotnik #dr eggman #eggman #dr robotnik #dr. eggman #sonic frontiers #my post

[asongofstarkandtargaryen]

I really enjoyed reading your family dynamics on Daenerys and Rhaegar! A great analysis. Just absolutely shits me to think that Rhaegar had such a great influence and moral impact on her despite their never meeting, only for her to be killed off so poorly in the show by Jon, his son, on the basis of some skewed morality.

Thank you, anon!

Game of thrones season 8 and especially the ending sucked big time.

I'm glad that Martin has clarify that many things will be different in the books. Therefore, I don't consider the show canon neither I believe that foreshadows the events that haven't happened yet. I don't believe that Jon will kill Dany nor that she will end up an antagonist.

When it comes to Dany and her relation with Rhaegar, I find that adding Jon creates an interesting family dynamic.Dany is inspired by her older, dead brother, who she never met and therefore she can't have a meaningful, personal relationship with him. However, one day she's gonna meet his son, Jon, who also has all the traits she admired on her brother and she can build a relationship with him.

Once Dany said that if Rhaegar's son ( she meant Aegon, his only known son) was alive she could marry him. Aegon isn't alive but luckily for her a son of Rhaegar remains and he's as admirable as she would want a relative of hers to be.

#rhaegar targaryen #daenerys targaryen #jonerys #canondany #canonjonsnow #jon snow

[ot3]

hi i just finished disco elysium after repeatedly being exposed to it by you and i am incredibly grateful i did <3 you have some of the most compelling and thoughtful takes on media & characters/character dynamics i’ve ever seen so i’m super interested to hear any of your thoughts on harry and kim—they & their relationship is probably my fave part of the game. both are characters with a lot of depth and complexity that i think tends to be flattened by fans, but i feel sometimes i project qualities and depth that isn’t there (especially in regards to kim since we get pretty few peeks into his interior life—idk i think there’s a lot of conflict and contradiction within him, such as his need to remain in control vs an impulsive/violent/cruel streak, his clinging to status quo/authority vs rebelliousness, etc., but again i feel sometimes im reading too deep into things). idk curious to hear your perspective!

first of all i appreciate your confidence in me! very flattered to be called compelling and thoughtful... i do my best. i kind of went on a tangent here about how i apprach character analysis in general instead of talking specifically about kim and harry here... sorry...... sticking it under the cut because its long. and incredibly unfocused. once again sorry.

i definitely don't think you're overthinking it. i don't really think it IS possible to overthink something like disco elysium, which is both incredibly vast as a text [i believe the total wordcount for the game's script is well over a million words, although obviously you don't see anywhere near that full amount in a single playthrough] but also incredibly dense as a text. it's oversteeped in its own ideas and worldbuilding, to a wonderful effect. it doesn't spoonfeed you it's ideas or narrative, and you have to put in real effort to engage with it. and despite how desolate the game is i've seen few fictional worlds that manage to feel so alive just by virtue of the implicit depth and texture of their setting. the same can be said of the characters.

everything you're shown in disco elysium, you're shown with a lot of intent. we understand that kim is a rather reserved character who highly values his self control, which in many ways makes the things we do see of him exponentially more meaningful and impactful. The fact that these things you've listed are things prevalent enough with him that they do manage to bubble to the surface despite how he tries to lock himself down means they're things worth looking at.

also, in general i don't think there's such a thing as 'overthinking' a work of fiction at all. the idea of 'overthinking' implies that analyzing fiction is a sort of binary where you have either come to the correct conclusions about the work or you haven't. but of course that spits in the face of what analysis is all about. i think a better question than 'am i overthinking it' is 'what relationship does this interpretation have to canon?' i don't think it's possible to do media analysis 'right' but i do think it's very easy to do it wrong, and to me that comes down to whether or not your ideas about a work are arbitrary, or in conversation with the text.

i almost think about character analysis kind of like cuil theory, where each level of abstraction is one step further away from the explicit text of a canon. basically everything i think about a character could fit into this sliding scale

1 cuil - explicitly canonical things about this character. as concretely 'true' as anything is in fiction

2 cuils - things about a character that are implied or alluded to, to the degree where these facts are 'canon', but not explicitly stated. subtext.

3 cuils - 'negative space' character traits, things that are neither directly referenced nor alluded to, but make concrete, logical sense within the surrounding context. stuff that toes the line between subtext and personal interpretation.

