you bring claudia home with you to norway for christmas.
claudia would never admit it, but you could tell from the grip she had on her hand that she was. the two of you had spent a season and a half in spain together, and this holiday break, you were excited to finally be going back home for christmas. the vacations spent partying at various resorts were nice, but you wanted something a little quieter and more wholesome.
"tu bien?" your spanish had never been good, and so, for the most part you refused to use it. now, though, you knew that claudia needed what little you had. she glanced over at you, obviously a little thrown off by the spanish. claudia's norweigan was nonexistent, so you had gotten your family to agree to english for the weekend you'd be staying with them.
"just nervous," claudia answered. her english was getting much better thanks to now fully living with you. your ability to speak spanish was atrocious, despite being able to keep up with what most people were saying. there were always exceptions, especially whenever someone threw in the a catalonian phrase. aitana and alexia were the worst about it, ona only really doing it to get on your nerves.
"you'll be fine, my parents will love you more than me by the end of the weekend," you told her. claudia doubted it, but she liked knowing that she had your vote of confidence. it didn't matter that claudia felt like she'd mess things up if she knew that she had your vote of confidence.
"right. i am a good girlfriend to you. we love each other very much, and even if they don't like me, they'll see that," claudia reasoned. you were glad to see her thinking rationally. it was amazing sometimes how sound of mind your girlfriend could be whenever she was away from the rest of her chaotic friend group.
…
meeting your parents had gone over extremely well for claudia. she knew that she was nothing like your exes, and that seemed to work well in her favor. your parents approved of the relationship a lot more than they had of your ones in the past. your father had openly told claudia this, and she had been almost insufferable for the rest of the night.
"are you sure that you don't want to stay a couple more days here? i mean, your parents did make up that room for us. it seems a bit like a waste," claudia said. you pinched the bridge of your nose as you got in the car with her. she shifted uncomfortably in the passenger's seat, thrown from her element since you weren't letting her drive you around.
"claudia, i love my parents, but i'd like to, at some point, have some privacy. they were well behaved because you were around, but once they get comfortable, it's all over," you warned her. claudia frowned a little, but understood.
family was very important to the both of you, and claudia had genuinely just wanted to spend some more time with yours. you were all for family time, but a lot of the things you wanted to do on this trip were just for you and claudia. you knew that she had been to a few ski resorts, but she hadn't gotten a good, proper, christmas experience in your books.
the drive to your little rental isn't too far from your parents' place. it's already decorated for christmas, and while it is nice, it feels less like home than where you had just come from. it's very organized, like how claudia had decorated her apartment as a compromise to you the year before.
"this is nice," claudia said as she walked around the little living room. the small house was nice, reminding you of the one you had went to look at in spain. your contract was up soon, and you were hoping to resign with barcelona. claudia was staying, promising you that she had absolutely no intentions of going anywhere else, and that she'd love for the two of you to get a place together whenever you resigned.
"i have a present for you," you said as you wrapped your arms around claudia's waist. she leaned into your embrace, allowing for you to kiss the side of her face several times. reluctantly, you pulled away to get the bag with the coat that you had asked your father to pick up whenever all of you had gone out to the big market.
"it's not christmas yet." claudia looked a little skeptical at the gift bag. you knew exactly what she wanted to be in the bag, and it definitely wasn't it. however, you weren't going to let your girlfriend run around looking like a tourist, nor would you let her stand there freezing because she wasn't properly bundled up.
"well, this is just to make our day trips easier on you," you told her. claudia cracked a small smile at the way you just constantly thought of her like that. you were definitely the caretaker in the relationship, always trying to make sure that claudia was safe, comfortable, and happy. "it looks thin, but i promise that it will keep you warm."
"you got me a coat in blaugrana?" claudia gripped the coat tightly in her hands as she held it up in front of her. you may have ordered the coat early, long before claudia had actually agreed to come with you. claudia smiled as she looked over the coat to take in the little details. you had gotten her number on the side, a little touch that you knew meant the world to her.
"it was supposed to come before we got here, but you have it now," you said nervously. you were twiddling your thumbs behind your back when claudia launched herself into your arms. you caught her, smiling and laughing as she tackled you back onto the couch. the two of you rolled onto the floor, lips connected in a deep kiss.
"i love it."
