#while most of these are traits fundamental to their character some of these i thought up while writing

[pacifistcowboy]

Can you rattle off question 16 for your Sol Ocs (whichever ones you have enough development on)?

I imagine theyll be opposite ish their counterparts, but am intrigued!

(16 is biggest strengths)

ooo thank u for askin’!!! sorry this took so long to reply to, i did a lot more than just rattle off jscjsjcj

sol-shadow’s biggest strengths in terms of like, skills are ice-skating, which she can do as fast as blaze can run, n i haven’t really thought about her fighting style, but she’s definitely efficient in using her cryokinesis. i imagine when she first shows up in blaze’s time her go-to would be using icicles to stab enemies, but after goin’ through the whole hullabaloo of self-reflection n whatnot, she decides to learn to use her powers in a way where she just immobilises enemies instead of kill them.

in terms of personality, sol-shadow’s biggest strength is how dedicated she is to other people. she does NOT want to be alone so she will do anything for someone if she thinks that means they’ll stick around. she also cares a lot about honouring what pierce (her brother) wanted for the people of the sol empire, in a very similar manner to the way og-shadow is with maria’s wish. however, sol-shadow’s a little forgetful i guess n doesn’t have a great grasp on what’s right or wrong, so sometimes she’ll already be doing something before she realises it’d be something her brother would’ve probably discouraged her from doing, or she can’t fully tell if it’s a good or bad thing. i guess she’s more of a ‘help this one person’ than a ‘help the greater good’ kinda person which isn’t really a strength or a weakness!

(so uh since writing this ^^^ i have realised i should probably have sol-shadow and sol-rouge swap ‘roles’ because blaze’s ‘role’ is much more like knuckles so it’d make more sense for her rival to be more like rouge than shadow, but i haven’t figured out how much needs to be changed around or how i’ll make it work so i’ll still share what i originally wrote for sol-shadow. i’ll have to figure out why she’d be a thief and possibly an agent or something of that style)

thorn’s (i’ve decided sol-amy’s name is thorn :]) biggest strength in terms of skill is swordsmanship. he’s self-taught so he doesn’t know any like formal ways of sword-fighting, but he knows how to attack and defend effectively n that’s all that matters to him.

in terms of personality i’d say thorn’s biggest strength is that he’s probably very focused and detail-oriented given how much he worries about things going wrong. he has no faith in winging it so he’d make sure everything is thought out and would notice things other people overlooked, but he’d always point them out in a way where it sounds like he’s more calling people dumb for not noticing rather than trying to be helpful. so i guess tldr he’s good at catching problems! but i don’t think he’s good at solving them :/

mittens’ biggest strength skill-wise is her physical strength which she’s much better at using to carry or move objects than to fight, simply because she tries not to use her strength violently. if she had to fight someone using her physical strength she’d probably accidentally kill them ‘cause she doesn’t know exactly how powerful she is. she also figured out how to use her aerokinesis in a way where she can subdue enemies without hurting them, which is her go-to move against people instead of using her physical strength. she can also use her aerokinesis to fly but chooses not to because she simply prefers walking.

personality-wise mittens’ biggest strength is her patience. she will always try to talk things out and find a peaceful solution and pretty much never loses her temper. she likes to give people the benefit of the doubt but she doesn’t just suddenly wholeheartedly trust them, more just has faith that every person can change.

i feel so bad that i cannot think of a single skill sterling has ahdjwjfjwjf. she can see the future but that’s involuntary. i guess she’d eventually have to get good at finding clues and asking the right questions since she’s the only one who can see and interact with the future for a short time to figure out what caused it. she also might eventually learn to control when the visions happen but that’ll take time and be a constant effort. she’s very much a normal person who just accidentally gained a special ability.

again, i can’t really think of what sterling’s biggest strength would be personality-wise fjhfjwhd i SWEAR she’s a good kid and i love her!!! she just spends too much time trying to stay out of the way and doubting herself to really let herself shine :( i guess i could say she’s very modest and you can trust her follow orders since she doesn’t trust her own judgement, but those aren’t exactly strengths, more like positive twists on poor confidence. she also doesn’t know social etiquette so she always skips the unnecessary waffling n stuff when you talk to her, so i guess that’s a good thing! as long as you don’t perceive that as rude n appreciate not having to participate in dumb social rules wndnwnfb sterling doesn’t even do it on purpose, she just never picked up on the stuff you’re “supposed” to do. i know that trait isn’t very opposite to silver, but it was rather difficult to make a character contrast silver since he himself has rather conflicting traits, so i said fuck it and picked one main part of silver to give sterling the opposite personality of, then let the rest of her form on its own

sol-vector’s biggest strength when it comes to skill is probably her orderliness. she is much stronger than the average person, but not freakishly strong like mittens, and she only uses her physical strength when it’s necessary, not like it’s her specialty, which is why i’m sayin’ her work ethic is her best quality. she’s adamant about checking every clue, following every step, and only going after a bad guy once absolutely certain they’re the culprit, not just goin’ off assumptions and vibes. this can be seen as either a strength or a weakness, but sol-vector thinks it’s a strength so ajdjsjc she also tries to refuse when random people ask for the sol-chaotix help since they actually work for the sol empire and are assigned jobs, so to her that’d be like breaking the rules, but if someone is in need of enough help, her compassion outweighs her need to follow the rules.

i guess sol-vector’s skill-strength is also kinda her personality-strength?? she sticks to her guns and doesn’t give up on doing things the ‘right’ way (her version of right, idk if i can say it is The Right Way), and it comes from a place of wanting to make sure the wrong person doesn’t get in trouble and that the sol-chaotix genuinely do a good job at helping people and protecting the world.

sol-espio’s greatest strength skill-wise is her aim. i’ve decided she’s a cowboy n not a sumo wrestler so she uses revolvers to fight and she is absolutely awesome at shootin’. she can handle multiple enemies at once, is a perfect shot, and has the time of her life doin’ it. if she runs out of bullets she resorts to just throwing her guns at enemies which she makes work!

sol-espio’s greatest strength personality-wise is her enthusiasm. she’s full of energy so she never loses steam, and she’s always in the mood for action. she’s constantly looking for someone to fight but she won’t hurt innocent people. she keeps situations lighthearted and banters with absolutely everyone…she just sounds like sonic doesn’t she :/ i’ll say i think she’s a lot more intentionally irritating than sonic, and has much less patience when listening to people. ig she doesn’t mind not being friends with ppl while i think sonic tries to befriend everyone he meets at least once

sol-charmy’s biggest skill-strength is her attention to detail. she’s very quiet and observant, and always wanders away from the group just looking at everything. most people gravitate towards the big, obvious things, but her brain doesn’t work like that, so she notices the little details and usually ends up finding the important clues first. being a spider, she can also climb and stick to walls n ceilings, and given her size and natural quietness, she’s good at going unnoticed. she’s also a good artist and poet, but idk how well i can show that given that i’d be the one writing her poetry lol (she can also probably shoot webs out her butt ‘cause y’know; spider, n could also maybe use it like rope? but i haven’t explored that yet)

sol-charmy’s biggest personality-strength is how insightful and a deep thinker she is. she doesn’t take things at face value, and she really cares about truly understanding someone or something. she’s very introspective, constantly writing and drawing how she feels, and although she’s very shy, if she sees someone is struggling she’ll try to support them, albeit by just kinda silently being near them and giving them a face of “i understand and i’m here for you.”

so i hadn’t written about sol-rouge before deciding i’m gonna change it so he’ll have og-shadow’s ‘role’ more than og-rouge, but his personality would still be a contrast to og-rouge, so i now don’t really have a grasp of sol-rouge anymore. i’m probably gonna have to skip him for this ‘cause i need to figure out how he’ll have skills like og-rouge but not identical, how they’ll be useful for someone not a thief, how he’ll still have og-rouge’s core selfishness(??) while no longer being a thief, what exactly og-shadow’s “role” is and how to apply it to sol-rouge, and how to make sure he’s actually different to og-shadow ‘cause i think they’re a bit too similar at the moment. this character’s a tough one D:

i haven’t developed my sol-cream, sol-big, or shelly organik enough to answer for them, but i do know that sol-big is a very good birdwatcher :] if that’s a thing one can be good at

thank u again for being interested in my funky characters and i am SO sorry that this was not remotely succinct

#while most of these are traits fundamental to their character some of these i thought up while writing #so there’s a possibility these things might change or not come up once i actually put these mfs in situations #but still!! i think these are accurate #i say as if they aren’t my own characters #sol dimension ocs #sol dimension #sonic oc #sonic ocs

[erose-this-name]

Kabru is such a brilliantly written character, one of the best in Dungeon Meshi (which is a high bar as it is, most of the main cast are similarly genius). 

His thing is that he is very friendly and nice confident and maxed out his charisma stat, but is also kinda ambitious and manipulative. But not in an overtly malicious way. Which kinda scares me.

The most impressive thing about him, writing wise, is that it’s all show-don’t-tell. He very frequently uses his charm and empathy and understanding of how people think in really clever ways. We’re often walked through his thought process of how he does these social deductions. We’re never told he’s scarily charismatic, besides other characters reacting to him being scarily charismatic.

Kabru is a natural-born leader and social engineer with superlative skills in both, which makes him the perfect foil for Laios, who’s too autistic and unambitious that he’s not even the de facto leader of his own party that he’s the official leader of. He’s so bad at leadership that his party just, sort of, doesn’t have a leader. They just kinda argue and do stuff.

What’s also neat, and perfectly inline with Meshi’s general theme of clever and logical subversions of fantasy tropes, is that Kabru’s character design in no way clues us in on this fundamental character trait of his.

He’s sort of a human fighter / knight archetype, which in the language of fantasy RPGs is a class most would associate with being a white bread jock, chivalrousness optional. (Laios subverts the same trope in the same way. It’s really funny that the walking exposition dump of the group looks like the character creator default preset spec’d as the most generic class available.)

If Kabru was a bard or noble and Laios a wizard, their character traits would be far less interesting

Even better is that we would expect someone who looks like Laios to have Kabru’s personality, and vice versa. Their character designs are flipped; the confident super charismatic leader is a short wide-eyed twink, while the slightly naive and very autistic monster enthusiast is a tall conventionally attractive Aryan lookin’ mf. (see what I mean by Kabru being such a good foil for Laios?? No wonder everyone ships them, they’re perfect for each other!)

Yet, their designs also work for them. Kabru just has a face that’s easy to talk to, his piercing blue eyes and curly hair gives him a false sense of naïveté, while his iconic 👁️👁️ expression hints that there’s actually quite a bit going on inside his head. Meanwhile, Laios believably looks like someone who doesn’t know what hair conditioner is. His armor’s collar gorget thing is also pretty dorky.

You can’t trust people like that (I mean overly charismatic people with a manipulative streak, not blue-eyed twinks) because you can’t know what their real motives are. You can’t know they aren’t pretending, you can’t know they aren’t trying to or haven’t already manipulated you. How could you? When he has so much more social intelligence than you do, average socially awkward Tumblr user? He’s touched all the grass!

In episode 16 (spoilers, btw) Kabru finally meets Laios’s party, who he’s been trying to find and fight for the better part of the season, and he just decides that no confrontation is necessary. Like, immediately upon meeting the guy. Just from how Laios looked at him. He figures that since Laios didn’t seem to recognize him, they either have never met meaning he has the wrong guy, or Laios forgot meaning he didn’t think it’d be a big deal, meaning the treasure was a trap or something. Which is pretty in line with Kabru’s established ability to always roll nat 20s for every charisma and deductive reasoning check, so cool.

But he doesn’t even seem curious about which of those cases is true. (He might be interested to find out some of the treasure wasn’t dangerous, but accidentally got thrown off a bridge). Much to Rin’s dismay, he’d rather just not bring it up because that could upset the leader of the party he might be working with for the foreseeable future.

Actions speak louder than words. So, all we really learn in this scene is that Kabru’s goals and M.O. can change on a dime, and that he values reputation and political capital more than money and vengeance. More than his own party’s desire for those things. Not only is he someone with a silver tongue, but he knows its value and is determined to use it at every opportunity.

Kabru and his party might not be very good at fighting or surviving in the dungeon, in fact their frequent TPKs are a running gag. But, he also doesn’t need to be when he can just manipulate Laios’ and Shuro’s much more proficient parties into helping him.

So far, Kabru seems like the most likely one to become king of the dungeon or whatever the mcguffin is. He is the only protagonist so far who has said that’s an actual goal of his. He’s said that he doesn’t think someone like Laios who isn’t a born leader should get it.

In fact, Kabru seems to have very strong opinions on what kinds of people should be allowed to adventure in the dungeon, evidenced by the fact that he murdered an entire party over it, justified or not. Kabru seems to think that Kabru is such a leader, and he’s probably right about that, but what kind of leader? 

What would Kabru do with that kind of power if he gets it? Because I’m not sure. All I know is that he is the kind of person with the ability to use real political power to its full potential. For good, or for very, very bad.

I’m not saying that Kabru is evil or that he’s secretly gonna be the surprise villain. I dunno, I haven’t read the manga. He could just be a nice guy that’s just, like, is like that. Everything he’s done could be justified by the explanations he’s given. He actually reminds me a lot of one of my IRL friends, and I’d trust him with my life.

But, I can’t help but feel a distinct sense of unease whenever he’s on-screen. I try not to trust confident natural-born leaders like him right out of the gate. I don’t like that our instinct as humans is to blindly follow them without thinking about it.

Tyrants and psychopaths also use confidence and charm and a friendly demeanor to make people think they’re a good guy, while manipulating everyone into thinking their self-serving actions are altruistic. Benevolent, confident, skilled leaders do exist. But there exists many more snakes wearing their skin. Wolves rarely bother with sheep’s clothing, they dress as shepherds and sheepdogs.

Anyway, my point is that I think it’s kinda neat that it’s possible to overthink this much about a character whose probably just a nice guy that is the mirror opposite of an autistic person. Writing that kind of ambiguity is hard, and employing it in this way is inspired.

#writing #spilled thoughts #dungeon meshi #kabru of utaya #laios x kabru

[scatterbrainedbot]

I AM SPINNING I AM PACING I AM FULL ON FROLICKING IM SO EXCITED

@d1sc0rd1a THANK U FOR THESE TAGS

okayokayokayokay so pretty much all of these questions will be Officially Answered properly in the character design/intro pages im working on but also i am physically vibrating with excitement about the fact that you noticed all these details and i have very little self control so! lore dump time!!!

(minor tw for mentions of leos self-harm/self-destructive anxious behaviors and unhealthy coping skills)

- mikey does indeed have curly fur! i believe he would be considered a 'rex' rat (pictured on the left) for this trait? though the curls can be more easily seen on mice (pictured on the right). or, at least it seems that way. have not delved too deeply into the details of rodent genes and husbandry, but id assume its the same sort of mutation considering curly haired mice are also referred to as rex sometimes? either way hes a extra floofy bby 🧡

-as for raphie, unfortunately being more fluff and less shell than the average rapheal comes with its downsides. especially if you and your brothers occasionally encounter things like territorial dogs, hungry cats, or sewer crocodiles while exploring places ur dad said not supposed to go. (most of his scars will have more ninja related stories, but his ear i think got messed up from something very animal. probably around age 11 ish? old enough to sneak out from dads protection but young enough to not fully know how to handle himself alone against real danger. thankfully his ear injury looks worse than it actually is for the most part, as the damage was largely to the outer ear. his hearing wasnt super affected, except that he now has a bit of a harder time being able to track/pinpoint noises origins if its on his right side.)

