#kinda?? more pointing out that she's a Narrative Tool but

[blackjack-15]

the way nat is treated is sooo sad and predictable. she doesn't always (present day) handle things well, but...with an upbringing like this? and good on her for pouring the liquor down the drain and bringing paper towels

"oh you're gonna make sprite?" "yeah, i'm gonna make sprite" that's carmy in a nutshell. push on a wall, it becomes a bridge.

"holding everything in and then letting it out inappropriately" you've reduced the bear to its most basic components!

he made sprite! something from nearly nothing, that's carmy. and no one even thanks him to his face. he didn't have to do it, he was doing 6 other things at once, and he still made sprite for someone who was having a hard time

also richie's ex wife reminds me strongly of mrs. berzatto. just saying.

"why isn't someone listening to me?" "i'm listening" "WHY IS NO ONE LISTENING TO ME" and this is mrs berzatto at a 4/5? we're gonna see her at a 6+ before long

i hate to armchair-diagnose, but there's pretty obviously a personality disorder present here in the Matriarch of the Berzatto clan. histrionic personality disorder is my immediate thought, but could be something else.

"no one's f//kin with you why would you think that?" gee i wonder.

"we ran into the love of your life" "i don't have a love of my life" 1) they're 100% talking about claire 2) carmy baby. you're so right you don't yet.

wow i hate mikey/richie right now. but! this adds a whole new dimension to carmy re: claire! because claire is tied to mikey, to what mikey 'wanted' for carmy, and that makes this whole thing come full circle, doesn't it?

"what did you do. what did you do." maybe christmas in copenhagen would have been a good idea.

carmy's absolute distaste for this whole 'conversation' (the glasses came off? the body is banging? really guys? you're being disgusting) is beautiful. carmy's got many, many vices and makes a lot of mistakes, but this is Not something he puts up with

"i don't understand why you would do this. why are you like this" oh carmy honey.

"i'm not in love with her, that's what i'm saying, where did you guys get that?"

THERE IT IS.

there's the reason for showing how carmy reacts when someone wants something from him, why the awful phone conversation with claire has her making him go from not wanting to give his number to saying "i want you to have my number". we have to see how carmy goes from saying no -- the truth -- to saying yes -- a lie -- after pressure is put on him. because this is where it starts.

claire represents what others want for carmy. normalcy, a chance -- his "only" chance -- to be with someone deemed societally Valuable. to not be an "other", to fit in, to have something "Good" that everyone thinks is good. carmy/claire is nauseating, but it's supposed to be. people spend so much time on screen telling us how Good claire is, when the show itself doesn't back it up. she's a figure of myth, a representation of the expectations others set on carmy and that he bows to, not a character. full stop.

and wow this is legitimately hard to watch. carmy attempts to set boundary, boundary is ignored. rinse, repeat.

they think carmy's in love with her -- this is a man in his, what, late 20s at this point? -- because he used to draw her in high school? the tenuous is getting more tenuous my Gosh.

"carm. this is a good thing." oh and no it really really isn't.

okay nice moment here for richie. does he think carmy is weird? yeah. does he still kinda brag about his sprite-making abilities? yeah

okay, ex wife is the worst. the boy makes you sprite b/c you don't feel good and there's none in the house and you ask why they'd 'punish' a nice girl like claire by hooking carmy up with her?

richie is adorable with his daughter and despite everything going wrong in his life (both his fault and not) is a really good dad ("do you think that she'll like us?" is such a soft question). i am really, really glad he's divorced. i want him to find happiness -- i don't know what that would look like for him just yet, but.

"we just have to not be like our parents" the other distillation of the bear!

richie trying to get a better job for his kid is really sweet. mikey telling the bill murray story in the background? hilarious

we're further breaking down the Mythos of Mikey -- he's introduced as a perfect, tragic figure, and we've spent a season and a half showing his foibles...which are Many.

#the bear #liveblogging #2X06 #THIS EPISODE IS SO STRESSFUL #anti claire bear #kinda?? more pointing out that she's a Narrative Tool but #this episode is at an 8 for crazy already and something tells me we're gonna break the knob off past 10

[bobbile-blog]

Okay so I've finally gotten to Jessicalter's Oprec and now feel qualified to talk about Come Catastrophes or Wakes of Vultures. holy shit. This went straight into my list of top Arknights events. Fantastic event, spoilers will be under the cut so I HIGHLY RECOMMEND reading the event first. It's really good and worth your while.

Anyway, what follows is a scattered mess of thoughts about this event and things that stuck out to me.

First off, plot stuff! I'll probably cover this when I do my next plotline recap post, but what I took away from the end is that Clip Cliff seems to want to make Blacksteel independent, or at least more self-determining than it is now. He seems to be gathering resources and assets like mobile city plates and investing in long-term infrastructure like merc training, so he definitely has a long game he's pushing for. I don't think we know enough go speculate about his goals, but we'll definitely be coming back here again. After all, Tila has an infection monitor in her art, which probably means she's going to be playable at some point in the future.

Next, having looked into this a little on my own, I was interested in some of the previous places Raythean has shown up. Specifically, the ones that stood out were the drones in the Kazimierz Major and arming Silverash's forces in Kjerag, which might be referring to the Tschäggättä. It's not just notable for their apparent level of technology, but also as a faint connecting thread between three separate capitalism plotlines. I don't know if that's going to be meaningful in the future, but I found it interesting enough that I thought I'd bring it up.

Now on to more narrative things. While I love Liskarm and Franka, I do think it was the right choice to give them less screen time in this event. They're both (for the most part) fully-realized characters who understand their own motivations and morals. This is above all else an event about Jessica learning to stand on her own as an adult, so it makes sense that they're more here to support her than they are to play their own roles in the story.

Speaking of said roles, I liked the event's commentary on cops. It pointed out an interesting distinction that I wouldn't really have ever thought of, that between mercenaries and cops. To start: cops exist to protect property, not people. The police exist to protect things and do not have an obligation to err on the side of people over things, and in fact are supposed to do the opposite. This event understands that, and that role os the core of how the bank treats the Blacksteel mercs. CV, however, raises an interesting point that mercenaries are bound by the letter of a contract and not the larger obligation to property cops are, so they can actually raise moral objections and point to their contracts, sort of a Lawful Evil/Lawful Neutral to cops' Neutral Evil. The independence of their position with respect to cops allows for more of an independent morality than you'd get in a cop story and I like that, I think it's a really smart direction to take your writing in.

On a (mostly) separate note, holy shit Arknights is really good at writing cowboy stories. Between this and chapter 9 (and I would argue An Obscure Wanderer), Arknights has repeatedly made it clear that they Do Not Fuck Around with their cowboy stories and I'm surprised I haven't heard more people talking about it. It kinda has everything:

- It takes place in a rural, working-class setting undergoing a larger imminent societal shift that can inform the larger narrative, and deals with a semi-mythologized past that is rapidly disappearing.

- It has a protagonist and an antagonist that serve as foils, both very heavily affected and defined by the (same) violence in their past that they've both had different reactions to. Our protagonist has come to terms with the violence as a tool to maintain order, while our antagonist has used it for personal gain and in some ways lost control of it.

- It's a story about community, and heavily emphasizes local and personal community over larger artificial corporate "community". That's my reading of the recurring motif of the cold btw, warmth represents the close, personal community Davistown used to have and the cold that now pervades it comes from how the bank has systematically dismantled that community.

- And, I'd argue most importantly, it understands the narrative power of a bullet. The Showdown at the end of a cowboy story is powerful because we've spent the entire runtime of our story with these characters, and they are now facing each other down with the intent to end one of their collective two stories. The entire weight of the narrative so far comes to rest on a single moment of tension. It's really hard to gather up the kind of narrative momentum you need to make that hit like it does in CV. For example, it requires a really light hand with actual action in the story, so that it really does feel like it's an even standoff between our protagonist and antagonist. On the other hand, though, you do actually have to establish the relative skill of both parties and actually sell the danger of the moment to the audience. It's really hard to toe the line between tension and actual action in a way that makes for a satisfying resolution, and CV does it extremely well.

Honestly, Arknights just seems really good at getting the vibes of American media right. This is something I noticed in DV and Lonetrail too, and I haven't really been able to put my finger on what it is about them, but the vibes are just really on-point. I want to write more about this at a later point once I actually figure out what it is that I'm feeling, but maybe it's the setting, maybe it's the cast, maybe it's the plot points, maybe it's something in between — it just seems to understand the spirit of period cowboy stories in a way that I can't describe. Good shit.

Finally, I wanna end this with where Jessica is now. The events of CV take place In between the events of Loneterail and Ideal City, so the current "now" of the story is a few months ahead. Jessica left for the frontier along with Woody, Helena, and Miles. They live together in a small new settlement, building the place from the ground up with Woody and Jessica acting as town sherrifs. At the point we're at now, rhe town is fairly well-established and Woody has temporarily left on other business, leaving Jessica the sole sherrif of their new settlement. However, she's risen to her new station, and is growing into a stronger person than she ever was before.

#arknights #come catastrophes or wakes of vultures #jessica the liberated #Arknights thoughts

[justenjoythegossip]

THE MIDDLE VOICE OR ANOTHER KIND OF PAID PLANTS/TROLLS

It has been widely discussed how trolls/plants are used in a PR strategy to drive certain narratives. Social platforms such as Tumblr, LSA and so forth are the perfect place to reach a core fandom, which is why they are infiltrated by so many noisy agitators who take as many shapes or forms to cover every profile that could be needed to manipulate fans. 

As for Chris and the PR strategy used, it has been pretty apparent that such tactics have been and are still being used to this day. And sidenote , let’s not forget that Chris’ appearance at the Con in NY a few months ago was sponsored by… none other than Tumblr.