4 cuils - hypotheticals. stuff that doesn't necessarily have any specific basis in the text, but isn't disproven by the text in any way. stuff almost entirely brought in to the text by an outside source.

5 cuils - hostile readings, where an interpretation of a character either contradicts or intentionally rejects something that can be said to be explicit canon, for whatever reason.

i think the 3 cuil stuff is by far where the most interesting character discussion happens, because this really all hinges on one thing: how much do you trust the person writing this character? do you believe have a complex vision for the character? how much do you trust them to write subtext? the idea of 'overthinking' something can come with the implication that there's nothing there to think about. but if that deep subtext is genuinely there, you're not overthinking it. you're just thinking. I think 'bad' character analysis comes into play when people attribute authorial intent to stuff that is really reliant on stuff they are bringing to the narrative that the author had nothing to do with. Stuff you bring to a text yourself isn't necessarily bad analysis or poisoning the well by any means, but being aware about what parts of your reading are impositions you are making on the text is critical.

That said, every character exists far more fully formed in an author's mind than it exists in a text, just due to the nature of writing. little breadcrumbs hinting towards this more robust picture of a character get left in the text. how many of them are intentional, and how many of them aren't? does it make a difference if it was intentional, if you can still convincingly follow those breadcrumbs back?

in the case of disco elysium, i absolutely do believe it is intentional. i fully believe that the people writing this game could, if they felt so inclined, give us as complete a picture of kim kitsuragi as there's been for any other character in fiction that we might use as the metric for character depth. but the important thing about kim is that he's not the protagonist - his character journey isn't the point here. more importantly, he's harry's foil. Harry as a character is a gaping wound. Everything is spilling out of him unwillingly, and it's ugly, and it's horrible, and then here's kim who is all buttoned up and put together and everything that you as harry are not.

so now here's the trick. you as the player and you as harry want to know kim. almost instantly. i dont know anyone who hasnt been obsessed with this guy from the getgo. we're supposed to want to pick at his seams until we find the bits that are more human there. getting to the ending where kim will join you at your precinct requires these two characters to meet in the middle to some degree. Harry finds structure and function from kim's behavior, and kim begins to exhibit more humanity both in terms of showing more emotion and showing genuine personality flaws, both of which are things harry has in spades. wanting to dig that stuff out of kim is the point of kim's entire character. on a mechanical level as a game that looks like trying to up his approval of you through conversations and investigation. on an emotional level of connecting with a narrative, it looks like what you're doing; reading into his mannerisms and behavior and trying to puzzle it out.

#disco elysium

[melissa-titanium]

in reference to my last rb;

you could say mother. he's very close with his adoptive sister :)

red or purple. he's very blue, but a LOT of koboreals are very blue. the only exceptional thing about his appearance is his terrifyingly vibrant red eyes. also red is his favorite color because blood.

he used to enjoy killing small animals that were in the castle and would dissect them and hide or bury the remains in various spots; usually in his or his sister's room. he only stopped because he realized he could kill other dragons instead. when he mentions this fact to anyone, he laughs it off which is usually unsettling.

i vaguely know what this means but not enough to. deduce an answer uhhh

his scars. koboreals tend to favor scarred dragons because it shows theyre strong and able to fend for themselves & survive through hard moments, and he REALLY latched onto that from a young age. he's a little more wreckless than he needs to be

well there's a lot that remind me of him so it's hard to choose, but one i have on my mind rn is youre going down by sick puppies. his music taste is just mine, but to match with my headworld i think he would really like classical/piano music.

anything and everything embarassing he's done haunts him, but his definition of 'embarassed' is just extra violently angry. i'd say losing a fight, but to *HIM* losing a fight is leaving the opponent alive, which he never does. maybe the times he's on occasion flirted with dragons on missions (he's very charming, cannibalism be damned) and they flirt back. its the only embarassing thing that doesnt make him unfathomably angry -- he just can't bring himself to be pissed over it.

he IS a vampire. he's technically also a werewolf. but i think if you had to choose i'd say werewolf. maybe he'd stop drinking people's blood. (who am i kidding, he probably wouldnt)

purple scarf with burnt tip

httyd. he would be like if toothless was just a wild animal with no empathy or compassion and also was really fucking hungry. for blood

i need to fully decide on this. mel's bed is a huge water bed shaped like a jellyfish but he is ME so he would probably sleep like me. flat on his stomach. he has no sheets, he's a koboreal and koboreals don't get cold; ESPECIALLY NOT HIM. he does not snore and does not sleepwalk. you'd expect both because of how loud and deranged he is when conscious, but he sleeps like a dead body.