-also yep! dons got some glasses that just clip/rest on the bridge of his nose! theyre mostly just for home use, as they do fall off if hes knocked around. in the field he has some goggles he tends to use (theyre helpful as they have multiple additional functions like heat-imaging, extra zoom/telescoping, and recording capabilities. but also theyll give him headaches if he wears them for too long without breaks). contacts are theoretically also an option but he absolutely hates the sensation of putting them in. so sometimes when hes tired he'll just not bother with either clips or goggles and just squint and struggle. leo hates when he does that lol.

-speaking of leo, he is def an anxious baby :) he has a few patches of fur missing on his hand cos he has the tendency to tug on it while hes thinking. he yanked and chewed on his own tail a lot when he was younger too, which is why when hes older he usually wears some wraps to cover the scars left from that behavior. he finds those scars specifically to be kinda embarrassing and shameful because they werent from any battle or life-lesson, just his own 'inability to control himself'. all of his brothers have repeatedly called him out on the fact that that is not a healthy way to think about his anxiety or mental health, but leo insists hes fine. hes kinda convinced himself that a proper warrior always has control over his own body* and his own thoughts, thus he should be able to just like willpower-brute-force his way into 'being better'. (this line of thinking pisses raph off so much he has to leave and go hit something)

Splinter also tries to talk him through some of that internalized guilt/shame/everything, but splinters very metaphorical, poetic, and indirect when it comes to talking about Big Things, which combined with how much leo gets caught in his own head, makes it kinda hard to gauge how much these talks actually help

*this is made extra fun considering leos also ftm trans, so he is faced with a body that fundamentally disobeys him perhaps more than the average rat-man.

-and im still going back and forth between a few species for splinter, but im leaning mostly towards an African Spurred Tortoise! they have these beautiful if kinda subtle geometric shell patterns and are the third largest species of tortoise in the world. the only thing that doesnt fit perfectly with Splints is that (allegedly) their lifespan in captivity is around 50ish years, whereas im p sure Tortoise Splinter is well over 75, probably closer to 90 when the boys are born and hes mutated into Old Man Papa.

but maybe hes just a particularly long lasting African Spurred Tortoise.

the Hamato family has taken very good care of him for many decades after all. :)

(well. until everything all fell apart, that is.....)

#tmnt #rat sons #my art #tmnt au #literally bouncing around the room thinking about this all #my downstairs neighbors are gonna hate me #ask reply #sort of??? #pats leos fucked up lil head #this bad boy can fit so much projection #get out of ur head idiot ur family loves and wants to help u #also looking at the chaco tortoise and ploughshare tortoise for splinter thoboth of those are smaller species than i think he is

[imagining-in-the-margins]

Extracurriculars (S.R.)

Summary: Reader saves her TA from a frathouse.

Request: gradstudent!Spencer getting dragged to a frat party and hooking up with a girl in her undergrad (someone he's been interested in) A/N: Who wouldn’t want to deflower sweet Spencer? Characters are both around 21. Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader Category: Smut (NSFW, 18+) Content Warning: Virgin!Spencer, frat house, college party, alcohol, drunken sexual activity, heavy petting, kissing, making out, loss of virginity (male) penetrative sex, protected sex (condom), TA/Student relationship Word Count: 5k

MASTERLIST

When I was younger, my mother taught me a few key lessons about growing up. She had to teach me those things because, while they seemed to come naturally to other kids, they never came to me.

It seemed fundamentally unfair that I could do the quadratic formula before I could tie my shoes. Of course, with that, I could just insist I preferred Velcro. My inability to recognize the socially acceptable way to care for my body, or even recognize the signals it was sending to me, was a little harder to explain. It was even harder to calibrate.

By the time I reached college, I became obsessed with cleanliness to an unhealthy degree. I would avoid any situations where I could find myself fixated on dirt beneath my fingernails or anything that could be even tangentially described as ‘sticky.’

I was petrified of being perceived as anything but pure. I had been that way for long enough that it had basically become my defining character trait.

And then, on one very lonely and poorly planned night in grad school, I decided to challenge the idea that I could only be one thing.

That night, I went to a frat house.

Between the pulsing speakers that measured up to my hips and the remnants of discarded beer bottles, I realized that I had made a number of miscalculations—the kind that my mother had most certainly not prepared me for.

“Come on, man, live a little!” the student beside me shouted over impossibly loud music.

I hadn’t the slightest clue what he was asking me to do, but I could tell from the taunt that my answer would be the same regardless:

“N-No thanks.”

I looked down at the glass bottle still dripping beer from its lip. My stomach churned at the sight. I was so distracted by the thought of spit coating the finish that I had failed to connect the dots to realize that the group was planning to play the aptly named game ‘spin the bottle.’

That was, until the older but somehow less mature man to my side jeered, “Why not? Have you never kissed a girl before?”

My cheeks burned with some mixture of embarrassment and rage. I’d hoped that they would confuse it for drunkenness, if they’d thought about it at all.

I wanted to open my mouth to defend my decision without sounding pathetic, but my lips stayed tightly shut.

Then, just a second before the pause became awkward, a second voice chimed in.

“Piss off, idiot.”

I heard her right before I felt her. Her arm slung around my neck brought with it the comforting scent of jasmine and vanilla. Her heated skin somehow stayed warm but never sticky, and my body quickly corrected its instinct to move closer to her.

She’s my student, I reminded myself.

My favorite student, though.

Although the feeling was shared by the man she was speaking to, he wasn’t so clear about it. He seemed almost sarcastic when he shouted, “Whoa! Careful there (y/n), you might make me think you like me.”

By contrast, she was outright in her apathy when she droned, “No one likes you.”

“Ouch,” he replied with a hand clutching his chest, “You wound me.”

I’d half expected her to respond to him in kind. My mind ran a million confusing calculations to try to determine whether this was just harmless flirting or actual annoyance. All I knew for certain was that my chest burned with jealousy that dissipated within a second of her speaking again.

“Hey cutie, which of these jackasses brought you here?” she asked so sweetly I could taste sugar on my tongue as I tried to answer.

“Huh? Oh, u-uh. No… jackasses.”

Smooth as the cheap liquor we’re drinking.

“Yeah, right,” she chuckled in disbelief before explaining, “That’s all that’s here besides you.”

… Besides me?

“You wanna leave?”

My heart stopped at the mere thought. For a moment, I convinced myself that I had fantasized the question. Perhaps someone had slipped something into my drink that had turned me into a blubbering fool. Perhaps it was something more nefarious.

She wouldn’t.

Wouldn’t what?

“What?” I asked.

Before she could clarify, the now very unwelcome third presence chimed in, “He just got here! Let him stay.”

I watched as she bristled in response. Her fingernails dug slightly into my shoulder and she pulled me closer.

It must have been instinct. There was no way she could have meant it on purpose.

It felt nice, though, to be closer to her.

“I also just got here, and yet, I want to leave,” she sneered.

When he made a motion to touch her shoulder the same way she’d been touching mine, she jumped back with a stern warning.

“Touch me and lose at least one testicle.”

He put his hands up in surrender. She scoffed. Her hand dropped from my shoulder, but I never had time to miss her. She took my hand so quickly that I didn’t have time to think about my response. So, I held hers back.

My heart had finally made up its mind before she spoke.

“Come on, sweetheart. We’re leaving,” she ordered.

I followed.

“W-Where are we going?”

She shrugged.

“I don’t know. Somewhere else.”

She turned to look at me with the utmost skepticism, or, dare I say it, fascination with what she found.

“You have somewhere to be?” she asked.

“Um… no?”

I prayed it had been the right answer.

It was.

“Wanna come back to my place?” she offered with a smile, “It’s not far from here.”

She’d said it so casually that I couldn’t help but feel I’d missed something. Surely, she couldn’t be offering the normal incidental activities typically involved with accompanying someone ‘back to their place.’

I had been so certain of it that I’d even possessed the courage to ask.

“Uh… to do… what?”

She laughed. It wasn’t a painful sound; it was kind and airy. The music of her laughter lined the increasingly quiet streets as the music faded away in the background.

“You’re cute,” she hummed. Then, with a wicked smirk, she purred, “You got something in mind?”

My face filled with what felt like half the blood in my body. The rest went to another, somehow even more embarrassing aspect of my anatomy.

She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she seemed emboldened and excited by how smitten I seemed. It all felt so idyllic that I didn’t even question when she’d taken my hand in hers again.

“Come on, cutie,” she instructed.

My heart quivered at the compliment. I didn’t even try to convince myself that it had been uttered with condescension or sarcasm. I enjoyed, even just for a moment, the idea that I might be seen as something desirable to her.

I had many reasons not to trust women like her. I had been burned in the past, with ropes and blindfolds that still felt paralyzing. But in that moment, those cruel memories felt worlds away.

She had just seemed so… calm. So happy to flaunt our intertwined fingers no matter how many familiar faces we passed.

“What were you doing in a place like that, anyway?” she asked.

I laughed before I thought not to.

“Did I seem that uncomfortable?”

“Weren’t you?”

“Yeah, I was.”

The admission didn’t seem as humiliating as I’d expected it to. The girl swaying closer with each step seemed pleased at the answer. I realized that she might’ve carried her own concern that perhaps she had overstepped bounds by assuming she was doing me a favor.

“Thanks for saving me,” I reassured her.

“Please,” she sighed, “I was looking for a reason to leave.”

It was a genuine, if not puzzling statement. Although I’d failed to realize in the moment, I would come to learn that we had both arrived at the party with the exact same motivations.

“Why’d you go then?” I asked.

The glitter on her face paled in comparison to her eyes among the streetlights. While she stared at me, I lost myself in the mesmerizing cascade of fluttering incandescence among the backdrop of her irises.

It was not the alcohol in my veins that made my cheeks tinge pink. It was not the bitter heat of the drought, nor the fear of whatever was making my shoes stick to cement.

It was the sound of her sigh and the way she looked at me like I might know the solution to the problem that landed us there together.

“Hell if I know,” she laughed solemnly. “Lonely, I guess.”

That makes two of us, I wanted to say. But it could be zero. If you wanted it to.

I wasn’t drunk enough to say that, though. Just enough to not stop the seemingly rude question from slipping out.

“Do any of those people actually… like each other?”

“Definitely not,” she laughed again.

I wanted to hear it again, but I didn’t know how to make sure of that.

So, instead, I just smiled and said, “Noted.”

By some miracle, she giggled again. Once she finished, she turned to look at me. At first, I met her eyes, but the intensity caused a shiver to spark throughout my entire body. Goosebumps rippled as my heart struggled to make sense of the feelings her eyes stirred inside me.

She laughed again. I wouldn’t care if it was the hundredth time. I savored the sweet sound in each of its iterations.

With her bitten lip and her half-lidded eyes, she swayed closer to me until our bodies bumped. I wondered if she could feel the way I shivered in response.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re cute,” she answered.

It was such a strange thing for her to repeat that the insecurity riding the waves of alcohol bubbled over again.

“You aren’t drunk, right?”

Again, she laughed.

Again, I begged.

“No, silly! I know my limits.”

She certainly hadn’t been shy with sharing the lack of them, either. Her arm wrapped around mine and pulled me even closer. It took every bit of focus I could muster not to trip and bring an end to the most wonderful waking dream.

Of course, that focus vanished almost immediately once I realized what part of her anatomy was now pressed against my arm.

So soft and warm and—

“Why are you worried about it, anyway?” she hummed.

At the same time, she dipped her head down to force me to meet her eyes instead of staring at her chest. Somehow, that wasn’t the most humiliating part of the exchange. No, that honor was reserved for the question that followed.

“Are you sure you don’t have any extracurriculars in mind for when we get to my place?”

“I was just making sure!” I yelped in the most pathetic kind of defense. It took me a moment and her own wayward glances down my body to realize that the tease hadn’t been an accusation.

If anything, it felt more like an offer.

Pride and confusion swelled in my chest. In the chaos, a few words tumbled out of my mouth that I hadn’t pre-prepared.

“I-I mean, you keep calling me cute, so… Sounds like something a drunk girl would say,” I laughed.

She didn’t, though. Instead, she came to a sudden stop and her lips curled into a slightly unnerving curvature. A hungry, stomach turning desire for… something.

Me?

It couldn’t be.

I stopped, too, holding my breath and waiting for some permission or instruction to do anything but wait. Thankfully, she turned and climbed the stairs of what I could now safely assume was her porch.

She threw the door open without further fanfare but a little bit of a tease.

“Get inside, idiot,” she laughed.

I followed her instruction. Of course, I paused at the door and waited for her to show me the way. I nearly passed out when she intertwined our fingers once more and led me through the darkness of her otherwise unoccupied apartment.

My training to hopefully get into the FBI would have had me carefully inspecting her surroundings to learn more about this tantalizing woman. It wouldn’t have been a bad idea, but I knew there was no way I could focus on anything other than how it felt when she looked at me.

Especially then. Together in the light polluted darkness, she didn’t stray too far. Even when she reached behind me to shut the door to her room, she lingered.

I stumbled backwards, not in fear, but as a horrible overcorrection to what I wanted to do.

To my surprise, it didn’t dissuade her.

In fact, she came even closer. She stepped forward until her chest was pressed against mine and her breath ghosted over my ear.

“Was he right, by the way?”

“Who?”

She let go of my hand and began trailing her fingers softly up my arm until I honestly couldn’t see straight anymore.

I wanted her so badly. Almost on cue, she splayed her hand across my lower back and held my hips against hers.

Again, I whimpered. Again, she giggled.

Her hips rolled forward against my now very prominent erection wedged between us. Just before she spoke, she took a sharp inhale that was released with a shaky breath.

“Have you ever kissed a girl before?” she asked.

I couldn’t even think to speak, let alone lie.

I shook my head no. Her free hand immediately tangled in my hair, tilting my head to the side just to see whether I would resist.

I didn’t.

“Do you want to?” she asked.

That time, I had to say something. I was too afraid the moment would slip away.

“Um… are you… asking me to kiss you?”

Immediately, she returned the question with a question.

“Are you telling me no?”

“No!”

Her hand in my hair held me steady while she retreated. The room felt hopelessly cold without her body heat.

“No, no, I’m not telling you no,” I babbled while she looked on with that same wicked smile. “As in, I think my answer is… yes?”

Before I could resort to begging, she closed the distance between us. Her hands held my cheeks and pulled me forward until our lips crashed together.

I knew my kissing her was clumsy and naive, but I couldn’t help it. The moment I tasted faded fruit flavored chapstick, my mind gave up on any hope for reason.

