#yeah i'm biased. what about it. i have opinions. and thoughts and feelings. and my opinion is WOOOOOOOOOO ZOROARK!!!! YEEEAAAH WOOOOO | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stars-n-spice · 4 days

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no you don't understand. I need the Bad Batch to have a happy ending. I need them all to make it out alive. I need them to all be together. I need them to be a family once again. I need them all alive, happy, healthy, thriving. I need them safe and healing and growing.

I need Hunter to be able to be at peace. To become what he so clearly wanted to be at the start of the series; a father. For him to have what he fought so hard for. To know that he's more than a soldier. I need him to be able to relax knowing his brothers, that Omega is safe and will forever be safe. I need need need him to have that peace. To have that kind of life. The life he didn't think he'd get, that no clone ever thought that they would get, but yet...And I need him to grow and learn from these mistakes and be that older brother for all of them I know he can be. Seeing him want a life different than what he was essentially made for that badly for him not to get it is going to absolutely destroy me.

I want Tech to come back. I want it so bad. I know Star Wars can't keep getting away with "killing a character and bringing them back" but what's doing it one more time? Am I biased because Tech is my second favorite Batcher? Yes. But listen, I just need him to return and be reunited with his family. I need him to see Crosshair again. I need him to see and be with Phee again. Yes the build up to his death was great and the send off with his goggles was, in my opinion beautiful, but I just really want him back. I miss him so much. He means so much to so many people and I just want to see him alive and well again.

I need Echo to come back and I need him to stay. Wrecker and Tech might be my favorites, but when it really comes down to it? Echo is my comfort character. When I'm upset and really struggling, what usually brings me back is thinking about what would Echo do? What would Echo say to me to get me through this? Echo means so so much to me and it hurts so much to see him reduced to a background character. It makes me think what even was the point of bring him back just to reduce him to what he is now? And I'm so so scared they're going to kill him off for shock value or to "explain" why he isn't with Rex in Rebels, but that's just so fucking stupid to me after having done nothing with his character since like the middle of season 2 of the Bad Batch. Bring him back, please. And let him be at peace for once too!! Goddammit, all this shit he's had to go through; getting fucking exploded, being a prisoner of war, losing Fives, losing his brothers because his chip malfunctioned, having to see what becomes of clones after everything they sacrificed for the galaxy-Like you already "killed". him off once, there's no need to do it again. Just bring him back and reunite him with the others, please.

I need Wrecker to get to have his family all together. On top of that, I need him to get the recognition he deserves for all that he does and has done. Omega might be the heart and soul of the team but Wrecker's the glue and arguably just as much as the heart and soul too. He's the protector, I'm sure he feels it's his responsibility to keep them together, to keep them safe. I want him to continue living his life knowing that he succeeded in doing so and now doesn't have to worry about something like that because they are safe. They're all together again and they're happy and they're safe. He can relax and enjoy what they used to have before it all went to shit. It's so obvious that he cares so much about his brothers and Omega in his own unique ways. Each of the members of the Batch have their own unique dynamics within each other, but it really seems like Wrecker is the one who has one with each of them. And yeah, he's my favorite so I'm going to be biased and I want him to make it out alive and I want him to be happy goddammit.

I need Crosshair to stay the fuck alive. I need him to continue to heal and grow and be back with his family again. I need him to be reassured and to feel safe and loved again. I cannot take another instance of a character who used to be so lost and broken finally getting healing and some peace only to sacrifice themselves again. To have someone go through so much only start to heal and then rip that away from them? I need him to be at peace. I need him to enjoy all that he's missed out on. I need to see him okay and content and healing and living. I don't think I can deal with seeing all of that being ripped away from him. Please just let the man be at peace for once in his fucking life. I am begging. You don't understand, he's healing; mentally, physically, he's getting better and to just,, take all of that away? Can't just ONE character please get a happy ending?? Like if any one of them deserve to see it through the end, it's him.

I need Omega to get the childhood she was cheated out of. I don't know how many times I've sat and thought about Omega only for me to burst out into tears. She's been isolated for nearly all of her life. At the most, she was free for two years out of her FOURTEEN years of existence. She went through ALL of that before the age Ashoka and Padmé were when they were just STARTING to go through the horrors. Yet she's remained so brave and so strong and so determined. She's endured and survived and I want her to thrive. I want her to have all her brothers together once again. I want her to grow up alongside them. I want her to be able to be a child for once. To experience life through those lenses. I don't want her to have to endure another loss.

