#this might not be a problem here

[bronzewool]

Final Fantasy VII: Traces of Two Pasts by Kazushige Nojima is a novel exploring the backstories of Aerith and Tifa, two party members you acquire early on in the game.

Traces of Tifa starts with a young Tifa in the small village of Neibelheim, playing with the other boys her age (minus Cloud) and reconciling over the knowledge their childhood is coming to an end as each boy is already making plans to leave and follow their future career paths. The boys try to cheer her up by promising to write to her, but it soon becomes clear to her that everyone has already decided she will marry one of these boys without bothering to ask her opinion. After Cloud and the other boys leave for Midgar, she becomes lonely and has no direction in life until a wandering material artist, Rashard Zangan, shows up, scouting for students to join his dojo, and finding the perfect pupil in Tifa. Throwing herself into her training, she proves to be skilled in the art form and even starts teaching a morning class for the other villagers. Fast forward to the Neibelheim Incident, where Tifa lost her father and is mortally wounded by Sephiroth, she wakes up in a Midgar hospital that managed to save her life, but she no longer has a home or any means of paying her medical bills. The doctor's son, Rakesh, also a student of Zangan, sets her up with a room in one of the slum container rows, and a job working at a steamed bun cart. Although Tifa is grateful for the help, she is still in the process of mourning the loss of her home while recovering from a near-fatal stab wound and yet still expected to work off her heavy debts. During her time living in the slums, we see how she met Barret, and the rest of Avalanche and would eventually become the bartender of Seventh Heaven.

The segment has a well-paced coming-of-age story of Tifa having no control over her life, and becoming the confident kickboxer and math-savvy bartender we meet at the beginning of the game. The story is slow in several areas, the major one being the attention to detail it goes into regarding her workout routine (to the point it starts feeling like an actual textbook) and her work rota at the food cart and preparing the bao buns (which starts feeling like an actual cookbook). Other than that it has a satisfying twist near the end with how Tifa manages to get out of debt and find a supportive community that becomes her newfound family.

The only minor complaint I have with this story is how little Zangan is in it, considering he is meant to be Tifa’s sensei, but he is only shown teaching her through textbooks that he leaves for her to study before disappearing for months at a time and returning to test her progress and handing her the next volume before disappearing again. This works in the context of the games as characters can level up by reading textbooks, but from a story standpoint, it's rather disappointing how little these two interact.

Traces of Aerith covers the timeline after Aerith and her mother escape Shina and hide in Sector 8 Slums, right before she dies and Aerith is adopted by Elmyra. The game briefly covers how Aerith and Elymra first met, but the book goes into greater detail about how they became a family and that it wasn't as smooth a transition as was implied. Elmyra's husband was a soldier who had been deployed during the Wutai War and was finally coming back home. Elymra would stand at the train station waiting for him with each passing day and on one such day, she finds Aerith weeping over the corpse of her mother and takes the girl in before Shinra finds her. Aerith is in the middle of mourning her mother and Elymra is overloaded with the responsibility of being a single parent while trying to maintain peace within her husband's business. Aerith's presence complicates things for Elmyra and they come up with a fake identity for Aerith which quickly backfires the more people learn of her existence.

The book tries to address minor details in the framing device of a polygon game and has various degrees of success while doing it. For example, Aerith's home is strangely bigger than the rest of the slums, with a two-story house and a garden filled to the brim with flowers. In the game, this area is heavily detailed because it's a set-piece that represents Aerith and the party spends quite a bit of time here. In the context of reality, this area makes no sense when just outside the gate the rest of Sector 8 is a shanty town. The book works around this by giving Elmyra a backstory where her father-in-law owned a construction company and stayed in the slums to oversee that company, as opposed to other businesses that would start a shop in the Slums and immediately abandon it once they earned enough to move onto the upper plate. Her father-in-law employed all those redundant employees and gained a lot of respect from the community for providing employment, hence why they live more lavishly in comparison.

My only complaint about Aerith’s segment in particular is how it glosses over major details in her childhood that fans were probably picking up the book to read about. We know the Turks have been spying on Aerith since she was a child, but they barely have a presence in this segment beyond one vital scene that needs to exist because it happened in the game and the climax where we can assume they saved Aerith’s life. Instead, we spend a lot of time setting up Aerith having a fake identity, and her panicking and using another girl’s name, and this somehow causes everyone to panic because two girls can’t have the same name I guess? (it's as stupid as it sounds and I don’t know why the book dives into this when we know Aerith uses her real name in the present timeline).