…
claudia couldn't believe that for the first time, she could go outside without being cold. the two of you had been out at the christmas market for nearly an hour already. you wanted to buy some things, but there were things to do first. claudia smiled as the two of you walked around, not complaining once as you continuously got distracted by different booths.
"thank god there's no line," you sighed in relief as you saw the rink. claudia's eyes followed yours, a slightly nervous look on her face as you tugged her toward the ice rink. "come on, we should take advantage of this, it won't be this empty for long."
"are you sure it's a good idea? i can't skate, and if i get injured, the others would probably kill you," claudia said.
"don't worry, i'll be right here the whole time holding your hand. i won't let you fall," you promised her. claudia hated that her trust in you dissolved any of the protests that had been building up inside of her.
once you both had your skates on, claudia took your hand and led you onto the ice. you moved slowly, allowing claudia to get a feel for it. she didn't really ever get too comfortable, so you only had her do a couple of laps. she took her skates back and sat on the side, content to watch you do your thing.
it was a little known fact, but you hadn't started out playing soccer. that had always been a bit of a side thing, even as you had gotten your youth team callups for your country. your first love had been figure skating, but there had always been someone better than you. it had destroyed you to always feel like you were second best, and so, your parents had steered you towards soccer, which had boosted your confidence as you grew into your teenage years.
being on the ice again after so long felt freeing. you danced along to the music, unaware of the way claudia watched you. she hadn't gotten to see you so unapologetically invested in something ever. you were completely lost in yourself, and claudia felt like she was falling even further in love with you. it should have scared her, but she had been feeling this way throughout the entire trip.
it was nearly an hour later whenever you finally got off of the ice. you'd be feeling it later, but for the time being, you were still buzzing. claudia seemed a little bit more clingy than normal as the two of you did a bit of shopping, but you didn't mind it. you loved it whenever claudia would hold onto your hand and lean into your side, randomly pressing little kisses to your cheek or jaw.
"wait! we have to get hot chocolate!" claudia chuckled as she watched you run off towards another booth. the two of you had spent most of your day out and about in town, and now both of you were more than ready to go home. claudia knew that you hated being out of the house for so long like this, so she was a bit surprised when you ended up being the one to make constant stops on the way out.
"why did you only get one cup?" claudia asked as you returned. you opened up the little mouth spot on the top and took a sip of it.
"because we're sharing it," you told her. claudia took the offered drink, eyes widening a bit in surprise. this wasn't her first time having hot chocolate, but this tasted different. "i used to get it every single year from the same booth because it's simply the best i've ever had."
"i want my own," claudia told you.
"tomorrow, we'll come back, i promise." you pressed a kiss to the top of her head as you dragged her towards the car. the two of you made your way out, not stopping anywhere else. you took a couple more drinks from the hot chocolate before you just gave the rest to claudia, who sipped on it happily from the passenger's seat.
"any more plans for the day?" claudia asked you.
"the christmas programs start soon, so we'll probably watch those and drink some wine. i'll warm up the leftovers my mom gave us for dinner, and then i say that we call it a night," you told her. claudia liked the sound of that, humming in approval as she shifted in her seat slightly. "all of this running around has made me very cuddle deprived, so you'll have to fix that."
"are you deprived of anything else?" claudia asked as she placed her hand on your thigh. the two of you shared a knowing look, one that claudia assumed meant she'd be getting lucky as soon as the two of you got back to the rental. however, much to her dismay, you did make her sit through all of the christmas specials that played that night before you even let her have more than a couple of very quick kisses.
The Metatron’s coffee (oat milk latte with unknown amount of almond syrup), as well as the whole business about it, is symbolic, I think most fans have agreed on that. It seems to me not only the drink itself is important, but the ceremony of offering and accepting/turning down a drink means a lot as well. When I think of it something archaic comes to mind: accepting a drink creates a connection and builds trust between people, and such exchanges have been symbolic in many cultures for thousands of years.
I’m not very good at drawing conclusions, but I would like to sum up all the cases when drinks are offered in season 2. So that someone more analytical than myself might have clever ideas. And I love making lists, they give an illusion of some control over this complicated narrative.
Aziraphale offers Jim some gross matter hot chocolate. Everyone remembers similar moments in s1, right? Only this time Gabriel/Jim accepts, and it changes him, becomes an important element of his new personality.
Nina offers Maggie some wine and she turns it down in the weirdest way possible. ‘No judgement’ is already a judgement!