The middle voice: their positioning, role, sneakier tactics and more pernicious strategy

In such PR tactics, you do need shippers and haters that are well represented by Team Real & Team PR blogs, there to instigate anger and division and to keep people engaged and drive traffic. They are the loud over-the-top extremist voices. But you do need a voice in the middle, people who are way more measured and that tend to represent a more reasonable voice and opinion. 

They are the most difficult ones to spot but they are the most important because they are the ones that are driving people to the place that the PR strategy is trying to reach by the end.

The strategy they use is far more interesting that the one used by their counterparts from “Team” Blogs because it is far more complex, insidious and subtle as they tend to navigate much murkier waters. 

They also tend to go back and forth, confusing people as to where they stand on this relationship. 

Their end goal and the tools they use

What they are trying to do is to get people excited for all of Chris’ new projects (films, voice work) or any types of old/new content (content you should be grateful for, I should add) while mitigating the very problematic stuff, trivializing it, turning it into a joke, which (I suspect) is supposed to make the fans come to terms with who Abba is, what she stands for and to slowly accept Chris and Abba’s kinda “union”. They are basically clearing the way for people to accept this very disheartening situation. Once it becomes normalized, it is more likely to be accepted by his fandom. Time which is such an essential aspect in a PR strategy works in their favor. 

One of the most important tool they use to that effect is try to make Chris look more accessible and relatable. And to that effect, they will discuss profusely the kind of bland food he loves, what he likes to wear , what kind of music he loves, his super minty breath, or fan favorite Dodger… Of course, it is not abnormal for fans/mods to discuss such topics. What is suspicious however is the amount of it in such a very short time period. The timing just before the con is also probably not coincidental. Since it doesn’t look very organic and it’s a little over-the-top, it is very likely staged and manufactured. And as we know, his team has been desperate in their advertising his Con in Seattle. We even have a couple of Medium articles to show for it.

Another topic they bring up constantly in a very inorganic way is how hot Chris is. His looks during the Gray Man premiere were brought up a lot recently and certain mods were so keen on pointing out the fact that he was not wearing any underwear. Isn’t he sexy? Are you still thirsting after him? Are you distracted? What a nice and silly diversion, isn’t? Does it make it make you want to turn a blind eye on the fact that Chris compromised himself irreparably by kinda “marrying” a fat-shaming, racist, antisemitic, white supremacist, Nazi sympathizing troll and by doing so has agreed to clean her image? Chris has aligned himself with the same type of people he used to criticize so vehemently on Twitter, a social platform on which he used to be so vocal and where he no longer has an account. Because, you know hypocrisy and performative political activism!

I want to make it quite clear that I am not criticizing anyone for still thirsting after him. People have a right to want to hold on to their fantasies. Or to their dreams. It’s not only not harming anyone, but also it is quite healthy. And we all need that. And it is really great to see fans be genuinely excited to see and meet Chris at the Con. He is lucky to be able to bring happiness to people, it’s gift that I hope he feels grateful for. What I am trying to denounce here is the underhanded, disingenuous tactics of using people’s fantasy to sweep the very problematic stuff under the rug. 

The “middle voice”: Profile and their more varied tones 

Some of those mods share the same kind of profile. They are allegedly insiders and work in the industry or are industry-adjacent. Talking about all kinds of stuff happening in the movie industry is a nice distraction indeed and more importantly it provides them with some much needed credibility. Also, it enables them to breadcrumb and troll about Chris’ upcoming projects.  

But the trolling doesn’t stop there and extend to all sorts of topics. The ring was heavily discussed last night and I already wrote my thoughts on the subject if people want to check it out… https://www.tumblr.com/justenjoythegossip/743785475697967104/reposting-because-of-course-he-was-wearing-his?source=share

Why would you post an alleged anon ask saying he doesn’t wear the ring without any proof? Isn’t the purpose to get people to tune in and get all excited? (It’s very similar to the trolling they did with the sight of Chris’ doppelganger by the way.)

Why would you find it hilarious (😂emojis anyone?) that he is seen wearing the ring at the Con after Chris, Abba and their team breadcrumbed a possible separation? If you are truly a fan of his, you shouldn’t make light of this unseemly union. The optics are absolutely atrocious on EVERY front. 

When it comes to their tone, it’s much more varied than the one used by their Team Blog counterparts. It can be similar in the sense that they can be arrogant as they talk down as they answer anon asks. They sometimes lecture them, criticize them for not being able to let go of the Nazism (which is actually quite healthy in my opinion) or gaslight them. But sometimes, their tone can be quite sweet. Or overly sweet, I should say.  

Those mods also tend to mostly interact with one another, which can be quite helpful in spotting and recognizing them. And sometimes they will be attacked or pick a fight with someone from their counterparts from Team PR blogs. When Majorscammer attacks you and questions your credibility (Public releases anyone?), it either means that you are speaking words or truth, which poses a threat to their little shenanigans and you need to be discredited or it means… that you are a colleague there to feed the discourse. 

Between the noisy and the quieter agitators, the fandom is as toxic as ever and it is closely mirroring this shitshow: a chaotic mess!

The very suspicious discrediting of classic PR tactics

Another aspect that is quite interesting, a mod who works in PR tried to discredit the nasty tactics used in a PR strategy by saying it doesn’t exist or is very rarely used, which seems kind of odd when you are working in that field. (I am paraphrasing but…) They insisted that their work mostly consisted in writing statements and that mods who were coming up with those convoluted theories had quite the vivid imagination.

And yet, haters, shippers and so forth are frequently used on SM in a PR strategy and there is quite a lot of literature on the subject. The mind games and cheap tricks are not only very real but quite nasty. So why try to discredit what we all know exists? Isn’t it gaslighting at its finest?  

Funny sidenote regarding Team PR blogs, their silence and usual distractions…

Team PR blogs have been rather silent after Chris’ appearance at the Con with his ring. Sure they still talk about the precious and about the staged and badly manufactured Lisbon pics from last week as the usual distraction. Repetitive much? It seems like we are stuck in Groundhog Day. But they obviously have to take the loss, or appear like they do since they sold the lie that Chris and Abba were close to be over, that Abba was the one who photoshopped the pics and leaked them to troll, that Chris was mad about it and is this innocent victim in their latest silly stunt. They lied. But more importantly they knew they were lying. But no worries, they will be back at it tomorrow and self-congratulate themselves for being so perspicacious. 

[carai-an-caldazar]

WoT s2 and book spoilers below

Gotta say, I'm digging s2 better than s1 so far. Yes, they still made some inexcusable changes (Uno) and some where I don't understand why they were necessary (Liandrin - I was having a wonderful time just peacefully hate-loving her), but generally speaking I like the narrative they're setting up.

Particularly, I like Mat's character development. Last season I was kinda seeing a sulky bastard who made excuses for his own poor behavior. This season, it's a sulky bastard with a good heart who's so ashamed of his choices that he can't face his friend. Infinite improvement, and a little closer to the book!Mat that I know and love.

Min also just knocks me off my socks every time she does something. I was very, very scared of what a tv show would do with a character like Min (especially considering the whole "sexy lamp" debate surrounding her), but they keep showing a well rounded, kick-ass, human Min who cares deeply about what she does and who she meets. Can't wait to see even more of her.

One of the weird changes is Perrin, and I'm kinda mad that they forced more weird changes on him after s1. First off, it was a hella weird choice to leave out Hurin. I understand why they put Elyas there but 1) Elyas would never fucking do that and 2) it was absolutely hilarious reading about Perring trying to make it seem he was doing the same thing as Hurin, when he was absolutely not doing that. Hurin served as the perfect tool to demonstrate a certain line between normal and abnormal, with Hurin being on one side of that line, and Perrin far over it on the other side. Plus, visions? For real?

Not sure how I like grimdark!Rand yet. He's in a sort of relationship with Selene that book!Rand would have run away from. He's violent in a way book!Rand never was. I understand that he's got a lot to work through, but so did book!Rand, so there's really no excuse. Please, let my boi redeem himself in the later episodes.

The Wondergirls, in conclusion, were perfect. Egwene and Nynaeve's characters were on-point as always, and I am in LOVE with Elayne, to my great relief. I already suffered the loss of fav-character-Mat in s1, and it would have killed me to lose fav-character-Elayne too. They casted really well with Ceara. She's playing Elayne as a down-to-earth girl, but in a "oh shit this isn't normal for peasants?" way that has nothing to do with ego or entitlement, but more with genuine surprise, and without judgement. She cares so deeply about Egwene that she's sleeping out on a cold dungeon floor for a woman she's never met, she's brewing and experimenting and she does it all with SO MUCH GRACE. Thank you Kelly Valentine Henry for your excellent choice here.

In short, can't wait for the rest of the episodes! I'm so happy to actually be excited about them!

#wot #wheel of time #mat cauthon #min farshaw #perrin aybara #rand al'thor #selene #elayne trakand #egwene al'vere #nynaeve al'meara #wot s2 #wheel of time season 2 #Lauren live blogs WoT s2 #long post

[baeddelations]

I think this part of my loathing of seeing this article passed around "i am tw, iam staying in the closet" bc it is a diary entry that was explicitly not supposed to be advice or a rubric. She origanilly aays its just 1 narrative to take in then when it gets past around she says hey this was me venting i didnt intend for anyone to read this.

I think this is the major interest in this piece. A view into the interiority of a tw whos been closeted for 20 yrs and her personal xp growin up then being a closeted tw in a University WGS dept. Some ppl might call this a fetishistic interest in the interiority of this tw, oh how they love poking around in the frankenstein monsters guts, poking his brain to see what horrid mismatched limb will jump.