Just when I thought she was done with me, she kissed me again. She kept kissing me—the action becoming sloppier and sweeter with every passing second.

Her hands dropped to grip fistfuls of my shirt at the same time mine jumped to cup her face.

She was so soft. The pillowy feeling of her lips made me forget how much I normally hated stickiness on my skin. Because I loved how it felt when her lips lingered.

I would’ve kissed her for hours, forever, but she ended that hope with a firm tug of my shirt before she tossed me towards her bed.

My heart leapt into my throat. It lodged itself just behind the Adam’s apple like it could hide its blatant affection from her somehow.

She stalked closer like she had before. She drew feathery patterns up my goosebump riddled arms before she whispered in my ear.

“You’re fun to kiss.”

“I-Is it bad?” I stammered, for some reason.

“No, it’s fun,” she repeated.

She didn’t dwell for a second on my insecurity and momentary idiocy. Instead, she began lowering her fingers down my stomach and giggling as she felt the muscles tense.

“You wanna do something more fun, Spencer?”

Completely lacking any oxygen, I breathed, “Like what?”

“You’re a genius, right?”

Just like that, she firmly grabbed hold of me through my pants. I responded with a broken, strangled cry that fell away the moment she started to drum her fingers against the burning fabric. 

“Do I need to say it?” she teased.

Her tongue peeked out between her teeth when she pulled back to look at me. At the same time, she began palming my erection with such familiarity that I nearly fell apart in her hand.

“Fuck,” I groaned involuntarily.

“Never heard you talk like that before,” she whispered, “Hope it’s a nice word.”

Euphoria flooded my senses that were dangerously heightened by the alcohol I’d consumed to make it through the party. Not enough to be inebriated, but enough to make me stupid.

Even more stupid than I was already made by the blood pooling in the appendage fighting against my pants.

“Fuck, please don’t stop,” I gasped. My hips started bucking against her, and for a moment, I thought she would grant me mercy.

But then her hand slowed to a stop.

“Gonna have to stop if you want to get to the fun part,” she cooed.

Half-joking, I slurred back, “Is this not the fun part?”

Then the world came to a standstill, the universe pausing its incessant tumbling to allow me to hear her next words with a crystal-like clarity.

“Do you want to fuck me, Spencer?”

I nodded without hesitation or shame.

“Use your pretty voice,” she chastised so kindly it made my heart ache.

“Yes,” I pleaded. “Yes, I want to f-fuck you.”

She smiled and it didn’t feel like a mockery, somehow.

“Good,” she chirped. Then, without hesitation, she began steadfastly undoing my pants.

She seemed so skilled at the movements that I doubted whether she’d had any alcohol at all.

I’d been so caught up in the wonder of her that every ounce of fight left my body. I let her undress me and barely managed to help in my stupor.

She still didn’t mind. The smile on her face persisted the entire time.

“Lay down,” she commanded.

I followed. I scrambled back onto her bed without ever taking my eyes off her.

She moved so elegantly, so graceful as she stripped and presented me with the most beautiful sight. My heart was pounding so hard against my rib cage that I was worried it might break free to find her.

Yet when she finally crawled on top of me, my body tried to sink into the mattress. As if to stop me, she wrapped her devilishly warm fingers around my dick.

Still, I’d managed to squeak, “Aren’t you worried that we’re… moving a little fast?”

“Are you worried?” she shot back without judgement.

My mind was caught in two types of fog, however. I tried to breathe through it, tried to think of anything besides how nice it felt when her fingers ghosted over the bare tip, but I couldn’t.

“Are you sure you’re not drunk?” I laughed again, the words getting caught on soft moans still pouring from my mouth.

“You tell me,” she dared.

Then she kissed me. This time, she didn’t stop at my lips. Her lithe tongue slipped between my teeth and nearly wrapped around my own.

The muffled sounds of pleasure between us were getting harder to bear. That energy, the pent up frustration of almost a full year of wanting her had to come out somehow.

I grabbed her hips harder than I thought I was capable of. My nails dug into soft flesh and it caused her to make the most beautiful sound.

That beautiful girl gasped before she moaned against my cheek. Her hips dug harder into my lap, bucking against the hardness wedged between her thighs.

I dragged my nails down her legs, surprising us both at how much I loved to watch her writhe.

Still, I knew she was the one in control. She looked down at me like a toy that played perfectly along with her fantasies.

I wanted to let her have her way with me. But when she leaned over my body, I couldn’t stop myself. My lips caught her breast the moment she came close enough.

My hands were gentler there, palming at the supple tissue that slipped between my fingers. I lavished the hardened peak at the center for as long as she would let me, suckling at her breast like a man starved.

Eventually, though, she wound a hand through my hair and pulled me back against the pillow.

In my daze, I hardly noticed the condom in her hand until she rolled the latex over my dick.

Suddenly, and without thinking, I sputtered out a confounding command.

“Wait!”

She froze. Her flushed chest heaved, still glistening with evidence of my affection.

“Are you alright?” she asked, her voice filled with the most genuine concern.

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine, I just…” I tried to assure her and myself.

The poor girl looked horrified, like she was waiting for me to condemn her for her absolutely delightful enthusiasm up to this point.

It was such a silly worry that it almost made me laugh. It almost made the vulnerability that would follow feel like no risk at all.

“I need to tell you something first,” I explained.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked at her. I really looked at her—that dazzling star of a girl. My student, my favorite student that I’d watched and lusted over in every class. My mind simmered with that feeling; the knowing that the thing I coveted most might actually be mine.

“I… like you,” I said.

Less eloquent than I’d hoped.

If her bubbly, wholehearted laugh was any indication, she still didn’t mind.

“Well, I’d sure hope so!” she snickered.

I felt compelled to explain.

“No, I mean, I’ve liked you for a while now. Like, I really like you,” I insisted.

That time when she kissed me, it felt like her own confession. Scooting forward until her heat was pressed against my own, she sighed happily against my lips.

“You’re so sweet, Spencer,” she hummed, “I really like-like you, too.”

Even though my mind tried to deny it, my foolhardy heart recognized the truth in her words. It clung to her the same as my hands drifting over the new marks on her thighs.

“But we don’t have to do this,” she assured me. “Do you want to do this, or do you want to stop?”

“I want you so bad,” I whined without any hesitation. “Please, please—I want you.”

That cruel twist of her lips returned. The sound of my begging urged her on until she lifted herself just above where I wanted her. She leaned forward again, propping herself up above me while her hair tickled my face.

“Kiss me,” she slurred against my lips.

I did. I kissed her even more feverishly than before and used all the air in my chest to worship her.

I was convinced my lungs would collapse when she finally started to ease her way onto my aching cock. Each second of tortuous pleasure, the scorching heat of her enveloping me like flames kissing desiccated wood.

My jaw was dropped open, my mouth losing all moisture as I panted and twitched with pleasure. I could barely keep my eyes open, but I saw her. I watched as she winced at how far her walls had to stretch around me.

Yet I felt her desire dripping at the base of me, glistening the same as my spit spread across her breast.

“That’s it, baby,” she purred as she settled at the base of me.

I looked down at where I’d disappeared inside of her and decided it was better than any magic trick I’d ever hoped to master.

“Does that feel good?” she whispered when she saw the wonder in my eyes.

Involuntarily, my hips bucked into her and made her gasp. Then, still without meaning to, I did it again.

“Yes,” I hissed when she tightened her walls around me.

“My sweet boy,” she cooed between breathy laughter, “You’re so fucking precious. I’m gonna make you feel so good.”

As if she hadn’t already.

But I would come to bite my tongue quicker than the words could make it out. Because for all the pleasure her descent had brought, it couldn’t compare to the feeling of her hips subtly rocking throughout her ascent.

My body actually trembled, overcome with the unadulterated pleasure of her careful rolling up and down my dick. It seemed insane for such a simple motion to render me absolutely dumbfounded, but it did.

I didn’t say a word. The only thing spilling from my lips were moans and butchered attempts at her name.

My hands, however, wandered. They traced her silhouette and groped whatever softness it could find. They settled, naturally, at her breasts. Through the motions of curious, clumsy fingers, I felt her heart beating harder against my palm.

As its speed increased, so did that of her hips. She came down harder while the pitch of her moans grew higher and more airy.

“Spencer,” she whined.

It sounded like starlight igniting deep in my chest. I felt that tension growing in my gut, threatening to bring an end to the wonder of loving her.

“Wait,” I grunted. My hands fell to her hips and halted her movements before I begged, “Sl-Slower.”

She obliged me. With her head tipped back and her hands on my chest, she rode me so slowly that I could feel every detail of her twitching muscles.

“You’re so beautiful,” I groaned.

My hips caught me off guard as they started to move. They bucked up into her with increasing intensity until it broke her rhythm.

That beautiful girl fell forward, barely catching herself before she collapsed against my body.

“Fuck me, Spencer,” she mumbled against my neck. She interrupted her own pleas with sloppy kisses against my jugular that lit my body on fire.

That passion was quickly muted by her words, however. Because that was when she growled, “Take me, Spencer. I’m yours.”

I’d never been a particularly strong man, but there was absolutely nothing that would stop me then. My hands splayed over the back of her thighs and lifted her just enough for my hips to move freely.

She clung to me, her arms wrapped around my neck and her whole body rippling with each collision of our hips.

I fucked her harder, my hands carving the memory into her skin and my jaw clenched so tightly I thought I might draw blood from my tongue.

“You can do it, sweetheart,” she purred.  “Give it to me.”

Then, just before I found my peak, I felt it. The unmistakable feeling of pulsing muscles as her body seized in my hold.

I gasped, choking on a moan as I felt her body begging me to fill her with the full extent of my desire.

I emptied myself into the condom and wished that it could have been her instead. I felt the warmth dripping back down me and dared to wonder what it would have looked like on her now-marked thighs.

“Good boy,” she snickered like she could read those fantasies raging in my mind. “That’s my good boy.”

She lifted her head just enough to plant one final kiss on my forehead, and then she promptly collapsed against my chest. I welcomed her weight despite the lack of air. Breathing hardly seemed important compared to her comfort.

And it was comfortable for me, too. As I nuzzled against her neck, I found a sense of home that I’d never felt before.

She was sticky with sweat and spit from haphazard kisses, but she was so beautiful that I barely even noticed.

When she got off of my lap, I missed her immediately. My hand chased hers and, to my unending pleasure, she let me hold it. She lingered for as long as she could before she excused herself and left me to clean up the evidence of what we’d done.

Her room was still as quiet as before. The heavy bass from the frat house felt lifetimes away. The alcohol still swirled in my bloodstream, doing little to warm my now freezing body.

When she walked back through the door, my body flooded with relief. I watched as she grabbed all of my clothing she’s tossed around and placed each piece on the nightstand.

There was a strange sadness in her eyes that I would’ve done anything to remedy.

“Hey, uh…” I started, yet my throat closed when she looked at me.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“I-I have a question,” I said.

Then paused, again.

She smiled. When that didn’t serve as answer enough, she laughed.

“Yeah?”

That lovely sound granted me the confidence to finally ask the question I’d been pondering since the moment I stepped into her room.

“Are… Are you still lonely?”

I hadn’t thought it possible, but her smile grew even brighter. Abandoning starlight for the full force of the sun that would soon peek over the horizon.

“Not so much anymore,” she answered bashfully.

I smiled, too. With a playful tilt to my shrug, I asked her one more question that begged for an answer.

“Can I stay anyway?”

Again, she giggled.

“Yeah. I’d love that.”

“So would I,” I told her.

And so, we did.

(Tell me what you thought about this fic here!)

Reid Taglist: @mrs-dr-reid , @dreatine , @hopefulfangirl24 , @laurakirsten0502 , @dontcallmekittens , @rintheemolion , @andreasworlsboring101 , @imsuperawkward , @wentz2005 , @lovejules888 , @dashneydanger , @materialisthicc , @violetspoetic , @mslowlife , @conniesanchor , @trippol-threat , @will-byers-needs-a-hug

Complete Taglist: @cynbx , @emsma11 , @mediocre-writer , @fightingdragonswithwho , @andiebeaword , @jayyeahthatsme

#spencer reid #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you

[justatalkingface]

Izuku vs Deku, Person vs Puppet

While I'm at this... I've made this point before, in that one Izuku mega-post I've made, and maybe once somewhere else? But I feel it's worth posting again outside of it, in a post just for this, if only so it's easier for people to look at this on it's own merits.

People use the name 'Deku' to refer to Izuku and I, on a personal level, dislike that. Don't get me wrong, I know why they do it, so I don't blame them (or you, theoretical random reader), but I don't like it all the same. Why?

On a fundamental level, I think of Hori making Izuku's hero name 'Deku' to be something that damages Izuku's development as a character, that it's not something done because that is what Izuku, the theoretical person would do, or something that will help him grow in some way; Izuku doesn't benefit from it all, actually.

No, the only person that really benefits is Bakugou. Here's the thing: Izuku doesn't like to be called Deku, he never did. Bakugou calls him that as an insult, deliberately, and the one time Ochako does it, based on a misunderstanding? Hurts him; he feels betrayed that his new friend is suddenly insulting him.

Of course, he's understanding when she explains why she said it, and all is forgiven afterwords, but that underlying fact is still there: Izuku does not like that name. So, why did he call himself that?

The way it's shown to us, the audience, the whole encounter with Ochaka is supposed to make him look at that insult in a new light, so Izuku calling himself that is supposed to be 'reappropriating' that name, and theoretically, that sounds great! The problem, though, is the reality of how it's presented to us:

When Ochako explains what happens, she says she thought it meant 'Dekiru', which is promptly explained to us that it means, 'You can do it!', and the way it's shown to us makes it clear that it's being given as an answer to the question Izuku has been struggling over: who am I as a hero?

The fundamentally cheerful and uplifting nature of the word, how quick and easy it is to say (as opposed to Aoyama's paragraph long abomination) and perhaps most importantly it takes that old, hateful name he's been called his old life and changes it, makes it new, encouraging, and hopeful, and has real resemblance to All Might's catch phrase, 'I am here' (as in, 'you no longer have to worry because I am here').

The setup for Izuku's name is for that, for Dekiru, the hero that says, 'You can do it!', which symbolizes the primary influence on his life shifting from Bakugou, from being belittled and looked down on, to All Might, to being enthusiastic and hopeful and encouraged; that is the reclaiming of Deku promised to us, like a new tree growing from a burnt down forest.

So... why is it Deku, then?

I'll say it again: it's because of Bakugou. It seems clear in how MHA's writing is set up that at first, Bakugou wasn't supposed to be as important and omnipresent as he ended up being, and at some point Hori shifted his plans to force him in the story, even as he was trying to keep Bakugou as Bakugou, keeping those same fundamental character traits that, realistically, he should have outgrown or have been punished for. And one of those traits?

Is calling Izuku Deku, calling him useless. The reason Izuku ultimately called himself 'Deku' has nothing to with Izuku himself, it's about Bakugou: if Izuku's hero name is Deku, and Bakugou calls him Deku? That suddenly isn't a bad thing, anymore; he's not insulting Izuku, he's just calling him by his hero name! But at the same time, it's clear by how Bakugou acts that he isn't calling Izuku by his hero name, he's just calling him by that same, belittling childhood name he always has; reality itself has just shifted to make that seem acceptable.

