#so for me it's like the fact that I'm read as a woman is relevant but not as relevant as my neurotype

[shapelytimber]

Wdym it's been 5 months ? Anyway, here is the end of my little comic serie about this niche Skyrim mod

*Insert me 100%ing the 4th arc of the hit mod 'vigilant' for the elder scrolls V Skyrim with little difficulty having a grand ol' time*

I messed up my files so Teldryn divorced me while I was away ckgkckkc And you know what good for him, he got a cottage and a kid out of it

[PART 1] - [PART 2] - [PART 3]

[COMMISSIONS]

If you're interested in my thoughts about this mod, you can read that below (it's fucking long so I'm sparing you all just here for the art to have to scroll through all that) vvv

A fantastic mod for sure ! I had so much fun, the voice acting was (for the most part) quite impressive, the music !!!!!!!!! Excuse me who gave this mod permission to have this fucking banger of an ost ???? Loved the new environnements, and there was so much of them !! Especially in act 4, I felt that all the locations had a unique and gorgeous aesthetic (frankly it was the most fun I had doing dungeons in skyrim... the bar is on the floor tho- if I ever see another nordic tomb or draugr I'll not be responsible for my actions), and fucking impressive mise en scene.

And the fights were so fun ??? In skyrim ?? Incredible.

But I still have some problems with it- first let's get the elephant out of the room : act 1 and 2... Boy oh boy were they not so great- I get that the begining is a slow burn to 1) get to know the vigilants of stendar, and 2) drive home the fact that the vigilants are quite incompetent and stendar hates them. Ok this is cool ! And they definetly were some highlights, like with the story of the three kajiits (I'm not good with remembering names (forshadowing for later-)), the ending of act 1, and uuuuuuuhhhh underground windhelm looked sick in act 2 !

But the quests in general were not very fun, at least not fun enough to distract me from the parts of the scenario I understood- which were kind of sexist and not that interesting (the sexism doesn't get better with act 3 and 4 but at least I'm having fun)- like I don't expect great women characters, this is still a tes mod, and it definitly doesn't get to "the man writting this is a fucking creep and I'm not playing this any longer" territory... But all the women we interact with are either : prostitutes, mothers/wives, or abuse(it's nearly always rape) victims- like I don't really mind that the first quest is to track down a vampire prostitute who propose to show me her sweetrolls, but it gets pretty tiresome after a while (and kinda ridiculous, like do all the big musley men I'm fighting in act 4 have to angst about their wives ? Can't a big musley woman angst about her partner too...). The worst one is Lamae Bal. From the charadesign, to the dialogues with her, to her story- hated that.

And also we don't have much dialogue choices and ways to influence the story in these 2 (3) first acts. Which I understand like this is a lot of work for fan content, but it's such a stark contrast to act 4 it's a bit jaring.

But speaking of the story... I get this is a very thoughtful and well researched story. A lot of work reading the tes wiki as been done by the author... But I, on the other hand, did not read the entire extended lore wiki- and I admit I was not understanding any of it during Act 4. Like I got a general idea, and the epic, dramatic and emotional moments were still impactful ! But I really don't think the author did a great job getting the story accross, and the more the mod progress, the more this problem becomes relevant. The recuring problem of tes games is that they have really deep interesting lore that we rarely get to see in the games ; the problem of this mod is that we get presented with this lore as if we already knew it.

And after watching an explaination of the story, it's such a shame because it's really good !! And well written ! But I don't think I should need a youtube video to understand it...

Also omfg I am not good with names mod please- everything has like 2-3 different weird fantasy names (but it's never explained it's the same thing, and what the thing is is never explained-), there is a billion men characters with weird ass long names, and the mod expects me to remember them all 5-6 hours after they got killed ??? I don't remember them 5 seconds after I'm done talking to them-

But I had fun playing it, and that's what matters <3 and I'll never get other twink molag bal <3

Also, my mage dragonborn is even more op now omg I can summon an army of 8ft musle men + molag bal + Jyggalag ??? The only fight I had a bit of trouble with was Pelinal's, the rest got obliterated easily (by Pelinal) kgkgkfjfifb

I'll probably need to nerf Elaris at some point in the future-

#I had a lot more comics planned to cover act 4 but none of them where really good or interesting or funny kfjgjfjf #so you just get the divorce ending that made me laught so hard when I was playing #elaris #altmer dragonborn #dragonborn oc #teldryn sero #tes #the elder scrolls #skyrim #skyrim fanart #skyrim mods #skyrim vigilant #my dragonborn #oc #altmer oc #vigilant of stendarr #art #my art #digital art #comic page #web comic #fanart #tes fanart #teldryn x dragonborn #cw divorce

[lovemyromance]

Azriel, the "entitled incel" of the Bat Boys

So I started laughing my head off as soon as I typed the title for this post. Because it's honestly so, so ridiculous this is even an argument people are using against Elriel.

Let's take a quick trip down memory lane, because people are calling Azriel entitled because of the following excerpt:

This man, is so desperately obsessed with Elain, that he is questioning his religion, their GOD (The Cauldron) on why the woman he loves was given to another. He is tortured over it, losing sleep thinking about it.

How does that scream entitlement? Is it because he says the "third sister was given to another"? Because Rhys assumes "You believe you deserve to be her mate?"

Azriel did not even consider the possibility of a future with Elain because she already has a mate. Not because he's only lusting after her, but because he is convinced that he will not get the woman he loves. He has such low self-esteem and image issues that he doesn't think himself worthy of even touching her skin, and you think he feels entitled to her?

Or is it the fact that you decided he just wants a mate? Nowhere in this bonus chapter does Azriel say he just wants a mate, btw, so not sure where that argument came from. Also, if Azriel just wanted a mate, why tf would he go for the only mated female in his proximity?

Wouldn't he, I dunno, latch onto any available single lady in Velaris over the mated and now forbidden Elain Archeron? I believe a relevant analogy is:

If I had a group of friends I hung out with, all consisting of married couples, basically, and I was the lone single friend. OF COURSE I WANT WHAT THEY HAVE AND OF COURSE I WANT TO BE MARRIED TOO? But....even if I wanted these things so desperately, my first choice for love would not be the married guy in my friend group, whose wife lives far away. Like, no. That's not who I'm going for first, or second, or ever, even.

So then why is Az only showing feelings for Elain? He's had sexual relationships before, why can't he just find someone else, why is he still obsessed with Elain?

Also, the incel thing is such a joke. Yes, he has romantic, sexual thoughts about Elain. And that somehow...makes him disgusting and toxic?

Are we just choosing to ignore Rhys's thoughts about Feyre? How these two mfs nearly risked their lives from a trauma-bargain because they were too horny to show enough self-restraint to not f*ck in the goddamn sky?? Those poor pedestrians of Velaris.

Are we just choosing to ignore Cassian's thoughts about Nesta? Like literally every other sentence from his POV was about her thin frame and massive tits, for ffs. He was absolutely chafing for her 99% of the day. But no one had a problem with that?

Cassian even stated he's jealous of Rhys, what Rhys has with Feyre, their bond. But we just decided to ignore that little tidbit too, huh?

And I know this entire argument is just performative. Because if Azriel had shown any even mildly romantic thoughts about another *ahem* character, that side would be screaming from the rooftops in joy. That's just a guess though, given how much they reacted from just platonic banter and something about sparky glow glow warmth in the bonus chapter. If you give a mouse a cookie, I guess.

Either way, I actually read the books, so Elriel is the only answer for me.

I mean, I thought it was obvious.

#elriel #elain #pro elain #elain x azriel #elain archeron #azriel #acotar

[tkdrawz]

Some of the TMNT fandom (and, frankly, society) really ain't shit.🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️

[From left to right: Princess Fiona (Ogress Form) (Shrek) Eep (The Croods) Gloria (Madagascar) Dijonay Jones (The Proud Family) Luisa Madrigal (Encanto) April O'Neil (TMNT Mutant Mayhem)]

These ladies are female protagonists in their respective franchises. All of them have different body types that contrast from the default thin, petite body type that we're used to seeing. And all of them are BEAUTIFUL! 💖

Three of these ladies became love interests that ended up in healthy relationships with partners who love them for who they are. Also, four of them are women of color. (idk if Fiona counts. While she is green, she started off white so... 50/50? 🤷🏾‍♀️) That part is especially relevant to this post because Twitter got me EFFED UP. I'M ON ONE, ON TWO, ON THREE TODAY!

So the concept art of Mutant Mayhem's April O'Neil was revealed by James A. Castillo, an artist who worked on the movie.

And people are DRAGGING HIM LEFT AND RIGHT! Being disrespectful to both him and April's design. I can tell you right now not even a third of those quotes aren't positive! There is a vast difference between criticism and insults:

💛"I do not like this design. Besides the color yellow and her red/ginger hair, she simply doesn't read as April O'Neil." That's criticism. This expresses disproval of the design without any vulgarities.

💔"Rethink your entire career. "Artist" my ass! This shit is garbage! She looks like she sleeps in a van and smokes so much weed she reeks of it. You failed." That's disrespect. And I don't think I need to tell you why.

Normally, I tend not to discuss such sensitive topics on my blog (religion, politics, discrimination of ANY kind, etc.) for my sanity and out of respect for others with opposing views. But today, I will make an exception.

I would love to include Luisa, who alongside April was mocked and disrespected heavily for her appearance, but I wanted to speak on this matter from the perspective of a plus-sized African American woman. Luisa comes from an completely different background whose culture and standards I am not entirely familiar with. I can't speak on what I don't know. Respectfully.💜

In the black community, women are faced with colorism, texturism, constant comparison, and body image negativity on a daily basis. And a good amount of it comes from our own community! Our shade, our 4C hair, our weight, our attractiveness, our lifestyle! It's brutal out here!😭😭😭

However, in terms of media a plus-sized black girl is seen as ghetto, loud, and undesirable with a side of attitude. The best example I can think of is Dijonay from The Proud Family.