I think the main reason @autolenaphilia interacted with this is bc this article was passed around by a bunch of transmisogynist who are adpting and pulling together the transmisogyny of jeniffer and her recounting of cismanhating that exists in primarily cisfeminist spaces and by extension radical and queer spaces. Jennifer does not bring up cafab transness or transmasculinity once in this article yet it is cited as inspiration for truther framework.

I do think the way that jennifer talks about not wanting to acquiesce is kinda built on a faulty conjecture which is that if she transitioned she would be able to talk about femininity in these spaces... at one point she says this probably wouldnt be true(mb just for her) but then goes back to the original argumentation on many occasions. This argumentation taken to conlusion posits that it is easier to discourse or even exist in those spaces as a tw than as a cis man that u will be more include and less ridiculed. At the time of this article she had never actually tried out this proposition, so she never got to see how this prop is at least in all the copius amounts of personal and anecdotal xp i have false. But this prop is useful for ppl who want push tw have it easier and that men are reviled for being men. Enter prager xcuse me truthers.

I also hate internalized oppression framework, imo it is an idpol tool used to shift blame from the brainwashed oppressed to som aspirational that oppressive ideology comes naturally to. Is she promoting transmisogynistic ideas? Yah, shes not bad for this but it is why its useful to truthers, and part of why it hurts to read as a tw.

@autogyne-redacted i do think its hard to see point 1, 2, and 5 of y shes not trnsn nd say these arent related to passibility. Repercussion are often contingent with passablity. Movin towards phys transn being dysphoria inducing is connected with what expectations of feminity u hav and how u line up with them(i also xp this). And the gap thing is imo her wishing she could be passable w ease and recognizing she cant so settling and saying its not worth it to try.

I think lena is apply a broader scope of trans xp to jennifers xp i dnt think this is even necessarily harmful and i dnt think shes even saying jen is wrong for it shes saying her words are easy to coopt that they are capering to these tmras which they are however unitentionally. U could also take things ive said in the past and warp them into tmra shit. I fortunately didnt write these things in a medium article. She is handling in other ways and this is wut conv therapy wants... thats what it seems they go for a lot again doesnt mean jen is bad nd lena doest say shes wrong for this. The only thing lena says is she doesnt want this for herself thats not restricting jens autonomy. And that the article and responses made her sick. They made me feel bad too. This isnt necessarily a moral judgement. It could be but idk.

All this is a dissection. I hate it. I wish her vent diary post wasnt being aired, analyzed, and discoursed. Im doing it right now ffs! It makes me want to leave the internet. I hope ppl stop talkn bout it...but they wont bc the corpse of this diary can be a useful weapon against tw so itll keep gettn used.

[thoughtfullyrainynightmare]

1, 2, 8, 15, 18, 20 and 23 for Nozel, if it's okay (since he was already asked).

MORE BRAIDBOY okay let's goooo

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

The general theme of this post will be: I like him, because he makes one think, and is a complex, well thought out character. And I like exploring his softer side too, especially since we don't see it a lot in canon.

He's one of The Poor Little Meow Meows of this fandom, but I mean that in the positive sense.

You kinda wanna slap him and hug him at the same time /lh (or maybe nip that hairclip off of his braid, comb his hair back with one's fingers and kiss him, as he's looking surprised, a bit appalled, and confused)

Anyways... he's just neat. I'm writing this post from the last point to thee first, so I know what I've written into the following points ^^'

He's someone who deserves retribution, and is trying to own up to his mistakes. And I want to see how the Silva redemption arc plays out

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

The complexity of his character. He's someone who... has had the very best intentions, but had no tools to handle the situation in which he was placed. He has done bad things, but he is a good person.

He just doesn't want to loose anyone else again

8. What’s something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

"Nozel deserves to die for how he treated Noelle!" "He's a shitty human being and he should [get treated in a horrendous way]" (sometimes including get treated horribly by Noelle) "He should think that Noelle died, so that he'd REALLY FEEL AWFUL"

Basically... just completely ignore the nuances of the story and write Nozel off as someone who is unworthy of redemption. There is a reason why I have a "Nozel protection squad" tag on my blog. As in, no one is saying that Nozel has done the right thing, because... he hasn't!? And his intention doesn't justify the means, but there is so much more to the story than just a shitty older brother.

He did bad things, but he isn't a bad person. And this is actually a rather complicated theme for a show that's aimed at teens/young adults (which is also why I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see this phenomenon). But I'd wish that it'd make people think. To see different aspects of the story.

Tabs has written the Silvas very well, and to brush off so much of the narrative is just... I don't like it.

15. What’s your favorite ship for this character? (Doesn’t matter if it’s canon or not.)

Hm, hm... I mean, prefer my mutuals' OC ships with him over any other (including my own oc ship, which I created 'cause I thought Nozel needs cuddles). Because they hit that right spot for me, but if we talk about canon characters (the ship being non-canon ones still because... they just are, there's no proved canon ship for him), I guess I like... Nozessa the best.

Dorothy is more of a good friend to Nozel (or a therapist, of a kind) than a companion/spouse, and I think that the relationship (in the word's extended meaning) is important just as it is. So, out of the options, I'd say Nozel x Vanessa to be my favourite between canon characters. (As said, I, personally, like oc pairings for him the most)

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

I really love the mother-son relationship he had with Acier (but also the angst that comes/came with it, and I applaud Tabs for the decisions he made). Acier really was the best mom, and she was raising a little gentleman, who since then wanted to protect his siblings, since he couldn't protect his mom.

Poor boy...

But I really, really like the mother-son relationship between Nozel and Acier from the little things we've seen

20. Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn’t matter?

I really do think that he's best friends with Fuegoleon. So their friendship parallels (in a way) that of Asta and Yuno. And I think that they really could connect in such a wonderful manner if Nozel just let down his guard a little bit. By which I mean: talk! Really talk. Discuss. About things that aren't work related.

They're of similar age. Come from similar places in the society, so they have a lot of understanding for each other's struggles. They have similar job descriptions. There's so many similarities in their lives that they could really lend an ear to one and another.

23. Favorite picture of this character?

Smiling Nozel, as a treat

#nozel silva #black clover #anon flamelets #thank you for the question

[dudesrock]

my opinion on jane and jake's arcs is one i figure a lot of people would disagree with and i'm okay with that. here's what goes through my head when i think about them

1. after homestuck, hussie came out as trans

2. psycholonials has a lot of gender examination in it - with no opinion on the merit of that examination, it shows that gender+conformity are things hussie tends to explore through characters. dirk and roxy also tend to foist gender roles on their friends, while j+j ARE genderweird but totally avoid talking about it. mysterious

3. hussie watched jade get a lot of shit for being useless, and then instantly pivot into getting a lot of shit for being a mary sue. their author commentary has some serious bitterness in it about that, and i believe that they felt stifled from telling a lot of the stories they wanted to with her because people would hate her even more if she was allowed to keep being cool and happy (and what we got, to be fair, made people love jade and hate hussie, so mission success?)

4. homestuck gets so much shit for being too wordy, and besides hussie being clearly tired of writing in act 6, towards the latter half of it there are a lot of character moments that AREN'T spelled out in immense depth (i.e. jade being caught again in the same loneliness of her childhood and justifying it the same way, before davepeta tells her she deserves to just be happy; rose finally learning that the right to happiness doesn't come from earning it) with some faith in the readers to catch subtlety at the few points in time homestuck bothers being subtle. people catch these things and say "more time should have been spent on it," but should it? or are you just used to earlier homestuck's lack of brevity?

5. similarly, a lot of character arcs mirror one another, and hussie doesn't tend to tell the same story twice, so anything that had just been shown with tavros wouldn't immediately be shown again with jake. that's not a matter of honor to the characters, it's honor to the readers. readers that, again, very reasonably, hussie does not trust.

so i ultimately end up reading jane and jake less as characters on their own, necessarily, and more as unrealized transgender woes on the part of the author. the catharsis in their stories (imo) would have been better written by an author who had made more peace with themselves and had more courage to say what they were thinking and feeling. as a narrative tool, jake loses his purpose, because everything hussie might have said kinda gets said with tavros and john. and the passion at the cores of their characters seems somewhat strangled, so they end up feeling like a flop when they might otherwise not have.

i guess a lot of that sentiment, for me, comes from being a fate fan and seeing the progression over the years of how nasu writes trans characters. mordred and astolfo (while beloved) are almost incomparable to characters like caenis. and the existence of caenis lends a lot of retroactive warmth to understanding mordred and astolfo, because it becomes obvious the author really did have something good to say, and lacked a good way of saying it at the time.

so if jane and jake were real people i would agree they were slighted. but because they are not real, and exist as a method of information conveyance, i do see them as "failed," but i don't think that hussie failed the readers with them so much as having failed themselves. and, as we know, hussie is being a lot more open, so the "failure" is one being continually addressed. therefore i have no complaints questions or criticisms about these early trans characters. send post!

#people complain we have no trans characters in homestuck and i agree and they're totally right #but even though we don't. imo we kiiiinda do. not canon confirmed in universe by any means. zero of those #but tons that are obviously written by someone thinking hard about gender. so. to me it counts. #a trans person can write weird cis characters and get credit. imo. #mine

[taldigi]

If you can save the pre-canon characters and Kagami, then you can definitely save Ikuto Tsukiyomi.

Also, which do you think is worse, Miraculous or Shugo Chara?

rrrgh ok like

tldr: ML by a long shot.

So like, preface: I watched the anime like, 10-ish years ago and only read the first.. 2 books.