But if Izuku called himself Dekiru, though? Then suddenly, that shallow protection Hori afforded to him vanishes, and it's clear that Bakugou is, in fact, constantly insulting Izuku, every time they talk. It makes him look bad. And, well. Hori can't have that, so... Deku it is.

Do know what the peak irony of all this is, though? The accidental metaphor that makes it clear just how little Hori cares about Izuku, as anything beyond being a vessel to advance the story?

The meaning of Deku: it can mean a couple of things, like useless, for example, the way Bakugou uses it, but another meaning is a puppet. Hori literally stopped Izuku from calling himself Dekiru, from saying, 'I can do it!', so he could call himself a puppet instead... and all for the sake of someone else.

The symbolism on that is so strong that it hurts.

#bnha critical #mha critical #bakugou critical #izuku deserves better #izuku is a person #deku is a puppet #reference post

[distort-opia]

Could you maybe explain to me what exactly Jason's problem with Bruce was/is when he came back?

Maybe I'm being stupid but I don't know. Like, I know there's this space between Jason's resurrection and Talia finding him... and Jason returing for a sec to kill Bruce, then changing his mind, and went back to Talia to plan The Ultimatum and travel the world a bit.

I went off the assumption that Jason thought Bruce didn't care enough for him to kill the Joker and then the whole stupid thing with the batarang to the neck after everyone thought Dick died.

But, like, Jason kind of destroyed his relationship with the batfam himself with the whole coming out of nowhere and trying to hurt/traumatize/kill them. I don't mean to hate on Jason specifically, I just don't get him on a fundamental level.

Would really appreciate if somebody could clear that up, I'm kind of desperate. Like I have most of the facts but it seems like a jigzaw puzzle with too many pieces and I can't make sense of it.

To be honest, I don't understand your confusion fully? You pretty much explained it yourself, why Jason was angry at Bruce after he came back. Even Judd Winick, the writer of Under the Red Hood, says it very concisely (in this interview):

When it comes to Jason's relationships with the Batfam, I'll once again let Winick explain his vision (transcription of a podcast episode to be found here):

You say that Jason harmed his relationship with the Batfam himself as if Jason's intention had been to have good relationships with them. At the times he went after Tim or Dick or Damian, I don't think he cared much about that, hah. Most of his choices at the time could be boiled down to "What would piss off Bruce the most, either directly or by proxy?"... and also, "What would get Bruce's attention the most?". Because that's what made it complicated, right. Jason wouldn't have gone to these extremes if he didn't care about Bruce.

As to things not making sense... you're not being stupid, I'm sorry to say that at least to me, it's impossible to reconcile all of Jason's actions within a coherent character. Just because he was written by different people in different continuities with very different goals (though maybe more accurately, by some writers lacking a goal, as in not really knowing what to do with him). This is true for most comic book characters, not just Jason; true consistency is a pipe dream when the history of a character spans decades. Keeping that in mind, my personal approach is forming an idea of the original core traits of a character (which is why I gave examples of what Winick himself said), and then filtering their subsequent portrayals through that. Some comics will be horribly OOC despite them technically being canon and you simply have to go the "I recognize that the Council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision I've elected to ignore it" route. Then there's, of course, your personal preferences; you can choose what is canon to you because you like it, and form your idea of a character around those instances-- though here I'd always warn to never stop being aware that it's your idea of the character. There is no absolute truth, and we're all playing in a sandbox. Other people will choose other instances of canon, or try to reconcile all of them somehow, and your ideas might not jive. That's perfectly fine.

That being said, while I do like Jason a lot, he isn't my full-time blorbo, so I'm sure other Jason scholars could respond to this much better than I did! If anyone wants to add more in-depth answers, please do.

#asks #long post #jason todd #bruce wayne #batman #my meta

[jkrockin]

Wait what guy who hadn't read Atlas Shrugged?

I was pretty sure I'd told this story here, but a cursory search suggests that I have not. Okay let's gooooo

Many moons ago, I worked in an emergency services call centre. I worked nights- I could get regular shifts, it paid well, and I am a huge freak, just like everyone else who works nights in a call centre. It is a lifestyle that attracts freaks. Some of my coworkers weren't full-time creatures of the night, but students or whoever who picked up occasional nights for the extra money, and one of them was Libertarian Shithead, who we'll call LS for short.

LS was a twentysomething white dude who wore a lot of name brand surfwear and designer sunglasses. I assume his parents were rich. LS loved nothing better than recreational arguing. Unfortunately, he wasn't very good at it; he had some of the most dogshit opinions I've ever encountered in the wild, and was terrible at defending them. He'd say some crap about how Gattaca-type eugenics is Fine, Actually, because if you let people make designer babies, the ~*Free Market will decide what traits are desirable! Racism and colourism and ableism and sexism and intersexism won't affect those choices at all! And I'd get mad, because I have principles to speak of, and we'd get into it, and WITHOUT FAIL, we'd get maybe halfway into an actual discussion about whatever horseshit garbage he was on tonight, and the second he thought he was losing, he'd say "oh, well. I'm an ~*Objectivist, so you can't really understand my perspective unless you've read Ayn Rand." Then he'd sigh, and change the subject.

At the time I had not read any Ayn Rand. Being fundamentally powered by spite, I withstood maybe three weeks of this shit before I pirated an epub of Atlas Shrugged, put it on my e-reader, and proceeded to slam through it at supersonic speed so I could finally get to finish an argument with this terrible boy.

Anon, I fucking hated Atlas Shrugged. The book is bad. It's way too long, every single character is an unbelievable douche, the prose sucks. Ayn Rand wants to fuck a train so so so badly, but the prose is so turgid I couldn't even get invested in how much she wants to fuck a train. And the core of the matter, the politics I was there to understand, are, y'know. Objectivist. Eye-bleedingly selfish and capitalistic, expressed in amazingly childish and blinkered terms. Even the bits where it seems like the shithead capitalist dudes want to fuck each other are too mired in the scunge of Rand's terrible views to be enjoyable.

But I read the fucking thing! I powered through it with only quite minimal complaining! I finished the book on the train to work, and when I saw that LS was on that night, I plonked myself in a seat by him, and metaphorically cracked my knuckles, ready to fuckin' party. In a perfect world, I would have been cool enough to have waited for the perfect mid-argument moment to drop, but I didn't. I think I lasted exactly until we were both off a call at the same time, and then leaned in as close as the desk dividers would let me, and said "So I finished Atlas Shrugged. I have some thoughts."

I cannot overstate how quickly it became obvious that LS had not read the book. For a hot second I thought maybe it had just been a while and the fine details had escaped him, but no; he didn't know who half the characters were, or key points of the plot, or even know any of the stuff in the John Galt speech, i.e. the big juggernaut of Here's How Objectivism Works near the end of the book about Objectivism that this fucking guy hypothetically based his Objectivist views on. It took me maybe five minutes, in between calls, to realise this, and another five for him to admit he hadn't actually read any Ayn Rand. He'd read her Wikipedia page.

ANYWAY I didn't speak to him for like a month after that, and I don't think either of us lost out there!

#at the time I was very angry #but in hindsight I think it was very funny #storytime #ask me ask me ask me #anonymice

[biggiedraws]

okay i just finished rewatching fma brotherhood and can we please talk about how fuckin 15 ed is. like lots of anime protagonists are 15 but ed is *so* 15.

like- he needs to disguise the car so he makes it into a 15 year olds idea of a really cool car, and its so cringe the adults force him to change it. he makes ling a sword and puts a little skull on the handle (for literally no reason except that he presumably thought it would be cool, even though they were in the middle of getting their asses kicked by envy) and then gets defensive when ling calls it lame. he gets riled up unbelievably easily over NOTHING. his fighting style is scrappy- hes experienced but not disciplined, and he'll use whatevers on hand to get the job done. he'll mess around in the middle of a fight, use unnecessarily flashy moves/weapons, and hes just generally a nuisance in combat. he gets really flustered when people insinuate that winry is his girlfriend, and then when he DOES confess to her 2 years later he uses a fucking alchemy metaphor because hes a NERD.

im saying all of this with affection by the way- hes a cringe 15 year old because 15 year olds are cringe! i feel like most of the time these high school age protagonists are basically just adult characters with more naive ideals, or theyre a bit more emotional, or they have "childish" interests. ESPECIALLY with these high stakes action-adventure stories, where the fate of the world is in their hands. but a kid can have the weight of the world on their shoulders and still handle their emotions poorly, act recklessly, goof off at inappropriate times, and generally think and act in a way that adults wouldnt. and still be mature and competent characters! i mean, ed is a GREAT protagonist. he has a full understanding of the stakes and he knows how and when to get serious. but he also does shit like breaking into a secret government laboratory, alone, in the middle of the night, with no plan, and nearly gets himself killed in the process. because hes a reckless kid! and if he HADNT done that, they never would have found out the enemys plan in time!

and its just so perfectly executed- instead of childish traits being sprinkled on top of adult problem solving and emotional regulation, him being 15 informs how he acts all the time! sometimes this is a good thing because he solves problems in a unique way, and sometimes it causes even MORE problems. its a fundamental aspect of his character that contributes to both his strong and weak points.

and my absolute favourite part is that hes still treated like a person worthy of his title and reputation- not only by the adult characters, but by the narrative itself. but he isnt treated like an adult either! the adults around him dont talk down to him, but they also dont have adult expectations of him. theres a whole bit about how the adults shouldnt stand by while the children are on the battlefield- insinuating that while the children are worthy of standing on the battlefield alongside them, they also feel some responsibility to lead them since theyre the adults. which is super reasonable! its probably the best take on adult mentor figures for child main characters ive ever seen.

and yeah theres an argument to be made that it was pretty fucked up of mustang to recruit ed to the military at 12 years old. but he was super upfront with him about what it would entail and didnt force him into it. so watching it as an adult, yeah, its fucked up. but the target audience is kids and thats how kids want to be treated! yeah its a lot of responsibility, but ed knew that going in AND he has a huge support network of trustworthy adults who are looking out for him. hes fine. and hes DEFINITELY better off than most high school age protagonists, who are just sort of thrust into high stakes, life-threatening situations with little guidance. the dynamic is less "you are The Chosen One who will singlehandedly save the world" and more "i mean you certainly have the skills and we really appreciate you working with us but what the fuck is a child doing in the military. who authorized this?? youre going to get yourself killed PLEASE be more careful!" and like. if youre gonna have a show about a 15 year old saving the world, then thats definitely the way to do it.

and what really seals the deal is how pissed ed gets when people treat him like a kid. thats the most 15 year old thing ever! he FEELS like hes being talked down to and disrespected just because hes not given the same expectations and responsibilities as the adults. watching it as a 20 year old im super impressed by the way the adults treat ed, but i can also understand why ed gets so frustrated. its the nature of being a teenager and thinking you can handle more than you can. which really just solidifies how fuckin 15 he is

btw im not saying ed is the only well written teenager in the show. hes just the clearest example- hes so LOUD about who he is and it makes it really easy to talk about his character traits. also hes like my favourite character ever and i just have to talk about him. so like al and the rest are also really convincing kids, and a lot of this stuff kind of applies to all of them! im just talking about ed because i want to lmfao

#i dont really have a thesis here i just love it #great writing and so fun to watch #fullmetal alchemist #fma #fmab #edward elric #analysis

[raayllum]

Now, don't get me wrong, by all accounts, Rayla isn't a particularly 'good' assassin. She fails to follow mission orders when she's actually given them (1x01, 1x02) and outright defies them (1x03). A lot of this is because of her own sense of morality and compassion, which is exactly what Runaan criticizes her for and what Ethari worried about.

R: Your heart isn't hard enough to do whatever it takes.

E: I told Runaan you were too good hearted for the work of an assassin, so I know you did not betray them out of malice.

However...

There is still a reason that Runaan thought she would be a good assassin. Part of that is because he's a lot like Claudia, his love for his family obscuring a more objective reality. The other part is that, other than her 'too soft' heart, Rayla has what she needs to be an assassin in terms of the skill set (her blades were at Marcos' throat) and because she doesn't always listen to said 'soft heart'. In fact, she often tries very very hard not to (see a lot of early S1 in particular).

“Of course. For…” she chewed her lip and counted on her fingers. “Hrm, maybe fifteen years now. Anyway, you can call me Redfeather.” [...] Rayla felt her heart turn soft in her chest in just the way she hated. She wanted to know more, had to know more. “What did you do?”

Now, we see that in S4 Rayla is a lot better at well, not listening to that soft squishy part of herself, and that Soren was less good at appealing to her about it than Ezran. Some of this is probably because he pivoted away from the dragon and went after it from an identity standpoint — which, not only does Rayla have a pretty malleable sense of self in her own head, she does not believe that any part of whatever identity is there is particularly good / does not think she's a 'Good' person quote unquote — but this was absolutely doomed to fail post-return. Spending two years alone, trying to singularly hunt down a man and murder him, and knowing all the while that you hurt the people you love the most and have nothing to show for it... Yeah, no one's gonna be in the best head space for that, or be overly inclined to trust their own judgement or capacity to save people.

Like most characters in the show, Rayla struggles with always knowing what the right thing to do is, and what served her well in the past — trusting her gut, taking on things alone, laying herself down in the line of fire, removing her hesitation, and going to save Phyrrah in 2x07 — may not always serve her well in every scenario. She thought she was right to do all the same things when she went after Viren, didn't she? So she errs on the side of inaction, of not wanting to make another mistake by acting with her heart rather her head (again), and inadvertently waltzes into another mistake (Soren being captured and going missing).

Rayla will do the right thing, and hate herself for it, and will stubbornly ignore the signs screaming at her when she isn't doing the right thing (and she'll hate herself for that, too.)

[ Sidenote: bonus post about how Arc 2 increasingly treats more and more character traits and decisions as circumstantial rather than inherently good or bad ]

As she says to Ezran:

R: I let him go. I don't know why. E: Because you felt for him. R: But he was a human — my enemy! E: Yeah, but then you saw he was scared. And you knew he was a person, just like you. R: That shouldn't have mattered. I had a job to do.

I think we can read this in two ways. The first is that to be an assassin, you have to be able to dehumanize others on a fundamental level because you're 1) murdering strangers 2) on someone else's orders. Although Runaan preaches about balance in Bloodmoon Huntress (when you kill someone, you remove their capacity for love and change) we have all of Arc 1 talking about why that mindset is flawed and isn't good enough, especially because it culminates in Harrow's death when he still had plenty of things to love, like his children, and so much he wanted to change, and it would've led to Ezran's death as well. This is one of the reasons why assassination and dark magic, conceptually, often go hand in hand for the characters and their explorations of personhood and the right thing to do, etc etc.