This is the show I grew up on! The theme song, the characters, the Suga Mama, ICONIC! I love Dijonay to pieces, but as I grew up I realize that she was, in some aspects, a negative portrayal. She was always chasing instead of being "the chase". She was a horrible friend to Penny. And she sucumbed to a lot of negative stereotypes with barely any redeeming qualities. And this was very disheartening considering that she was the darkest one in the group. And the heaviest. And as a little chubby wubby in the 2000s with THIS as my representation? I have to give the writers a bit of the side eye. Was she any better in The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder? To that I would say.... meh. I love her in the reboot, but they could do so much more with her in my opinion. I still haven't seen them address the issue of colorism. 👀

While she is not a human, Gloria is voiced by a black woman (Jada Pinkett Smith) and imitates the sass of a black woman so... yeah. She's included. Gloria was persued by two men. One was the suave, flexing hippo Motto Motto. And the other was her friend/neighbor from her childhood Melman. She chose the latter for good reason of course. Now in Madagascar, Gloria wasn't mocked or criticized for her weight. In fact, hippos are known for their weight. However, she was seemingly fetishized for it. By Motto Motto to be exact. And being fetishized is NOT better than being ridiculed.

Unlike Dijonay, April was the chase, a love interest for Leonardo. I admit, I was SHOCKED that she was gonna be persued. Let alone that the writers wanted to try another Turtle/April pairing considering how April and Donnie went...😬. Now her backlash was on a completely different level. One that I wasn't even prepared for....

While Gloria and Dijonay are original characters, Mutant Mayhem's April O'Neil is a different interpretation of the character that has existed since the 80's. The same can be said for the Turtles, Splinter, literally everybody else! Every show and movie for that matter! And with every story, she changes. Design, motivation, relationships/dynamics, even race as of lately. All of it changes. And change isn't bad. In my opinion, it keeps things fresh and interesting instead of spoon feeding us the same story and concepts over and over again. Change challenges us. Change motivates us. However, some people don't like change nor want to accept it and adjust. And that's life. That's just the way it is. But change is necessary in order to progress.

She wasn't bad in the movie AT ALL. I absolutely adored her! And the dynamic between her and Leo wasn't akward or uncomfortable at all. It was handled really well. Ayo Ediberi did an incredible job bringing her to life! (GOD, I loved her in The Bear! Shameless plug lol)

That being said, I understand some of the sensitivity that fans have when a character changes so drastically you can barely recongnize them anymore beyond the bare minimun. (See also Sonic Boom's Knuckles) But the blatant discrimination, rude comments, and the boldness, THE AUDACITY, that some of these nasty Twitter fingers with their dirty fingernails have to type such disrespect to the artist that I can't repeat up here was wild af. Like, I can't believe we have to share a planet with some of them! Uggh!😷(But that's Twitter 24/7 so what's new?) Her and Rise April don't deserve the hate they get. You don't have to like them. Art is subjective. But to insult and harrass the artists and the people who look like the characters, then mask it under the umbrella of "tHaTs mY oPiNiOn" is 🐱. I said what I said. And I will say that shit again.

Also, just because she's black doesn't mean we can't have another white April O'Neil ever again. We know goodness well they could make another iteration of TMNT and make her white if they wanted to. Heck, I encourage them to explore other races and cultures too! New York is full of them! And it's not like all the other versions of April up and vanished. You can watch them anytime on Hulu, Netflix, Paramount Plus, etc.

One more point I'd like to make is that I am an African American woman who is currently on a weight loss journey. As a plus-sized girl, I had incredibly low self-esteem and picked up toxic, unhealthy eating habits from starving myself to overeating BECAUSE I starved myself. Also, I have experienced both sides from being disrespected and made fun of to being complimented and persued. I was at my biggest weight 2 years ago and I have made incredible progress to lose weight since then. People can lose weight. It is achievable! I went to school with some people who were way bigger than me that lost the weight by senior year! Just because she's big in this movie doesn't mean she can't lose weight by the sequel. Like I've said before, it's not wrong to encourage health and fitness!💪🏾 In life, they call this a glow up. A "remember how you treated them in high school" type of comeback. People can, and are allowed to, change. And it's not wrong to embrace your body and the skin you're in. It's all relative!💖

This post isn't to convince you to change your mind. And it won't make the bullies go away. I can't change the world overnight, nor am I trying to. At the end of the day, you're the consumer. It's your choice. Your prefrence. I can't tell you how to think.

I just wanted to spread a bit of awareness that plus sized people exist. And they will always exist. Everyone is deserving of representation in media in all facets. No matter their shape, size, shade, or sexuality. There are so many people from different walks of life who deserve to be seen and on screen. And the amount of visibility for black girls this year alone is amazing! And I want the same for other women of color, too!

Don't let this trash ass society and the people in it who prefer AI/robots over human beings, fake over real, and bad over good tell you otherwise. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. YES I AM TALKING TO YOU. YOU ARE AMAZING! YOU DESERVE ALL THE GOOD THINGS IN LIFE AND MORE. YOUR STORY CAN CHANGE LIVES. BEING A GOOD, HARD WORKING PERSON DOES PAY OFF IN THE LONG RUN! YOU ABSOLUTELY MATTER IN THIS LIFE AND THE NEXT. WE SEE YOU. I SEE YOU. AND I ADORE YOU. RAISE YOUR SELF ESTEEM, ADJUST YOUR CROWN, WEAR IT PROUD, AND DO YOUR BEST!

Be good to one another. Take care.

💙 -TK

#real talk #I didnt censor myself that much because I mean every word I said in this post #positivity #body postivity #tmnt #tmntmm #tmnt mutant mayhem #mm april #april o'neil #shrek #princess fiona #eep #the croods #gloria #madagascar #dreamworks #luisa madrigal #encanto #dijonay #dijonay jones #the proud family #the proud family louder and prouder #disney #black girl magic #nickelodeon #tinkerbell #asha #wish movie #cassie #fnaf ruin

[attonposting]

Okay, so Carth keeps coming up lately, both by people who love him and people who don't, and I thought I'd throw my two cents into the ring.

People complain that Carth is sexist, a lot. And I get where that's coming from, I've got the same issues with his romance as anyone else. I love the bones of Carth's character and remember him very fondly – he's tied for my favorite character from KotOR I, even! But the writing is... flawed, to say the least, and in a way that goes past just 'poorly aged.' I don't think his lines themselves ever go worse than awkward, but there's some more fundamentally unhealthy stuff written into his relationship that I suspect wasn't intentional.

What I find interesting, and what a meme just very succinctly pointed out, is that many of the same people who have beef with Carth are cool with Atton. Who is definitely the more sexist of the two, both incidentally and deliberately. And it's a really interesting differentiation between the two pilots/f!PC love interests/earlygame buddies, because I think their palatability comes entirely down to how the games portray that sexism. So this is my attempt to figure out why one thing works and the other kinda doesn't.

Carth Onasi is introduced as a stand-up guy. He stays behind as long as he possibly can to save other survivors on the Endar Spire; he believes in the Republic wholeheartedly, he serves to protect and approves when you do the same, and other characters sing his accolades. He's supposed to be wholesome, but with PTSD-related trust issues that cause friction between him and you.

Atton Rand is the opposite of that. You find him in a jail cell, he's untrustworthy and a cad, at any given moment he's either abrasive or lying through his teeth, he complains when you help people, and when you get to the bottom of his trust issues, you find out he's a worse guy than you ever could have imagined.

It's much too oversimplified to say that Carth is supposed to be a good person and Atton is not, that's not where the problem comes from, but it will become relevant later.

When Carth starts flirting with you... okay. The biggest, most obvious problem is that the game wants you to be into it. Carth flirts and continues to flirt after you can tell him to stop. Sure, whatever; that's not egregious. You can respond to Carth's flirting positively or negatively, and that's great... but when you do respond negatively, the game loves to pull you into these playful insult exchanges where your PC shouts and pouts while Carth taunts you. There's where the issues start. Even when the player is trying to shut him down, they get dragged along for the ride anyway, and the narrative decides that this is also romantic. Thus KotOR I only has a shallow understanding that it's presenting a situation a woman may want nothing to do with. It's kind of impressive that you can actually call Carth sexist in-game, and yet it doesn't feel like the game actually understands that he is in fact being sexist.

Actually, no. Maybe I'm reading too deep into this, maybe this is why I'm so forgiving to Carth as a character, but I don't think the problem is Carth, I think the problem is that the game is being sexist in this particular spot. I was more annoyed by my own return dialogue options than anything Carth said to me - especially the ones where I was being mean. It felt like f!Revan was being pigeonholed hard into the writer's idea of 'women', that it was not an especially flattering or nuanced view, and there wasn't anything that I actually wanted to say. Definitely the writer did not understand my perspective as a player – but that's not a problem unique to K1 and it's one even the sequel is super guilty of at times, so I'll move on for now.

When Atton makes skeevy remarks, you always have at least one dialogue option to call him out for it, and you cannot ever react positively to what he says. Either you smack him down or you ignore him. This is extremely important. Yes, you could argue that it's not as accommodating to how different players might react... but what this establishes is that the game is self-aware. It does not think what Atton is doing is in any way attractive, or that it should be interpreted positively. Instead it acknowledges what a lady's probable reaction to his unwanted advances would be and encourages the player to express it, and the way that's written isn't a playful back-and-forth, it's the Exile snapping at him and Atton backtracking. Atton's being a piece of shit, but instead of stirring up chemistry, the narrative goes out of its way to mete out karma – hence everyone else on the ship mocking him, or the comically topical details like him being an unwashed loser who smells terrible and scratches his junk in public. Whether you like Atton or not, the game wants you to know that it thinks he sucks, and you are never left feeling like there is an unsettled score.

On the contrary, this lack of self-awareness is what makes Carth's romance in K1 hard to swallow if you didn't start out receptive to it. When you can react negatively to Carth's comments, it doesn't feel like you can do so in an intelligent way. The tone is very “Ugh, MEN, amirite” rather than “I don't like the turn this conversation has taken and would like to just be your colleague again” or just “Stop.” - which is probably what you wanted to say if you were just platonically enjoying or less-amicably bickering with your dorito-jacket companion when the gorgeouses started coming out of left field.