In the Job minisode Crowley offers Aziraphale wine and he turns it down.
Aziraphale offers Muriel a ‘cuppertea’, and they do the most remarkable thing: they neither accept, not turn it down. They find a third way to go about it, and I absolutely love it. This is yet another small detail about Muriel which makes them so special and sets them apart from everyone - humans, angels, demons.
The barman in the Resurrectionist asks what Aziraphale will be drinking, and he doesn’t order anything. Baffles me every time, it's so not in his character and completely illogical in this situation. Everything is wrong and upside down in this episode.
I mean, even Gabriel had enough wits to BUY drinks in the pub. Obviously later he tells Beelzebub ‘You don’t actually have to consume it’, so it makes the drinks accepted but not taken - almost like Muriel's.
Crowley makes hot chocolate for Jim
The ’smitten’ conversation at Justine’s. Aziraphale turns Crowley’s wine down, AGAIN
Metatron’s coffee
May have missed something, but even like this it seems a lot.
Not sure about the scene with Crowley and laudanum, it it definitely meaningful, but there was no offer. Another special case is Jim making his own hot chocolate. Precious 15 seconds of screen time are wasted devoted to an extremely informative scene where Jim makes the drink, drinks it and says ‘Ah!’. Whatever for?
I'm like, kind of obsessed with them lmao. While I've drawn Vox quite a lot (I've been working on a Vox animation thing over the last month-ish) I hadn't done much of anything when it came to Val and Vel. I knew I'd want to do something with them all later on, but I wanted to get a good understanding of their designs, shape language, and the differences between the three of them so I can play a lot more when it comes to doing them (heh) in my own style.
So, since I was most familiar (and most obsessed with out of the three lol), I started with Vox :3
While I've been working on the animation project, it had kind of been an 'adjust-as-I-go'/'let's-bullshit-this' process, rather than doing the work of understanding why certain things looked more correct than others, so I still learned a LOT from this one study. (Plus the scene makes me wheeze and I happily took the excuse to use that moment as his study reference haha)
Obviously Val is... an asshole, to really undersell it. But this is hell, his character is interesting and his design is immaculate. I think I had the most fun with studying him tbh. Without his santa wings-coat he- *coughs* - yeah. Uh. Good design. I can actually believe that Angel fell for him at one point. Manipulative bastard - sorry tangents. ANYWAY! XD
VERY fun to draw, and a very good balance within these designs of showing off character attributes but also not taking themselves too seriously (The HATS these boys wear! *wheeze* did Velvette just give up fighting them on it? I've gotta know haha)
I missed color too much by this point to make them all match perfectly, and frankly - trying to draw canon Velvette without hue differentiation is AWFUL she has so many details and overlapping elements. If I ever have to draw Vel from 1x03 again I might cry.
Something about her 1x03 look actually makes me feel viseral irritation just by seeing it (like, even b4 I made myself draw it), but then I see her in 1x08 and I wanna draw her forever???? She's so fucking cool? So fucking cute????? The duality of man ig lmao
Anyway, the TLDR is that actually being conscious of how things are represented when drawing a character can lead to surprisingly immense insight... I feel like I not only understand so much more about how to represent their characters, but also a much firmer grasp about how the shape language in the show works.
These designs are immaculate and I had so much fun. I actually have a lot more I could say about this, but my period came today and I'm tired and this post is already massive so I'll leave things here for now! But yeah! Hopefully more Vee's in the future bc I love them!
Referring to your Chase post: Not enough people talk about how Chase snapped at the IRIS doctor. Like I know it was probably withdrawl getting to him but also, Chase can be scary and intimidating when he needs to be. I don’t think we as a community talk about that enough…
Oh yeah no, Chase has the potential to be a really fucking terrifying if he wanted to be. The only reason he isn't is because I think he doesn't want to be scary, especially since everyone around him keeps treating him like he's some kind of threat when he isn't.
Kinda off topic but not really, it's sorta why I don't really buy the "Chase is Anti" theory?? Like it's a good theory and I definitely find it fun to play around with it, but I don't think it's that simple in a way.
Unless there's something about Anti we're unaware of I just don't think Chase would ever actively choose to go down the road of deliberately hurting people. He's seen and felt what it does to someone to lose everything why would he actively choose to do that to others (unless there's an element of he doesn't choose it that it's something he's unable to control then that's obviously a different story).