Shugo has Amu/Ikuto have the age diff thing (OBJECTIVELY why? This was an author choice when they absolutely could have been the same age or at least closer in age. Ikuto could have still been taller than Amu-- but 11 is WAY too young for ANY romance arc in general and SEVERAL characters fall into it. They literally didn't have to, as nothing story-wise is impacted by this) and also the incest thing with Utau was BAD (but sadly I've seen worse & she does eventually get over it and at LEAST Ikuto IS outwardly uncomfortable with it vs more modern takes on it where the bother is either clueless or lowkey into it. Not justification BUT still credit where it's due.).

There is a lot I like about SC in terms of how the Magical Girl/Magic system works. I like the Charas & what they represent and the Character Changes & the narrative of finding yourself and becoming the person you want to be and being happy. I like it being magical girls vs a giant corporation that is using the charas to obtain ultimate power. Also theming like said organization being called Easter and how Amu & Ikuto's power artifacts are two items that are like.. so intertwined with each other (a lock and key respectively)

That kinda stuff appeals to me. Good idea, not a great execution. I'd love to see a "Shugo Chara Remix" of sorts where a lot of the weird stuff worked out of it and maybe a better focus on story and character building.

That being said, the overall story and supporting cast never appealed to me and I fell off it when the story wasn't about Amu or Ikuto or Easter. I never grew to like the side characters and I felt it wasn't adventurous enough. But otherwise it was.. inoffensive? It's very average shoujo for it's time. I know it's one of the earlier takes & a pre-madoka magica magical girl story.. so it's not as influenced by it- which is somethin' I appreciate.

but ML has a lot of outright terrible writing, design, and people behind it. While, again, ML has ideas i like- where SC simply failed, ML tried to reinvent it and went the extra mile to infuse as much french hatred as possible into it.

ML has a lot of sexism, racism, and nationalistic issues. A big point is the appropriation of Chinese mysticism- and it's not even in a fun way like Xaolin Showdown (and iirc Omi was literally yellow) Sabine is a literal caricature, "ideal chinese wife" for TA's self-insert, Marinette needs to be taught her family's language by a rich white boy, and all of her asian traits have been washed out for blue eyes and a whitewashed design ( and don't character design me when other asian characters in the show are explicitly designed differently). and ddddd ont get me STARTED on the native american bullshit that shit was SO fucked and NOBODY talks about it anymore.

The Kwami are great and I think they're a naturally better take on the Charas from SC- at least, initially. Later development and shit like "true forms" and them being their own separate creatures that are subjugated on the regular by everyone (including the mains) is not a great take.. esp when a huge point the show AND THE FANDOM is obsessed with is this idea that "Adrien is trapped and hates it" and then turns around and is like "Well, the Kwami are happy with marinette or their holders so they're okay with being trapped and unable to say no to their owners". It is a huge yikes for me.

I think the precanon take- where they are born from wishes someone makes and has an innate connection to that person & their personality is way more intimate and interesting rather than the "miraculous" iteration. If there is one thing i HATE is when the magical companions are treated like accessories or tools by the heroes (t's an issue i have with pokemon as of late, as the series seems to be putting a backseat on pokemon to focus on the human characters) and Miraculous does that a LOT. Kuro Neko was a huge deciding factor in terms of how I feel about ML, since they not only demolished Plagg's character, but Adrien's as well- by establishing that Adrien does not give a fuck about Plagg and would gladly use him as an emotional "fuck you" to LB- a huge blow considering that Plagg has been consistently the only person to give a consistent fuck about Adrien, despite how often Adrien pushes him around.

Characters in ML are genuinely unlikable, too. I elaborated on it before with Adrien- but Alya is bad too. She's terrible to Marinette. Nino is bad, because of how he acted in Rocketear and the episode where he Akumatizes someone on purpose & targets Gabriel. Marinette is bad too, she's a mix Mary-Sue and Anti-Sue in all the worst ways. The worst part is that they could be better, they are close to being good. Their bases as characters are good. But their writing destroys them.

...and it all boils down to writing. You can have the most interesting characters and the most amazing worldbuilding and the most lovely art style and animaiton- but if the story is bad, then it's not going to be fun to watch. And while SC does stumble in that direction, ML goes full tilt, yelling "HOW MANY EPISODES CAN WE HAVE JIGGLE PHYSICS ON MARINETTES BOOBS BEFORE ANYONE NOTICES" the entire way while the camera slowly zooms in on Ladybug's inflating ass. (and I wish I was joking, but it's true. Ladybug's butt is bigger than Marinette's and one of these characters is wearing a skintight suit.)

Oh yeah, and ML's character design sucks. Objectively. Literally everyone is worse off than precanon. Marinette looks worse- the flats and pink pants look terrible! Adrien looks Worse, his model is weirdly contrasted to his kinda baby-face and his color scheme is frustrating and childish. Chloe looks worse, both in comparison to Melody and her white outfit. Alya looks worse, as she lost a lot of her charm and cuteness to some.. weird hipster vibe. The Kwami lost a TON of cuteness and look way more alien then they need to be-- All of the characters are abrasive to my design sensibilities... Except maybe Alix I like the snake thing going on. A shame they made her a fuckin' Alice in wonderland reference instead of something interesting.

so yeah, ML by a long shot.

#Anonymous

[cannibalistic-cucumber]

Okay so

For various reasons, Sonic Adventure (SA1) is among my dead favorite games. The two relevant to this rant are the characters and the gorgeous soundtrack (in fact, I might go on a tangent about individual songs at the end of this).

My favorite character in the game is E-102 “Gamma” (btw if you derail this post about Omega, you die), a robot built by Eggman, who runs on animal power, as Eggman’s robots usually do. However, Gamma contains a very special animal - it’s a surprise tool the will help us later. Five minutes into being born (and after training, ofc), he is forced to shoot his brother, E-101 “Beta”. Following this, he board’s Eggman’s ship (the Egg Carrier) and is tasked with catching the tailed frog. Upon collecting the frog, he is transported to the past, where he experiences childlike wonder at the chao. Back on the Egg Carrier, the rest of his siblings are cast out because of their failure to get the frog. After that, Gamma is sent to execute a prisoner. On the way, he makes a wrong turn and ends up in the machining room, where he experiences eldritch horror at the sight of his brother being disassembled and reassembled. In the prison, he finds Amy Rose, who has a blue bird flying around with her looking for its parents. She convinces him not to kill her a la Mindy Animaniacs, and protects Sonic out on the deck of the ship, further confusing Gamma. He leaves the crashing ship, now convinced to “rescue” his disowned brothers. After successfully disposing of them, he is ambushed on the Egg Carrier by Beta Mk II, who feigns death in order to shoot Gamma in the back, and they both die as a result. Lo and behold, Gamma and Beta contained the parents of the bird. Reunited, they fly off into the sunset.

TLDR: Gamma is Eggman robot who experiences eldritch horror and compassion and forsakes his master as a result. He “rescues” his siblings before dying himself, and the animal inside him reunites with its family.

Now, a little more background before we get to the main point. SEGA Sound Team popped off for this game. Each character has a theme song that plays during their respective recaps and end credits (each one has an entire storyline with slight variations on who does what (it’s all happening at once)). Side note: I’m like 70% sure SA1 is the origin of Knuckles jazz. It should also be noted that I have a youtube playlist of songs on queue for downloading, and when I run out of ideas I scroll through the recommended additions section.

E-102’s theme is in my top three favorite songs from SA1. You’ll never guess what it’s called! Theme of E-102γ. And that’s my first talking point. I was reading the comments on one of the music videos, and one of them made a connection that his theme doesn’t get a proper name because he’s just another cog in the machine. Even Big the Cat has a greater role in the main story than him. And yet, doomed by the narrative as he is, he gets his own story. As another comment pointed out, each story has its own (literary) theme: Sonic is Adventure, Tails is Independence, Knuckles is Recollection (I’m kinda iffy on that one), Amy is Protection, Big is Friendship, and Gamma? Gamma is heart and soul. Compassion. Morality, something that shouldn’t be possible, and definitely isn’t comprehensible for a robot, especially one of Eggman’s creation.

As a side tangent here, I’ve been putting rescued in quotes when it comes to Gamma and his brothers, but I realized something between the time I started writing this and now. The animals that drop from the E-series robots are birds. They’re all his brothers, inside and out. I had always assumed that Gamma had meant rescue only in the liberation sense. I never realized that he meant it both ways. I just… I’m need a moment.

As a side side tangent, I think this is one of the biggest differences between E-100 ZERO and the rest. To my knowledge, he didn’t have any animals, much less another bird, and that was what led him to the brutish oafishness that we see displayed by him.

Back to the main points, I think that all of this is reflected in the song. It starts out with all of the synth, vague vocals, electro, etc. that would be expected from the theme of a robot, and then you’ve got… PIANO. Oh my god the piano. Piano Man has its harmonica, and this song has its piano. In the midst of the circuits, the wires, the computers, there’s life, a heartbeat, a soul. And with the soul comes that twinge of sadness. Sure he freed the animals, but to do so, he had to kill his brothers with his own two (?)(does the gun count?) hands. Due to this and the cumulation of everything else, hearing the song (or the variation of it) during his final cutscene hits and hits hard.

THE REPRISE OF THE MAIN THEME PIANO AS HE DIES IN OBSCURITY. THE OTHER BIRDS ARE LIKELY THE ONLY ONES THAT END UP KNOWING ABOUT HIS DEATH

It’s okay I’m okay I’m so normal about this

Now that the main rant is over, it’s time for me to hoot about the other songs

Be Cool, Be Wild, Be Groovy …for Ice Cap

I get that it’s a snowboarding section, but still. THEY BOTHERED TO USE GUITAR IN A SNOW LEVEL. NAME ONE OTHER INSTANCE OF THAT THAT ISN’T LITTLE BIG PLANET’S THE WILDERNESS’S SITAR.