Worse, when you actually can shut Carth's romance down, it involves being a dick to him and stomping hard on his personal issues. Like I'd understand if a player was angry with him at this point, because again, you've been forced into a romance arc even when you were telling the game no as much as it would let you - but there's a huge difference between wanting to tell a guy to back off and wanting to shit on his dead wife or his Sith kid or his blown-up planet. I dunno, I'm not that vindictive! I think there's only a couple of options at the very end of his romance tree where you can turn him down... not even amicably, it's still rude, just without being a Grade-A asshole, and by that point, you have been through a lot of flirting you presumably didn't want to be involved with. Generally, the game won't let you break things off with him without being a dick, even if you never agreed to board that train in the first place. Now loop back to the way that K1 unfailingly portrays Carth as a great guy, whose flaws have nothing to do with his upstanding sense of morality, and there's where the dissonance comes from. Not only does the game push you into his romance after you said no, it makes you the bad guy for trying to get out of what he initiated.

But there's another issue in the timing of the Carth relationship. He starts his flirting while he's expressing intense distrust and standoffishness with your PC. With Carth's nonstop skepticism about your trustworthiness, and constantly bringing up his issues with you... at least during Taris and Dantooine, it comes off more like his attraction to you is superficial and not as a result of him growing to like you, something that's pushed by how it's always focused on shallow hooks like your appearance or your 'cute' attitude. It's very awkward. I do not think this was the writer's intent. I think Carth's supposed to be captivated by what he's seen you do, and that's just going in recursive loops in his paranoid little brain and making things harder for him. By the end of the romance, it's extremely clear that Carth's into you for you. But it's clumsily handled at the start.

Contrast this with Atton, who starts off aggressively sexist towards a female Exile, fifty times more offensive than anything Carth ever does. Literally the first line he gets is leering at the PC's forced state of undress, mocking her vulnerability, and he continues in that vein for much of Peragus. He creeps on your nudity at least four times off the top of my head, he ogles you, he complains about women, he tries to hit on you, he even contemplates the possibility of Sexy Kreia (which is a level of dickery I can scarcely comprehend.)

But that tapers off and disappears around the time he starts showing actual romantic interest in your PC, like when Kreia threatens him and it's revealed how much your opinion matters to him, or when he asks Bao-Dur for advice. And a female PC never sees it again. This creates the opposite impression – that Atton's attraction is a result of your time together. Sure, he's still a pig, but it follows that he wasn't making serious passes at you on Peragus because his behavior now that he is actually interested in you has changed. And it implies that in an actual relationship, that would not be how he'd view or treat you, which I think is crucial for how willing people are to ship Atton with their Exiles.

Now, this is all a product of how K2 did not actually answer that question and let you romance Atton, because with Carth, it's the opposite and you see exactly how he behaves once he gets into a serious relationship. It involves spanking. Things could be very different if K2 actually had fleshed out romances. It's hard to say, because both the PC and the crew were very thoughtfully written (I will take a bold step here and say that K2's characters were on the whole written much better than K1's), but on the other hand, Atton is still the worst and I'm pretty sure the game would want to remind you of that if you agreed to play tonsil hockey with him. And it may have crashed into the same pitfall that Carth's did; if the game railroaded your interactions with Atton up to some point, it'd leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth who wasn't already signed up for the ship.

With the way things are, Atton not only gets a free pass to be interpreted as generously as his fans want and easily ignored by those who weren't keen on him, he even gets an interest boost from this because people will always want what they can't have.

Anyway. With a male PC, you'll continue to see Atton make sexist remarks towards other female characters and can even have a wingman chat with him that is entirely him projecting his issues all over women. He doesn't make these comments with a female PC, suggesting that he's on his best behavior... but that he'd still totally be a leering asshole if he wasn't trying to impress you. With a male PC and Carth, his sexism is nonexistent, again probably because he was never intended to be sexist and it's a product of clumsy/oblivious writing.

There's an additional layer with Atton and the question of how much anything he does is an act, but that doesn't exonerate him from any of the crap he says. I could write a separate essay on Atton and his relationship with women, but the guy is very much a womanizer who's terrified of the idea of intimacy and has a lot of shitty opinions that stem from his defensive need to believe that nothing emotional is ever real or relevant to him. He might've been casing the Exile on Peragus, but his chauvinism is genuine.

But I digress. The tl,dr; is that Atton acts less sucky the more he crushes on you and Carth acts more. Combo that with how their respective games make Atton pay for being creepy but give the strong impression they want you to go along with Carth's nonsense, and it's a little less mystifying why Carth gets so little benefit of the doubt while the King of Trash enjoys fandom sexyman status. His romance is almost predicated on the fact that he's a scumbag, where Carth's is very confused to whether the awkward parts should exist or not.

There's a bit more that kinda hurts Carth. The flirting... well, from what I remember it just got “wow, okay then” later on, and I found it way more silly than offensive in any way, but him repeatedly bringing up how you remind him of his dead wife doesn't help the relationship much and suggests that Carth may be projecting someone else over you. I can live with that, drama's tasty and it doesn't prevent a real connection from burgeoning. You can make the exact same argument for Atton anyway, and I think his is way worse. My major issue is at the end of the game. Mr. Trust Issues does not react well to the events on the Leviathan, when it turns out he was right to have kept an eye on the PC all along. It's great payoff! And I absolutely adore his discussion after that, when he admits his struggles to reconcile you and Revan, how he tried but he can't hate you, how helping you gave him something real when revenge only left him hollow. Seriously, for all the shade it gets, there's some really great stuff in his romance too - you just have to stick it out long enough to see it. But then, on Rakata Prime, Carth seems to reconcile his crisis of faith and finally, wholeheartedly decide to love you in a way that falls flat on its face. He confirms you're a good person because you're not Revan anymore, like Revan is some purely evil part of you you've now cast off, when... that really seems more like denial than anything else, and not the foundation for anything healthy.

Seriously, I wish they'd handled that with more nuance. It would have counted for so much in my books.

All of that said. I know I just went after the man like a vending machine with a stuck bottle of chocolate milk, but I think the sexist vibes in Carth's romance are worst at the start and that he does not deserve the sheer amount of flack he gets. I've seen far worse offenders in the world of video game romances, and this might drive some controversy in and of itself, but I vastly prefer Carth x f!Revan to Bastila x m!Revan. There's a whole 'nother pile of issues in K1's other official ship (f in chat for Juhani), and I think those are much harder to deal with than the ones here. If anything frustrates me with Carth's romance, it's how unnecessary all of the bullshit is. I really want to get into it! The concept is perfectly fine! I love the character! There's good stuff in there! And when I replay KotOR, it's not that difficult to close my eyes to the bleh parts and enjoy the rest, especially once the first couple of conversations are past. Again, all Carth needed was a more conscientious writer at the wheel.

I'd be really interested in hearing other people's takes, both on how they interacted with either of those romances or where their interpretations differed from mine. I only have my own perspective and that of a few people I've talked to over the years, and I'm given to understand this is something of a fandom hot topic!

#carth onasi #atton rand #kotor #kotor 2 #kotor ii #basically a dissertation on how framing makes all the difference #i'm sorry carth #i love you a lot but your writing is so bad #kotor remake pls fix

[meanbossart]

Massive ask compilation time OH LORD

YES, her journals are a fun read. I somewhat wish there was more to her and The Dark Urge's interactions, too - she's wonderfully evil and clearly very attached to you if you're playing as that character, but I had hoped there was more of a reason for her obsession besides just "you were fun to cut up", haha. I remember reading her journal over a couple of times looking for something I might have missed.

His reaction was pretty in line with the Narrator's cues, just immediate rage over what she had done to him - DU Drow may be a masochist but that's reserved for people he cares about! So, her and her posse met a swift end. Also, despite the fact that the whole tadpole thing turned out being for the best, I think he's easily overtaken by resentment over his lost glory-days whenever faced with it so directly (he misses living in obliviousness) - not to mention his profound fear of vulnerability, and of feeling... Small. The way Kressa spoke to and of him would have absolutely shook him to his core, especially by doing so in front of the others.

[MORE UNDER CUT]

THANK YOU so much for your kind words first of all! As for the question, it depends a bit on the timeline; his dislike of female drow, especially at the start of his tadpole'd journey is pretty irrational and faith status wouldn't be of too much relevance, he just thinks It's in their nature to want to put him down and be conniving, and wants nothing to do with them.

Later, and especially post-game, he might at least give them a chance to prove they aren't "like other drow", though it would take him a lot to ever let his guard down entirely - UNLESS you seem like a complete fool LOL he's actually easy to trick into dismissing you as long as you don't mind playing the role of a dumb idiot.

But if not, he'd have an extremely short patience for any attempts to exert authority over him or his actions - or jokes at his expense, or any level of smugness or secrecy. Nymea would definitely feel kept at arms length because of the gender+race combo alone and have to put up with a lot of snideness. Basically, she'd have to treat this 6'4" feet tall freak with kids gloves to ever develop a rapport LOL

But also... The vampirism may "help"? He'd consider her a "lesser drow" for it. In that regard her attitudes toward Astarion would probably come to be relevant. I'm not sure about that aspect of it to be honest!

First of all, this is a hysterical scenario because he Would just fucking put the ring on without thinking about it LOL so thank you for the laugh that mental image just provided me with.

Oh he wouldn't care though. I mean, he dislikes drow in general, but he is a drow (up for debate, but you know, generally speaking) and he thinks he's pretty great. As long as he's still huge and strong he could wake up a woman tomorrow and not give a damn. And, frankly, his dick could turn into a pussy at any point in time and it wouldn't change anything about his character save for having to add a recurring UTI problem to his character sheet - he'd probably have fun with it.

TOTALLY FAIR, I'm very sorry it went past the point of enjoyment for you, but I'm glad you knew when to put it down!!! We're in our hand-holding and elf-smooching era now with the occasional visceral description of violence LOL SO YOU'RE WELCOME IN IF YOU'D LIKE. Thank you for dropping by!

Just putting this here because - I actually haven't decided yet, so that's pretty funny you asked LOL I'm leaning eyes closed though, nothing like a smooch to calm the big weirdo down.