he would probably choose koketira but i think he'd make the best podcast with amara. they'd probably just do some kind of chatter podcast talking about their experiences. too bad technology is tasreradian exclusive.

spinosaurus.

he is canonically really good at dancing; but AWFUL at freestyle. he can only do it well if he's told exactly what to do, but because of his inability to take advice without getting real bitchy about it, he never gets a chance to shine.

killing and eating people. he's awful he's literally a terrible person i could list so many but mostly his egotistical-ness and his lack of compassion for other creatures. he doesn't believe he's at the center of the universe, merely that everyone ELSE isn't. he treats other dragons like npcs in a video game (quite literally a huge basis of his early life behaviour.) he is basically just all of my negative traits shoved into a character and amped up to 100.

if you asked people his negative traits?

amara would say he has some bad influences, and can be a bit intense... but he means well.

mira would say he's a little mean, and gets really angry alot. but he's his best friend, so its okay!

topaz would approach the question from a methodical angle; he's sloppy when fighting, choosing to charge in and rip things to pieces rather than taking the time to think. he's impatient, but his lack of clarity in his demands just fuels his impatience. he gets very jealous, is enraged easily, and loves to place the blame on everyone but himself. ...but, otherwise, he's a good listener when you need someone to talk to.

izdaja and koke would probably say something wildly different because they met him at incredibly different points of his life.

barbarian. chaotic evil. my class and alignment because again he is Me

bugs. he can pry open a dragon's ribcage with his bare claws and eat their organs with a smile on his face, he can burn down an entire forest and kill dozens of rocokiri without remorse, he can steal, lie, murder, and hurt anything and anyone that comes in his path. but if he sees a fucking spider, he is DONE FOR. he's had nightmares about getting eaten alive by termites more times than he has claws to count on.

despite my love for music i unfortunately know jack shit about scales. he does canonically play piano, though. in a theme song made for him though i think he would have a cacophany of instruments in which an organ, drums and electric guitar are the most prominent.

he doesn't date.

he doesn't have a 'schedule,' as he hates restrictions. he stays up until he can't anymore. late, to him, is roughly 4 pm.

he only cries if it's;

a. crocodile tears

b. bodily/pain response. like if someone was cutting onions

he doesn't cry when he's sad. again; any and every negative wmotion he has is immediately transferred into rage.

he doesn't get embarassed really? but i think something he wouldn't like to bring up would probably be his poetry. he's known for being a skilled blacksmith & mechanic and an incredible fighter, not at all for his flowery words.

OK THATS ENOUGH MELPOSTING TONIGHT im done. bless

#melissa titanium #mel roars

[liloinkoink]

9 for the ask game thing cause I love hearing how that works for people

[ask meme]

9. How do you worldbuild?

....I DONT?

like. joke but also like. i'm not an extensive worldbuilder. i tend to do exactly enough for what i need to work and not too much more beyond it. i'm not going to find out the name of a currency or a town until the exact moment i need it, but if i think it'll help, i'll do it

i do really enjoy it, though. worldbuilding is like... a puzzle? it's really fun to take the pieces from canon (story beats, adaptable canon events, character arcs, specific character traits, settings, character dynamics) and the conventions of the genre of the au im making (like class/species in a dnd au, or how a myth/fable translates to the characters im using) and get them to fit together. smop is an au i really love for this, it's really fun taking incredibly flexible mcyt elements and fitting them into the really wide One Piece worldbuilding

my favorite kind of creative work is work with a bit of constraints, which makes building worlds for aus super fun given they give me two sets of flexible-but-confined constraints to work with and try to make something compelling/clever out of

it's 100% need-to-know basis tho. ive got enough to tell my story and nothing more. i honestly wish i was a bit more expansive! my worlds could probably use a little more padding

#oink asks #answering these several days late its fine #foodforworm #hi worm!!!!

[piraticoctopus]

Froslass headcanons

Alrighty, here’s a condensed version plus some folklore stuff. (The WIP long version goes into way more detail on certain things because I can't control myself. Hopefully I'll get around to posting it eventually.)

(Sorry about the formatting, but I couldn't get multi-level bullet points to work.)