I need to see this group of individuals who never really fit in have their place in the galaxy. I need to see them, all created with clear intents and purposes to fight in a war as cannon fodder find new purposes. I need to see these burnt-out kids catch a damn break for once. This family of neurodivergents who spent their entire lives either isolated or distant from everyone else because they were "different" and "special" get that well-deserved ending where they're all safe and happy and have a purpose and a place in the galaxy because fucking hell. I wanna know there's hope for me too.

just AAGUUHHH. I've never wanted a happy ending for anyone more than I want it for the Bad Batch.

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izukuisbaby · 2 years

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⊹˚.⋆ SHOPPING HEADCANONS - MY HERO ACADEMIA

୭ flora's notes : this wasn't planned but I'm on vacation and izuku owns my heart, I couldn't stop thinking about him when I bought clothes 😔✋🏼

୭ female reader/ male reader and gn reader friendly 💓

m.list | comment and reblog if u enjoyed !

⊹˚.⋆ IZUKU MIDORIYA

℘. he insists on tagging along with you on your shopping trips. he just loves to feel useful and wants to give his opinion on what you try on !

℘. and he's honest too ! if something looks bad on you he will nicely tell you : "I think this doesn't flatter your body well enough", "you should try another colour baby ! I've seen you wear this one before and you looked stunning/handsome !"

℘. and if one of your clothes fits you well expect a SHOWER of compliments "Y/N THAT'S THE ONE, this looks so good on you and the colour definitely lightens up your face. YOU LOOK SO CUTE oh my god" and he would be a blushing mess🥰

℘. learns about your colorimetria so he can pick clothes for you to try on or as gifts !

⊹˚.⋆ KATSUKI BAKUGO

℘. you have to DRAG him to the shopping centre because he hates being around a lot of people. he says they are impolite, careless and disrespectful and he would throw a tantrum if one dares slightly push him to get to a display.

℘. is grumpy the whole time : "hurry up goddamn it, you take 3 hours to undress I'd better get in there and remove your clothes myself", "tf is that granny outfit, who in their right mind would sell that", "this colour makes you look like you're gonna throw up your guts dumbass, get rid of it"

℘. when something suits you, he will very discretely smile and his eyes will sparkle,

"looks good i guess, take it"

"you sure, you don't seem convinced katsu ?"

"MOTHERFUCKING TAKE IT"

⊹˚.⋆ SHOTO TODOROKI

℘. "sho, you're not supposed to come in the fitting room while i change !"

"oh, I'm sorry y/n i thought it was okay since i already saw you naked"

"SHO- I mean technically you're right but you could AT LEAST close the curtain, I wouldn't want everyone to see my underwear"

℘. yeah shoto opens the curtain WIDE instead of asking if you're dressed or not. to him, the world stops when you two are together and he only sees you. so of course he wouldn't notice the 20 other people around you in the fitting area, who can now see your fully exposed body

℘. shoto apologizes and is even more of a blushing mess than izuku at this point AND he pays for your stuff (rich bf shoto💥💳💥💳💥)

℘. he is whipped and biased, he thinks everything looks good on you so he isn't of much help but he is a huge support and compliments you a lot♡

℘. ... you'd have to call Mina to actually get advice though -

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bloggingboutburgers · 2 months

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Hey it's me again. I wanted your opinion on something. When I told my mom I was ace, she accepted it . It was nice, so I'd thought I could tell my stepdad. He was uncomfortable and didn't want to talk about it. I asked mom why that was and she said that he's uncomfortable with hearing what's practically his kid talking about sexual stuff. I'm left feeling very confused. Do you have thoughts on this insight?

Ima be honest, I have zero experience being a parent (yet, at least), so I'm not sure I have any right to form much of an opinion on this...

That said, please do take this with a grain of salt, but I always think it's a shame when younger people aren't allowed to explore what sexual and romantic orientations mean openly, since we all know puberty is a thing and those things don't miraculously wait until you're 18 to come to mind. I'm probably biased, because a- I'm European and I guess my culture isn't as like... Rigid? When it comes to "protecting the children"? Idk it's got good and bad traits but it is what it is, and b- I realized I was ace at 14 after what felt to me like an explosion of horniness and romantic roleplaying from everyone my age around me, until I realized how they were was fair, and how I was was fair, and everything was aight, and I'm sure as hell glad I realized it so soon, too, despite there being nothing or no one to give me any hint on what I was back then.