Chase finally having enough with the doctors and snapping at them- him pushing and shoving and generally causing them a hard time when they're physically restraining them, to me reads as someone who's currently in survival mode, i think he's acting that way because he's been pushed by these people to his limit and he knows that they're doing it on purpose. And at that point I think he just lost the energy to even pretend to be civil
Hey you said on march 24 you have an au of trixie and dash becoming celestia and luna and then never elaborated. Can you. Please.
Tagging @sighlentknight since they also asked. Sorry it took ao long, got distracted by dishonored au. Anyway
I'm playing a bit fast and lose with the canon timeline in this au cause let's face it the canon timeline is a mess and i'm just trying to have fun here.
The AU starts with Rainbow and Trixie being sent back in time. How, I don't know, it's not super important, maybe a messed up magical experiment, maybe Discord, maybe a weird phenomenon, anything goes. Point is that they're sent 1400 years back in time, to the Reign of Discord.
After spending a while bickering over who's fault this is (they do a lot of bickering, not gonna mention it every time so just assume they're always bickering), they try to set out and find their way home, weirded out at the chaos wastes they've ended up in. Eventuallu, they run into a group of important figures, either the founders or the pillars of Equestria, the specifics don't matter, but this is how they learn that they've ended up back in time.
Obviously freaking out, they eventually calm down enough to get the lay of the land and explain what's going on to the locals. They figure that finding Celestia and Luna would be the best shot at getting back home but weirdly none of the locals have ever heard of Celly and Lulu. Still, it's the reign of Discord so they gotta be around somewhere, and Rainbow happens to know that they're gonna get the elements of harmony from the Tree of Harmony, so just go there, wait for them, be home in time for dinner, no problem. Trixie is a bit doubtful of her confidence but hey, not like she has a better idea.
What follows is an epic quest as they make their way across the Chaos or Discord's reign with the help of locals, which would take at least another full post to explain so I'm gonna skip most of it. Point is, Rainbow and Trixie get some time to both bond and get really frustrated because finding Everfree is next to impossible when the world is all topsy turvy and directions don't make sense.
They eventually make it though, finding the cave with the Tree untouched by Chaos. Great, just gotta bunker down and wait for Celestia and Luna to show up, what could go wrong?
A lot, as it turns out. When they approach the tree, things happen. Maybe it senses potential in them, maybe its because they're time travelers and thus rather unusual, or maybe it's just cause theyre the first ponies who've made it this far and the Tree is low on options. Either way, the world is wildly out of balance and someone are needed to fix it and these two are as good as any.
In a bright light, Rainbow Dash and Trixie are ascended to alicornhood, their cutie marks changed into something more appropriate for the chosen guardians of Equestria's balance; a sun for Rainbow and a moon for Trixie.
Cue them freaking out for several hours because What The Fuck!?!?!
No time for that though because something like this has not gone unnotices by Discord. In a flash, he appears, curious about the two embodiments of Harmony in front of him. They're young so he could defeat them easily, but where's the fun in that? Instead, he wants to play with them a bit, taking their companions hostage so they'll play along.
This goes about as well as you could expect, Rainbow and Trixie may be confused and freaking out but neither take well to having their friends threatened. They confront Discord and, not really knowing what they're doing, use the Elements on him, ending his reign.
In the aftermath, they find themselves with a lot of ponies bowing to them, both strangers and ponies they met and helped out during their quest. Soon, it is pretty clear that they are being declared rulers of Equestria despite their objections. The people will accept no one else.
At the crowning, they are given regnal names. In a way, they chose them themselves. After all, they had both been quite insistant that Discord would be defeated by alicorn princesses named Celestia and Luna.
Over the years, they grow into their roles. Rainbow Dash's coat and mane is bleached by the sun she has found herself raising every morning, while the opposite happens to Trixie since she spends most of her time at night. Her eyes and magic color also changes as a result of her new magic. They both get into the flow of ruling a nation.
Throughout it, they of course don't give up on returning home, but experiment after experiment amount to nothing.
With time, their relationship also degrades. I mean, not like it's ever been good, I mentioned how they spend most of their time bickering, but with Discord defeated and them acclimating to their new situation, they no longer have more pressing issues distracting them from how much they REALLY don't get along. Trixie and Rainbow are hardly the most compatible of ponies in the best circumstances, and now imagine that but upped by hundreds of years. The only reason it doesn't happen sooner is because stuff like Sombra and Tirek pop up to distract them.