Solitary-living, mostly nocturnal omnivore with meat as an important part of its diet; Diet shifts to almost fully meat-based during the coldest months; (I like to imagine that “souls”/“life energy” are separate from physical calories; since they can and do also eat actual food)

Tend to inhabit more forested areas, whereas Glalie prefer open habitats; This reduces resource competition between the two

Hunting method: manipulate prey by various means to lure them in, then incapacitate them by draining "life force", body heat, or directly freezing (or some combination)

Employ different tactics based on target, and thus have to be intelligent enough to learn from experience and observation; Some tactics might fall under aggressive mimicry

May alter the terrain to passively direct prey (for example, by making the route of easiest travel lead toward their dens; easiest route is where Froslass wants you to go)

Notable moves learned by level-up: Confuse Ray (since Gen IV), Captivate (from Gen V until its removal from the games in Gen VIII) (note: only works on opposite gender), Draining Kiss (since Gen VI), Will-o-Wisp (since Gen IV) (I just think this one's interesting for an Ice type)

Prey availability varies by proximity to human-inhabited areas; those living closer to humans have more room to be picky (better variety)

Humans (usually) know better than to fall for their tricks, but aren't off the table; Actual documented cases of humans killed by wild Froslass are few, but missing people are often attributed to them anyways

Teeth built for crunching frozen stuff (see wolverines as a real life example); Base Attack and Special Attack are equal, and it has access to Bite, Crunch, and Ice Fang through Snorunt; However, usually rely on Special moves

The way their mouths work means they'd either have to use the middle part of the "mask" like a weird beak, or would have to always bite off to one side or the other

Extra/unfinished food is frozen and kept for later, but will be arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way; They keep durable, non-edible remains to use as decorations

Collect non-food-related items of interest, too, such as rocks or man-made objects

Have an eye for finding beauty in the morbid and grotesque; Understanding of visual balance might make them good at things like flower arranging

Possibly possess some method for detecting thermal energy (heat) (This one is purely speculative and has no basis in canon); Seen in certain snakes and in vampire bats (only mammals to do this!); Physical mechanisms of how it works in animals might align nicely with Ice-type traits (requires heat-sensing organ and surrounding areas to maintain a cooler temperature); The diamond shape on its forehead could function as a heat pit??

Red possibly serves as an attractant of sorts?; Presence of a visually-obvious color is irrelevant if being seen by prey isn’t a bad thing (in fact, if you’re trying to bring prey to you, perhaps it's best if they DO notice you); This possibly conflicts with Snow Cloak? (unless they make themselves completely invisible to hide); Conclusion: 🤷‍♀️

I imagine that they sort of have a “torso”, but that at least the lower half of their body is hollow

Temperament generally calm, level-headed; Introverted but not inherently “shy”

Limited emotional displays and minimal outward expression; Hard to read

Face mostly obscured; Hand over mouth is a common pose, which hides it further

Capable of feeling emotion, just don’t tend to show it (there’s no need to do so if solitary, and doing so may even be detrimental)

Solitary traits impact their social behaviors: Generally bad at communicating, prefer to avoid conflict when possible, likely to stay quiet when upset

Cohabiting with others can be hit-or-miss; Will often simply maintain acquaintance-level relationships with others, apart from select individuals they decide they like; Do best when given time and space for themselves

Value self-sufficiency and tend not to seek help; Relationship with trainer may take some work because of this, especially if not caught as a Snorunt (requires patience)

Froslass would likely consider chilling in the same area as someone else while doing separate activities or just zoning out to be “bonding” (no judgment from me, because same)

Pain in the ass to do field research on, because they’re aware of observers and (like many Ghost-type Pokémon) find amusement in messing with equipment like trail cameras

Wild Froslass do not occur naturally in Hoenn

The not-headcanons-but-other-stuff:

Pokémon as a series is full of chances to explore the dangers of anthropomorphism and I could talk about it for ten years; Pokémon don't have human morals, yet some of them operate at a nearly-human level of intelligence, which is kind of terrifying to think about

Froslass is based on the yuki onna of Japanese folklore (see here for a good overview); It seems to largely be inspired by two varieties that make for an interesting combination: 1) The forest-dwelling, soul-sucking ones from Aomori/Niigata/Miyagi Prefectures, and 2) the version first written by Lafcadio Hearn [x], (this is the yuki onna story, and is the one where the yuki onna marries a human man)