The second way is that Rayla, by ignoring her own wants and personhood — her own heart — is also dehumanizing herself. It shouldn't matter that she's a person with wants and weaknesses; she had a job to do. We see this reflected in a lot of her behaviour ("Don't worry about my hand. The egg is all that matters now" —> "It's agonizing. But I know our mission comes first: the world is in danger, and you can trust me to stay focused") and in Runaan's / Moonshadow elves infamous "I am already dead" thing.

(There is also the factor that, because her and Callum mutually informed the construction of each other's new senses of identity to an absurd degree, if Callum doesn't want her then she doesn't know / doesn't have a firm footing on who she is anymore without him, but that's a codependent post for another day.)

All of this is a very long winded way of saying there, much like Viren and Claudia, are two consistently contradicting aspects to Rayla's personality that she is catapulting between, and the Assassin Rayla and Protector Rayla are, as of S5, still equal parts of her as she finds her way. Both have good and bad qualities of her, even if the Assassin Rayla side is — let's say more negative — and far more worrisome given what Callum has asked her to do if he is possessed again, and how it seems like S6 will be going full steam ahead in exploring that plotline.

In a lot of ways, Assassin Rayla and Protector Rayla have the exact same set of traits — selfless, protective, strong, willing to sever close bonds or divert from the mission to do the Right Thing — but instead describe the circumstances she's making those choices in. Protector Rayla is the one who stands against Runaan on the battlements; Assassin Rayla is the one who refuses to prioritize her parents even when she absolutely could (or at least, more than she is).

Assassin Rayla causes her to forget her own needs and put the world above everything else. Assassin Rayla causes her to ignore other people's needs, either not helping them (although iirc 4x05 is the only real example of it) or by leaving / keeping secrets.

The part of her we don't want her to listen to, the part she listens to when she's Scared — the one that walks away from the drake in 4x05, that tries to walk away in 1x09, and what led to her leaving, in a lot of ways, in TTM (both out of love, trauma, and a desperate need for control) — and how S4 reaffirms those qualities is precisely what may lead her to hurting Callum (again) in S6.

Because Callum is asking her to become an Assassin, Aaravos marks her as a failed one, and Rayla still — deep down — wants to ultimately be a Protector. We'll just have to see what side she answers to (and why).

More thoughts on Rayla, identity, and murder to follow lmao

#tdp #tdp rayla #the dragon prince #i need you to kill me #4x05 #arc 2 #rayla #mini meta #raylangst #theme: identity #analysis series #4x05 always gives me chills bc for literally anyone else in the main cast #leaving the dragon wouldn't be a Change #but bc rayla's such a bleeding heart it shakes us to our cores lmao #tdp meta #analysis #would u believe me if i said this was supposed to be Short #it's esp funny bc post s4 i was like 'rayla would never even try to kill him' #but post s5 on her end i'm like hONEY NO!! like i really feel like it's up in the air #of how much she'll Try now in ways it wasn't before #which is very fun #but very sad ofc

[utilitycaster]

Hi! I saw your tags on the escape room poll that Team Liam would be last and I wanted to ask why? While I agree that they wouldn’t be first, I wouldn’t put them last either. Do you think they would just have too much conflict to use their skills?

I didn't realize this was from last night's 4SD and because OP said "Battle Royale" I assumed that it was in some way a combat-oriented escape room, in which the lack of a dedicated/significant healer (Vax has, what, 30 lay on hands and a couple low level spell slots) and the fact that Orym is one decent but not incredible tank among two of the most tissue-paper characters in terms of HP would spell their defeat.

With the understanding that this is a traditional escape room here's my thought process:

From my escape room experience there are four skills that map easily into D&D skills and one that does not map into the D&D character skill chart but does map extremely well onto players. They are:

Investigation/raw intelligence. How good are you at inspecting and comprehending things?

Sleight of Hand/raw dexterity. How good are you at manipulating objects/fine motor control?

Persuasion or Intimidation/raw charisma. How good are you at convincing people to work together or perform tasks?

Perception. How good are you at generally noticing things right away?

The most crucial thing, however, is "do you try dumb shit and push buttons and try to figure out everything quickly." And so:

Toss up between Travis and Sam's character teams in terms of the D&D skills; Chetney and Veth are both particularly suited for escape rooms between strong intelligence and high dexterity. I think Sam's team overall is probably stronger; Tary's mechanical knowledge and FCG's desire for everyone to work together and Scanlan's general buffing abilities/capacity to get people to do what he wants (presumably win) mean everyone has a lot to bring to the table. FCG is the only one with decent perception, iirc, though, and Travis as a player is fundamentally a button pusher and therefore his characters will inherit this energy even though Chetney and Fjord are going to be carrying the entire thing (although, actually, Grog will probably respond well to being asked to perform tasks or look for things).

Taliesin's characters have the combined skills but unfortunately with the except of Caduceus they all have the trait "does not work well with others" and Ashton and Percy in particular wouldn't listen to Caduceus and they're the ones with the most relevant skills here. Beau could do an escape room on her own and probably would (note: someone told me this is what Marisha said on 4SD and I agree wholeheartedly) but necessarily will be less effective than groups who work together. Vex would do pretty well and would be competitive enough, but none of Laura's characters are particularly expert in investigation and if Vex and Imogen clash it is 100% over in terms of getting out in time, though I think Jester would make a valiant go of it. None of Ashley's characters crack +1 in investigation and no one has 20 dex, and I doubt most would be interested or competitive about this, though I do think they'd get along the best by far.

Rounding things out, I suspect that Liam's characters are just behind Taliesin's in terms of conflict; it won't be quite as heated but I get the sense all three of them, all of whom are very much about working together with their respective parties, will not be very good at working together with each other, and Orym is the least likely to take the lead despite most suited for it. Caleb is extremely smart but I don't think he'd be the most invested in going super fast. I don't think they'll be last - Ashley or Taliesin are more likely - but they'd certainly not be first. The NPCs, meanwhile, have the advantage of two people who know each other well, a very agreeable and mature person in Eshteross, and Essek and Allura will probably vibe solely on the basis of being wizards who know and like Caleb if they don't know each other personally yet. Iirc Essek and Eshteross should have decent dex scores though not 20, and everyone has diplomatic skills. I believe Allura's wisdom is respectable as well. They'll certainly be the most well-behaved and adult about it.

In conclusion, you're right, probably not last (would almost certainly be last in the combat scenario I mistakenly imagined) but absolutely should not be first.

#answered #promisetourself #cr tag

[alexandraisyes]

Bloodmoon Twins Personality Analysis - The Sun and Moon Show

Disclaimer, this analysis was made 01/28/2024 and is copy-pasted from the original (me) source on Discord in TSBS server. I have a thread there.

Thoughts under the cut.

Okay so some small disclaimers, while Bloodmoon themselves are technically one entity, we all know they are also two separate AIs so I did do some small analysis on the separate AI. Blood refers to the main AI who is in control of the body most of the time (more ruthless, impulsive, bloodthirsty), and Harvest refers to the second AI who is, according to Blood, sleeping most of the time (more logical, analytic, and emotionally aware). I cover them individually here before doing a broader and more in-depth analysis of them together.

Blood (The Original AI)

Blood is driven by an instinctual need for blood, which manifests as a strong desire to kill. This bloodlust is a defining trait, often influencing their actions and decisions. Blood harbors deep-seated hatred and distrust, particularly due to Ruin's manipulation. Past experiences with deceitful kindness have led to a strong aversion to any form of compassion or assistance. Due to Ruin's manipulation, Blood reacts poorly to kindness, perceiving it as a ploy to use them. Their skepticism towards helping hands stems from a history of betrayal and deceit. Initially, Blood shared a connection with Lunar due to their common origin under Eclipse's creation. However, this dynamic shifted to hatred after learning that Lunar was rebuilt before them, and Monty had no intention of rebuilding the twins. Blood exhibits manipulative behavior, shown in their ability to trick and manipulate individuals, as seen in their interactions with Trashcan Man. Blood's resistance to reprogramming is considered due to the fear of potential erasure or further psychological damage. The complexities of their current state make the reprogramming process a risky endeavor. Blood faces emotional struggles resulting from the internal conflict between their bloodlust instincts and potential for redemption. The lack of a support system contributes to difficulties in overcoming these struggles. Despite Ruin's role in their revival, Blood's feelings towards him are complex, reflecting a mix of manipulation, betrayal, and potential loyalty.

Harvest (The Adaption)

Harvest, like Blood, exhibits a strong instinctual bloodlust, driven by a desire for killing. This primal urge influences their actions and decisions, making them a formidable and dangerous character. Harvest displays a more complex emotional range compared to Blood, possibly influenced by their interactions and experiences. Despite being labeled as "stupid" by certain characters, Harvest demonstrates intellectual capacity in his own way. Knowledge of escape plans, tactics in dealing with Eclipse, and other strategic elements showcase a level of intelligence. Harvest exhibits manipulation skills, particularly shown in their ability to trick and manipulate individuals, as seen in their interactions with Trashcan Man. Harvest demonstrates the ability to pretend to be Moon for a short duration, showcasing a level of acting skills. While not perfect, their attempt at impersonation suggests a degree of versatility in their behavior. Harvest possesses remarkable physical agility, demonstrated in their leaping abilities and skills in combat, including dodging attacks from Eclipse. The combination of fighting skills and agility makes them a formidable opponent. Similar to Blood, Harvest's relationship with Lunar is influenced by shared origins under Eclipse's creation.

Okay now that we're done with the basic rundown of them separately lets do them together

Bloodmoon

Bloodlust and Violence - Bloodmoon experiences an intense and almost primal craving for blood. This desire is portrayed as a fundamental part of their nature, akin to a physiological need. The urge for violence and bloodshed is depicted as overwhelming and challenging to control. Bloodmoon often succumbs to these urges, leading to aggressive and destructive behavior. The desire for blood is often described as a compelling need, suggesting that it goes beyond mere preference or inclination. This need manifests in a strong drive to engage in violent actions. Metaphors such as "thirst" and "hunger" are used to convey the intensity of these desires. This language paints a vivid picture of Bloodmoon's cravings as essential, like an insatiable appetite. The violent tendencies extend beyond a mere desire for blood; there is an emphasis on the act of causing harm and engaging in physical violence. Bloodmoon is portrayed as actively seeking out opportunities for aggression. Bloodmoon's bloodlust is presented as a product of both their inherent nature and the environment in which they were created. Ruin's programming and manipulation play a crucial role in amplifying these tendencies. The absence of a proper support system, in contrast to the original Moon and Kill Code, contributes to the heightened and uncontrolled nature of Bloodmoon's bloodlust. The lack of influences that might deter violent behavior allows these instincts to dominate. Bloodmoon's manipulative tactics, observed in interactions with characters like Trashcan, may serve as a means to satisfy their bloodlust. Manipulation could be a strategy to create scenarios conducive to violence. The persistent and intense nature of Bloodmoon's bloodlust implies a significant psychological impact. This aspect of their personality is not merely a preference but a driving force that influences their actions and decisions.

Origins and Environmental Influence - Bloodmoon's origin is linked to Eclipse, who played a pivotal role in their creation. The specific details of how and why Eclipse created them contribute significantly to their nature and purpose. Ruin's influence on Bloodmoon's programming is highlighted. They are portrayed as tools designed for a specific purpose, emphasizing functionality over emotional or ethical considerations. This utilitarian perspective has a profound impact on their behavior. Unlike animatronics with more comprehensive emotional programming, Bloodmoon is presented as lacking certain higher cognitive functions. This absence contributes to their perceived "stupidity" and affects their ability to empathize. Bloodmoon's psyche is deeply affected by Ruin's manipulative tactics and deceit. The environment created by Ruin involves a web of lies and half-truths, leading to a distorted understanding of reality for Bloodmoon. The contrast between being treated as tools and the emotional complexity seen in other characters highlights the unique nature of Bloodmoon's programming. This dichotomy raises questions about the ethical considerations behind their creation. The relationship with Lunar, being built by the same creator (Eclipse), implies shared origins. However, the differences in how Lunar and Bloodmoon were rebuilt and treated compared to Bloodmoon contribute to feelings of resentment and conflict. The environmental influence becomes a critical factor in understanding Bloodmoon's bloodlust and violent tendencies. The lack of emotional support, coupled with manipulative programming, amplifies their aggressive instincts. Bloodmoon's creation is portrayed as aligning with Ruin's intentions. This alignment serves Ruin's plans, emphasizing that Bloodmoon is a means to an end rather than an entity with an individual agency.

Trust Issues and Manipulation - Bloodmoon's trust issues are deeply rooted in the manipulation they experienced from Ruin. Ruin's deceptive tactics and lies create a pervasive atmosphere of mistrust, making it difficult for Bloodmoon to rely on others. If there was any initial trust in Eclipse, the revelation of being manipulated or used as a tool likely shattered that trust. Learning about Eclipse's role in their creation and the subsequent rebuilding of Lunar without the same treatment intensifies feelings of betrayal. Trust issues have a profound impact on Bloodmoon's relationships with other animatronics. The difficulty in trusting others impedes the development of meaningful connections and cooperation. Ruin's use of kindness as a manipulative tool contributes to Bloodmoon's aversion to kindness from others. Any act of goodwill may be perceived as a potential manipulation, making it challenging for them to accept genuine gestures. Solar's upfront and honest approach is acknowledged as a factor that may have contributed to Bloodmoon allowing Solar to help. The clarity of intentions helps bridge the gap in trust, showcasing that transparency can influence their willingness to cooperate. The narrative suggests that Ruin plays a significant role in shaping Bloodmoon's trust issues. Whether it's through intentional programming or environmental influence, Ruin's actions have lasting consequences on how Bloodmoon perceives trust. Trust issues manifest in paranoia and skepticism. Bloodmoon becomes vigilant and wary of others' motives, questioning the authenticity of interactions and second-guessing the intentions of those around them. The absence of a reliable emotional support system exacerbates trust issues. Unlike animatronics with strong bonds or friendships, Bloodmoon's isolation intensifies their struggles with trusting others. Trust issues can significantly impact decision-making. Bloodmoon may be inclined to act defensively, anticipating betrayal or manipulation, which could influence their choices and actions throughout the narrative. Trust issues can serve as a compelling aspect of character development. Overcoming these challenges may lead to personal growth and a more nuanced understanding of relationships, providing opportunities for redemption or reconciliation.