HAHAHAH WELCOME BACK, I've been around this whole time! But I was hanging out on twitter for the most part. HOPE YOU'RE INTO THE DND STUFF LOL

DROW DURGES RISE UP I'll be honest with you friend, DU drow's lore has been as accidental as something like that can be, so much of it has felt completely organic in the way it came up - I guess that's what good RPG does to your brain. The rest of it has just been a wonderful opportunity to develop my writing that I decided to take full advantage of this year. Thank you so much for the lovely message!

---

Aaaaand I can barely muster something to say that feels like an appropriate response, but again I wanted to acknowledge all the sweet compliments people take the time to leave in my inbox. Some of you guys' comments about the things I create blow me away, I think I'm pretty confident in my art but... Damn, makes me so happy to know the stuff I create can hold a little special place to some folks. Thank you all so, so much for taking time out of your day to spread a little kindness around, and make mine a little better.

Again, thank you all for humoring me, have a lovely day folks!

#ask #DU drow

[sparklecryptid]

The Folgers "Incest" Commercial and the Internet

the internet doesn't know how to engage with things that make them uncomfortable or self reflective and im a killjoy

TODAY ON: The Internet is once again Hitting My Buttons and I have been Enabled (shoutout to @fatalism-and-villainy for reminding me of my BEEF WITH THIS SPECIFIC MEME) so now you are all going to listen to me rant about why I get so fucking annoyed with the meme that grew out of the Folgers Brother and Sister Commercial.

This is the commercial in question:

Is the acting weird and stilted? Yes. Does the whole thing remind me of bring a teenager and having awkward interactions with the family members I haven't seen in a long time? Also yes. Does this commercial commit the crime of being suggestive? Does it commit the crime of making it seem like the brother and sister are in a *gasp. pearl clutching. etc.* incestuous relationship? No. It doesn't. The acting is bad. The camera angles suck. The lighting is terrible. The script could be more natural. These are valid criticisms of the ad. The fact that a meme culture jumped up around the siblings in this ad making them into an incest joke makes me wonder if we all need to go back to elementary school Language Arts.

Granted I do take the view that messaging in media can be interpreted by others however they please so I know I've already lost some of you and that's chill, I am not here to convince I am here to rant.

Also like. My guys. My gals. My nonbinary pals. The intention of the creator matters. The creator of this stunted and poorly acted commercial did not intend for the internet to read this as an incestuous relationship.

(That doesn't matter to the internet, and is of little relevance here, but it is still important to note.

"But Moose," You say and I already know where you are going with it, "We know that, that's why it's funny to meme!"

"I know," I reply with a sigh that speaks of having just completed three end of term group projects, "But at the moment I'm taking the words incest and incestuous away from you because none of you can be trusted to use it to describe the thing it is made to describe and siblings just being siblings.")

The internet has decided its a funny haha to giggle at the bad acting here. That's fine! It's fine! You do you! I am simply a fellow on the internet that gets annoyed too easily! It's fine! The author is dead and the internet took over and nothing matters ever.

We're here to talk about how one of the reasons this commercial took off so fast as a meme is likely because it showed an awkwardly acted familial relationship that made people uncomfortable because it showed an attempt sincerity and sincerity is cringe. The internet around the time the memes took off was full of people who would rather make jokes about being affectionate toward your sibling than ever admit that sibling relationships are complicated things and that *gasp* being sincere with a sibling you have a good relationship with isn't uncommon! Admitting that you like your sibling might ruin your cool guy street online cred! Admitting you don't get the joke might make people make fun of you!*

Admitting that you're afraid of self-reflection and being forced to confront why you would rather these two characters be in an incestuous relationship than just be siblings is scary!

AND THAT is why this commercial annoys me! Because these memes are seem like they are laughing at a poorly acted aid that at least made an attempt to be sincere about how it portrayed a brother and sister relationship! Is the commercial cringe? Yes. Does the acting suck? Yes. Is the commercial implying anything? No. It's not. You guys just can't imagine something being cringe and sincere and are stuck on the heteronormative imagining that any relationship between a man and a woman has to be sexual if it is to mean anything.

*why i was on the bandwagon for so long. i am not good at Getting The Joke in real life why would I be any better online?

#i cut this down from 500 words so here #anyway. i should have a tag for rants #moose rants

[bridgetoesoteria]

✨Toxicity✨: What would have happened if you stayed?

Helloo. So this is going to be for anyone who feels in two minds about their decision to walk away from a situation.

Sorry in advance, the piles are so long! I really meant to be more succinct. So, grab a snack or break up the reading ahah 😅.

This can be used for any kind of situation: professional, romantic, platonic, etc. Options are left to right. Hope it resonates :)

For the collective: P.S.I took time out to do a guided meditation to connect with my intuition. So some of you may benefit from that. Some personal messages came through for me as well. So your guides probably want to connect with you too. I used a guided meditation on YouTube but feel free to do whatever resonates best with you.

Without further ado 🙇‍♀️🎩 ...

Pile 1

**TW: Substance Abuse**Off the bat: So before I even really began the reading, I was channeling Hey There Delilah by Plain White T's. So idk if that is relevant somehow. I was thinking of a lot of early 2000s songs. I feel very eager and excited. So maybe some of you left home behind to chase your dreams in someway. So, every win is a little bittersweet. Honestly, its such a vibe rn. I'm feeling chill, room is dimly lit, there's thin swirls of smoke coming from the burning sage...

4-card spread: Ace of Disks, The High Priestess, Prince of Cups, 7 of Disks. Bottom of Deck is Knight of Wands.

So, for context I'm using The Urban Tarot Deck. I feel like the imagery really helps with this pile. Its a Thoth inspired deck so the names for the cards are a little different. I read Knights as Kings and Princes as Knights.

All right, so right away I feel kind of confined. I don't think you would have had a horrible life or situation but it would not have been all that you needed. You would continue secretly dreaming of the life that you truly want. Whatever that means to you. I say this because the woman on the high priestess card looks very dreamy. Like she stole away and ran herself a bath just to have a few moments of solitude. But with the "knight of cups" right next to her--which is another card that can signify illusions, fantasies, daydreaming--it feels like she's dreaming of what could have been. And what could still be!

I always read this knight of cups as an amateur filmmaker. Someone just starting out, perhaps a little pretentious, but their intentions are in the right place. The fact that its a card that isn't fully mature, like a king of cups for instance, makes it seem tangible. So the woman isn't jumping to the ultimate end goal, but what could reasonably happen. This dream just lives in her head. Something she keeps for herself.

This is supported by the ace of disks (pentacles) and the 7 of disks. The 7 of pentacles can show patience as you wait on your investments or considering whether you invest or not. Aces are new starts. So, you would still be thinking about whatever alternative option you rejected to stay. Maybe you would know its still on the table and that's why you toy with the idea as a contingency plan. You know your growth is being stunted. Honestly for this group I think you were meant to leave. I don't think you would ever have been able to throw away this opportunity.

The king of wands is passionate and action oriented. This is how you would yearn to be. An energy like this cannot be contained. For some of you this may be referring to leaving a family dynamic or hometown behind. Right under the king is the 8 of cups reversed. With the imagery, I'm getting substance abuse problems. Maybe its common where you're from, alcoholism in particular. With it reversed, I think you would want to cut ties once and for all. Like just ghost friends, cousins, maybe even a partner. Like its the sort of thing where there may be all this lore associated with your name back home.

You will see what you could turn out like and decide to just go. For some this could relate to a job too. Maybe you see how the job consumes people around you, people lose relationships, some may get depressed, start drinking. You might have "noped" out of that and decided to carve your own path.

For those resonating with more of a family dynamic, I think you might experience some kind of loss. The kind of loss that acts as the straw that breaks the camel's back. Like I'm hearing "well, if Granny G/GG ain't here anymore, wtf am I doing here?" For others you could experience some kind of deep betrayal like a cheating spouse, a backstabbing best friend. And it will just make you go "fuck it" and choose yourself. You might not even be about all that lovey-dovey crap anyway.

Oracle Message: The oracle cards basically repeated the same message: Imposter Syndrome, Forever a Phoenix, and Emergence. Its literally what I- like look at this: "Sometimes you can't save it. Sometimes you have to take what's left and what lessons you have learned and simply just watch the rest burn to the ground." (Forever a Phoenix) The message of feeling confined comes up as well. The emergence card depicts a butterfly woman emerging from her cocoon. It's giving...I REST MY CASE.

Pile 2

Off the bat: A lot of you could be watching for an academic or professional situations. It reminds me of when I had to choose another school over my first choice. In hindsight, that was the best decision I could have made. I now can truly understand the saying "thank god for unanswered prayers." A move could be significant in someway so maybe some of you relocated or chose to stay where you are.

4-card spread: 9 of Wands, Wheel of Fortune, The Moon, The Hanged Man. Bottom of deck is The Fool.

I immediately started to feel a lot of anxiety. My chest feels kind of tight. If you hadn't left maybe you would have dealt with a lot of anxiety or panic attacks. I feel like the environment would have been stifling. A lot of major arcanas in a spread can sometimes signify stability or a lack of change. So if you are watching for a professional situation (academic counts too), you might not have progressed. This could look like never being given promotions. For others I am getting a combo of work and school like a dance academy or something. In a situation like this may always skip over you when it comes time for assigning solos. There is also a lot of romantic energy coming through but please consider how it resonates for your situation.

I also think something about remaining in whatever this is, would have caused you to doubt yourself. The moon and the wheel of fortune side by side could hint at emotional or mental instability. While I do read the wheel as a positive card, because it is something that is always turning, it can also represent a certain predictable unpredictability. The 9 of wands reinforces the message about being on guard. I think it would have been really exhausting to keep up with this toxicity indefinitely.

If this represents a romantic "third party" situation, the affair would have continued in the same way it was going. This applies regardless of which side of the third party you fall on. So if you were in a relationship with the person already, they would keep cheating. Or you would never be able to relax because you'd always be waiting for the next shoe to drop. Always on the look out for signs they're back to their old ways and never fully being able to trust them. No relationship can thrive in the those circumstances. So it would leave you frozen in this state of constant misery.

For others, if you resonate with being the person they snuck around with or if you were one of the many people they were entertaining, they would have kept that up, unfortunately. You would probably get resentful eventually. You may not even get any kind of title that would hint at some kind of significance to your relationship. They would not show the kind of effort that makes you go, "wow, they really value me and want to make this connection work". Nope, with the wheel and the fool. They would want to continue popping in and out with no thought to how it could throw you off balance. They could ghost. Your self-esteem and ability to ground yourself would really suffer.