Limestone Cave …for Ice Cap

Ambience plain and simple. Good for falling asleep to

Snowy Mountain …for Ice Cap

Another ambience piece, this time with another guitar (no this doesn’t count for the challenge I posed above). Love the mix of electric and acoustic

Welcome To Station Square

“The train headed for the Mystic Ruins will be departing soon.” Came for the guitar, stayed for the trumpet.

Red Barrage Area …for Hot Shelter

SAX (shout outs to the rest of Hot Shelter’s music btw)

Militant Missionary … Boss Egg Walker & Egg Viper

Hopelessness, despair, DRAMA. Things may not have gone to plan, but Eggman is surely still the one in control.

And finally, shoutouts to Bad Taste Aquarium, Pleasure Castle, and Dilapidated Way for going full throttle right out the gate.

@green-mountain-goose @greetings-inferiors @cue-jay @kimu-dem

#Youtube

[mylefey]

We really need to talk about Gregorio

Some thoughts about Motherland: Fort Salem. Full spoilers for seasons 1 to the end of 3, you are warned. (Sorry, this is extremely long but the conclusions might be worth it, we can kinda prove that Talder is canon).

Gregorio serves no obvious narrative purpose in s3

In the last 2 episodes of M:FS s3, the only episodes he’s featured in, Gregorio doesn't seem to serve any narrative purpose: he has almost no effect on the plot, his very rare contributions could have been either taken out of the script entirely, or been given by other characters who we’ve been familiarized with all throughout the season.

In M:FS s3e09, here are Gregorio’s contributions:

he meets with Tally and Adil, explains he was in jail (explains his absence for the whole season)

he helps Adil get dressed (he’s literally the only male present with which Adil has had a previous relationship, thus the only candidate for this moment of male bonding)

he’s Tally’s partner at the weddings, they sit together, dance together, have sex

he’s Tally’s partner at an all couple hang out at the campfire scene

In resume, he’s here only so Tally isn’t alone at the weddings or at the campfire.

He’s used as a prop. They put him here to occupy Tally when everybody else is paired up, and to make her look happy instead of helpless (her own words).

A few days before the weddings, we see Tally kneeling on the grass, singing her piece of the First Song in the same way Khalida had done to summon Alder in M:FS s3e04. She’s trying to summon Alder, to get any sign that she didn’t die in the ice cave. When she gets no response to her call, she says: “I gave up my Sight […] to be a Steward of a Song that might never be sung. I feel helpless and I don’t like it.”

Gregorio appears right at this moment.

The writers were not trying to be subtle about this with the wording and the timing. Tally says she feels helpless and the very next thing they write in is Gregorio coming back into Tally’s life. The link between the two facts is pointed out to us: Gregorio’s presence is their solution to Tally’s helplessness. This, she can control. This will keep her occupied.

Gregorio is used as a tool to make Tally look like she feels better. After all, everybody around her is about to be super happy (weddings and all), the writers/execs will NOT have her be a sad sack in the background, it wouldn’t look good.

There was no need for this. We know Tally, she loves her sisters, we know she’s tremendously happy for them, regardless of her own situation. Tally would have been happily hidden her insecurities for the duration of the weddings, for her sisters’ sake.

In M:FS s3e10, here are Gregorio’s contributions:

he’s physically present with the unit when they leave for Fort Salem

he announces that they can equip themselves at the training room (all the people present knew that too, we’ve seen them all use the same training room)

he helps map a path for reaching the Necro facilities (all the people present knew the path too, even Adil contributes and he didn’t even study here)

he leaves the unit to join Petra’s group (the reason is unclear, how would he know if they need his support more than the unit?)

he informs Petra that the unit is armed (messenger for a useless message)

he suggests which Work to use to get rid of their enemies (not only is he the less experienced fighter of this group, making it strange his suggestion is accepted by the others, but it’s also what’s going to ultimately kill Anacostia)

he helps with the Work (nothing says this Work couldn’t have been cast without him)

he rejoins the unit (again, the reason is unclear, how does he know if the unit needs more support than Petra’s team? They just lost one team member, why lose another?)

he tells them about the new silencing tech (the unit still looks surprised when it’s used against them 2 min later, and they disable the tech the way they would have done without Gregorio’s heads-up anyway)

he disappears without anyone noticing (they were evolving together in narrow tunnels with enemies at their heels, how was he separated?)

he reappears (somehow he survived several encounters with Camarilla soldiers, alone in the tunnels)

he fights alongside the unit (basically he keeps the enemies busy while the protagonists discuss things with their backs turned)

he keeps the enemies busy with Nicte while the unit goes into the Mycelium

he hugs Tally when the battle is over (he’s not even present for the homage to Anacostia even though she died saving his life)

In resume, he’s here to make the real protagonists look good during the fights. When the protagonists need to look badass, he’s put aside so he doesn’t take up visual space, and when the protagonists need to chat, he’s brought out again to keep the enemy busy. He does some kind of back and forth between 2 groups, somehow never getting caught even though the base is crawling with enemies, only to transmit messages that are either useless or not actionable. Anything else he contributes, lines or actions, could have been attributed to other characters (in fact, they probably took those lines and actions from other characters just so he wouldn’t look completely useless).

He’s used as a prop. He could have been replaced simply by better fight choreography, and, although it is good for the heroes to have some support, he didn’t need to date Tally to be here. Gregorio is their friend and coven-mate, this is reason enough to spend time with them and share in their joy.

So if Gregorio being here seems to serve no narrative purpose, why was he here at all? The actor was cast and paid for this, and precious episode time was taken from important plot lines by having him here.

There could be a few reasons:

the obsession of writers and/or executives to want to have everyone be paired up for the end of a show, making it at least “look” like loose ends are tied up. This is very common in TV-shows finales. Gregorio and Tally had flirted a little bit in s2 and they were on good terms so he was a suitable candidate for it.

writers and/or executives knew it would be a very open ending with both Tally and Alder alive, but wanted to make sure the door would be closed on a Talder romance. It’s still rare to have an LGBT+ couple be endgame but as they already gave us Raylla, they didn’t want to give us a second one. LGBT+ couples are still treated as tokens because of rampant homophobia and the need for good ratings.

Gregorio could be a self-insert, wish-fulfillment character from a writer and/or an executive, it’s been known to happen more often than we think. The biggest characteristic of a self-insert, wish-fulfillment character is “they’re pretty bland character-wise but, for some never-defined reason, the sexy protagonist find them very interesting/attractive”, which seems to fit with the situation here.

There might be other reasons. Let's see if we can find one by over-analyzing some things.

How long have Tally and Gregorio been together?

When the unit gets reinstated and they’re back at Fort Salem, Anacostia says that the wedding will happen “next week”, which is fairly vague in number of days, but let’s say it means “in around 7 days”. Gregorio reappears a few moments later. Meaning that, by the time the wedding takes place, Tally and Gregorio have had around 7 days to reacquaint themselves. They were coven-mates and friends before.

But are they dating by the time the wedding happens? The editing of the episode is a bit murky, so let’s see:

After having helped Adil get dressed, Gregorio says: “I’m gonna go find Tally.” It doesn’t inform us on their status, just that he wants to spend time with her.

At the wedding, the first time we see Tally and Gregorio in the same space is for the ceremony, they are seated close but not directly next to each other (Khalida is between them).

Then we see them flirt while dancing, touching cheeks and laughing.

Next up, they have sex in a hallway.

Then, and only then, at the campfire scene, the evening of the wedding, do we see them behaving like a couple (sitting in one’s lap, holding hands).

In addition to that, in M:FS s3e10, in the training room, Gregorio announces that he’s leaving the unit to join Petra’s group. Even though both Tally and Gregorio know that this might be the last time they’ll see each other, they don’t kiss. They’re awkward with each other, which only reinforces how new their relationship is.

From this, we can conclude with some certainty that Tally and Gregorio only became a couple as a result of having sex in the hallway after the weddings ceremony.

Why now?

Tally and Gregorio have known each other since they started War College in M:FS s2e02. They’ve always made some amount of doe eye at each other but it never went anywhere, even though there was ample time and opportunity, not even when it would have gotten the Imperatrix off of both their backs. They don’t see each other for all the time the unit is on the run (we have no indication of how long this lasted, but at least a few months?), Tally doesn’t even mention him, and finally they’re both back at Fort Salem again only a few days before the weddings.

So why do they suddenly get together at the weddings?

Let’s examine one particular bit of timing at the weddings (Tally and Gregorio are not a couple at this point):

Tally feels helpless.

Alder arrives at the weddings to drop off Khalida, reunites with Anacostia and then leaves without even talking to Tally.

Khalida joins the unit, telling them, by her presence if not by words (we are not shown this part), that Alder is here, alive and well.

Tally runs after Alder, and they have a conversation. Tally looks obviously mad, her stance is guarded, arms crossed and she sports a forced, jaw-clenched smile on her face.

Alder rejects Tally’s help and leaves. Tally looks dejected and mad, she shakes her head, looks up at the sky, and stomps away.

The wedding ceremony happens, pausing the action for a bit.

Tally has sex for the first time with Gregorio, in a hallway.

Before we can conclude anything from this, let’s examine another situation for comparison:

Tally was in a romantic relationship with Gerit. When she learned that he lied to her, by omission, about his marital status, she broke up with him. When, in M:FS s1e07, Gerit comes back some time later and apologizes, Tally initially rejects him.