Is this book well written? Yes. Did it need to exist? No. There is nothing new we learn in this book that changes your worldview of the game or about Aerith and Tifa as characters. Hardcore fans will enjoy it but casual fans are not going to get anything out of it.

#charl's book journey #I wasn't gonna mention this part because it sounds nitpicky #but the lack of agency is a problem #not so much with Tifa because that's the point of her story arc #but with Aerith she's a little girl who is the pov of a war over the ownership of a family business #and because she's a child Aerith can only act as a spectator watching the adults argue #this might not be a problem here #but if this was a kid's book #the publisher would send it back #because you can't have a kids story where kid has no agency #even when hanging around other children Aerith doesn't move the plot #and that's a problem #she only has agency near the end and it backfires on her #as if trying to make the point #your mum hiding things from you and controlling what you do or where you go #was for your own good #so don't do that again ok sweetie? #fandom: ff7

[hamletthedane]

Love that Oppenheimer is a deeply disturbing horror movie about a man forced to accept that he is, in a person, the representative manifestation of mankind’s evil in committing one of the greatest horrors of human history - LITERALLY acting as the modern Prometheus, tormented by his sins for the remainder of time. Knowing that he will never be pitied and his actions will forever be utterly unforgivable because the blood of genocide and the potential of total human annihilation will eternally drip from his hands.

But also the simultaneous indictment by the film that to blame a single person for the Manhattan Project is to refuse to accept your own capacity for great evil if the ends ever seem to justify the means, and the culpability of every member of a species that lets itself create something so unspeakably terrible.

Hate that twitter’s take on such a nuanced and brilliantly handled examination of those issues is “movie bad because protagonist not evil enough.”

#what’s that quote about the problem with othering the enemy in media is that we can no longer see our own reflection in their eyes #oppenheimer’s motivations WERE sympathetic that’s the POINT #we SHOULD feel uncomfortable with our sympathy for him - the film goes out of its way to make us feel uncomfortable about it #we should be uncomfortable with the fact that we might have made the same decisions as him in his place #yes he’s evil but his evilness represents the evil that we might all accept in ourselves #twitter simply cannot handle nuanced takes on things ig (tumblr does though - the posts on here have been surprisingly excellent) #oppenheimer #(tldr - look if you walk out of Oppenheimer thinking it somehow celebrates the man then you may need to retake 9th grade Literature srry) #films

[ruporas]

feast (ID in alt)

#vashwood #vash the stampede #nicholas d wolfwood #trigun #trigun maximum #tw blood #im posting this so late because october escaped me Suddenly.. hello.... #i wanted to make it a photoset with this other vampire vw wip but i don't think i'm finishing it any time soon and the mood of it is #completely different anyway. also i don't think i ever shared anything about my vampire au on here !!! it's all old art by now so im shy lo #but maybe i'll do a photodump of it. long story short vash is a vampire since birth and ww is a human vampire hunter that turns during thei #travels together due to EoM experiments + getting vash to drink from him at some point. #humans turn once they get bitten but bc ww has been experimented on #& got bitten by a bunch of human turned vampires thruout his hunts he thought it wouldn't be a problem for vash to drink from him but alas. #theyre both ok though theyre traveling together definitely not hating themselves for what theyve become and feeling guilty for what theyve #done to each other. theyre completely normal about it. the biting part is really appealing to me in vampire aus so i draw it a lot but #in reality vash only drank from ww once and ww mightve done it twice under the realization he might actually die otherwise #since he wont drink from humans after being turned.... he's combatting the 5 stages of grief at all times #if this is all nonsense im sorry DMGKSDF I'M NOT good at explaining and this au came from nowhere in the depths of my mind its a mess #ruporas art

[bananonbinary]

theres so many ways to write how jmart interact off-mic in season 1, but my lowkey favorite is “jon genuinely doesn’t realize what a huge asshole he’s been and thinks he and martin have ‘professional differences.’ he sees no reason they cant be friends right up until martin is like ‘you literally wished i was dead’“