This could also apply for situations where cheating wasn't the issue or at least it wasn't the only one. If the other person was rude, or controlling, or just awful, that would have continued. It would be you giving up parts of yourself and your peace to keep things afloat. They would still poster like they are "self-made" and like they're a great person.

Oracle Message: I haven't pulled anything yet but some of you may benefit from meditating. If this is something you have been practicing and wonder if there's any point, there is but the benefits are cumulative. So, you have to stick with it. Same with therapy, fitness journeys, or health journeys. Any kind of self-care. You just gotta be consistent. I am pulling from my affirmation cards deck. I'm going to insert a pic. "Today I am responsible" and "today I am at peace" came out together. My intentions were to read these cards as if they came out reversed. So with that in mind, you would have continued being in a lot drama and back and forth. The situation would be detrimental to your mental health and possibly physical health. Think a partner or friend that uses substances and so it makes it easier for you to get into. You might not get as much joy out of life and work would be unfulfilling. Overall, you would not experience much growth as a person.

Pile 3

Off the bat: I am getting more relationship and love energy. But if you are here for something nonromantic, just change the love stuff to fit your situation. Many of you are here for friends or significant others. For some of you, this reading may not be "that deep." Like perhaps this is just a crush that you moved on from and you're wondering what could have happened with them. Others you might have left a party and you're trying to quash the feelings of FOMO lol. Bubbles from The Powerpuff Girls could be significant for some reason.

4-card spread: 10 of Swords, Ten of Cups, Ace of Swords, King of Pentacles. Bottom of deck is 4 of Cups.

I just want to note that the king of pentacles came out sideways. So if there is a flakey or unreliable person in this situation, they would have let you down. So for some resonating with a party or a gathering, if you wanted to stay because a friend or a crush was there, they might have ended up ditching you anyway. You could have stayed and realized this person was not even available, so perhaps they came with someone else. You might have just ended up bored, in your feelings, and way too drunk.

Next, if this was someone that was breadcrumbing you or kind of one foot in, one foot out, they have the potential to really disappoint you. I say this because of the sideways king of pentacles, ten of swords, 4 of cups, and the 6 of pentacles right under the 4 of cups. So you could have ended up feeling unfulfilled emotionally or practically (e.g. quality time). This other person could be kind of cocky, especially if they have a lot of other friend or dating options.

For others of you, staying could have led to pregnancy or children in some way. So this could be a partner or spouse that you considered staying with. A few examples I am getting: Having a child with this person, staying with them and starting a family, finding out they had a child or family with someone else.

The storyline is kind of splitting at this point. Some of this could resonate or none of it, so trust your gut. There's a group of you where things would not have been that bad. This is only for people who had a decent relationship with the person. Maybe the main issue was that you both weren't mature enough or stable enough to have a baby or a super serious relationship. This pregnancy would make you two very happy and would bring you closer together. Even if you ended up co-parenting, I think it would be okay for the most part.

Now, for the other half of the storyline...it's not such a happy ending. If something told you this person was not reliable enough to have a family with, that was likely the truth. They seem like the sort of person that would seem cool to start. They would act like they are going to step up. Think coming around your family more, being present for first ultrasounds, looking at apartments with you. I do think there would still be an air of detachment though. Unfortunately, this person gives me the vibe that they would just go cold. Like they may start off seeming bored, then escalate to "no call, no show" type of behavior, culminating in them ghosting or being very hard to reach. They aren't as ready as they seem and you would be mostly on your own. Whether this means as a single parent or them letting your relationship fall apart. They could continue posting online with their friends, when you were supposed to go to an open house, or crib shopping, or having your baby shower...you get the idea.

Oracle Message: I am pulling from a non tarot deck. I will insert a picture of the cards. It would be a lot to type out in order to explain properly. 😅You could resonate with certain cards more than others. (OMG you know what I just realized. I was getting Bubbles earlier and isn't that what Summer Walker calls her baby? If you know about her and her relationship drama, that could be more confirmation.) For some of you, you could see "what could have been," reflected in one of your friend's life. Maybe they made the opposite decision than you. The cards talking about fate lead me to believe that maybe things worked out in your best interests. In hindsight, you might be able to see how you dodged a bullet. Perhaps you would have had to sacrifice your goals, boundaries, or self-love. The other person seems really messy. The first, third, and sixth card make me think that. The first card is again making me feel like they could have a group that they run with that probably isn't the best influence. Maybe they have a lot of run-ins with the law. Impulsivity and recklessness could be the norm with this person. Also, it would probably be very hard to trust this person. Specifically, it would be veryy hard to trust they will change. You could have the same conversations and just go around in circles with no results. The trust question makes me think of couples counseling and the card next to it reminds me of individual counseling. You would probably get more out of one-on-one counseling. Whatever decision you made here was the right one.

I've been considering offering personals. I would probably put a quota on certain readings just so we are all "consuming responsibly", so to say. It would also just make me feel more a little more comfy. Boundaries were the main reason I stopped doing readings for anyone besides myself. I need to have my ducks in a row so for now it's just a thought.

Anywhoo 🦉 I've got soo many more readings planned. The last one from the poll will be a classic love reading. I will probably do another poll so keep an eye out for that! 💋

~K

#tarotcommunity #pick a card #tarot #intuitive readings #tarot reading #oracle reading #spirituality #oracle cards #pick a pile #pick a card reading

[mcytblrconfessions]

*sighs in sadness* Ocean Queen Lizzie you were too good a character to be released onto the masses who couldn't characterize you well in fanfiction to save your life :(

The joy your story brought me (self-proclaimed number one Ocean Queen fan /hj) is immense, but it does not cancel out the multitudes of fanfiction flattening you into a hollow shell of yourself who only exists as an extension of the men in your life, clogging the LDShadowLady fandom tag and making it nigh-impossible to fin the (rare) fic in which Lizzie is in-character

And trust me, I know. My experiences are born out of pain and sorrow. Deep in the clutches of hyperfixation, I checked the LDShadowLady tag several times every day for months, no filters. I looked at every fic in the tag, and the backlog of fics. I read every fic in the tag, with only a few exceptions for the most truly unstomachable fic. Even as my hyperfixation loosened, I still checked the LDShadowLady tag often, and scrolled through the backlog. I still read every Lizzie centric fic I can find, and a lot that isn't. I still am on a constant search for good Lizzie fic (please: anyone want to recommend any fics? I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing/missed/forgot to bookmark! she doesn't have to be the main character, just significant!)

I have gazed into the abyss. I have absorbed the scope of it. I have written fic on my own.

And yet: the problem is less with the lack of Lizzie fics, and more with the bad ones, the ones that don't actually feature her in any real capacity, which becomes easy to see once you've read a lot of them noticed the pattern, just a combination of sidelining, of mischaracterization, and mischaracterization by omission, that trap that is so easy to fall into.

I can forgive fandom for this to an extent. No fic writer is perfect, this is about the collective patterns. But after a certain point, it starts becoming harder to ignore: the way she is written into fics only to warp around c!Jimmy (sometimes other male characters) with zero regard for her interiority, her agency, her struggles, her potential, in fics that give male side characters these things.

The way she is ignored varies. Sometimes it is the most blatant examples: she is put in a situation in which multiple canon traits/opinions/experiences of hers would obviously be relevant, but all are ignored except supportive sister. Sometimes it is more subtle: it iisn't a plot hole that her being a supportive sister/caring/"strong woman girlboss" (in the way that doesn't actually give her any agency or depth or plot importance, she's still a flat character only there for support, but actually we only write her as a personw with no interior depth or anything interesting bc she's just so cool and competent and perfect there aren't any problems that give us reasons to focus on her or give her like, a character arc or something) is the only thing that comes up in the au, but the fact that the author didn't find anything else about her interesting or worthy of show, never considered showing her in more depth, giving her an arc, giving her choices to make, the fact that over and over again authors decide that the only reason to show her is if she's supporting a guy, grates a whole fucking lot. Mostly, it is more subtle but once you see it you will never stop unseeing it. I try to repeat it but I just sound like a broken record.

Am I going insane for noticing this when nobody else seems to? I worry that, even being mad mostly at the trend and not the individual writers, I am still somehow being too unfair to them. I check my line of thought over and over. Then, once again, I am reading a fic and I can't stop thinking about how it's another fic in the pattern, and I try to find something that isn't and it takes me pages and pages, and I am so angry again. Death by a thousand pinpricks. Driven insane by a thousand lackluster Lizzie portrayals.

It's hard not to feel crazy. People like the Ocean Queen! People don't dislike her character! She just slowly gets flattened, over and over. Never any interest in her depths. (yes I am ocean punning at a time like this)

I am awash in a sea of misery. Every day I think of her and I wish for a world where people liked her better. Where she was the character with a million fics exploring her potential. I think about it and I think about her and I think about my fic for her and the good fics I've read for her and I open another fic where Lizzie is tagged and I hope.

(The pain these fics bring me is immense but the joy I feel about the character is greater, at least. Mostly I think about that. Two sides to everything, how unfortunate/lucky)

Ocean Queen I love you.

#confession #mod response #long post #ch: empires s1 lizzie

[argumate]

culturally the male-coded thinkpiece is "I did this thing" while the female-coded thinkpiece is "this thing was done to me", the classic subject/object distinction that may partially reflect experiences but mostly reflects the kinds of stories that people want to read, want to tell, and are willing to publish.

so back in the day -- and still now, presumably? -- the typical feminist post written by a woman was "here is all the ways I've been abused by men" and the typical feminist post written by a man was uh, "here is all the ways I've abused women, in the past of course, not any more, I'm a better man now, in fact possibly better even than women," etc.

and this made a lot of people very angry and everybody took everything very personally because their lived experiences were on the line or being erased or what have you and it was all incredibly important and incredibly silly and short-term fashions were mistaken for long-term trends as the political winds blew and shifted and in the end it was all forgotten outside of laboured attempts to insist that it remains relevant to current events somehow, like this one.

where's that title card...