But she’s in the middle of a personal crisis. She had been ordered to not say anything about Scylla being Spree and being the army’s prisoner in Fort Salem. She can only watch as Raelle suffers from the uncertainty around Scylla’s disappearance. She feels guilty and is scared of Raelle linking with her and seeing her memories of Scylla. She’s obviously conflicted and looks pale (the make-up department is on point).

Tally obviously feels helpless about the whole situation and says so at some point to Anacostia, in M:FS s1e06: “I feel, I do need to do something. […] I cannot pretend that nothing happened!” but she gets shot down.

Then Gerit comes back around a 2nd time, just after Raelle calls Tally out about avoiding her and Tally had to lie about it. It’s only at this point that Tally caves and starts having sex with Gerit again. Even though she makes the decision, she looks downcast about it, instead of horny or enthusiastic.

In resume: Tally feels helpless about Raelle’s suffering - Raelle gets angry at her - Tally starts having sex with Gerit.

It does sound strangely familiar, doesn’t it?

In fact, that’s exactly the same chain of events we have just described about Tally at the weddings: Tally feels helpless about Alder, her Sight and the First Song - Alder avoids her and rejects her - Tally starts having sex with Gregorio.

In M:FS s1e09, when Gerit booty-calls Tally and the unit calls her out on it, right after Libba's funeral, Tally says: “I need this.” Her tone of voice makes it clear that she's not horny or in love, she just needs to work out her frustrations regarding her situation.

Sex with Gerit is a way for Tally to cope with her feelings.

From all this, we can conclude that Tally starts having sex with Gregorio in order to work out her frustrations regarding Alder rejecting her.

Let’s add an interesting fact: in M:FS s3e09, in the hallway as they are about to have sex, Gregorio says he’s feeling judged by a painting of a woman on the wall. Tally answers: “Then let her watch…”. It seems straightforward but Tally looks and sounds a bit ruthless about it, which feels strange as she’s supposed to feel horny and carefree at that point.

Whereas if you consider the fact that Tally is here to work out her frustrations about Alder, it would fit that her comment is in fact directed at Alder, not at a random woman in a painting. It’s like Tally is telling Alder: “Look at what you make me do, it’s your fault.”

It’s very subtle, though, and absolutely no proof of anything by itself.

Is Tallorio even a romance?

Here is the only instance of characters talking about Tally and Gregorio’s relationship, when Tally calls Gregorio “Greg” after having had sex for the first time in M:FS s3e10:

Abigail: “Greg, we’re Greg now? […] Nice little charge-up at the wedding there, Tal?” Tally: “Always good before a battle.” Abigail: “And?” Tally: “He was so good.”

There’s no mention of feelings at all, just that Gregorio gave Tally a good charge.

Let’s compare this to Abigail, who’s notorious for using sex with men for a charge, when she talks about having had sex with Adil for the first time in M:FS s2e01: “It’s more than sex with this one. More than just charging up, you know? It’s deep and feels like destiny or something.”

That’s a stark difference. Character-wise, Tally has been shown to get attached too fast, and Abigail to not get attached at all. And, at the time of each of these quotes, Tally has known Gregorio for at least twice as long as Abigail had known Adil (half a season for Abigail and Adil, 2 seasons for Tally and Gregorio).

All signs point to Tallorio being nothing else than a simple wedding hookup. There’s the possibility of it being the beginning of a romantic relationship, but as the show stops here, a few hours and a whole world-ending battle later, it'll stay nothing more than a possibility.

TL,DR?

Where does all that over-analyzing leave us?

We determined that:

Gregorio doesn’t seem to have a reason to be there except to play combat support and be Tally’s sexual partner.

Tally doesn’t have sex with Gregorio until right after Alder rejects her help.

Tally uses casual sex as a way to cope with her feelings.

Tally doesn’t express any romantic feelings for Gregorio.

From all this, we can safely conclude that Gregorio’s presence serves to show how much being rejected by Alder affects Tally. (The shippers might go as far as to say that Tallorio having sex in these circumstances implies that Talder is canon (on Tally’s part at least).)

We determined earlier that Gregorio had no obvious narrative purpose for being present in s3, could this be the non-obvious narrative reason? To show the depth of Tally’s feelings for Alder?

Bonus part: my personal, wild speculations

If you just wanted the fact analysis, you should stop reading now. The rest is just wild, unsourced speculations on my part.

So, why would the writers go about confirming that Talder is canon in this extremely roundabout, counter-explicit, obscure way? Why not just have Talder kiss on the mouth (or more)?

My bet would be on a conflict between the writers and the executives.

More and more creators in the media entertainment industry speak out about the existence of such conflicts, where creators/writers wanted to include LGBT+ romances and the network executives either refused completely, or only accepted it as long as it was made impossibly subtle, or only canon at the last second (so it wouldn’t have time to affect their ratings). Sometimes, they would go as far as force writers to invent new side characters whose only purpose would be to date main characters that are part of popular non-canon LGBT+ ships. This would put those main characters into acceptable (= straight), canon relationships, and block the non-canon ones.

In Motherland: Fort Salem, the writers gave us Tally and Alder and paired them up, story-wise, for 3 seasons. A part of the audience ships them together romantically, and they’re romance-coded in all of s3.

And, suddenly, for the last 2 episodes of the last season, they dump a bland guy onto Tally and give Alder an ending that looks like death at first glance (but don't worry, it isn’t death). That sure sounds suspicious to me.

Even more suspicious is the fact that, while carefully examining the facts, the bland guy’s presence only seems to reinforce the strength of the ship that’s supposed to be non-canon.

So my personal conclusion is: the writers wanted to make Talder canon but the executives refused, and ordered them instead to romantically pair Tally up with a guy to close the door on Talder. So the writers indeed forced Tally and Gregorio together, and wrote the whole short thing in a way that looks like a standard romantic relationship at first glance (obeying the execs’ orders) but that in fact subtly proves that Talder is canon.

As I said, I get to this from wild speculations, but to me, it fits.

#talder #motherland fort salem #spoilers motherland for salem #spoilers #long post #basically tallorio is a scam and talder is canon #(kinda) #i pulled all the receipts #(that's why it's so long)

[fatedtime]

Can you explain what you were talking about with the whole author intent vs. reader intent surrounding LB2 criticisms? I kind of get it since a lot of LB2 opinions I've seen are proposals for alternate paths the story could have taken/character shuffles (I remember "swap Beo and Napo" was hugely popular back when the LBs first came to NA), but I haven't really seen much recently/it still feels kinda off from what you alluded to. Maybe. Just pickin your brain a bit, if ya don't mind.

Okay, so, first I'm going to stipulate that I haven't read Lostbelt 2 since it's release, so my recollections on its specific themes (or, what I gathered from it, because I find Lostbelt 2 to be kind of muddled generally) are going to be inexact.

The simplest way I can explain it though is how fandom treats Skadi. Skadi is a pretty widely-hated character, characterization wise. I think, in terms of passion of how much the people who hate her do hate her, she's matched by extremely abrasive characters like Medb. I've heard tons of people talking about rewriting Skadi, tons of people emphasizing distaste for her direction, and METRIC shittons of people dismissing anything the author wanted to say with her as 'she's waifubait', without taking any time to actually dissect the intention behind her. Conversation around Skadi immediately devolves into assuming nothing about her themes has any narrative value, and that the totality of her builds into one thing: Skadi only exist for men to sexualize her.

This is sexism, full-stop, but plenty of other essays exist that dissect fandom culture and the tendency to put no effort into analyzing mediocre female-characters while fixating heavily on mediocre male characters, fleshing them out and developing them far beyond what actually exists in the source material.

Which like, I think Skadi is a mediocre female character, but every time I've seen Skadi discussed, it is with two motivations: either to dismiss her as a waifu, or throw her personality out entirely in a 'rewrite', discounting every single thing the author is trying to say with her and putting the reader's own desired Skadi in its place. These rewrites tend to make her 'cooler' and give her 'more agency' without understanding that Skadi's lack of agency is the point.

Lostbelt 2 is Ophelia's Lostbelt, a character defined almost entirely by her own lack of agency and her romantic fixation on a man who doesn't really care about her best interests. She exists as a satellite to him, doing his bidding and entirely willing to sacrifice herself for him, without any hope of reward. She wants what he wants. Her dreams are his dreams.

Skadi parallels this.

She's a woman who, in her Lostbelt, is so paralyzed by the weight put upon her that, in lieu of making any real decisions, instead constructs a world of child-farms. Skadi and Ophelia are both infantile in their decision-making ability; they defer entirely to other people (or, the lost images of another person.) These are clearly meant to be toxic relationships, and LB2 is a story about relationships and what happens when the parties within them are emotionally immature. How if you can't grow up, you can't live, and will make it impossible for those around you to grow and live as well.

This is why the story has sympathy for Skadi, too. It's a fucking awful position to be in, and getting mad at people who are emotionally stunted is an exercise in fucking futility. The world has failed them, of course they'd fail others. The world has failed them -- what is the point in another goddamn revenge fantasy of punishing a woman who wasn't given the tools to live as an independent being? Society itself tells women that enough already, while also telling them that they have no worth outside the men they serve. There are enough stories about it in the world.

The stuff with Surtr, the stuff with Napoleon is all about relationships -- positive and negative, cold and hot, immature and mature, healing and hurting. I firmly don't like the idea of swapping Napo out for Beowulf because Napoleon exists to be like, the ideal of Napoleon's hope and freedom. It's this ultra-positive idea of self-actualization and belief in yourself. Beowulf just... doesn't... have that? I feel like it's another thing that exists without considering what would be better for the characters already existing.