Responses to Kindness - Bloodmoon, due to their past experiences and manipulations, initially responds to kindness with skepticism. Kind gestures may be met with suspicion, as they have learned to be cautious about the intentions behind such actions. Bloodmoon is opposed to being treated with pity. Their response to kindness might include a rejection of sympathy or expressions of understanding, as they prefer to be acknowledged on their terms rather than as objects of pity. Bloodmoon's past encounters with manipulation make them prone to misinterpreting genuine kindness. Acts of goodwill might be seen as potential traps or attempts to control them, leading to defensive responses. The narrative hints that Solar's upfront and honest approach might have influenced Bloodmoon's willingness to accept help. Solar's transparency contrasts with the deceptive tactics they experienced, making it a key factor in their responses to kindness. Kindness can evoke complex emotions within Bloodmoon. While they may have an innate desire for connection and understanding, their past trauma and programming create a conflicting internal struggle between accepting kindness and resisting vulnerability. Despite their initial reservations, there might be an underlying desire for authentic connection and acceptance. Bloodmoon, like any sentient being, may long for genuine relationships but struggles to navigate the complexities of trust. The responses to kindness play a pivotal role in shaping Bloodmoon's relationships with other characters. Genuine acts of kindness, if recognized and reciprocated, could potentially pave the way for deeper connections and alliances. Bloodmoon may reject unearned sympathy, preferring to be treated based on their actions and choices rather than receiving kindness solely because of their traumatic past or current predicament. How Bloodmoon responds to kindness becomes a crucial element in their character arc. In the future, positive responses and a gradual opening up to genuine connections may indicate a path toward redemption and personal growth. This theme of responses to kindness introduces the possibility of character evolution. Over time, Bloodmoon's reactions may evolve, reflecting a shifting perspective on trust, connection, and the potential for positive change.

Psychological Impacts - Ruin's manipulations have a significant impact on Bloodmoon's psyche. The intentional programming to serve as a tool and the deceptive tactics employed by Ruin contribute to shaping Bloodmoon's perception of trust, reality, and their own identity. Bloodmoon's lack of a supportive environment or trustworthy companions exacerbates the psychological impact of their experiences. Unlike Old Moon, who had allies and friends, Bloodmoon is isolated, contributing to feelings of abandonment and vulnerability. Bloodmoon's internal conflict and struggle with identity are prominent psychological aspects. The juxtaposition of their original selves with the manipulated version creates an internal battle, questioning who they were, who they have become, and whether redemption is possible. The innate bloodlust and violent tendencies programmed into Bloodmoon's nature have a profound psychological impact. The struggle to resist these urges, coupled with the consequences of succumbing to them, adds layers of complexity to their mental state. The psychological impact is also influenced by Bloodmoon's connection to Lunar and Eclipse. The dynamics with these characters, including feelings of betrayal, hatred, or possible remnants of familial bonds, contribute to the emotional turmoil within Bloodmoon. Bloodmoon's reactions to Eclipse and Kill Code provide insights into the psychological trauma inflicted upon them. The separation from Kill Code, the influence of Eclipse, and the eventual return of the Kill Code present challenges to Bloodmoon's mental stability. Trust issues and an overarching sense of suspicion are core elements of the psychological impact. Bloodmoon's experiences with manipulation and deception make it difficult for them to trust others, influencing their interactions and decision-making. The internal struggle for control, particularly when the Kill Code takes over, showcases the psychological battles fought within Bloodmoon's mind. This struggle contributes to moments of chaos, conflict, and the potential for externalizing their internal torment.

Intellectual Capabilities - Despite their violent tendencies, Bloodmoon displays a form of cunning and tactical thinking in various situations. This is evident in their ability to escape from pursuers, formulate plans for dealing with adversaries like Eclipse, and utilize their environment to their advantage during confrontations. Bloodmoon's intelligence is notably reflected in their skill at evading capture and hiding effectively. Whether crawling through pipes or utilizing the Pizzaplex's layout to their advantage, they demonstrate an understanding of escape and evasion strategies that contribute to their survival. One aspect of Bloodmoon's intellectual capabilities involves a deep understanding of torture methods. This knowledge goes beyond mere aggression, indicating a more calculated approach to inflicting pain. Their proficiency in various torture techniques suggests a strategic and calculated mindset. Bloodmoon showcases an ability to recognize emotional manipulation, particularly in their response to kindness. Their past experiences, particularly with Ruin's manipulation, have made them wary of kindness being a facade. This awareness implies a level of emotional intelligence, allowing them to see through deceptive gestures. Bloodmoon's skill in replicating the voices of certain animatronics demonstrates a form of audio-based intelligence. This talent could be employed for deception, manipulation, or strategic communication, showcasing a multifaceted approach to problem-solving. Given their connection to lunar eclipses and celestial themes, Bloodmoon displays a level of comprehension regarding these cosmic elements. This understanding adds a layer of complexity to their character, showcasing an intellectual engagement with celestial phenomena beyond their violent tendencies. Bloodmoon exhibits a capacity for manipulation and trickery, as seen in their interactions with Trashcan. Their ability to deceive and lure others into games highlights a strategic and manipulative side, indicating a level of psychological intelligence. In combat situations, Bloodmoon demonstrates adaptive intelligence. Their ability to dodge attacks, counter adversaries like Eclipse, and employ diverse fighting techniques reveals a keen sense of adaptability and strategic thinking in high-pressure situations. Bloodmoon's awareness of environmental influences on their behavior, as seen in their reaction to lunar eclipses, suggests a level of self-awareness and introspection. This recognition adds depth to their character, showcasing an intellectual capacity to understand the impact of external factors on their animatronic nature.

Okay whoo now I'm gonna skitter off

#sun and moon show #earth and lunar show #monty gator and foxy show #fnaf #fnaf au #tsams #eals #mgafs #tsams bloodmoon #bloodmoon fnaf #tsams bloodtwins #blood tsams #harvest tsams #character analysis #tsams analysis #alex talks #bloodmoon analysis #personality analysis

[emoprincey]

Sanders Sides and autism

Ok, it's the last day of @autisticsidesweek today, and I figured this would be the perfect time to post this essay about how I think Sanders Sides relates to autism.

Headcanons about the Sides being autistic are pretty commonplace, which isn't surprising given how many autistic people there are in the fandom, and in fandoms in general, for that matter. As an autistic fander, I am of course partial to these headcanons. But that's not exactly what I want to address today.

Today, I want to talk about how the concept of Sanders Sides naturally lends itself to having autistic-coded characters, and how this coding is actually a fundamental part of the show.

Before I start, I think it's relevant to mention that Thomas has ADHD. This has a lot of symptoms in common with autism, and is probably a big reason why some of the Sides resonate so strongly with autistic people. However, I think there are other aspects of their characterisation that also make them unintentionally autistic-coded.

First of all, the characters have very clearly defined personality traits and interests. While autism can lead to someone having an unclear sense of self, it does come with a need to sort things into categories. An autistic person might define themself by specific traits, such as being creative or logical.

Additionally, the Sides' interests often seem like special interests - that is, an interest that feels more important than a regular interest, and I speak from experience when I say a special interest can consume every waking thought and make it impossible to think about anything else. This is most obvious with Virgil, whose interest in emo subculture and music informs not only his taste in music but his dress sense, and his personality. But this is also true of the other sides - Roman is not actually a prince, but he dresses as Prince Charming and always tries to act like a prince, Patton tries to fit the role of a dad, and Logan a teacher. All of them base their personalities and styles around one specific interest or trait, the way an autistic person might do with a subject they're interested in.

Even the fact that they wear the same clothes all the time ties in with this. Autistic people very often have comfort items, including clothing which they want to wear every day. From a meta perspective, their costumes obviously stay the same to make characters played by the same person more distinct, and because of wardrobe budget. But in-universe, these are characters who have the ability to shapeshift into whatever they want, and wear whatever they want, yet they always choose to stick to the same outfits.

Secondly, the characters in Sanders Sides have difficulty seeing things from anyone else's point if view. This is an integral part of the series, and many of the plots revolve around the Sides struggling to understand each other’s perspectives. Logan and Roman notably get into a lot of arguments as a result of not understanding each others perspectives. Low empathy or varying empathy levels in different areas can be a trait of autism, which is part of the reason autistic people find it hard to relate to others, and I think this is present in Sanders Sides.

I've already mentioned how autistic people often group things into categories. This can also come across in a very black-and-white way of thinking about things. From personal experience, I'd describe this as only seeing things one way or another - for example, finding it difficult to compromise, or accept that people can do both good and bad things without being sorted into the categories of Good and Bad. This isn't the case for all autistic people, but both of these examples are particularly relevant to Sanders Sides. The whole idea of the light side/dark side dichotomy is a pretty straightforward example of this kind of thinking.

Patton in particular has a very black-and-white way of thinking about morality, and inability to see things from a perspective other than his own. Another thing linked to autism is a strong sense of justice - or at least, a strong sense of perceived justice. This means that autistic people tend to cling to the morals they've been taught, (whether that is because of the black-and-white thinking, or finding comfort in clearly defined rules in a world where little else seems to make sense, or a combination of the two). This is exactly what Patton does. He also struggles to see how the moral standards he's been taught could possibly be wrong.

It would be remiss of me to write an essay about autism-coding in Sanders Sides and not dedicate a section to Logan specifically.

Logan has a lot of more well-known autistic traits. He likes schedules and punctuality, meeting deadlines and making sure all of his time is planned. A lot of autistic people struggle to function without a rigid schedule and don't like changes to plans.

He also has a tendency to take things literally. This is shown by his panicked reaction of "who gave him a knife?" to Virgil’s "can I take a stab?". He always clarifies when he means something figuratively, because he would need the clarification if someone was talking to him. Idioms and slang phrases don't come naturally to him, so he uses note cards to help himself remember them.

He's very single-minded and struggles to see things from other's perspectives. Although he makes a clear effort to try, it does take conscious effort that it probably wouldn't take an allistic person. When discussing schedules with Roman, he doesn't see anything wrong with only leaving 5 minutes for creativity, because that's not his domain.

Difficulty connecting to or identifying one's own emotions can also be a trait of autism. Logan states frequently that he doesn't have emotions, or doesn't feel anything. That is honestly what autism can feel like sometimes. Even if the emotions are there, it can be really difficult to tell the difference between sadness and anger, feeling tired or frustrated or just hungry. This reminds me of Logan because even though he's clearly been angry and excited and scared on screen, he still insists that he doesn't feel those emotions.

This is all to say, I think the fact that the sides base their lives on specific interests, generally have difficulty empathising with each other, and other aspects of their characterisation make them unintentionally autistic-coded. This format of show especially lends itself to that because of the characters personifying abstract concepts and having very distinct designs.

#sanders sides #virgil sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #the dark sides aren't rlly mentioned that much so i won't tag them #sanders sides analysis #autisticsidesweek2023 #i could maybe elaborate or word things better in future. im tired but i wanted to get this out today

[mashedcontroller]

I'm feeling spicy, time to list everything I think BH outclassed 03 on. And by that, prepare yourself for the most backhanded, hyper specific or wildly vague, and strings-attached compliments you've heard in your fucking life. But actually, the reason I'm doing this is because I think 03 is better than BH in every way that matters. The majority of common points people give BH over 03 typically come down to attempts to make subjective taste sound objective since a lot of shit is really just a difference in priorities and/or genre rather than an objective flaw in the other show.

And, to be clear, 03 is the better show. It has a really strong thematic core and just says a lot of shit that I rarely see other stuff have the gall to say. 03 tackles heavy topics and tackles them well. It left me with a lot to think about, even years after my first viewing. It's a political piece of art that remains relevant 20 years after the fact. On some levels, it was designed to do this. 03 is a character drama that deconstructs a lot of the elements that make up the shonen genre, and it also very clearly had something to say. 03 has very few weak points and has some of the strongest moments I've seen from any piece of media that I've interacted with. I think a lot of its bad reputation comes from people failing to engage with the show on its own terms. I can only speculate on what's going through other people's heads, but expecting it to act as supplementary material for BH is a fundamentally wrong assumption to make about the show. These two shows are trying to accomplish very different things, so judging 03 on its ability to be BH is a boldfaced stupid lens to view the show through.

BH, however, is still a well-made show. Like, I'm more than happy to shit on it, but BH is by no means a bad anime. It's just not as ambitious as people claim it to be. And if it really is one of the best things Shonun has to offer, then that says pretty mediocre things about the genre imo. It's far from a bad show. I think it accomplishes the role of "fun action series" really well, but it also has gaping flaws the moment you decide to engage with the work critically. That's not necessarily an issue that I'll take with its fanbase. The show's got a lot of elements that make it good for cultivating one. Stuff like large casts, likeable characters, emphasizing its worldbuilding, prioritizing action over character work, etc. are all traits that are great for cultivating fandom, and they're all traits that BH has that 03 revokes. But yeah, BH does fall apart once you look at it critically. My biggest issues with it come down to the fact that the show baits you into thinking that it's deeper than it actually is. So, I'll take the bait and look for the deeper stuff and then find nothing, which is where my negative perception of the show comes from, which isn't helped by how common it is for people to take the bait without really looking.

So, yeah, in short, I have a mountain of good things to say about 03. It's an incredible piece of art with so much shit to look into. In my opinion, you're doing the show a disservice to watch it and not put serious analytical thought into what you're consuming. Meanwhile I have a lot of mixed opinions about BH. It's a great show to watch, it's just a terrible show to consume critically. This isn't even me calling people who prefer BH dumb or anything. The show's are just so fundamentally different from one-another that your preference truly does just come down to a mix of personal tastes and how you prefer to interact with media, especially if you're a more casual viewer of either/both shows. The part that makes me angry is how disrespected 03 is in the majority of FMA circles.

The animation and sound design of Roy's snap is really fucking good in BH.

While 03 may have an overall better art direction and visuals than BH, I do really like how juicy the BH animators and sound designers made Roy's fire attack. The fire itself is just so fucking juicy and satisfying. The BH team did a really good job at making that attack iconic. There's no "but actually" here. The BH team just fucking nailed this one aspect.

In general, BH has better special effects than 03. This is absolutely a difference in available technology at the time each show was animated. And while I do have respect for special effects animation; it's often the difference between animations looking really stiff vs getting across their intended atmospheres, especially in the realm of video games. Using a human body as an analogy, the special effects are more like the hair than the skin, fat, muscle, nerves, or bones. Both important but somewhat expendable.

BH's alchemy is much more logically consistent than 03's.

So, there are a lot of reasons for this difference. The two main ones are the BH and 03 can barely if even be considered the same genre of anime. BH is a fun fights-heavy action series with some intrigue plot, while 03 is a really critical deconstruction the genre BH embraces that's more of a character drama with a heavily knit thematic core than anything else.

And their commitments to their genres translate to each show's relationship with alchemy. In 03, Alchemy's rules are much more metaphoric than literal. Equivalent Exchange is the shit because it's representative of the philosophy that Edward clings to; that life is fundamentally fair, that there is some universal justification for everything that happens. And 03 is about tearing that belief into itty bitty pieces. In fact, we learn that Equivalent Exchange isn't even true. Everything about Alchemy in 03 is bound by the magic's metaphorical meaning. Thus, when it comes to fights, characters really just need to be able to loosely justify how their alchemy functions for the audience to go "oh ok." And, in 03, alchemy is fundamentally powered by taking the life force of something and using that energy to do something else. So, you get stuff like the ability to extract alchemical energy from plants in order to amplify your alchemy much later, Edward being able to turn his automail into a gun, Dante's alchemic dragon thing, Scar's arm being the Philosopher's Stone, etc. The point is that you're sort of meant to accept that "yeah thats a thing that can happen." In other words, the fights exist purely for spectacle and the logic behind them is low priority at best. So, the way 03 frames it's combat is that it has to establish rules that exist within their own space and work with those rules. So, it can't circumvent stuff like "Roy can't use his gloves if they're wet" because there's no reason to and giving a talk about how H2O has Oxygen in it would have been horribly distracting in the one scene where Roy does get fucking soaked. Especially since him being crafty in a fight is sold by him just using Havoc's matches + Armstrongs rocks to make frag bombs. Tldr, the way 03 is structured allows if not flat out encourages characters to bullshit during fights. I think the fast and loose usage of alchemy's principles in the earlier parts of the show also make the later parts of the show, where those principals turn out to be false, feel more believable.