[ispeacetoomuchtoaskfor]

On the Subject of Susan

I'm going to be a little blunt and my words may seem antagonistic here. But no hate, please. I'm just trying to analyze and provide my analysis based on the very simple facts. Now.

I've never quite understood the anger at C. S. Lewis for how he ended Susan's tale. Mainly, I suppose, because I had the whole story.

Everyone gets angry that Susan is "banned from Narnia" because she likes lipstick and nylon stockings and being a teenage girl in the 1940s, but no one seems to understand that that's not quite how it went, much less that Susan still has a chance.

Let me work backwards a moment and explain the latter. You see, to quote Lewis himself, in a letter to a girl called Marcela in 1955,

"...Haven’t you noticed in the two you have read that she is rather fond of being too grownup? I am sorry to say that side of her got stronger and she forgot about Narnia... ...She is left alive in this world at the end, having been turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end—in her own way. I think that whatever she had seen in Narnia she could (if she was the sort that wanted to) persuade herself, as she grew up, that it was ‘all nonsense’”

Now, there's a lot to unpack here, but first and foremost, my point is quite simple. "Perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end-in her own way." It was always meant to be open ended, for Susan. Narnia is not forever closed to her, unless you and she choose so.

"But Peace!" I can hear you saying, "There's that whole 'too fond of being grownup' phrase!" Why yes, yes there is, how clever of you to notice. The whole point of the latter portion of Susan's arc is that she chose that- lipstick and nylons and "being grownup"- over Narnia. She grew and she chose to forget Narnia.

After all, what sort of modern teenage girl (in England, during WW2) would be so interested in medieval times and what they probably explained to their friends to be a good old game of pretend? No, no, she can't remember Narnia right now - she's going to the cinema with a few girl friends, she's going to a party, she's focusing on everything but there and inevitably, after pushing it away for so long, Narnia let her be.

You see, C. S. Lewis was a very Arminian (and yes, I spelled it correctly) Christian theologian. And while I'm sure most of you here on this hellsite would like to ignore that, it is relevant to how Lewis wrote his fiction. After all, it's at the core of his basic beliefs, despite his being a staunch atheist in college and into his adulthood, and despite what you may like to think, it crept into his writing even when he did not intend it. For example, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is called an allegory for the story of the Resurrection, despite Lewis' arguments to the contrary. He insisted that it be seen as what it is, very heavy symbolism. Very heavily used Christian symbolism, that is all over the Chronicles whether you like it or not.

Let me explain why this is relevant to Susan, what Arminianism even is, and how that term applies here. Susan is, so to speak, a symbol of an atheist left behind, after all of the Christians she called family died. In a situation where you regard Christianity as true, she is left on Earth while they have gone on to heaven. And this doesn't mean that the gates of heaven are closed to her, quite to the contrary! They would be closed on the day she died insisting that Jesus Christ was not Lord, plain and simple. She has a choice to make, so long as she is alive.

Now, to Calvinist theologians and Christians, Susan never had a choice. Either Aslan, the God symbol here, chose to bring her in, or he didn't. Calvinists believe in a thing called predestination, the concept that every believer that would ever be brought to heaven is chosen specifically by God. Arminianism declares the opposite. It's a whole thing in Christian theological circles, but that's irrelevant to this discussion. In any case, the core of Arminianism is that you and I have a choice in whether or not we believe in God, and in whether or not we go to heaven.

To an Arminian theologian, God, or Aslan in this symbolic case, can influence our choice, Susan's choice, up to a point. Once we reach that point, once Susan forgets, God, or Aslan, steps back. He accepts our choice, allows Susan to forget. It's up to us, up to Susan after that.

Lewis was an Arminian theologian. He made the point, repeatedly, in his theological works, about people having a choice.

He repeats that point with Susan.

One last thing, before you go. You see, there was another letter about Susan, after The Last Battle was released. He'd been asked if he ever intended to finish Susan's story.

This was his answer.

“I could not write that story myself. Not that I have no hope of Susan’s ever getting to Aslan’s country; but because I have a feeling that the story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But I may be mistaken. Why not try it yourself?”

Well, my people? Now that you've heard what I had to say (and say through quite the essay, my apologies), why not? Go, do what you do and tell her story for yourself. The author has encouraged fanfiction, so go on! And don't worry about Christianity and symbolism too much. It may help you understand how and why Lewis wrote what he did, but unless you're determined to have your tale in his style and overlapping seamlessly with canon, it's unnecessary. Unless you choose to make it a part of your life, you don't have to be concerned about it.

Feel free to ask questions, and I'll answer to the best of my ability, with Google by my side!

Also, I nearly forgot. There are absolutely other problems with Susan being the last of her family, left alone in the aftermath of WW2. This is not the place to talk about those, however, merely to help you understand why she "is no longer a friend of Narnia" and to remind you that there's always hope.

Oh, and besides that, don't forget that I'm talking about the books and not the movies thank you very much, while The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was absolutely perfect to canon the other two were not and I'm not going to consider them in this post. I do appreciate them, but when dealing with book canon they're both nos.

#susan pevensie #the chronicles of narnia #the problem of susan #narnia #narnia susan #well this wasn't my plan for 3 am but here we are #arminianism #calvinism #my theology is very arminian leaning #but i tried to depict the two sides fairly #or as fairly as i can at 2 in the morning #if you want to know #im arminian with a touch of predestination #i believe that you get a choice #but also that sometimes #like with paul #god will smack you upside the face with undeniable proof of his existence #even then denial is an option #just not denial of his existence anymore more denial of his sovereignty

[kyouka-supremacy]

Yeah, Teruko was the one that made me realize the sexisim that existed in BSD when I first binged it. Or, more accurate, what TYPE we're dealing with. The female characters can exist and have their own moments, but they can never outshine the male characters and Asagiri can also allow himself to forget them if he needs to. When I read Stormbringer, one of the things that stood out to me is the fact that no female character has any prominent role until like, 200+ pages in, and what role Kouyou got was so minimal she might as well not have shown up at all. Yosano has a huge important backstory that doesn't become relevant until SEASON 4 while most of her male companions have had theirs explored way before her. It's disappointing, but I genuinely find Teruko intolerable and find her to be the worst written character in the entire series. It's not her fault, but her behaviour around Fukuchi and her ability was just horrid to me. Her ending here just enhances all the issues that already existed in her character for me. She's the only female character in this series I can't stand and that SUCKS because I want to love them all, but Asagiri is making that mighty difficult when he pulls stuff like this :/

(´；ω；｀)

The almost complete lack of female characters is personally my greatest disincentive to reading Stormbringer (together with the lack of ss/kk. Discredit where it's due).

Teruko's role this whole doa arc has been.. Saddening? I feel all the hd have a lot of untapped potential; but whereas with Fukuchi and Tachihara and even Jouno it's like, you know what's their deal, there's so little we know about Teruko and Tetchou's motivations and backstory. And even when both had their occasional times to shine - I like Teruko's scenes in the Sky Casino arc! A lot! I think they make for a very cool character! -, there's the whole deal with Teruko in the airport arc which is just :/// Like, she's just there to move the plot forward. She was very pretty in chapter 105 and made me feel like she had some further insight in the whole picture, like she had taken a stand and had a motive, but in the end it was never elaborated on, and I'm very sorry for that. Way worse, she was exclusively delegated to the role of numbly moving the plot forward, which is just wholly unfortunate. Why did she let Atsushi go just like that, like, really?? Oftentimes women's role in this franchise is truly meaningless. I don't really care for what side she was going to take in the end, I just wish she was just handled more sensibility, more respectfully. But alas. Hoping she'll get some spotlight in the future, because I really like her.

I like Teruko! Like, I genuinely get where you're coming from, and your reasons for not liking her are very valid. To me it's more about straight-up ignoring some stuff I don't like (REALLY can't vibe with the Fukuchi worshipping, I find it quite gross to be honest) and emphasizing the aspects I do like. I like how she's unapologetically mean - honestly, not many female characters get to do that. She gets to be a villain -, but I also like how it's compensated with a very strong moral code and genuine intent to protect citizens. I love lots of her scenes in the Sky Casino arc: her interactions with Tachihara are funny and vaguely wholesome, her determination and resourcefulness to win over Sigma is so cool, and her reluctance to hurt citizens, and the scene where she stopped an aircraft with her bare hands!!!! Honestly, banger after banger after banger, looking back at it that's probably why I held such high expectations for her character. Despite personally wholly disagreeing with bsd's morale, even Teruko's enouncement of her Hobbesian principles is enjoyable for me, because it's quite rare to see a woman preach such realist, cynical worldviews; if anything, it's refreshing. I think her ability is super cool and original, I love it tons!! I really like her character design, too. I like how she's of the highest grade compared to all other hd members minus Fukuchi and I like how she can be childish and keep them in line at the same time. I like how more mature and savvy she looked in her latest airport arc appearances, how she looked tired of war on par with Fukuchi. I wish she was given more screentime and importance and agency, and I wish the mess of the last chapter didn't happen, but I like her personality.

On her ability, I think it's pretty cool, and neutrally problematic by its own; but I do agree that between Teruko having child appearances and being obsessed with a grown-up man, the whole Mori deal, Aya proposing to Kunikida in chapter 40, the chapter 107.5 page that left everyone perplexed and was only later on clarified by the anime, (and, regretfully, even how the Kyouka / Atsushi dynamics are framed in some of the earlier chapters), it creates a very distasteful pattern.

I really like Yosano's backstory (really. I've said it a lot of times before, but I think chapters 65-66 are the best written chapters in the whole manga.), but it's not like just because of two small chapters that center around a woman after 15 volumes of male spotlight bsd suddenly stops being sexist lol. And that's something I've already said before, but: Yosano's chapters are beautiful! But they don't really help empower female characters in this franchise. Yosano completely lacks agency in the story, which is FINE for the story on its own, yet in the context it simply does nothing but reinforce the fact that women can't be masters of their fate.

I also strongly agree with the fact that female characters are accurately written as to never outshine their male counterparts. As someone else has pointed out before, both Kyouka and Higuchi have respectively saved Atsushi and Akutagawa's lives (in Kyouka's case, multiple times), so why is it that Atsushi and Akutagawa don't serve them the same respect and admiration that they hold for them? The double standard is really blatant once you start seeing it.