Obviously people shouldn't be creeps about things and having concerns is fair, but being accepting and open-minded to younger people figuring themselves out is key to help them feel validated and less alone, I believe. But... Yeah, I'm no parent, so I wouldn't know. For me, back then, the validation didn't come from my parents, but mostly from my friends and then my brothers. I'm glad at least your mom is accepting, and I hope that your stepdad not wanting to talk about things isn't a sign that he's opposed to it – though even if he is, you are what you are and that's nobody's business but yours. I hope you have the amount of approval and validation you need in your life regardless.

#ghfnjkgldf that was a lot of blah blah on something that technically isn't my business i'm sorry #but yeah i wish you well #asexuality #asexual #aspec #...with that said REAL TALK for a sec i never got that whole card of like #“hmmmgh don't say sex don't talk about your sex life”#i'm not i'm talking about my proud lack thereof #ohwell

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urfavnegronerd · 9 months

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a little rant while im on break at my job

okay i know we're supposed to like ghostflower ships but i... i have some thoughts.

i see the love and lust between those two in into the spiderverse, miles is so giggly around gwen and gwen is slightly less unhinged (you ALL know what im getting at, love her but our good sis gwen is.... *hand motion*) etc. allat good stuff.

but i can't see that happening especially w the events of atsv, like there's definitely room for patching up the relationship but anything romantic between the two would feel forced as fuck i feel like. and maybe that's just me being an intensely passionate empath who likes to act like a nonchalant lil asshole, but still. i LOVE gwen, sony set her up beautifully for an amazing character arc that i'm so excited to see in the next one. HOWEVER, also this could just be me being an annoying little afro latina shit, she's not coming back from opening the collectible, going through miles' sketchbook w/o permission, and the shoes on the bed. that doesn't mean i HATE her i just can't look at her the same.

now a bitch is biased because black love is forever 🔛🔝, but also in the comics and video game miles has a black love interest. there was definitely also THE connection w/ miles and margo (however i'm also kinda in favor of prowlerbyte anyway--), and lil old me in the theatre was loosing it. i think that staying true to the aspect of black love interests is also going to be so important for the community, both comic/video game fans and black fans alike, mainly because of how black men interact with black women. speaking from experience i can't even count how many times i wanted to be the short lil white girl with blue eyes and blonde hair instead of the tall and awkward black girl with the wide nose and corkscrew curls. now here's where i think my personal bias kind of skews my opinion on this, but this franchise has been so important to SO many people. again speaking from experience, when i saw miles in atsv with the EXACT same hair texture as me i almost cried because no one in the history of ever has animated my kind of hair right and miles' hair was right. on top of this i saw so many little black boys practically tripping and falling in anticipation to see this movie in theatres. so i think i favor miles having a relationship with a black girl because this will reach such a new audience and possibly open doors for black men and boys to start treating black somebody and girls with respect. because if these little boys in the theatre see their like, idol for lack of a better word, treating black women and girls with respect i think then there's gonna be an aspect of healing within that.

i'm not really sure how well i'm communicating this, but i don't really think i can fully get behind the ghostflower ship. to me it feels really fucking forced in a way that kinda icks me out, however this is not to say i won't absolutely love the shit out of these two if it happens. in a way, this franchise feels like something the black community needs in several ways. like yeah this shit is pro black but FULLY pro black, not pro-black but anti gay, trans, or whatever the fuck. it shows blackness in a new way, artsy and nerdy but also really fucking cool at the same time and i never fucking got that as a little kid. like i kid you not the other black kids in school would call me a wanna be white girl. and to see someone with similar interests as me just sort of opens the world up??? like i visited my older sister at school in the dmv while wearing a spiderverse hoodie, and people actually wanted to talk to me about it!!! like not ina "oh i like ur sweatshirt ma" type thing like a "omg you like this movie too??" type thing and i just--

yeah i def strayed from the topic, but i hope our baby does get his lil black girl (or his lil gwen, from a big sisters perspective i don't hate her as a prospective partner i just think that there would need to be a clear breakdown in the difference of cultures. for example i was taught that anytime you meet anyone formally (like a parent or something) you shake their hand and or go in for a hug and kiss BOTH cheeks and talk about their home their clothes or whatever) but for like the sake of authenticity (sorry to be that asshole but come ON) but like.... flowerbyte 🥰🥰

did this make sense i feel like i word vomited like a bitch, idk maybe i'm projecting my personal shit into a franchise i really like

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dwobbitfromtheshire · 4 months

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Stuck Between a Jock and a Metalhead

Summary: Nancy, on a whim, decides to visit Steve at Scoops Ahoy, which leads to her overhearing confessions from Steve that leads her to think about the decisions she's made. A few days later, she decides to come back. She finds him being hit on by the town freak. What's a girl to do? Oh, get stuck in a freezer with the both of them.