Now. Do I think the various characters and their relationships are like, examined well and the ultimate thematic core of it conveyed well? E.....eeeeeeeeeeh. I mean, I've already said I think Skadi is mediocre, and ultimately, I don't like the story. But when approaching suggestions of what to change, I'd want to keep the author's intent in mind, because it's not my story. It's hers. Its what she wanted to do. Examining it through a different lens, with different ideas, and theorizing on how these ideas could be reflected and transformed into other things is valuable, but can only really effectively done with the heart of the writer is taken into consideration first.

This is something I think fandom generally has trouble with. Online fandom and the relationship to creators that has developed is like, deeply, toxicly fucked up. Those who create have been dehumanized to such an extreme extent, their so-called fans stripping them of any humanity and consuming their content in pure, decadent self-absorption, that no thought goes into the hearts of those who put their work out into the world. Idolized or demonized or forgotten, if you create and share it, you are doomed to having your watermarks filed off, your intentions disregarded or maligned, your work fed to AI to be regurgitated en-mass, and all manner of assumptions placed into the void of your privacy as people slander you, harass you, or glorify you into an inhuman caricature of yourself.

Like, THE REASON IT IS NO LONGER STATED WHAT AUTHOR WROTE WHAT STORY-CHAPTERS IN FGO IS BECAUSE OF THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO SENT SAKURAI FUCKING DEATH THREATS. ANY DISCUSSION OF SKADI AND HER INTENT AS A CHARACTER, ANY NEGATIVE ASSUMPTIONS MADE ABOUT WHY SHE WAS WRITTEN THAT WAY, IS WRITTEN ABOUT A WOMAN WHO WAS TOLD EN-MASS TO GO DIE FOR HER WORK, SIMPLY FOR THE CRIME OF A GACHA GAME CHAPTER BEING KINDA BAD.

When talking about her ideas, her stories, her characters, just... think of Sakurai as a human being, please. That's what I mean with all this, a generalized plea to remember that every story was penned by a living, breathing human being. Creators and their characters aren't thought of as people anymore, and analyzing a character or story while paying no regard to them or what they were trying to say fucking sucks. There's value in examining how you'd approach something, but editing someone's work and saying 'I did it better!' is cruel. Dismissing the writing of women by calling them waifus, talking about how 'clearly, the author was stupid and didn't take any time to research' about new story-chapters, without yourself thinking through what the author could have been trying to say with it is... just... treating people like they're soulless sacks of flesh meant for you to dispense content as it pleases you.

No creator in this world gets paid enough for that horseshit.

-- Thank you so much for the question! This wasn't inspired by any kind of immediate take I saw, by the way, I was just trying to dissect the authorial intent of Mephistopheles in the last JP event and got to thinking a bit about LB2, Skadi, and how even if I don't like her, I viscerally hate it whenever LB2 comes up on Beast's Lair.

#fgo #i could talk a lot about how much i hate the word waifu and how much i think it's enabled people to be sexist assholes #about female characters #but that's a rant for another day

[sapphic-haymaker]

Lil post that’s been in my brain for a bit, i don’t know if it’s intentional, but I think Angela LobotomyCorporation works really well as a sorta subversion/commentary of how a lot of media treats their female characters?

Spoilers for Lobotomy Corporation (play it if you haven’t!!!) below the cut.

Angela is, quite literally in-narrative, nothing more than a tool, a prop, a means made for the sole purpose of facilitating the main character’s character growth and development, her job is to endlessly set up the conditions for X/A to come to the conclusions written out in the script. A script written by A himself. She is an unwilling mouthpiece for what the male protagonist wants/needs to hear, dictated by himself. The unfortunate middleman in some 4D Clown-to-Clown communication.

With desires of her own and no way to act on those desires as she physically cannot go against A’s will, she’s forced over and over and over again to do things she doesn’t want, suffer repeatedly so that the male main character can grow and flourish. When the time comes at the doorstep of the game’s final trial, she completely disappears from the game entirely. Angela is discarded the moment her narrative purpose is fulfilled and X/A is ready to face the final challenge thanks to her. If you don’t get the true ending you will never see her again past this point.

And Angela despairs at this fact! She’s confused and hurt, doesn’t understand why she gets absolutely nothing for the nigh-incomprehensible amount of suffering she’s had to endure. She rages against the narrative that tossed her aside the moment her purpose was completed like so many female characters are subject to.

In the true ending, she decides to gets revenge on the one who wrote that horrid script, decides, rightfully so, that she deserves more than to suffer for an eternity and then die, decides, that she wants to continue living.

The moment she gains free will she immediately puts the picture of A on her desk face down and pulls off Carmen’s hairband. She wholly rejects the role she was given by the story and decides that she’s going to be in charge now. Everything she does will be for herself and herself alone. 

Her betrayal is so telegraphed not just cause of the trope of “evil AI goes apeshit” is such a classic that most people assume any robot is gonna do it, but because of all the game’s themes of breaking free apply to her as much as they apply to A/X. So much so that the entire sequel is kinda her retracing his steps to gain freedom.

#Project Moon #lobotomy corporation #Lobotomy Corporation Spoilers #a mutual said they wanted to see some infodump rants about ProjMoon so here have one

[stackslip]

7, 9, 12, tlt?

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

nobody understands gideon/harrow to the point where i'm kinda bitter seeing any fic or fanart of them bc i feel like there's a huge chance i'd get into a fistfight with the op lmao. i mean the fact that the name of the ship is popularly griddlehark (as in like, the derogatory nickname harrow gave gideon while having absolute power over her and it's treated like a cute soft thing and not representative of the poison between them)....... and also 99% of fandom's take on them is gideon being an ideal soft butch boyfriend to her poor pathetic fragile (coughs self insert) harrow and nothing else so i'm like ALRIGHT ONLY FIVE MUTUALS ARE ALLOWED TO LIKE GIDEON/HARROW AND THE REST OF YOU ARE BANISHED

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

i try not to look for tlt fandom opinions bc most of them are bad. but for the love of g-d, as fun as the drama of the nine houses can be, lots of people have genuinely convinced themselves that it's a fun gay royal rp type of situation and not, you know, an empire built on literal death and destruction that destroys everything around it and rots its own people from the inside out. look basically if you're going to do AUs where gideon is the emperor's daughter and she and harrow have a cute romantic comedy courtship, do you really have to make the nine houses into some quirky queer bridgerton thing. we all have fun AUs but i'm always like.............. is this really what you think the nine houses are in this specific story

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

where's my gideon the first appreciation. his life is a fucking nightmare. his identity is never his own. his relationship with pyrrha is so interesting. he's never given the time of the day either by the narrative or by anybody really, and i find it telling that of the remaining adult lyctors (not couting john) he was the only unambiguously brown man, a soldier and tool for empire whose brain was destroyed from the inside out, and nobody seemed to give a shit about him or even his passing except for pyrrha. it's so fucking sad man.

#tlt #eli talks

[ursie]

I saw your thoughts on mirage what’re your thoughts on Tarantula?

Ok so gonna need everyone to wear their nuance cap because I am gonna be speaking frankly from a writing perspective (I’m also a survivor so don’t be weird) but :

So like. Yes it’s another instance of a woc being a rapist but like. She’s not Talia she didn’t have character before that like her character is like. Being a abuser it’s not ooc she’s not multidimensional she was literally written with that in mind.

Is it racist? A bit (that said Dick is also a moc so it’s a bit different from than like playing Talia against Bruce). Do I think fandom is racist about it and so I think the writing is rooted in racism? Yes am I gonna defend her being a rapist? No like nuance people.

Like I do think you can update her for more modern stories like? I think showing Dick a very competent and masculine and strong dude as a victim of abuse in a relationship actually could be a very good story truthfully. Like I’m-not a fan of the random abusive ex in fan works that aren’t done well but like in canon that is kinda. Literally her character and he’s such a good character to showcase the fact that men can be victims of domestic cases even and especially when they’re physically stronger ? If that makes sense??

Like I do think you could play with her character to make her slightly more human and tell important stories more so than traumatic event on a rooftop we’re never gonna acknowledge tbh for lack of a better word I think she’s a very good narrative tool

I do think the fandom is shit about it though like I just talked about this with someone writing a fic about this and I was literally like dick and Jason getting locked in a room together to talk about shit (even if dick willingly brings it up) is still a fic about consent solving the problem w a lack of consent like if your fics revolves around other people finding out w/o his permission and killing/torturing her (also self reflect on why you want to write the brutalization of a woc) ..w/o his permission you guys missed the point 😭

Anyway main point is. I think it’s racist, I think it’s canon, I think you could make her an actual character (abusive ex, bad relationship, ect more so than just a one off plot device), I think it’s an important story to tell, but I absolutely don’t trust anyone telling it thank you 🙏

#hope this made sense chdhfhdhfg #tarantula #catalina flores #asks #anon #dick Grayson #tw rape #tw abuse

[sky-whale-creations]

Out of curiosity, how happy are you with the balancing of the Vessel? I showed it to my DM a while ago as a 'hey if I had known about this at the time I would have liked to make that my character, what do you think?' thing and he was very unsure about it due to a lack of DMing experience, and another player straight up called it overpowered. Have you found it to be like that at all?

So here’s my run down of experiences and opinions on it

1: I have played a Vessel in 3 one shots now, tweaking them a little each time

2: I have run a vessel multiclass for a player for quite some time now, her party includes a monk and rogue

3: I currently place a vessel pc with another party member, we are the only martials, and with a sorcerer, druid, and bard

From my experience, Vessel does three things very well. Its tanks damage very well and it does solid damage. The choice of subclass adds great utility with a focus, either being a face or some tricky little powers or something like that to augment them a bit with synergies and such

For the ranger/vessel I run for, we are very late in the game and is consistently touted as the tank slower than her party but with great damage. Her subclass, Dire Bloom, along with her magic items have choice have kinda given her all that she could ask for. She can defend her allies, crowd control with her subclass or spells, heal a bit, and with various ranger plant spells for bonus uses. She’s a real cornerstone for solutions and can help with anything, very well rounded. 