Meanwhile, BH's alchemy is operating on a much more literal framework, so the writing has more room and necessity for creative and engaging combat sequences. In a way, the fights in BH are puzzles and alchemy is the tools the characters are given to solve those puzzles, so the fights become engaging because you want to see how the characters solve the puzzles. It's very gamey. That said, I do have to say that I dislike how the homunculi are fit into this system. Their lose condition is having their stones exhausted, which just translates into "they have more HP." Which is very bullshit. The homunculi in BH die when the story tells them to, at least, that's how their lose condition makes it feel.

Both shows heavily rely on the usage of gimmicks to make their fights interesting. For example, Roy uses exclusively fire, which he creates by snapping. Like, I really like how Roy's combat gimmick gets explored in this fight specifically.

I like how Ed ducks into a crowd in an attempt to dissuade him, and Roy's like "you think I care about collateral damage lmao." I like how Ed thinks he won the fight by slicing Roy's glove, but then Roy just ruins his day by revealing that he has two hands and therefore another glove. I really like how Roy's not taking this very seriously and Ed only wins because of Roy getting a flashback. This fight is just an excellent display of character for both of them and I love it.

Anyways, there are a lot of other character gimmicks. Honestly, 03 is so much better with its character gimmicks during fights than BH is. Like, I could list a ton of cool moments where the character gimmicks get played with. And part of how it does this is that every character plays by their own rules. No character will ever break their own rules, but the universal rules governing what is and isn't acceptable for a fight isn't very consistent. This does fit into 03s themes about how there is no universal truth. But yeah, that's how 03 structures its fights and why characters will sometimes just blatantly ignore the laws of alchemy.

Anyways, in BH, the rules are much less person-by-person and are more like "Alchemists can do XYZ," "Homunculi can do ABC," "Alkahestrists can do UWV," "Chimeras can do RST," etc. So, everyone has similar rules that they have to play by. Which also makes it so much more jarring when someone blatantly breaks those rules. Like, when Edward gets impaled and uses alchemy to not die, it's super jarring because that breaks the laws of human frailty and it doesn't really make sense. It's even worse when Edward fucks with Pride's Stone. Compare that to some of the blatant bullshitting in 03, like where Edward uses concrete to turn his broken automail into a gun. He shouldn't be able to decide when the shots are fired and where's the ammo coming from? But part of the reason it isn't jarring is because him turning his automail into a gun isn't a big deal or even particularly important to the scene he does that in. Or take bullshitting that is more relevant, like Alphonse performing a successful human transmutation. At this point, it's been clearly established that Alchemy's laws aren't true. So, Alphonse breaking them doesn't break audience suspense. Instead, the fundamental logic behind it actually working is tied to the story's central themes.

But yeah, BH's alchemy is a bit more logically consistent than 03's, but there's a very good reason for 03's alchemy to have some logical inconsistencies, which results in BH being much worse at breaking its own rules than 03 is.

A lot of the characters are just easier to get behind and digest in BH.

The entire point of 03 is that these characters are nazis and morally grey as fuck. Meanwhile, the characters in BH are primarily meant to be fun characters that you could comfortably fantasize about being or being friends with. The characters in BH are much simpler than in 03 and the show tends to gloss over their war crimes. Even when it addresses them, there's a billion asterisks and variations of "they're still the good guys." Compared to 03, where everyone is just messy and fucked up.

For example, BH Roy is easier to root for than 03 Roy, but that's because BH Roy is a fundamentally different type of character than 03 Roy. BH Roy is firmly a protagonist while with 03 Roy, he's much more antagonistic and complex. He doesn't solidly fit into the categorization of protagonist or antagonist because he's a bit of both.

And to be clear, I'm not calling the characters in BH simplistic in a derogatory way. A major benefit to simplicity is that you know who to root for and don't have to do a ton of heavy thinking to enjoy the story. That said, I don't think this style of character is necessarily appropriate for a story where the majority of the protagonists committed racial genocide and serve in the military for a fascist dictatorship. BH's characterization would've been a lot better if the story wasn't also trying to cover ridiculously heavy topics.

I've been using Roy as my go-to example since he's the only character to be one of my favorites in both shows, but I think the character who benefits the most from this point is Izumi. In BH, she's iconic. She's a slapstick oriented character who's just a joy to have on screen. In 03, her character writing gives me a lot of mixed messages. She's still very slap stick, but it's just weird in 03 since a lot of similar stuff gets unpacked, but Izumi being outright physically abusive to the Elrics at times just isn't. She's also much softer in 03; most characters are. And I'm mostly just left confused on how to feel about her. She has some great scenes, especially with Wrath, but the character feels a bit disjointed. In BH, she really benefits from being a nonparticipant in Ishval. The writing doesn't have to worry about her being sympathetic in spite of her committing genocide, so she gets to be divorced from the massive fuck up that was that section of the story.

BH has a larger cast than 03. Also, a lot of BH exclusive characters are more likeable than the 03 exclusive characters.

There's a lot of things to unpack here.

So, first thing that's kinda an obvious point is that BH prioritizes making its characters easily likeable to the detriment of its larger themes, 03 makes its characters likeable in service of those themes. So, it's a lot easier to get behind BH Mustang than 03 Mustang because Mustang's warcrimes just aren't that important in BH while they're the most important part of the character in 03. A lot of a character's likeability in BH hinges on the audience's ability to simply ignore the Ishval subplot, which was already a poorly handled subplot. While in 03, their likeability is intentionally contrasted with their war crimes to make a point. That's the primary reason why the characters in BH are more likeable than in 03.

And this also extends to the casts that are either version exclusive or unrecognizable between the two. Kimbly is a perfect example. In BH, he's designed primarily as a fun and bombastic antagonist who blows shit up because it's fun. They also made him extremely fashionable. Meanwhile, in 03 he's genuinely fucked up and views the lives of people as little more than tools to use to further his own goals, which is made interesting by Kimbly not being a top dog (like most villains running with that mindset are). He's at the bottom of the food chain and yet he still thrives under that mindset. BH Kimbly is the more fun character, but that's because BH Kimbly and 03 Kimbly are fundamentally different types of antagonist.

A lot of this comes down to tone. 03 is a much more somber show than BH. Unlike BH, it takes the premise of "child soldier works for a fascist government that partook in genocide a few years back because he wants to fix a mistake that made him and his brother permanently disabled" as a sign that the story is meant to be dark and a little fucked up. Meanwhile, BH tends to gloss over the fucked up shit in favor of selling the power-fantasy aspect of the story. This just results in BH's characters being a lot more fun. The surface level shit is the only thing that really matters to them when looking at BH since the deeper shit is simply shit and not really worth calling attention to.

The cast sizes also exist to further both show's individual goals. BH being about action and badass people being badass benefits from a larger cast because you get to see more flavors of badassery. It lets fights cycle between different styles of combat, which helps keep things interesting. 03 is a character drama. This benefits from having a smaller cast because it allows the show to spend more time unpacking a handful of characters.

There are a lot more badass female characters in BH compared to 03

I'll give BH a "you did the bare minimum" award for being an action show with female characters who are not just eye candy. That doesn't make the show revolutionary. It just says bad things about the genre that this isn't considered the bare minimum. But yeah, in both shows, most of the female characters are subordinate to their male peers. Hawkeye is defined as Roy's henchman. Winry is defined as Ed's love interest/childhood friend, Izumi is defined as Ed's mentor. In some aspects, this is fine. Like, the main characters are Edward and Alphonse, they don't need to draw attention away from them in favor of their own bullshit. But how badass a character is doesn't exactly translate into whether they're feminist.

Like, again, the reason you see more badass female characters in BH than 03 is the same reason you see more badass characters in BH than 03; BH is an action show, 03 is a character drama with some amount of action on the side. They're both guilty of employing sexist tropes. BH tends mix those tropes with badassery, while 03 tends to mix those tropes with character nuance. Doesn't change the existence of the tropes. It's sort of just something that you gotta accept about either show. That doesn't mean that its female characters don't have good moments in either show. Just that they're working from a sexist baseline. Neither show is particularly feminist, but they're also far from the worst offenders out there.

There are a few characters where I prefer their BH incarnations over their 03 versions.

The reason someone might prefer one version's character over another is a bit more nuanced than just which character was written better. The vast majority of overlapping characters fulfill different narrative niches in each story. For example, comparing 03 Lust and BH Lust has always felt disingenuous to me because while it's true that 03 Lust is the more compelling character, a major reason for that fact is that BH Lust was never designed with being compelling in mind. A more apt comparison would be 03 Lust to BH Greed, as those two characters do share the same niche of being an antagonist that makes the audience question the nature of the homunculi and eventually splits off from them. I'd also say that BH Lust and 03 Greed fulfill similar narrative niches as being a minor antagonist that establishes exactly what the main villains are all about and who's death is used as a tool by the authors to reveal exactly what the protagonist slaying them is all about. That's why BH Lust's death and 03 Greed's Deaths are both pointed to as highlighting points in their respective series. They both execute on their niches quite well.

This also accounts for the primary reason why someone may like a character in one show but dislike them in another. BH Mustang fulfills the niche of a secondary protagonist. In 03, he fulfills the role of a pseudo-antagonist / morally ambiguous major character. I happen to really like both versions of Mustang, but it's for very different reasons. In BH, I just think he's funny and has a lot of good banter. That's more or less exactly what he's meant to accomplish there. You're supposed to go "haha funny" and/or "haha awesome" with this guy. BH Mustang falls apart when you critically analyze him because the Ishval plot was mishandled, but his surface level traits are so good that I can just be like "I saw nothing." Meanwhile, 03 Mustang is a character who you sort of have to engage with critically to get the most out of. He's a complicated character and his relationship with the audience isn't a static variable. And there's merit to both approaches of character writing. There's as much value to a character where it's not worth overanalyzing them as there is to a character who doesn't really come into their own until you pull out the tweezers.

So, in case anyone's curious, which characters do I prefer their BH incarnations to over their 03 incarnations? Well, I prefer Barry the Chopper and Izumi Curtis in BH vs their 03 counterparts. Like I said, there's a lot more nuance than "this character was written better in one anime than the other" when regarding personal preferences. So, the reason I prefer BH Izumi over 03 Izumi is that I thought BH Izumi was funny and cool while I just got a lot of mixed messages about 03 Izumi. So, in this case, I think BH Izumi fulfilled her narrative purpose really well, while I have much more mixed opinions on 03 Izumi. As for Barry, it's a similar case where I thought he was really funny in BH, while I think he fell short as a more serious antagonist in 03. In Izumi's case, the failings I have for her in 03 are that I don't think her treatment of the Elrics is put under the same scrutiny that every other character is given. Like, in BH, her being physically violent towards them is played off for comedy. It's the same case in 03, but it doesn't work as well in this context because 03 is the show that turned the short jokes into an important metaphor, so it's really weird that Izumi's slapstick wasn't given the same treatment. And I found that really off-putting. Meanwhile, my main issue with BH Izumi is that the stuff around her failed human transmutation was extremely underexplored, which doesn't stick out as much as the slapstick issue in 03 because Izumi is ultimately a minor character in BH while she takes the mantle of a more major character in 03. Though, personal bias is a huge factor in why I prefer BH Izumi over 03 Izumi, since her specific plot about being unable to bear children just happens to be so alien to my personal life, as someone who's both never had a failed pregnancy, has zero interest in bearing children, and would happily make a magic "goodbye pussy" circle. It's not that this type of conflict can't still be compelling to someone like me, but it's going to require more narrative work than a conflict that I can more closely relate to. Hence, why it's personal bias. Meanwhile, in the case of Barry the Chopper, my preference towards BH's version is a fair bit less subjectively biased. He just fits really awkwardly into the role 03 tries to assign him. The issue is that he jumps back and forth between trying to be fucked up and scary to being a comedic antagonist, which just undermines both aspects of him.

Like, the antagonist for this scene, should end up looking completely alien to the version of Barry the Chopper seen in BH, but that version of Barry is played relatively similar to BH Barry in Lab 5, resulting in the 03 Barry being inconsistent.

And for every character where I prefer their BH version, there are plenty more characters where I prefer their 03 versions. And a lot of that will come down to personal preference.

Armstrong's a great example of a character who on a surface level isn't that far off between 03 and BH, but he just works so much better in 03 than in BH because of the different character niches he fulfills in both shows. In 03, he's a minor character, while in BH, he's a major character. So, in 03, he's not particularly developed. He's mainly a funny guy who has a few shots where he's sad over Ishbal, and then he ends up supporting Mustang in overthrowing the government, which he mostly does in a comedic fashion. That's a pretty apt description for both his 03 and BH incarnations, but I only take issue with his performance in BH. The reason for this is that he's a more important character in BH, so I expect the show to disclose more information about him, which doesn't happen. Like, in BH, I want to know more about how his refusal to fight in Ishval affected him, his relationships, his status, etc. But BH only addresses that through off-handed scenes where Olivier calls him a pussy, which don't really go anywhere. Meanwhile, in 03, first of all, Armstrong did kill people in Ishbal, so the massive question of "how did his time in Ishbal affect him" can be supplemented by other characters confronting similar questions. Thus, the minor amounts of information we are given about Armstrong alongside information we see from other characters who were soldiers in Ishbal like Marcoh and Mustang are more than enough to get across the general picture. Secondly, we actually do get hints at how Armstrong's goofier attitude and kinder disposition impact his career. Mainly during the raid in Dublith where Envy disguised as Bradly says "this is why you never get a promotion." As a minor character in 03, he's allowed to have the nuances of his character be heavily carried by implication. But I can't really give a major character like BH Armstrong that same affordance, especially when those hints are barely given. It doesn't help that Armstrong's backstory in BH very heavily leaned into the story's insistence that the soldiers didn't mean it when they slaughtered Ishval.

Edward is more of a Badass in BH than 03

Ngl, I'm cheating a little with this point because it's like "I agree with this point but I also couldn't give less of a shit about it." Which, that response is, at least, 85% personal preference coming into the equation. I'm not going to say that badass characters never resonate with me, but it's really uncommon because the badass character has to be someone I personally can somewhat relate to, which is a rare flavor of character in popular media. My own experiences with the two characters are that I find BH Edward to be kinda boring as a character while 03 Edward is the most interesting character in the show (as he should be given everything I said about what 03 is trying to accomplish). But it's a lot of the same stuff my general thesis has been; BH Ed is more badass than 03 Ed because BH Ed was written to be a badass while 03 Ed was written to be a compelling character.