A/N: I imagine Colbie Smulders as Lily.

Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six - Chapter Seven - Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten - Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Nancy sighed as she lay in bed, staring up at her ceiling. Technically, she was no longer grounded, and she could leave the house if she wanted to, but around this time, she would be heading to the newspaper. That was out of the question, considering she lost her job. Was she still fired? Tom was possessed by the Mind Flayer at the time. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about it or to feel guilty about all of the times she hated Tom. She also tried not to think about Hopper's funeral would be tomorrow. A soft knock on the door startled her out of her thoughts.

"Come in," Nancy called out.

Mike's head appeared in the doorway before he came all the way in. He looked downtrodden.

"I just wanted to see how you were doing," Mike said softly.

"I'm not really sure," Nancy said softly.

"Yeah, me neither," Mike said. "I still can't believe that Hopper is. . ."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Nancy said.

"We didn't get along, and I was rude to him, but he did help us out. I just hope he didn't think. . .," Mike trailed off.

"He knew how much you cared about him and how much you cared about El," Nancy said softly. "El was his only daughter, and I think it was her extenuating circumstances that made him on edge. I mean, you two have a lot in common. After you thought El was dead, you weren't exactly the happiest person to be around. You were very rude to Max and extremely protective of letting her into your group, kind of protective like Hopper was with El."

"Yeah, I guess so," Mike sniffed.

Nancy got up and hugged her brother tightly. She pulled back and smiled.

"You're getting too tall," Nancy said. "Asshole."

She was about to say something else when the phone on her beside table rang. Nancy spoke quickly and eagerly before hanging it up.

"What was that about?" Mike asked.

"I got my job back at the post!" Nancy grinned. "They got a new Editor!"

"Already?" Mike asked.

"Well, the one female reporter didn't want one the assholes to become the new Editor, so they called in a favor with a friend. The new editor is going to be a woman from a competing newspaper. The new mayor is hoping to clean house and reopen businesses that were closed because of the mall," Nancy said. "And he is hoping to clean up Klein's mess as quickly as possible."

"Man, Eddie's lucky he got to witness Joyce slug the guy," Mike said.

"I got to admit. I'm a bit jealous myself," Nancy said. "Anyway, she wants to meet me, so I guess I'm going in today."

After allowing her mother to drop her off, Nancy walked into the building and headed directly towards the editor's office. A woman with long dark hair and a powder blue pantsuit was unpacking her new office. A nameplate sat on the desk: Lillian Barnes. It matched the name on the diploma on the wall from Emerson College. Nancy stared at it for a while, imaging her own name there.

"It has a great journalism program," the woman's voice startled her out of her musings.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Miss Barnes," Nancy blinked.

"It's Lily, please, and you never have to apologize to me for being ambitious," Lily replied.

Nancy realized that her eyes were just as blue as her pantsuit, and the woman was very tall. She practically towered over Nancy.

"It's a great school?" Nancy asked.

"The best, in my opinion. I might be biased. It was home away from home for me for quite a few years, and it certainly never let me down," Lily said and sat down before pointing at the seat in front of her. "And I love Boston. Do you have a particular college in mind, yet?"

"Not really, keeping my options open," Nancy said. "I plan on applying to lots of places."

"Smart. Well, if you plan to get a degree in journalism, then my suggestion would be to apply to Emerson as well," Lily said.

"I might just take your suggestion," Nancy grinned. "I'm looking forward to seeing what you bring to the table here."

"I bet you are," Lily said. "I bet it was frustrating working with people who are so misogynistic, not to speak ill of the dead or anything."

"It was frustrating, and I did come close to quitting, but then I realized that's probably what they wanted me to. I didn't want to give up this job, and I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me quit," Nancy said.

"Determined, I like that. What made you get involved with journalism?" Lily asked.

"My friend, Barb, she went missing a while back. Turns out her death was covered up by Hawkins Lab. It had been a chemical spill," Nancy said.

"And who uncovered the truth, I wonder," Lily said, her eyes sparkling.

"I broke into the lab and got them on tape admitting to the cover up, then I worked with a former reporter to reveal the truth," Nancy said and Lily laughed.