Specific Pokédex entries seem to draw from other varieties, as well

If the Pokédex is taken at face value, Froslass is out here selectively hunting down physically attractive human men to take them home and eat their souls; This is exactly the image the devs have been going for this entire time, and no one can convince me otherwise

If the “Traces of a Lost Village” quest in Legends: Arceus is taken as true (and there’s no reason to believe otherwise), it implies that Froslass (or at least the one in question) is not only capable of physically disguising itself as human, but also imitating human speech and behaviors convincingly enough to pull off said disguise for years; I have seen no one talk about this particular detail despite all of the things it could do with such abilities, and it’s driving me crazy

To make that clear: the game devs of Legends: Arceus looked at Froslass, which has been stated more than once to prey on/victimize human men in some way (including in said game), and gave it the ability to convincingly disguise itself as a human woman; Combine this with the previous point about the Pokédex and Froslass is now an even more dangerous catfisher than it arguably already had the potential to be

#pokemon #froslass #pokemon headcanons #OP #long post

[queer-starwars-bracket]

FAQ

What should I be judging characters on?

Whatever you want. How much you like the character. How good it is as representation. Some combination of the two. We just hope you take the time to read the description written for each character so that the non-movie characters have a fighting chance.

2. Why is the bracket organized the way it is?

The bracket is broken up first by continuity. First Legends characters and characters from the novel Ronin will compete amongst themselves. Once only one of them remains, they’ll be integrated into the main tournament next round. The New EU tournament is also broken up with the idea of reverse seeding, making the most popular characters compete against each other in the first round to keep them from dominating the tournament. There are two other “mini-brackets”, one consisting of all of Doctor Aphra’s exes and the other consisting of all of the non-binary bounty hunter bosses from Jedi Survivor. There are also two scripted matches: Moff Moors vs Aleskin/Pavol for being kind of problematic and Adrellia/Odellia vs Thandeka/Dima as the two generations of Eiram queens are pretty similar. Beyond that, all matches are decided randomly. If there are ever an even number of passes occurring in the entire tournament, things will be reshuffled even if it involved someone competing outside of their heat. After the first round, there may be some shuffling of the bracket to prevent passes where possible.

3. Why are some characters running as a couple?

When a couple doesn’t have many individual character traits and have really only appeared in stories together, they will be competing as a pair. This only really applies to supporting characters, as main character ships will have individually defined characters.

4. Why did you use x identity?

Specific orientation labels are difficult in Star Wars, as they do not exist in-universe. We’ve used wlw/mlm when a character has expressed same-gender attraction but there has been no textual or authorial clarification that they don’t have different gender-attraction.. Playersexual is a term when it comes to representation in video games describing characters whose only expressed attraction is to the player character in a non-gender locked romance. I elaborate on this decision here, as well as link a video on the topic by a bisexual person. If mistakes were made regarding author clarification regarding labels or instances of different gender attraction were missed, please let us know. However, only asks/DMs with sources included will be considered.

5. Why did/didn’t you include x?

Characters are only included if they have textual or word of god evidence of them being queer. Characters who have only been mentioned were decided on a case by case basis based on how much is known about them. Characters who are named and appear in a story were automatically included, regardless of how minor their role was. Characters with alternate alien gender systems were included, with such things being specified in their label.

Kallus and Zeb: While Kallus and Zeb seem like a prototypical heavily implied by not actually confirmed same gender ship, it was decided to include them without official clarification because the canon ships Flix/Orca and Chass/Yrica have the same level of textual evidence, but were meant as romantic relationships. If Kallus and Zeb were a f/m couple it would be considered obvious that they were together. This is different from something like Finnpoe, which doesn’t have quite as much textual support. Or even Chirrut/Baze, where the novelization has them think of each other as brothers.

Ahsoka Tano: The Ahsoka novel gets right up to the line of establishing that Ahsoka reciprocates Kaeden’s feelings. The author, EK Johnson, was simply limited it being awkward to fit a full romance in the story and the requirement of the story group. We weren’t quite in the era yet where a well known character could be quietly established as queer in a book.

X’ian/the male Twi'lek server in BoBF: They weren’t included in the bracket because it's unknown if the costuming details that make them seem trans are supposed to be diegetic. They will have to wait for an author to take the detail and make it canon.

List of characters in the bracket

#faq #info post #star wars #queer rep #sw #information