But Nightmare Moon does eventually happen. Afterward, Rainbow slips more and more into the Celestia persona. It's still a mask, something she puts on because she feels she has to, but without Trixie, there aren't a lot of ponies around who see her as anything other than the immortal dignified deity, so she spends more time being Celestia than she spends being Rainbow.
Eventually, the day she has marked on her calendar comes around, and she sees a huge rainbow spread across Equestria. It's fun seeing it from the outside, she so rarely has the chance to do it herself nowadays.
After 1500 years of life, tutoring a filly version of one of her best friends is still the weirdest thing she's been through.
It hurts seeing the mane six get together and be friends. She's happy for them, of course, but seeing her younger self laugh and be happy is a painful reminder that she will never be that pony again, her friends can never really see her as one of them again because even if she's still Rainbow Dash, she's also an immortal god empress and thats a rather big hurdle to overcome in a relationship.
With Trixie back at least, she starts letting the Celestia mask slip. Poor Twilight gets a heart attack first time she hears her mentor call Luna a bitch for taking the last slice of cake. With someone around who actually knows her as Rainbow and not Celestia, she can finally be her authentic self again, the mask becomes less something she wears all the time and more something she just puts on for court and lets slip in private. Those who know her are shocked at the change, but she seems happier than anyone has known her to have been for centuries.
She both dreads and looks forward to the day Twilight visits to tell her that Rainbow and Trixie have vanished. On one hoof, getting to finally drop the mask entirely and reveal who she is will be such a relief. On the other, how do you explain that their friend is both gone forever and standing in front of them?
Meanwhile Trixie has to be held back from having a threeway with her past self and Starlight.
Hello hello again! It's good to have you back for a little while! Unfortunately there is a lot of infighting in the critical sphere right now and it's not very fun to follow. And worse still Lily is as smug as ever. People are too invested in who ripped off what, who's disrespecting this or that, they should just be having fun at Lily's expense. That's what Saiscribbles has done, and you can tell how effective it is because Lily has tried every strategy in the book to prove how not mad she is.
You know what?
I think I would like to poke fun at the whole thing. I mean, it's sounds like she's gotten a bit ridiculous since I've been gone. (Ridiculous sounds like an understatement, thought.)
I've done serious and it's exhausting. You can only take her serious for so long before you realize she doesn't really even know or believe what she's saying.
As for the fighting, well... It's a shame, but let's try to focus on what's at the core of this blog: Gossiping about Lily.
...But I do have one thing I want to get off my chest, so I will mention it here and then move on. It is under the read bar just so those who don't care can ignore it.
I do have one thing to say about the drama, and that's about Ethel.
They are a liar liar pants on fire.
Seriously, I watched Evangeline Skovs video, which was one of the better coverages on the subject and there was no plagiarism. Not even of me, and I was a source!
Never mind that fact that Ethel legit lied about my blog in their rebuttal, claiming that Levi couldn't find anything on my blog about their video, or glade, so Evangeline was lying.
Their proof? Levi used the search bar, used the word minor and glade, and nothing came up except one post...
Fun fact: I'm bad at tagging things, and my search bar is kind of useless because of that.
(Side note: why would I use glade's name? Why would I want to draw attention to someone who I assumed wanted to be left alone? I'm pretty sure that was made clear in the video.)
Anyway, if you used my archive you could easily find TONES of posts from me talking about the video in question with details.
Here's one that Ethel conveniently left out:
And you know what's hilarious about that? They reblogged this take to try and rebuke it on their tumblr. (That they have long since abandoned.)
I decided to ignore it, because obviously I'm not going to try and get in a fight with them, and Ethel was so mad by that they messaged me directly to try and threaten me with legal jargon.
So I blocked them.
But hey, since I'll probably never bother with this again, here are the messages. Enjoy old drama from like...2 years ago:
Image text here:
[Okay, I've put this off for as long as possible, but please, read this case study as right now you are parroting harmful legal advice. Victim testimony not only constitutes evidence, but can be sufficient evidence to convict, a fact that was tested in Commonwealth v Gustavo Gonzalez Santos in Massachusetts.