"Damn. I like you," Lily said. "Tell me, are you willing to use that same stubbornness that used for your friend to find the truth for other people?"

"Absolutely," Nancy said without hesitation.

"Well, it's definitely going to be interesting working with you. I'll be sad to see you go once school starts, but until then, I'll be putting you to work. Now, you'll still be an intern and do the usual things like answering phones, but I'm not going to waste your other skills either," Lily said.

"Thank you! You won't be disappointed!" Nancy exclaimed.

"I know I won't," Lily grinned. "I look forward to seeing what you bring to the table, Nancy."

A weird feeling settled over her as she started to work throughout the day. Slowly, but surely, life was moving forward, and it felt strange because it was still happening even without Hopper. Nancy knew it was strange to think that time would stop because he did, that the whole world would come to a complete crashing halt because Jim Hopper had died. But no, Jim Hopper had died, and the world kept turning. It left an odd, bitter feeling in her stomach. There was one less grown-up who could keep them safe, and suddenly, Nancy didn't feel quite so safe anymore. She had decided to walk back home after work. She made sure to call her mom and let her know. As she was walking she saw Otis's salon door open and Steve's car out front. Nancy started moving and walked in to find Steve playfully arguing with Robin. He brightened when he saw Nancy.

"Hey, Nance, my parents and siblings just left," Steve said.

"What?" Nancy asked.

"Oh, the Sinclairs and the Hendersons adopted Steve," Robin said.

"Well, that's good. You definitely deserve it," Nancy grinned.

She stepped into his space and pressed her cheek up against his chest, wrapping her arms around his waist.

"What's this?" Steve asked.

"Oh my God. You're so damaged you can't even recognize a hug," Robin said and Nancy giggled.

"Very funny, Robin," Steve said.

"I got my job back at the Post," Nancy said. "There's a new editor and she's amazing."

"That's great!" Steve said. "You deserve it, Nancy."

Nancy sighed, and she gazed up at him.

"I'm not ready for tomorrow," Nancy said softly.

"Neither am I," Steve whispered and kissed her forehead. "I think my lip has done enough healing to risk a little pain."

"Are you sure?" Nancy asked.

"Worth it," Steve said.

"Are you guys allowed to kiss without Eddie here?" Robin asked.

"Yes," Steve and Nancy scoffed.

"I wasn't sure how three people relationships work. Hell, I'm not even sure how people relationships work," Robin said.

Nancy grinned and moved to wrap her arms around Steve’s neck. She pressed her lips to his and sighed in contentment. Kissing Steve again felt a lot like coming home. It was warm, familiar, and safe. She giggled when she felt him smile against her lips. She pulled back when she felt him wince but stayed wrapped up in his arms. No, she definitely wasn't ready for tomorrow, but she felt like she could get through it with Steve there and Eddie. She knew, though, that Eddie would be there mostly for his sister. She burrowed deeper into Steve’s arms, trying to get the image of a sad El out of her head.

The next day dawned bright and early. Nancy woke up before anyone else in her house and sat at her desk, her journal open before her. She stared at the blank page, not knowing what to write, and she sat there until the sun finally came up. Nancy stared at the clock. Time to get ready. Her movements were slow as she showered and put on her black dress. How many times were they going to have to do this? The ride to the church was quiet, and Nancy sat in the back with her siblings, sharing looks with her brother over Holly's head. When they walked into the church, Nancy spotted Eddie standing awkwardly at the front. He was wearing a borrowed suit that hung off his lanky frame. Nancy moved forward to greet him. His eyes lit up when he saw her and immediately pulled her into a hug.

"Glad you're here," Eddie said with a smile.

"Where's El?" Nancy asked.

"Oh, she's in the back with Uncle Wayne and Joyce. She's not handling it very well, which is understandable. I was a basket case myself when my mom died. It helped having Wayne there, though. She hasn't been sleeping, and she tried to run away once because she thought she was being too much," Eddie said and ran his hands over his face, carefully avoiding his nose.

"You haven't slept either," Nancy said softly.

"How can I when I have nightmares of my own?" Eddie asked softly. "And when I'm not having nightmares of my own, it's El. It's back and forth so Wayne's not getting any sleep either. When I'm not having the nightmares, I lay awake at night trying to figure out how to help my own little sister with hers."

"I'm not sure if there's anything you can do except to let her know that you're not going anywhere," Nancy said softly.

"Yeah," Eddie said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Talking about your own will probably let her know that she's not alone," Nancy said.