#the magnus archives #this one makes most sense to me bc he was at martin's birthday #and i think s1 jon's Problems all come from being too caught up in his own head to notice everyone else around him #so it makes sense he'd sorta...forget his words and actions have consequences #also its very very juicy to imagine jon experiencing the sting of rejection here #and have to reevaluate why martin might not like HIM #because i love pain

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

years later someone buys the plot, turns on the lights and is suddenly worshipped as a sun god by a bunch of puppets falling apart at the seams

pov you break into the spooky abandoned Playfellow Studios building for shits and giggles

#lore tidbit! the plot is not available for purchase #the building is only Technically abandoned. its still very much Owned private property! #actually ive been thinking about the Other side of this au. the people's perspective #cause in this au at least they all Knew the puppets were alive #many employees - especially the ones working 'closest' to the puppets - put up a huge fight when the show got canceled #but it was either Disassemble (kill) Them or Lock Them Away #and honestly? killing the neighbors would've been somewhat of a mercy #but the employees had no way of knowing just how Bad things would get #wh lights out au #scribble salad #and i mean. the building's electricity bill remains paid. #the employees that felt really bad kept it paid over the years - devoting a bit of their income each to it #thinking the puppets would a) be awake & b) be able to figure it out #yeah that's actually a lil fun tragic tidbit as well - if any of the puppets had found the breaker.... #or found it and Messed with it a lil... flipped the right switch... #they would've gotten the lights back on no problem #but yeah anyway ive been Thinking about the employees' side of things a lot #might tie that in with act two. it'd make sense considering the shit that happens #well either they'd help the puppets out or they'd get shoved into one of the sinkholes by barnaby. so. #bc if we're talkin seriously here. the puppets are more likely to kill a person than worship them for any reason #they'd go full 'THREAT!! THREAT!! ELIMINATE THE THREAT!!! WE'RE NOT LOSING ANYONE ELSE!!!' mode

[lazylittledragon]

i'm going to scream i got accused of being a transmisogynist by someone on twitter because of this specific part of my t4t steddie art

#ramble #the thing is 99.9% of people thought it was VERY funny #i've had 1 person genuinely have a problem with it and it was because i kept eddie transmasc #basically they were upset because i didn't make them both transfemme bc i just. didn't want to #twitter hasn't learned that not everything is for you and if you don't like something you don't have to interact with it #and just because you don't like something that doesn't mean it's Bad #and also sometimes queer things aren't made to be understood by everyone #it was specifically because they thought it made them into 'just another straight couple' #as if that isn't a MASSIVE erasure of trans people's queerness #trans people in m/f relationships doesn't make them any less queer or somehow inferior to gay relationships #it boiled down to 'but you could've made them lesbians :((' YEAH BUT I DIDN'T #idk it was just absolutely infuriating trying to defend myself without saying 'idk what the fuck you want from me at this point' #anyway transfemme stevie is very big on twt but i didn't know whether to post it here or not #but i might if people want to see it because i love it a lot #twitter would die if they saw the olden days when we called them genderbends and there wasn't any trans content at all

[blinkpen]

rough sketchies of LTI Timeline Lamarr gettin creative with the shapeshifting to literally make their own entrances maybe

#mog art #artists on tumblr #anthro #furry #dragon #lamarr #lti timeline au #i found the perfect quote unquote villain song for them too #its funny to imagine lamarr singing it at Regular Timeline charlie unaware charlie is not here to be a goofy two shoes at him #because this Lamarr has never met Charlie #RT charlie is just trying to steal something LTI Lamarr has that might help him fix this problem #but lam just keeps singing over charlie trying to provide context and char's like So This Is What It Feels Like #smoking cw #body horror mild

[thelaurenshippen]

ah yes, the sweet sting of rejection from a billion dollar corporation who believes that "action stories don't appeal to romance audiences", welcome back my old familiar friend

#personal #writing #this was the EXACT problem I ran into with my gay outlaw story #and why I was just like FINE IT WON'T BE SCRIPTED IT'LL BE A BOOK #(and I mean who knows if it'll sell as a book) #(but it was NOT selling as a podcast) #how do I tell these companies that there's a whole website of people who love both action and romance #how do I explain that these people pull ships from the barest two second looks in action movies “aimed at men” #it's the conflation of romance = ladies and action = men for me #that's what really makes me roll my eyes #companies being like 'sorry lauren we just don't think people really into romance are into action' #HI I'M SITTING RIGHT HERE YOU'RE TALKING TO ME #my favorite movie is mad max and most of what I read is romance #I play violent action video games and I have a pathological need to ship #we exist #and we are legion #ANYWAY #might delete later