The actual reason I wanted to bring up this point is because it's a common enough point I've seen people make when comparing the two shows and I find this point rather bothersome. Maybe that's because I take issue with consistently seeing a rather mediocre character being placed on a pedestal over one of the best protagonists I've ever seen. But it's also more the explanations that bug me than anything. Like, I cannot take anyone seriously who uses calling a character "whiny" as a critique. Maybe it's because you're looking for an action hero who can shrug off shit that would normally be traumatizing, in which case, you're in the wrong genre. Maybe you take some issue with characters being emotional in a vulnerable sort of way. 03 features a lot of characters displaying emotions in a dysfunctional sort of way. Characters are allowed to hurt in a way that doesn't fuel anything other than more hurt. Characters will repress their feelings and that will bite them in the ass. Characters are allowed to be depressed, not in a "waiting for the heroic do shit speech" sort of way but in the genuine "existing is painful, no energy, depression" kinda way.

And this is the point that rubs me the wrong way about the majority of complaints thrown at 03 Ed. It's not that wallowing in your own misery makes for good entertainment, but it's an important part of 03's themes and its point. I can also, just, relate more to this unproductive sense of pain. I have depression, that is what depression looks and feels like. It's unproductive, it's painful, it can't be fixed by someone just walking up to you and giving a dramatic speech. And that's why the way 03 expresses hurt resonates with me in a way that BH's just doesn't. It's low octane, and that's the point. That's what makes it good.

BH's Ending is a lot more Straight-Forwards than 03's Ending

I think that's the best way I can put it without saying something I flat out disagree with. BH, in general, is much more straight-forwards than 03, and the endings of both show embody that. BH is, ultimately, a fun show where the heroes have to take a bunch of twists and turns to come out victorious. Meanwhile, 03 is an extremely messy show about characters being put in fucked up situations and no one coming out of it unscathed. It's about decisions that will haunt you for the rest of your life. It's about situations where the right answer is the one you least want to accept. It's a show about how the people will create doctrines to shield themselves from the truth. And it's a show about human selfishness. The endings of both shows are exactly how their shows should have ended. BH was never going to have a bad ending and 03 was never going to have a completely satisfactory ending. If 03 had a happy ending, the show would've been worse off for it.

So, yeah, BH's ending is a lot more straight-forward. It's a happy ending where everyone gets what they want more or less. Narrative knots are tied. All that shit. I personally thought the ending was nothing special. Like, it's another happy ending. I can't fault people for enjoying it for that, but it's not the type of thing that's going to stand out in my brain.

Meanwhile, 03's ending does a lot of nontraditional things. There's arguably multiple major plot twists that come out of nowhere and are more of a "fuck you" to the audience than anything else. The protagonists end the series arguably off worse than where they started. Wrath and Gluttony are still alive and haven't had their arcs concluded in any satisfying way. There's no guarantee that the setting or the characters in it will continue to be okay after the series ends. And that's okay. The ending of 03 is very messy because it's meant to be messy because the point that the show is making is that the world is neither straightforward nor fair, which is why you gotta keep doing the best you can to improve it. That's why the ending is uplifting. Even though Edward's in arguably the worst position he's been in throughout the series, having literally lost everything, he hasn't given up, so you, the viewer, shouldn't give up either. Life doesn't end until it ends, so you should live.

And yeah, the ways that 03's and BH's ending function are fundamentally different. I can totally see why one ending would pass someone by. Like I already said, I didn't feel anything watching BH's ending but 03's ending felt very significant to me, and I could totally understand the inverse being true for some people.

Conclusion

People give BH too much credit and shit too much on 03. Like, 03 is just the better show. It's just that 03 isn't designed to be a comfortable watch in the same way BH is. You're meant to leave BH feeling good, you're meant to leave 03 with a lot to think about. If 03 makes you uncomfortable, that's a feature, not a bug. Many of the fan advertised strengths and weaknesses of each show is really just differences in genre.

And while I've repeatedly conveyed that 03 is the better show, that's not because BH is bad; 03 is just really fucking good. It's like comparing Elden Ring to Dark Souls 1; sure they're made by the same developers and have a lot of surface level similarities, but they're so fundamentally different experiences that viewing them through the same lens isn't fair to either. There are a lot of things that BH does well, and there are a lot of things that 03 does well. But it's not fair to say "BH does X thing better than 03 therefore it's better" (or the occasions where the inverse claim is made) because both shows are trying to paint very different pictures, to the point where I don't consider them to be parts of the same genre. There may be similar components, but the way those components are used is very different from one-another. Comparing the two shows makes for interesting analysis, but it's bad for the purposes of actually criticizing either show.

#fma03 #fmab #fma analysis #fma2003 #fullmetal alchemist #fma #fmab critical #that's right i'm using all the tags this time #mostly because i've put a ridiculous amount of time writing this so i'd like it to be seen by other ppl #and yeah responses are good even you don't have much to say I love seeing other ppl's opinions about shit

[mail-forwarding]

(Sunrise Christmas — Ded's dialogue if MC's yet to meet him)

"Ho ho ho! I am Ded Moroz, headmaster of the Santa School. Thought you may know me better as Santa Claus." "And I know all about you! I know every child on the nice list, MC."

I don't often take choice-dependent dialogue into consideration, because the MC in those mini-scenes tend to be characterized by player choice and not by baseline canon, and thus the reactions by other characters tend to shift away from that baseline.

Dialogue options for meeting a new character or greeting a returning one are somewhat different, because while they may say nothing about MC, they often do provide information about the characters or the world.

This particular line, however, I found highly interesting because of what it says about MC, regardless of whether LW intended for such a reading. This implies that no matter what sort of MC you are given the choice to play (agreeable, irritable, insatiable), fundamentally, MC represents good. Even their relentless "harassment" (put in quotes because it's 50/50 whether the characters are receptive, and dubious what the motivation even is for writing a canonical God of Sex Appeal as a sex pest) is not enough to detract from that goodness; one could, if one squinted, possibly make the argument that this behaviour is positive for other characters, perhaps because it is flattering to be wanted by someone as desirable and/or widely desired as MC.

I mean, of course this plays into the whole Lovable Sex Maniac and/or Jerk with Heart of Gold trope(s); of course the protagonist of a game like this would be classified as good. Of course all relationships MC can have with other characters are understood as a vehicle for those characters to grow and change for the better, regardless of how they actually interact. I'd say this is actually pretty typical for the genre since FEH and FGO do this too.

But what this line also implies (which I don't think LW intended to do) is that those two other MCs —the grumpy and the insatiable, who are mostly* optional, because their dialogue lines must be selected and the results are not usually acknowledged in subsequent scenes— must now be explicitly understood as still different aspects of the core MC, even if they're mostly* non-canonical. It's not that MC is good despite the dubiousness. The canonical MC, after all, goes so far beyond simply good. The way the text treats MC, even when they're being dubious, they are still being good.

*I call a trait/portrayal non-canon if it has to be specifically chosen by the player and makes no appearance if that option is not chosen.

Outside some select scenes, horny MC is usually non-canon. There are a few instances where the game forces you to be thirsty (though IIRC, those instances are not explicitly horny, and most are not implicitly so either), and I think a couple characters call MC out for their problematic behaviour in a way that alludes to promiscuity or sexual availability. But since nothing in the rest of the game addresses this in any way, unlike their noted tendency to be a problem child (because they keep getting caught up in bullshit, sometimes that they themself instigated), I tend to read this as MC being a "regular" "person" during puberty, who at least experiences aesthetic attraction, and may have said some things regardless of whether they've engaged in any such relations/acts.

Same goes for mean options: there is actual explicit textual evidence of MC being mean/insensitive/impatient/irritable, and quite of a lot of it at that, but this is portrayed as exceptions to MC's general temperament.

#housamo #will the real mc please stand up #mc trivia/speculation #events lore #sunrise christmas #i love reading too much into things 🤡 some real 'the curtain is blue because symbolism' shit 🤡 #i am also fascinated by the way the prologue of this event treats shiro #i mean i agree. as his no1 supporter and fan #but i didn't expect the game itself to call him PURE AND GOOD AND CAN DO NO WRONG #i am looking forward to reading jamboree and seeing if that shiro holds up to this one

[adarkrainbow]

As I am working on a d’Aulnoy fairytale right now, I want to take some times to explain a very basic thing that one needs to get with her way of writing fairytales.

Which is the reason why d’Aulnoy was so loved and famous throughout the 18th and 19th century, before dropping of the face of the earth for the 20th, and why people often have a hard time entering or appreciating her fairytale work despite it being fundamental to the world of fairytales. Which also explains why Perrault eclipsed her.

People got used and expected to a “folkloric fairytale” format. This comes from the Brothers Grimm, who popularized the idea and concept that fairytales had to be these short, folkloric-feeling, simple but efficient stories. The huge collections of “folk tales” and “folkloric fairytales” that arose between the 19th and 20th century didn’t help the feeling. This led to the concept of fairytales as stories short and concise enough that they can be summarized in a few pages for little children to read while they fall asleep.

Of the two “founders” of the French fairytale, Perrault’s stories are those that are the closest to the “Grimm style”. He wrote short, efficient, simple stories, that can easily be summarized, and try to imitate the style of “folktales told during evenings by the side of the fireplace”. (In fact this is also why so many people oversaw the literary aspect of Perrault’s tales, simplifying them by removing all the additional things he placed in, such as the double-entendres, the little jokes or the various wordplays). But it has to be noted that Perrault was an exception, and his style was not the most common or popular one during the “French fairytale era”. Everybody wrote like madame d’Aulnoy.

And what was madame d’Aulnoy’s style? A novel style. She wrote her fairytales like novel - or rather fantasy novellas.

Madame d’Aulnoy did everything people do not expect from fairytales. She didn’t leave people’s appearance to the readers but gave long, flowery, detailled descriptions. She didn’t leave the characters as flat entities with just one trait or one goal - she explored in all her tales the thoughts, feelings and various vices and flaws of each characters, and took care to always explain why a character did this thing rather than another. And she actually wrote full dialogues, instead of having the characters speak in bare, iconic lines. 

You know when nowadays people take a fairytale and expend it into a full YA novel or fantasy story? That’s what madame d’Aulnoy originally did. And that’s why people started to reject her fairytales. They thought of them as too long, too complex, too convoluted, with too many descriptions and too many dialogues that make it feel like the story is over-stretched. It is the feeling that I had myself when I first discovered her tales - and even today, I still consider that some of the parts of her stories are too stretched, repetitive or could be cut down.

But that’s because she wrote as people wrote in her time - late 17th century France. We were at the era of “river-novels” (roman-fleuve”) where a good novel had to take at least five books worth of main plots and subplots, and where everything had to be said. Once you get in the mindset “I will be reading an old-fashioned novel”, and once you get used to the style of 17th century novels, you suddenly get into the story. The Grimm and Perrault stories kind of conditioned people’s minds to a “short attention span” when it comes to fairytale narratives. But once you get past this, the d’Aulnoy stories suddenly open themselves to you with all the wonders, marvels and horrors you would expect from a typical fairytale: fairies, good and bad, and wizards, good and bad, and dragons, and talking animals, and giants, and weird curses, and metamorphosis, and magical items, and wondrous castles, and creepy underworlds, and brutal murders, and all that. In fact, you tend to get more than what you bargained for since madame d’Aulnoy love to make her stories have various “arcs” inside of them and plot twists, resulting in a lot of magical things and items being thrown in each of them. 

(I do have to add that it is all probably harder for an English-speaker because I have seen some of the English translations of d’Aulnoy and wow, they’re really a handful. Basically what I got from these translations is that they tried to stay faithful to the style and wording of d’Aulnoy... but as a result didn’t realize they were drowning the meaning, joke and essence of wonders and horrors into a lot of antiquated words and complex sentences.)

#french fairytales #madame d'aulnoy #d'aulnoy fairytales #fairy tales #fairytales

[paragonrobits]

tbh i think the whole ‘Midna’s true form doesn’t look enough like a gremlin so her imp form is better’ is kind of a ground zero for a particular type of discourse in character design that ultimately boils down to a single question:

should a character’s design be a visual summary of their personality?

there are pros and cons to this thing. on the one hand, i always appreciate a design where a single look at it goes ‘oh yeah you know EVERYTHING about this person’. a lot of the most iconic villains really lean into this (though a lot of heroes don’t, for a particular reason), and these designs are a very effective way to instantly communicate character.

The flipside issue of this, though, is that while it doesn’t INHIBIT nuance, it does make it harder to convey it, or at least if you assume that a design should always communicate the fundamental facet of this character, it also means that by default those facets will have greater significance to an audience than more subtle or less obvious traits revealed through characterization and plot. For example, if your character is a huge and brutish monster with a soft side, and the former is what their character design communicates (because the soft side is a subversion), than this approach to character design can be more of a hurdle.

Character design as character thesis also creates a problem with audience response; if the audience overwhelmingly makes assumptions about a character because of the way they look, even if that’s not at all what you intended, they can and probably will warp that character to fit their preconceptions. (For instance, all the male characters who happen to be attractive by the standards of the audience and get reimagined as brooding bad boys whose pragmatism and ruthlessness is them being dark and mature, even if the actual character is an explosive dumbass with zero maturity and too selfish to consider that other people have goals independent of what they want.)

This is where you run into another big issue with this whole idea: remember when i said that heroes and protagonists often tend to have less interesting designs, or at least that their characters are not often communicated as well? This largely boils down to a desire to have characters that you WANT people to like to be broadly inoffensive; if you’ve ever created OCs and you shied away from a particularly unpalatable character trait or design feature because you thought it would turn more people away, than you know EXACTLY what i mean. Heroes are often compelled to be more broadly likable, but this also means flattening out their potential concepts in favor of something more... marketable. Which sucks. It fucking sucks. Its why so many heroes come off as boring compared to villains, and while you can get some fun ideas by making your heroes just as extreme as villains, its very easy to screw it up and create unlikable characters. (You can honestly study a lot of discourse this way.)

Going back to Midna, she’s actually a prime example of a heroic character that does this right, but the thing about her is that while being a gremlin is a big part of her character, it isn’t what defines her. She is, after all, the protagonist (though not the playable one) of this game, she is THE titular Twilight Princess, and this role is ultimately what defines her, and her growing into her responsibility. She may be a gremlin, but its not the sole aspect of her personality.

Personally, I’ve always liked her true form more (though to be honest, she would probably have more facial elements from Imp Midna if she appeared in more games especially now, since the highly mature and regal look of her true form is kind of a stylistic element exclusive to Twilight Princess, while she’d probably look more like Imp Midna but Gerudo-sized and proportioned if she appeared in Tears of The Kingdom), not least in part BECAUSE its such a contrast to her actual personality. It’s very fun to get a character whose design expects you to think one way of them, but they turn out to have a radically different personaltiy, while it does seem limiting for a character’s design to indicate who they are. It might communicate things easier, but it also leans towards a much flatter character; if you convey everything that way, what’s left to tell?

for Midna, when we see her true form’s contrast against the gremlin cursed form we associated with her, its essentially the story of her character development and the depths of who she really is told in reverse.

#character design #midna #legend of zelda