"This sucks," Eddie muttered.

A moment later, El was coming out from the back of the church, her eyes red and puffy from crying. She approached Nancy and hugged her.

"Thank you for coming," El said softly.

"You're welcome, is there anything that I can do?" Nancy asked.

El shook her head and then she moved past Nancy when she saw Mike. They hugged tightly, El clinging to him as tight as she could. It was then that Nancy noticed Steve walk through the door with Robin. He moved politely through the crowd of people and made his way over to them. He hugged Nancy, kissed her cheek, and then hugged Eddie tightly. El broke away from Mike and moved to wrap her arms around her brother's waist. Lucas, Dustin, and Max arrived last. Lucas and Dustin were with their parents, but Max was by herself. She was by El's side in an instant and stayed there, ignoring everyone else. Nancy heart broke at the thought of Max suffering through her own loss, and she remembered that Max had to watch her own stepbrother die. They all went through too much shit.

Eddie, Wayne, El, and the Byers sat up front while the rest of the party sat behind them. The pastor stood in front of an empty coffin and spoke empty platitudes about a man he didn't really know. If only he knew what Hopper had really done for them, for everyone in this damn town. It was Joyce who stood up and spoke about the man she had known for years that drove the party to tears. It was Joyce who struggled to keep it together, and Nancy knew that this woman had one foot out the door. When they moved things to the cemetery, El had to be carried by Wayne to the grave site.

"What are we going to do now?" Dustin asked as they lowered Hopper's empty coffin into the ground.

Nancy shared a look with Steve, Robin, and Eddie. They realized at the same time that with one less adult in the know, these kids were going to need them now more than ever. What are they going to do if it all happens again? Suddenly, they didn't just lose the greatest man they ever knew, but in some way, they officially lost the last bit of childhood they had been clinging to. It was time to grow up now and make sure that these kids still had something to hang onto.

Chapter Thirteen

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thefeathercollective · 7 months

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we're 99.9% sure that portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa was plural.

okay uh disclaimer. we're not a psychology or literature expert by any means. we rarely even read poetry. we only heard of this guy in high school literature class and the thought stuck with us and then we found plausible evidence lmao. also, as a plural system ourselves, we're clearly biased.

and a considerable amount of this post will be sourced from wikipedia. and this is the first time we've made a post like this. please don't come after us I'm just writing this for fun lmao

huge ramble ahead!

who even was that man

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa (Portuguese: [fɨɾˈnɐ̃du pɨˈsoɐ]; 13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher, and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. He also wrote in and translated from English and French.

yeah that's who the man was. but what really sparked our interest in him during class and made us wonder if he was plural were his...

✨heteronyms✨

y'know pseudonyms? when someone writes under a different name than their own for whatever reason? these are similar, but the catch is that the different names have different personalities, supposed appearances, philosophies, all that shit.

the term was coined by Pessoa himself, and his heteronyms were written as if they were real people. they had detailed careers, histories, etc. he had at least 70, although I vaguely remember some other source estimating it at around 100.

"but eva, these could just be OCs or something!",

he had 3 main ones though, being Alberto Caeiro (known for interpreting the world as-is, without greater meaning or anything, like some sorta anti-poet), Álvaro de Campos (a naval engineer who even had multiple phases in his philosophy) and Ricardo Reis (who wrote with a lot of structure and rationality, and was very pessimistic).

I predict someone typing. to that, I begin my endless copy-paste + ramble about all the things that make us think the heteronyms were headmates.

I'll throw in a section of a letter Pessoa wrote to some other poet (bolding the parts I find relevant because I don't love walls of text lmao)

How do I write in the name of these three? Caeiro, through sheer and unexpected inspiration, without knowing or even suspecting that I'm going to write in his name. Ricardo Reis, after an abstract meditation, which suddenly takes concrete shape in an ode. Campos, when I feel a sudden impulse to write and don't know what. (My semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, who in many ways resembles Álvaro de Campos, always appears when I'm sleepy or drowsy, so that my qualities of inhibition and rational thought are suspended; his prose is an endless reverie. He's a semi-heteronym because his personality, although not my own, doesn't differ from my own but is a mere mutilation of it. He's me without my rationalism and emotions. His prose is the same as mine, except for certain formal restraint that reason imposes on my own writing, and his Portuguese is exactly the same – whereas Caeiro writes bad Portuguese, Campos writes it reasonably well but with mistakes such as "me myself" instead of "I myself", etc.., and Reis writes better than I, but with a purism I find excessive…)

so not only does he describe writing Caeiro completely unexpectedly, he also gives the same sort of opinion about his heteronyms' writings that we've seen (and experienced) plural folks give about their headmates' typing or drawing styles.