I’ll highlight two relevant sections in case you don’t have the time to read the entire thing: “The defendant's sole argument on appeal is that the evidence was not sufficient to support his convictions. The defendant asserts that "there were no witnesses to the alleged assaults," "no physical evidence," "no medical or forensic evidence," and "no expert testimony." He argues that "there was absolutely no conclusive evidence presented at trial that suggested the [d]efendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."” And: “Here, the victim testified to facts that constituted each element of the charged offenses. Her testimony, which the jury found to be credible, was sufficient, standing alone, to support a finding beyond a reasonable doubt as to each of the convictions. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Lawrence, 68 Mass. App. Ct. 103, 104 (2007)
("The victim's testimony was sufficient evidence of [indecent assault and battery on a child under age fourteen]"); Commonwealth v. Gonsalves, 23 Mass. App. Ct. 184, 185 (1986) ("The victim's account of what the defendant did to him in the apartment was sufficient to overcome the defendant's motion for a required finding of not guilty of rape"). The idea that long infected our legal system that the victim's testimony in sexual assault and rape cases is less credible than the testimony of victims in cases involving other types of crimes -- an idea that reflected nothing more than sexism and an unwillingness on the part of our courts to treat sexual crimes as the gravely serious matter that they are -- has been rejected both by statute and by common law.”
When you and others continue to parrot the myth that victim testimony does not constitute as valid evidence, you are harming victims of rape and abuse. This is straight up rape culture and, since I’m pushing back any video coverage on the matter until I’ve finished dealing with Lily because I don’t want to muddle things, I need you to stop promoting falsehoods. We have legal members on our team who have passed the bar, Patchie does not, Opal does not, and neither does You Can Eat Hearts. You are causing unnecessary harm to victims by breathing life into myths constructed by rape culture. To be clear, I am not asking for your denouncement of certain people, just for you to please, stop publishing bad legal takes.
This is also the case in Canada, if you're wondering - https://www.accused.ca/evidence.htm
Sorry, I just realized I didn't give you the US case study. Here it is - http://masscases.com/cases/app/100/100massappct1.html#:~:text=The%20jury%20found%20the%20defendant,We%20affirm. ]
Oct 30, 2022 9:16 AM
Whew, you have no idea how long I wanted to spill this tea.
Alright, I've said what I've wanted to say on this topic. I'm now going to focus on laughing at Lily and her horrible incest stories.
All I'm here to say (for now) is that if this was any
other
sect
nobody would be assuming that they would obviously have to be tricked by their Sect Leader
to die for him
You never hear that even thrown out there as a possibility for any other sect. Isn't it just kind if assumed that a Sect's disciples will die for their leader? But since it's Su She nah couldn't be the case.
No matter that the standard set up like one chapter ago is that if you've got secret evil elements to your song you have to put spiritual power into those elements specifically nah the Moling Su disciples were tricked.
Or that if they were taught wrong in the first place they'd have been playing a song to seal their own power every time they fought corpses, which for a 'rising sect' must be a lot of times, and would absolutely have killed them a long time ago. Like why would Su She even do that, this wasn't exactly a ten year plan. idk how you reconcile that, that's like actually absurd.
Honestly how do they even accidentally lock up their own spiritual power when they need the spiritual power to lock up everyone else's spiritual power?
(Oops I accidentally said a lot oh no)
(good for them getting away with it I hope Moling Su prospers in the years to come)
I'll forever be upset about how Elemental (2023 Pixar movie) flopped so hard, and it's not even its fault.
Let's be real, going against Across the Spiderverse would be a deathblow for any animated movie, but the marketing team REALLY didn't help matters. Not only did the trailers barely show up (to the point my friends DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT EXISTED), the trailers also did such a poor job representing its actual story.
A lot of people were turned off by the "unoriginal premise" as well as the "forbidden romance", and I can't even blame them but no!!! The story is so much more than just "ooo they can't fall in love because they're (gasp) FIRE AND WATER?!?!?!?" and "what if (insert concept) has emotions but elements this time"!!!!!
At the heart of it all is a personal immigrant story. A story about two fire people moving to another place in order to start a new and hopefully better life (aka literally immigrants). A story about their daughter who feels in debt to them for making the sacrificd to leave their home. A story about her feeling like she'll have to sacrifice her whole life and her dreams in order to repay them and make them happy.