[rowanthestrange]

oh they are the doctor’s species tho aren’t they.

child sent through a wormhole.

a wormhole. that thing they just mentioned in this episode. didn’t have to but rusty did.

child sent throw a wormhole. one of this species finds it. copies it. the child dies. the 99.9999999% copy remains. gets picked up.

can’t change its shape at will anymore not without ridiculous energy, but that’s what time vortex exposure gets you and that creature has copied it so at the moment of death boom there’s energy boom change your shape and repair all the damage.

they’re fae they’re demons they’re angels they’re vampires.

vampires were already linked to time lord history anyway, of course they are, same thing, they were always a mirror, but also literally.

they actually are the doctor’s species.

#wild blue yonder #russell: ‘here bitch i just solved your lore problems’ #‘took 60 minutes’ #sorry chaps this might be the headcanon now

[sparring-spirals]

im still thinking about that moment last episode where they're planning how to approach dancer and we got:

Ashton: "yeah we should go in with a ginger approach, make sure she doesn't run"

Imogen with complete sincerity, immediately: "so should i just go and calm her emotions right away?"

Ashton with zero judgement or concern: "that, or i was going to pin her down, but that's cool too."

and then when FCG naturally panics over why are we attacking dancer they both turn in sync to be like! No!!! not attacking. restraining. 👍 :) like what. you're both. mildly messed up on exactly the same wavelength here. i love them both so much. what do you mean overkill. this IS my ginger approach. I'm Doing The Job By Whatever Means Necessary Why Are You Yelling.

Something something two people who have spent their lives learning to suppress their flinch/doubt reflex when in a crisis. Out of a horrible necessity. Those two Problem Solving together with a casual sort of callousness. and looking at each other like 👍? 👍 meanwhile FCG is in the background going "wait we're talking about attacking her???" "no of COURSE not, just restraining!" god i adore them.

#its the combination of the mildly unhinged suggested action w/ 'ginger approach' + the casual tones + the agreement + fcg horror in bckgd #what a great scene tbh. i enjoyed it so much i MIGHT update their tag to reflect it......... hmm #critical role #cr spoilers #c3e69 #imogen temult #ashton #migraine buddies #(my current tag for them) #but i could do something here......... hmmm...... interrogation rave? #(because this and they both have light powers... i shall think on it) #scene #shitpost #character meta #? #im a fan whenever they interact tbh #chetney probably would have joined in but thats different bc chet gets JOY from this. these two just think theyre problem solving. which. #they are. i suppose. #'NO! restraining :)'

[stuckinapril]

I just know I’m gonna struggle in my later years bc I don’t wanna get married I don’t want kids I just wanna rawdog life and be a hot milf

#You might be like that’s probably bc you’re just 21 and ur values will change #And to that I say. Perhaps. But rn I don’t see it and I haven’t seen it since I was like 15 #Also you might be like Well pave your own path! Not all women end up w domestic lifestyles #And while I agree w that sentiment you have to understand I’m an Arab girl #Rn I’m chilling doing whatever and my moms cool w it but that’s bc I’m just a kid basically #Once I’m Older (age 25+) I feel like the expectations r gonna start rolling in #Though this is by no means an Arab girl problem bc god knows even here in the states misogyny #Runs rampant #I just feel like i legit reject everything that’s expected from a woman in her later years so I fully expect to be #A neurosurgeon one day forlornly smoking a cigarette from her penthouse office #p

[aatom87]

crosspost of some fionils I did a little bit ago.

#my art #dungeon meshi #fionil #viera #ft the prototype of the stopwatch concept #pls it's not about their periods #twt bot problem has become obnoxious so I might as well post here more

[kazooms]

To all the CoD content creators who want to include german phrases when posting about König: a little thread of things you can use! (coming from a native german speaker)

So this is just a little something I see often or could think of off the top of my head, so if you'd like to know any more, ask away, and I'll add on! This also goes for a section of sentences. I'll add one if I come across it!