hell, "writes better than I but with a purism I find excessive" is exactly my opinion of lynn when he does our assignments lmao

the semi-heteronym surfacing when Pessoa is sleepy could be some sorta dissociative state that lets a headmate come through, be it straight-up fronting or passive influence... but I'm probably forcing it too much here.

uhhh here's something on the heteronym thing from some guy called richard zenish. I bolded some parts again

For each of his 'voices', Pessoa conceived a highly distinctive poetic idiom and technique, a complex biography, a context of literary influence and polemics and, most arrestingly of all, subtle interrelations and reciprocities of awareness. [...] Pessoa was often unsure who was writing when he wrote, and it's curious that the very first item among the more than 25,000 pieces that make up his archives in the National Library of Lisbon bears the heading A. de C. (?) or B. de D. (or something else).

"okay.... they could still be characters though"

the heteronyms were aware of and sometimes interacted between themselves. wikipedia's list of Pessoa's heteronyms even has the man himself as a heteronym and pupil of Alberto Caeiro, although I don't feel like going after the source for that bit.

dear hypothetical person I'm quoting here, you're entitled to your opinion. but how about we take, say... a more DID/OSDD-y approach to things? because there's things that hint that Fernando Pessoa's plurality could be traumagenic and/or disordered too.

When Pessoa was five, his father, Joaquim de Seabra Pessôa, died of tuberculosis and less than seven months later his younger brother Jorge, aged one, also died (2 January 1889).

(written by himself about himself:) Nothing had ever obliged him to do anything. He had spent his childhood alone. He never joined any group. He never pursued a course of study. He never belonged to a crowd. The circumstances of his life were marked by that strange but rather common phenomenon – perhaps, in fact, it's true for all lives – of being tailored to the image and likeness of his instincts, which tended towards inertia and withdrawal.

(written by a schoolfellow:) For one of his age, he thought much and deeply and in a letter to me once complained of "spiritual and material encumbrances of most especial adverseness". He took no part in athletic sports of any kind and I think his spare time was spent on reading. We generally considered that he worked far too much and that he would ruin his health by so doing.

so childhood trauma, check...? at the very least this stuff doesn't sound very good for a child's mental health.

Pessoa's earliest heteronym, at the age of six, was Chevalier de Pas. Other childhood heteronyms included Dr. Pancrácio and David Merrick, followed by Charles Robert Anon, a young Englishman who became Pessoa's alter ego.

"I can remember what I believe was my first heteronym, or rather, my first nonexistent acquaintance — a certain Chevalier de Pas — through whom I wrote letters to myself when I was six years old, and whose not entirely hazy figure still has a claim on the part of my affections that borders on nostalgia. I have a less vivid memory of another figure . . . who was a kind of rival to the Chevalier de Pas. Such things occur to all children ? Undoubtedly — or perhaps. But I lived them so intensely that I live them still; their memory is so strong that I have to remind myself that they weren’t real."

oh I just found some spiritual stuff too

the appearance of the first heteronym was after his family members died so that's one thing... and like, that's not just one childhood heteronym but at least four. and well, to me they sound a bit too vivid for your average imaginary friend.

Pessoa's interest in spiritualism was truly awakened in the second half of 1915, while translating theosophist books. This was further deepened in the end of March 1916, when he suddenly started having experiences where he believed he became a medium, having experimented with automatic writing. [...] Besides automatic writing, Pessoa stated also that he had "astral" or "etherial visions" and was able to see "magnetic auras" similar to radiographic images. [...] Mediumship exerted a strong influence in Pessoa's writings, who felt "sometimes suddenly being owned by something else" or having a "very curious sensation" in the right arm, which was "lifted into the air" without his will. Looking in the mirror, Pessoa saw several times what appeared to be the heteronyms: his "face fading out" and being replaced by the one of "a bearded man", or another one, four men in total.

........

man, this wikipedia article is extensive and full of stuff that supports our silly little theory, huh.

yeah, so he attributed it to spiritual reasons which is fair and valid, but... "owned by something else" all of a sudden? the thing with the right arm sounding a lot like partial possession in tulpamancy? seeing his heteronyms' faces in the mirror?

yeahhhh.