Not to mention how Asian-coded it is!!! The director, Peter Sohn, is clearly writing from his perspective as a Korean-American immigrant, and as an Asian immigrant, I resonated so unbelievably hard with Ember's story. It really felt like the movie held up a mirror in front of me. I've never felt this seen in a movie before this one.
And it feels so good!!! I'm so sad that a lot of people will be missing it out because the marketing team did such a terrible job at their literal jobs. If more people gave it a chance, they'll likely find a story that truly made them feel heard.
Also the romance is really cute. Like I don't typically seek out romance stories, but damn that was good food, that was good fluff. I think it's also a great allegory for interracial couples, but I'm not in an interracial relationship, so I won't overstep too much!
Long story short, if you're unsure on whether you really want to see this movie or not, hear it from me who saw it twice:
honestly RE: censorship has produced some very appealing queer coded relationships, I think part of the problem is that like. Straight relationships often don't compel me, yeah? And part of it is that I frankly, don't believe a fair amount of these characters are in love. The art contains social conventions so you'll assume they're in love. And if you're unaware of it and buy into those conventions, you never notice a problem (unless they're using the conventions that give female characters no depth. People today are somewhat more aware of that). There's a level of laziness to the way so many straight relationships are written.
Many queer censored relationships can't engage those assumptions because straight people don't understand something is gay until it's bedazzled in rainbow rhinestones, and even then some of them have doubts, so (usually) an artist must put effort in to make you think there's something there. There (usually) must be legitimate connection. And because they're censored, they continually cannot rely on anything too lazy to keep interest. They also can't try to deliver payoff that isn't ready (because they're rarely allowed to deliver payoff, if ever). They can't squash the appeal of a relationship by not knowing how to write these characters in a steady relationship to the point where you hate it.
You basically end up getting a (sometimes years long) build of potential and genuine connections, without a satisfying resolution- which sucks, but it also can be very compelling. The inability to say I love you outright means the characters must say it in other ways that tend to be more emotionally impactful- such as holding out a human heart to each other, selfless and hopeless sacrifices, pulling you out of hell, etc. You could argue these moments are an example of "showing not telling" even.
But as we move into more mainstream queer art I feel like some people are starting to use the same conventions I find so lazy and boring in depicting straight relationships. Because it's a Gay Piece of Media you know there will probably be a gay relationship, so you do come in with assumptions that the creators can play off of more efficiently than otherwise. You can miss at establishing the connection. You can rush the payoff. You can write the chase well but fail in writing the domestic. You can tell me these characters are in love without me buying in and believing it because you didn't really give me much to believe in.
follows a girl who’s seen as cursed because of her recently hanged notorious pirate queen mother, and runs away to the navy where nobody will recognise her
and her half-sister who’s desperate to find her before she’s arrested for using a fake name, to bring her home to their dying father & save the family business
both get on the bad side of some pirates and have to brave storms to find each other
i dont think i made this clear in the prev post but WHAT I WAS GETTING AT WAS i think toby specifically wants players to get attached to ralsei and make choices playing into that so that the inevitable reveal of our distinction from kris and their own opinions and feelings and everything hits even harder by sort of slapping you in the face and being like HEY BUDDY. THEY DONT WANT THIS. and also a slap in the face to ralsei too who i again would like to say is parasocial asf with us and needs to go to video game therapy :heart:
my biggest problem with a people’s history of the french revolution by eric hazan is that he keeps like. implying that lafayette defected to the enemy (meaning Austria and Prussia), but like. mf was immediately arrested bc he was seen as the cause of the revolution. the only people who saw him as a conservative were in france
remember seeing a post on here that was like “best wishes and xy are both really flawed seasons but they mirror each other on what exactly made them flawed, as best wishes relied too much in an overarching story that ended up being canceled and then rearranged bc they didnt know about bw2, while xy opted to not have a myth arc at all which made its base season really boring” and idk abt the xy half there, ill see once im there, but damn yeah as of rn it holds up
i do think it’s perfectly fun and sexy when, for whatever reason, be it serialized canon that goes off in a wildly divergent direction after you’ve had a big chunk of extrapolated-upon status quo (actual plays are very susceptible to this), too much time between new content where fandom developed its own tropes and tumors, or just outgrowing a piece of media (and/or its quality of representation) before you’re done making content inspired by it, fan creators DO end up exporting their basically-an-oc to their own webcomic or oc universe or whatever