Terms of endearment:

(Mein) Schatz / Schätzchen / Schatzi (general term of endearment)

Meine Liebe (my love)

Mein(e) liebe(r) (my dear) -> Mein_ lieber (male ver), Meine liebe (fem ver) yes, just a change in capital letter :,)

Kleine Maus (little mouse)

(Kleines) Mäuschen ((little) mouse, but cute-ified)

Mein(e) Süße(r) (my cutie) -> Meine Süße (fem vers), Mein_ Süßer (male ver)

Words/phrases:

Mein(e) Kleine(r) (my little one) -> Meine Kleine (fem ver), Mein_ Kleiner (male ver)

Liebling (darling)

Bitte [?] (please OR come again if there's a question mark following up)

Danke (thanks)

Du (you, informal)

Sie (always capitalize the 'S' if referring to "you" but formally)

Vorsicht (caution/attention)

Komm' (come)

Beeil' dich (hurry up; informal)

Beeilen Sie sich (hurry up; formal)

Sicher? (sure?)

Ist es sicher? (Is it safe?)

Pass' auf (be careful; informal)

Passen Sie auf (be careful; formal)

Warte (wait)

#❄ talks #cod könig #cod smut #cod x reader #cod mw2 #call of duty könig #cod konig #konig mw2 #konig x reader #könig smut #könig x reader #könig cod #i dont actually post content stuff here but i think this might help some people! #if u stumble across this and have any questions dont be shy to ask :3 #also i have no problem to translate other stuff for you guys too; i dont bite jsjdjfn

[bumpscosity]

Well the aethers are joining the lair.

#top one is my boy cosmos (name I got him with new name tbn) #bottom is hibiscus whos our bookkeeper who loves reading so um. might be some problems here. #fr #flight rising #sassy speaks

[verdantglow]

I believe it’s true,

‘Cause nothing matters when I’m all wrapped up in you.

(Made a Boat Boys playlist the other day. It’s not quite done & ready to post yet, but I’ve decided I want to go through it & do paintings for a few lyrics from each song on it. Here’s the first one. ^^ )

#boat boys #SmallEtho #hermitshipping #trafficshipping #verdant art #Part-time soulmate Full-time problem #<— gonna be using that tag for this series so people can find it on my blog. #also that’s the playlist’s name on Spotify if you want to listen to the WIP #just remember it’s subject to change & some songs might get swapped out #Spotify #fuck it I’m gonna slap this in their individual tags as well #I hope that’s okay #afaik Etho doesn’t go on tumblr & Joel seems to know exactly what kinda shit’s going on here. #anyway. #Joel SmallishBeans #Etho #Ethoslab

[sneez]

victor kain chronic pain nation rise up (credit to @transdankovsky for this idea :-D)

/ id: two digital drawings. the first image shows victor kain and daniil dankovsky sitting together; daniil is taking victor’s pulse. inside a speech bubble above victor’s head is a screenshot of a question from the duolingo russian course, in which the sentence ‘я – хороший пациент, у меня всегда всë болит’ is translated as ‘i am a good patient, i always have pain everywhere’. the second image shows daniil looking politely horrified. end id. /

#artwork #pathologic #victor kain #daniil dankovsky #this might seem a bit out of left field given that i havent talked about it at all publicly but victor having chronic pain is one of my Most #Established and Important Headcanons and i think about it all the time. i should write something about it but i have lost the ability to #write it seems :-/ but i can still create Images! so here is one :-D #there is a lot of projection involved i will confess but i also think it makes a lot of sense for his character so i am not ashamed of that #not that anyone should be ashamed of projecting i just feel embarrassed when something is Too obvious. baring my soul via the depressed dad #anyway i imagine him to have multiple chronic illnesses and health problems but primarily fibromyalgia in the pain department #but he hasnt really realised that it's abnormal so he hasnt mentioned it to anyone. until he brings it up offhandedly to daniil (as #pictured) and daniil goes through every stage of grief at the same time #hes got problems. hes gottem #as i said it was icarus who had the idea and ive been thinking about it ever since :-D ily ic #thenks duolingo russian course for my life my russian is still incredibly sparse but im tryin. im getting somewhere. very (very) slowly #i hope you are all doing well my dear friends!!! i am so sorry i have been so absent this term has been absurdly busy :-( i miss you all