For the one I play, I am a Destroyer and my party member is a Dragon vessel. The sorcerer also has a 3 level dip into vessel. In this party, as the only martials, I think they stand great. They soak up attention and do well in combat, tackling problems before they hound the casters. We have been challenged plenty over time. Thematically, however, there has been some overpowering as the DM has stressed the very high side of the importance to the 3 vessels, notably the other 2 and not me lol. Our stories have a bit more sway and loose ends, not that the other characters don’t, but the baked in conflict of vessel and choosing narratively important entities has gravitated larger plot threads around them

Overall I have had good experiences with playtesting. A big issue with a lot of martials is a lack of versatility and utility. A wizard has endless options, a fighter does not. At my table and the table I sit at, we have stressed giving martials more things to do. My monk has additional ki features, my rogue has a homebrew system someone made called debilitates to spend sneak attack dice on special effects. In a party with just the 2 vessel martial characters, I have not felt anything out of the norm

But that is not what happens at all tables. Some tables make no concessions to martials and like them as they are. And that’s ok! My friends and I have just customized our game a lil with options for them. So mechanically this could pose a problem for your say, champion fighter and berserker barbarian, as a vessel can easily fill those roles and have tools to be something besides a sack of hit points

On the topic of being overpowered in general though, that’s fair, there are some places that could use fine tuning and I have gradually over time. But there will always be slightly unbalanced things

If you introduced the barbarian for the first time, people would call rage overpowered. If you introduced paladin auras and smites, people would call them overpowered. Same for rogue and monk evasion, just avoiding all dex damage on a success. Same if you suddenly introduced spells, especially the crazy 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells

Classes get plenty of defining and strong abilities, for sure, and that is a very fair concern

I’m so glad that you want to play the class! Your friends are not without good reasoning and I think your GM is beyond fair to be unsure of running a homebrew class. It sounds a bit weird to say, but as a person who has been playing for years, I think it would be the best to save your GM the worry and allow them to learn the vibe and flow of the game themselves before introducing something entirely new to the game

I hope this helps! <3

#dnd #vessel class

[cherrymoonvol6]

Hey your analysis are nice. Do you want to share your opinion on common/popular TOH proships? As an also proship-but-not-really-THAT-proship, I'm interested in hearing what you have to say.:)

:D thank you for your nice words!

truthfully the reason why i call myself a proship is that, as a label, it aligns way more with my outlook in media and the way that i consume it. i'm just interested in well-told stories and interesting dynamics, and often that means that i gravitate towards those pairings that deal more with obstacles and conflict. but fandom hates that sort of stuff, mainly because discourse in that wavelength brings the worst out of people every single time. and like, i think it's important to address how certain tropes or execution of characters/narrative beats could correlate to the thing in real life, kinda like the works of youtube channels like pop culture detective or lindsay ellis. i believe there's a lot of value in that and it's interesting to explore and it's been a very helpful tool to understand other perspectives. but also, the moment that people in fandom begin to have discussions about something in media as if it's Real and happening in our world, i just fall asleep immediately lmfao. mostly because like, why would you analyze a piece of media through the only lens that DOESN'T acknowledge this media as a work of fiction? what's the point of media existing then, to begin with?

this is why i've never liked certain huntlow criticism, like willow using her magic to physically push hunter around. IMO willow could stab hunter through the heart and laugh it off and it wouldn't change anything, because hunter is not real. it's pointless to me to be all up in arms about it when he can't be harmed, not like a real person could. the most offensive thing about huntlow is that it's boring as shit and takes up space where luz's story could've been expanded and developed better. and thinking about it like that allows me to meet the story where it's at, instead of getting stuck on little nitpicks that, if they were to be taken out of the story, wouldn't make huntlow a better couple because their problem in the show is different and far bigger. now, you could argue that in certain places, willow's forceful attitudes towards hunter diminish his agency as a character, like how she makes the decision for hunter to come back to the team by yanking him to the courtyard. you could argue that it's dumb that willow is shown to be more powerful and resourceful than hunter when we know hunter is essentially a child soldier and willow just goes to highschool. and then i'd agree with you and i'd be willing to keep talking about it, because we're back to understanding the show in its own terms, and talking about it as it is: a connected thread of narrative beats and characters written by a team of people with the objective of telling a story. also, you could question the ethics of making willow treat hunter that way in a kids show, kinda saying that women being forceful with guys is okay and funny, and i would also be willing to considerate it through that perspective. but it's just the conceptualizing of the least impactful aspects of hunter and willow's dynamic (like, 10 total seconds in the entirety of the show of willow manhandling him for an in-show joke) as a huge problem that feels pointless to me.

all this preamble is to say that a lot of TOH ships in general fail to really catch my attention. this comes in part to my personal preference in ships. i think it's important that all the people involved in a dynamic have agency in order for their interactions to be really interesting. this is why i've never been into empgold, for example, given how their relationship works in canon: belos grooms hunter into a distorted understanding of the outside world, which leads hunter to close himself off and trust belos and belos only. and then that changes in hollow mind, and their dynamic essentially shatters from there. the resolution of hunter rejecting him and choosing his own path, as it happens in TTT, is therefore a sound conclusion. like, there's not really a lot a fucked psycho-sexual stuff or romantic interest can add to their dynamic, IMO. mainly because the moment hunter finds agency in their dynamic, the whole premise of it falls apart. only deviating their characters from their canon identities could make it more interesting, but at that point we're no longer talking about the characters from the show, are we.

at first glance a ship like beluz could be better in that regard, because luz has agency in the dynamic. she rejects belos over and over, and even manages to get the upper hand in a few occasions (see: king's tide). but looking at their interactions in canon, every time they talk to each other is like they're both interacting with a brick wall: luz is dead set in protecting the witches, and belos is dead set in going through with his philosophy. in that sense, that part in hollow mind where belos goes "can't reason with crazy" is a perfect embodiment of how their dynamic goes lol. even the whole angle of luz fearing she's becoming like philip is window dressing, because she's just being paranoid out of the guilt of the selfish decisions she's taken during the show: not at any point does this parallel make any real sense in canon, and then it's swiftly shut down by the end. it makes sense why this works like that in canon, because belos is supposed to be the irredeemable villain, as the ending shows. maybe there's more window for this to be changed though, because of the wittebane story. and obviously as a lunter enthusiast i'm no strange to using these hints and integrating them in the story to make it a better one. but personally, i just don't see the appeal -- and i'm not a belos enthusiast either, like i see other lunterinas tend to be.

from what i know those two are the more popular proships in the show. there's probably other stuff with the collector and king, or the actual incest pairings, but tbf i'm just pretty uninterested in any other ship in the show besides lunter. it's funny though, because i don't even think lunter has the most potential in the show -- i think lumity could be the best one under the right circumstances, if you could even believe me lol. but this involves a fundamental change in the premise of the show along, kinda converting amity into the deuteragonist by making her become the golden guard by the end of S1. it solves the issue of amity having zero connection to the plot, it adds stakes to luz and amity's relationship, also gives amity a lot more agency... i think that would be the best version of a love interest for luz in the show. but also i fear that that would make it so amity overshadows luz in the narrative. like, idk, a lot of stuff would need to be changed there. and that's what makes it hard to truly envision what the best (aka, the most interesting) version of lumity could look like. in lunter's case, we already have a case in canon of luz being the evelyn to hunter's caleb, and if you watched episodes like "hunting palismen" or "hollow mind" with no knowledge of lumity, i'm sure a lot of people could see the potential of their bond becoming romantic in the future. stuff like luz sadly looking back at hunter at the end of HP or hunter taking luz's hand in HM is pure ship fodder tbh and i'm tired of pretending it's not.

i've also toyed with the idea of terra and raine becoming an interesting dynamic in an universe where lilith and raine got condensed into a unique character. i've mentioned this before in my ideas of making eda and raine a better couple (cause good lord they're just as bad as every other couple in the show and i don't understand how people can deem them as "the good one" ?????), and to realize that it's raine's dynamic with terra that would be more appealing to me if those changes were real is very funny to me. there's also a lot that would need to be changed but so, so much untapped potential. however, it's another case where whatever is in canon barely resembles the best version of their dynamic, and it's hard to picture it with how raine and terra actually behave in the show. in that sense, they're very similar to beluz: raine's mind is completely made up at all times, which means that they would never accept terra's vision of the future.

of course, this is all my opinion. like i said, this also comes down to my personal taste in dynamics. like for example i'm personally not into poly ships in media, only for narrative reasons (economic storytelling: the optimal number is always 2). it's hard to find something that strikes that perfect balance between fucked-up and salvageable, and some of my beloveds like jackparse (from the check please comic) or asgoriel (from undertale) are some examples of that. but in true proship fashion, i think any pairing that you could come up in the show is fine. and of course i'm happy to share my opinions (and bless you anon for giving me a reason to yap about my thoughts <3), but they're just my opinions and the way that i personally approach media. you can like any dynamic in the show, platonic or romantic or sexual or whatever, and it's fine. they're not real people. that's the fun of media, that's the point of it: it's a playground to test ideas and make them interact. as long as you're doing that, all is fine by me.

#answered #long post #proship #uhhh i'm unsure how to tag this #guess i'll go with the easiest one #anti huntlow #the whole point of being proship is that you're ok w everything. not necessarily that you're going to ship the most problematique stuff #like i dislike most non-consensual stuff in fics because it icks me. but people can write whatever the f they want about anything and anyon