I've written more on bsd's sexism here, if you'd like to check it out. Even though it's very important to read things critically and acknowledge franchises' faults, I still can't help but feel bad for spreading negativity (╥﹏╥) Here's to hoping the bsd writing of female characters will improve in the future!!

#I really get the frustration of disliking a female character but wanting to like them SO BAD because sis it's not their fault– #the author can't write women to save their life. #It happened to me with Lucy because the whole “Live‚ and save me from this place one day” deal was a very hard pill to swallow. #Which doubly sucked because I really felt stereotype of hating on a female character just because she gets in the way of your mlm ship ಥ_ಥ #teruko ōkura #bsd #bsd negativity #mine #people asks me stuff #4am has apparently become the prime time to answer asks lol

[blueteller]

The Beautiful Subtlety of TCF World-Building

I could write an essay about how magnificent it is. In fact, I probably already did. However, it always hits me again, every time I re-read it.

Just look at this moment.

-Human, do you want to loot these magic devices?

“Aigoo.”

Cale was flabbergasted. […] Rather than trying out these gambling magic devices that resembled slot machines of his previous world, the Dragon instead wanted to steal the device and break it apart in order to see how it worked.

Cale did feel a sense of satisfaction, but feigned ignorance as he asked.

“Why?”

[…]

-What do you mean why?! We need to figure out how they work! […] And then I will be able to take all of the money from here! I will use 1 silver coin from my piggy bank in order to rake it all in!

Cale’s expression turned stiff.

A dragon really was amazing. Raon was thinking even more practically than Cale.

Cale seriously considered Raon’s suggestion before seeing someone put in 1 copper coin, which was 1 cound in the Caro Kingdom’s currency, into a machine and then turning away.

Resignation, anticipation, desperation, obsession, and despair. Cale didn’t want to take the money that was gathered through the collection of all of these emotions.

Wouldn’t it be better to steal from wealthier people if he was going to steal?

-Chapter 187

It's such a small moment, I didn't catch it at first. But did you see it?

Did you see how Cale considered Raon's offer, because it's in-character for him to like the idea of free money... then immediately turn away from it? Why would he? What is it about gambling that disgusts him so much?

Cale dislikes gambling because of his abusive uncle. And we don't learn about that until much, much later:

“Wow, really?”

It was at that moment.

Choi Han overheard a voice that made him stop on his way inside the mart.

Two women were standing by the discounted items located outside. They were frowning while chatting with each other.

“No, Mr. Kim really fell deep into gambling?”

Mr. Kim.

Choi Han couldn't help but stop whenever he heard that family name.

"Exactly! He's asking anybody he knows if he could borrow some money from them! Apparently his eyes look hollow and he reeks of alcohol!”

“My goodness. Unnie, then is Mr. Kim Seung Jong not working?”

“How can he work when he’s like that?”

The older looking middle-aged woman snorted and shook her head before lowering her voice.

“But isn’t there a kid in his house?”

“Ah! I, I heard that he brought his distant relative!”

The woman who was chatting with her covered her mouth with her hands.

“My goodness… then-”

“Ah. That is a bit concerning.”

-Chapter 736

We don't learn until Choi Han's indignity test that Kim Rok Soo grew up with an abusive uncle. We only heard about him being orphaned and spending time at the orphanage before that point. I'm not sure if his uncle was ever mentioned at all.

Cale is someone who obviously cares about family a lot. Clearly, his uncle is a memory he tried his best to suppress.

Because he is someone who can never forget, but is able to pretend to forget everything he doesn't like.

That is some excellent world-building, right there. The most amazing part is how far ahead the author was planning. Think about it!! The subtle moment about gambling happened over FIVE HUNDRED CHAPTERS before it became relevant to the story!!!

This author is incredible. I admire them a lot.

...Also, poor Cale. No wonder he didn't want to rob casinos. The idea of gambling is at the very least a source of minor trauma for him 😢

#tcf #trash of the count's family #lcf #lout of the count’s family #cale henituse #cale #tcf cale #kim rok soo #character analysis #world building #tcf is amazing #tcf chapter 187 #tcf chapter 736

[bijoumikhawal]

There is something funny about Garak bitchily comparing Julian to a Vulcan because actually. Yes. Julian feels so, so, so deeply and with great conviction. And he has to keep tight control on it because acting out of pure emotion could expose him as an augment, and after he's discovered as one it could be used against him. Even the anger we see Julian express is incredibly controlled- except, perhaps, with his father.

Just like a Vulcan. Which like- I have a lot of feelings about and you know I'm not the biggest TOS fan but me and my ex boyfriend did watch it on our little dates, and the way emotion and control over it in TOS is used with Vulcans does edge into Roddenberry's orientalism. It's this idea that Vulcans have an inherently beastial nature (which, we all have a beastial nature, we are beasts we are animals and the inverse is true in that beasts are people) that had to be reformed but when it comes to certain things- violence and sex- its more likely to come to fore. Very much reminds me of how people will comment that Egyptian men (and men from Muslim majority countries in general because they forget there are other religions) simply can't control themselves, and that social strictures must be put in place to help them. Like hiding a woman's hair. Which isn't to say this exploration of emotion in these terms is bad- I'm only commenting on what I remember of TOS and Roddenberry's comments about Vulcan male sexuality.

But with Julian specifically there ISN'T any implication of that. Instead the evocation is that of a person who's body is assumed to be violent learning to keep very careful control of themselves. Which are relevant to the way in which bodies like Julians- Black men, Arab men, Autistic men- are policed, especially in conjuction with each other and especially with a queer reading. It's not that Julian’s emotions are especially wild compared to another human beings. In fact, Siddig specifically went against script directions for Julian's behavior to remove typical expressions of a person (lbr a man) lashing out in anger- if the script says Julian punches a wall, instead he plays Julian leaning against it and sliding down to the floor, face downcast or in his hands. It still conveys being overwhelmed, but it's a very different behavior.

No, it's that his emotions could be perceived as wild, as especially frightening, and used to deprive him of his freedom and autonomy.

#Cipher talk #Ds9 #Julian bashir #Bashir fan club

[queenlucythevaliant]

If you don't mind me asking, how would you like

to see Proverbs 31 used? The part that always bugs me about how it's used is how the churches I've attended completely ignore the part where the woman described is working and trading outside the home. They try and use it as "you should stay home and raise kids" defense.

Mostly, I'd just like to see it used less?

In my experience, there's an undercurrent to the way that this passage gets used that's like, "...and this is the part of the Bible for women!" This really gets under my skin because it just isn't true at all. The WHOLE Bible is for women and the whole Bible is for men. I don't like the insinuation that women should keep returning again and again to this one passage when there's the entire Bible right there to study. Romans is ours too! And Genesis! Isaiah! 2 Timothy! Joel! Revelation!

Biblical womanhood (whatever we mean by that) must begin with women being well-versed in the whole Bible, and that can't happen if Proverbs 31 is treated like a banner chapter for so much of women's min. Proverbs 30 is actually the one part of Proverbs that really moves me (specifically "Feed me with the food that is needful for me...") and I've never gotten to study it in a formal context! Meanwhile, I've sat through seminars and studies and read books and listened to podcasts giving me Proverbial 31 and telling me, "Here ya go," like it's Necessary and Sufficient for Biblical Womanhood. And these two chapters are right next to each other!

Granted, I'm not a guy, but I don't see men's ministry pulling a few specific bits of Scripture and saying, "These are the Men's Chapters." There's just a presumption that the whole of Scripture is relevant to men.

In fact, if you really want to get into it, Proverbs 31 is actually directed more at men than women, saying, "this is the kind of woman you should marry." If we took half the Proverbs 31 talks directed at women and gave them to men, I think that would be a big improvement.

(I know I'm being somewhat hyperbolic here in places. I've been sitting on this ask for a little while knowing that it was basically unavoidable trying to refine my answer and like. Sorry. I am Frustrated and this is what you get from me.)

#i feel like I'm gonna get in trouble over here bc Biblical Gender Roles are Fraught #but I am sick to death of Proverbs 31 #at my Christian school in HS youth group at women's retreat in college min Bible study at conferences in women's books and podcast and and #totally sick of it #my problem with Proverbs in general is that it often seems as though 90% of its content is said more clearly and more powerfully #elsewhere in Scripture #and I think that goes extra super quadruple for 'how do I live a Godly life'? #that's so much of the Bible guys!!!!! #ask me hard questions #only thou art holy #i enjoy being a girl

[geekgirles]

Disclaimer: I am well aware of the content of the Bible Leaks. However, I will not be addressing them. If you are reading this and have read the leaks as well, please, refrain from pointing out any spoilers from them out of respect to fellow fans that chose not to spoil themselves.

With that out of the way...

Um...could we please take a moment to talk about what just happened, whatever the fuck that is, please?

If you've known me enough, then you must surely know I despise Lila Rossi. As a character, as a villain, if she were a real person I might literally bite her head off... I wholeheartedly believe she is the source of about 75% of the salt in this fandom, given most salt takes on other characters are a direct result of their actions whenever she's around.

Just her mere presence in an episode is enough to sour somewhat my viewing experience.

And even I think her character deserved better than the bullshit they're trying to pull.

Can we please agree that the whole Three Mothers and Three Identities thing is some major ass-pull????

Where the fuck does that even come from?!?!

It makes no sense, it comes completely out of the blue, and it all just comes off as some poorly woven plot to make a literal 14-year-old look worse than a grown ass abusive father terrorising a city and its inhabitants.

And you might say, "Well, Geeks. It doesn't come exactly out of the blue... There was the whole Other Mum from Risk and Different Room in Perfection thing. That's gotta count as foreshadowing."

And though I admire your efforts, I'm afraid I must insist that if that is supposed to be foreshadowing, then it's bad foreshadowing.

This doesn't feel like foreshadowing, but like some hastily added details they had to include like, "Oh, damn! That's right; we're supposed to be trying to go somewhere with this girl! I know, let's just give her a different mum and room in different episodes. That'll do it."

By the way, this also contradicts some key aspects which ultimately undermines the whole thing. Such as the fact that Lila Rossi is part of the Agreste Brand, so it makes absolutely no sense as to why someone who is clearly not Mrs. Rossi would take her to the train station. Because as evidenced by the Illusion father-teacher conference, Mrs. Rossi is indeed the woman that appeared in Heroes’ Day.

(Also, Lila was introduced as Gabriel's muse in Ladybug by Alec, though now I'm not sure if she's ever been addressed as Lila Rossi on public appearances such as Risk, but it still feels contradictory) (I don't know, maybe I'm being too nitpicky with this, but it' just feels so contradicting. I swear, I have a point and I will elaborate on it in the future)

But in the end, the reason why this fails to be proper foreshadowing is that Lila is too much of an absent character for it to properly work. Seeing as, out of 4 seasons before the current point in time, she's only really been in the spotlight/relevant in, what, 6 episodes????

It doesn't feel like a twist we should have seen coming, but as a rushed, groundless subplot that has nothing to do with her previous appearances nor does it tie itself with any of her previously shown traits other than her being a liar.

Which instead of expanding on her character, ultimately reduces it to one-dimensional levels.

I discussed this in a different post forever ago, but in my honest opinion, proper foreshadowing or, at least, character placement, would have been if Lila had shown signs of knowing Alya is Rena Rouge. Why? You may ask. 

Simple.

Because Lila has been shown in two different episodes, in different seasons, to have been paying attention closely and jealously to the things going on around her home. Namely, Ms Bustier’s class doing things together at the park which is right below her window while she was stuck at home because, for some reason, she refused to go back to school. 

As we all know, Alya first transformed into Rena Rouge in the park. It would have been the perfect explanation as to why Lila never once tried taking glory for Rena’s actions under the guise of being Ladybug’s best friend—because of course she would entrust her best friend with a miraculous! Just like it would have been the perfect chance for her to try to get closer to Adrien once more by claiming something along the lines of, “Though Ladybug overreacted, she has a tendency of doing that because we can’t forget the backhanded comments, we agreed to change my superhero identity into one that would be safer from Hawk Moth!”

Instead, by having Lila somehow pull off the triple identity con without a single warning in six years, what they are doing is robbing her of a believable reason for the way she acts!

Let’s take Chloé, for instance. 

Chloé’s actions are not excusable. Regardless of how terrible Audrey is, or how badly she neglected her before hopping on to the Enabling Train alongside André, that is never reason enough to be a bully and a total brat to absolutely everyone around you. 

However, Chloé’s reason for the way she acts makes perfect sense within context. She is not just your typical rich spoiled brat. She is a rich spoiled brat whose father is in a position of power and whom she has completely under her thumb, which results in André’s power over Paris becoming Chloé’s. And thus, whenever someone confronts her on her terrible behaviour, as long as they are not in equal footing with her (like Adrien or Kagami), she can just have her dad take care of the situation and potentially have that person or their parents/relatives’ lives ruined. 

Essentially, Chloé’s character amounts to a spoiled brat in a position of power who’s constantly throwing temper tantrums. And yet, this aspect of her personality has gradually been explored over the seasons. 

What’s scary about this is that this is a real-life issue. There are people all over the world getting away with their actions (regardless of how severe they are) because their families have money, power, connections...

Lila, par contrast, gets her character simplified each passing episode she’s featured in. 

We’ve gone from all the possibilities we were offered back in Volpina—Lila indeed just being a new girl trying to make friends but being afraid of rejection, her hating Ladybug while liking Marinette, a possible redemption, her becoming a legitimate villain in her own right rather than the narrative bending over backwards to try convince us she is not a threat even though she is barely featured at all...— to a character whose entire schtick is “Oh, look at me! I’m evil and a liar!”

As I said earlier, one-dimensional levels of character depth. 

The funny thing, though, is that Lila actually had a believable reason for the way she acted, and they are choosing to completely negate that and refuse to give their character any depth in favour of making her as malevolent as possible!

As I said with Chloé, please remember that reason does not mean excuse.

With that out of the way, let's remember how early seasons and especially Oni-Chan went out of their way to establish, or at the very least, hint at Lila being someone who most likely started lying to make herself feel special and make up for the lack of attention she was receiving at home. 

Unfortunately, as time went by, her desire to be the centre of attention and liked, never mind if she never actually put the effort to deserve any of that, far outweighed any original good will and desire for friendship and genuine connections. While the implications that her mother giving her everything she wanted in hopes of making up for her absence further soured her personality until she became the lying, petty, attention-seeking spoiled brat we know today. 

This, coupled with her desperation to be seemed and, more important, feel more special than she actually is gave us a legitimate reason as to why some petty liar would go as far as to ally herself with a terrorist.

Is it troubling behaviour? Undoubtedly. But Lila's never been shown to be a very stable individual. If the early running gag of her throwing things around when angered is any indication.

...

Um...

...esto...

...what exactly is she missing if she’s suddenly been conning three different, completely unrelated women into thinking she’s their daughter? A good psychiatrist?!?!

(I apologise for talking about a minor’s state of sanity, but you’ll have to agree with me that the writers are the first ones portraying kids as literal monsters here). 

And you might say, “You might be overthinking this, Geeks. After all, it’s a superhero show; you can’t expect it to be realistic.”

And once again you would raise a very valid point. Hell, God knows I wouldn’t watch half the things I do if they were realistic. However, it is imperative that we make a distinction: 

Fiction doesn’t have to be realistic, but it must be convincing.

And there is nothing convincing about a 14-year-old having three different identities because of how good a liar and manipulator she supposedly is. 

Marinette pulls off impressive, crazy feats every single day? That is convincing because we see repeatedly how Marinette has both a complexity addiction due to a need to control things to calm her anxiety, and the fact that what ultimately saves the day is her natural quick-thinking and creativity, not to mention the fact that she has superpowers.

Chloé gets to expel people just by threatening to call her dad, the Mayor? Again, it is convincing, and probably even realistic, because she is in a position of power and, unlike Lila, her actions are appropriate in the sense that they are outlandishly cartoonish.

Lila...she doesn’t have that. 

Maybe it's just me, but I just can't seem to buy the excuse that any responsible mother would be okay with their underaged daughter "going to Africa to deal with poachers" all by herself, especially in the middle of the school year. Just like I have the feeling many parents would at least be apprehensive at the idea of their teenage daughter becoming such a public figure as both a model and the face of the Alliance rings.

But hey, maybe those are just signs of me having the potential to become an overprotective mother in the future. Instead of, you know, one of the most atrocious cases of the Adults Are Useless trope I've ever seen.

Nevertheless, as of right now Lila doesn’t even have much depth. And I’m not saying she needs some sob story that will make us feel sorry for her, no. You don’t need to make a villain sympathetic for them to be a good villain. After all, Frollo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame has no sympathetic traits nor does he have a sad backstory whatsoever and he is still one of the best Disney villlains ever. 

So what am I supposed to do with Lila? What, do I have to wait until season 6 comes around and retrospectively reveals she’s not a teenage girl at all but some sort of ancient witch who lures people in with her syren song and feeds off of their adoration for her?

At this point it just feels like the writers are so desperate for adding shock value, that they forget to add anything of value.

#miraculous ladybug #ml salt #lila salt #ml analysis #ml spoilers #ml season 5 #ml season 5 spoilers #ml s5.20 #revelation #revelation spoilers #ml writing salt #gabriel agreste #monarch #shadow moth #hawk moth #ml revelation

[thefirstknife]

The exotic mission is incredible. Please get your exotic fish and dunk them in the HELM and then do the exotic mission. It's best to go in not knowing anything, though the mission is quite difficult gameplay wise. I'd still recommend trying it out on your own and then checking a guide later. Spoilers under:

XIVU. Just. XIVU. We're quite literally tithing her and she's quite literally addressing us directly now. That's not good! And yeah, the Pyramid architecture we've seen last week? That's where we go. It opens up:

And Xivu welcomes us in with some absolutely metal lines:

It's a drowned Pyramid.

The mission is timed once you get in here, you have 10 minutes. It's more than enough when you come prepared but you might have a tough time the first time around:

And the main area is in a full on maze inside of a Pyramid!

And there's a guy in there :) :

Once you kill the guy, you get "the audience" which consists of going to the veiled statue, aka the Woman, and receiving the exotic, which is a scout rifle called Wicked Implement. It looks... certainly interesting. It seems to be made by Xivu, but is modelled with heavy influence of the Lucent Brood aesthetic.

The shiny bits look like shiny "windows" in Savathun's throne world, the little sharp capsules look like capsules for holding the Light in the throne world. The muzzle mimics the "eye" central piece of Savathun's ship. I'm losing my mind. What is going on. The lore is also... something else:

Absolutely not having a great time with Xivu telling us to "become a god of death" as those are the exact words she told Osiris in Immolant. Immolant still directly relevant 3 years later? More likely than you think.

Once you get the weapon, seven Darkness artifacts will appear in the area of the maze, the first one being above the statue:

Shoot them all (there's plenty of time to find them all, just be patient) and then come back to the statue where you will get a "commune" prompt which includes Xivu talking to us directly, again. All of Xivu's lines at the end when you get all artifacts:

Now that I'm reading it again, the fact that she says that her sister's "needle" inscribed something "on this temple" makes me think that Savathun was somehow involved in this weapon and this drowned Pyramid. A "temple built of whispers" but "tithed to war in secret" and "sunken in the deep." As if Savathun was in charge of it but left it for Xivu. First thoughts, maybe completely off the mark but mentioning Savathun's involvement here is so peculiar. We know that Savathun has previously been helpful to Xivu, namely with preparing Torobatl for her invasion.

We still have to find the catalyst which might be something weekly so we probably have to wait. It might give us some extra lines or stuff.

Incredibly good shit here. 10/10 mission and season. Made for me, personally and all Xivu enjoyers. Super interested in this Pyramid and how it relates to Xivu and Savathun. Xivu having a Pyramid would be weird, especially since this one is seemingly defunct and sunken, as well as the implication that it was originally designated to Savathun. Or she at least did something with it. Wild. I'm eating it.

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #season of the deep #season of the deep spoilers #xivu arath #pyramid #wicked implement exotic mission #long post #if you click