(I'm guessing the magnetic aura thing could be some sorta derealization, contributing to the he-was-a-dissociative-system hypothesis, but that's yet another stretch on my part.)

(plus, spiritual plurality is a thing.)

oh! this thing he wrote sounds a lot like it too.

"This tendency to create around me another world . . . began in me as a young adult, when a witty remark that was completely out of keeping with who I am or think I am would sometimes and for some unknown reason occur to me, and I would immediately, spontaneously say it as if it came from some friend of mine whose name I would invent, along with biographical details, and whose figure — physiognomy, stature, dress and gestures — I would immediately see before me."

let's just do a quick google..

am I biased? yes, very much so. but y'know. you can see I have my reasons.

to see if any people with more qualifications than we have think the same about Fernando Pessoa possibly being plural lmao.

...oh, yes. contrary to what we thought a couple years ago when we had that class about the guy, other people have indeed thought the same. and written about it.

keywords "fernando pessoa mpd" give us:

this paper from 2012 (in portuguese) that... well, I *think* it claims he had mpd but it's very convoluted and abstract about it

this little... forum post? from 2009 that quotes a dead link :v

this one seems kinda cool. it regards Pessoa's positive approach to his heteronym-having as a creative condion called Pessoa Syndrome, and later mentions some Multiple Personality Order (not disorder). don't love some of its wording about mental disorders and madness... it's good to see someone consider healthy multiplicity as a thing that exists, though. it also claims Pessoa became someone with multiple personalities through his heteronymic writing, which is yet another possible origin I hadn't considered before for some fucking reason.

this one cites a dissociative process

this one straight up calls it "subject plurality"!

conclusion ig. I'm pretending to be organized here.

other keywords (like "fernando pessoa dissociative") provide some more results :0 but I've been writing this post for far too long now and would rather not read through more odd wording lmao

it really surprises me that wikipedia doesn't mention the possibility at all from what I've read and ctrl+F'ed. I thought we were being a conspiracy theorist about it but then I found even more stuff to back us up, including other people's analyses. so that's nice.

and I think this kind of thing, of plurals of the past, should be talked about more in the community. it's really interesting to say the least.

...

how does one even end a post like this one.

uhh thanks for reading!!

#eva.headmate #pluralgang #plurality #plural community #plural system

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1218-814 · 2 months

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Jade Leech Analysis and Theories

Again this is for myself, loosely based off of what other ppl think, but he's my kin so I may be biased

requested by @thehollowwriter

His actual Personality (Iced Tea Theory) and his hobby

No one has actually gotten Jade's trust and trusted him back. He's desperately trying though, but he's not getting the right idea of how. His actual personality is frozen, but the only one that comes the closest to helping him is surprising: Kalim Al-Asim.

For Jade, you have to dump a ton of sugar (sweet love) into the tea.

Remember what he said in response to the tea?

"It feels like all my teeth will fall out."

What is Jade's unique magic written as?

"The teeth that bite."

I'm going to call Jade's actual personality iced tea for this reason.

Also, the mushrooms are a metaphor, as well as Jack’s cacti, for personality. Jack and the Octavinelle trio are from a cold place, Jack comes from the snowy region and Octavinelle comes from the icy ocean. Cacti grow poorly in cold places, which equals undeveloped Jade, which needs some sun and warm air to grow. It’s odd how suddenly there’s the story about a cactus and the detailed reason just to go to the greenhouse. And how much they emphasized that Jack is from a snowy country.

Jack said that he wanted to get his cactus some light in the greenhouse, and Octavinelle showed up, together, which is weird to me.

Maybe this is what happened in the even (as in odd or even) chapters with Octavinelle. Ace and Deuce don’t seem to have memories of Atlantica Museum, and other positive things in that arc. Maybe the one who blotted was Jade? (There are different plot lines if you look closely, wasn’t it odd that you see how Malles was feared in the main story, but not in Halloween events? Even in part 5 how Ace and Deuce were like “long time no see” when you saw them before the end of 4?)

I think even at this point, his clinginess hasn’t resolved; so Azul and Floyd are accepting it, saying to him “Let’s change it little by little”. I mean it’s hard for someone like Jade, who lives for someone else to be just told “live for yourself!”.

I mean Azul asks him what he should do when Jack ruined his mushrooms; which I assume is letting him decide what he wants to do, as a part of helping him live his own life.

Jade talks to someone he doesn’t know from him, and the mushrooms are near a “sunny place” (with cloth). Azul insults him with a serious face and Floyd calls them “mushrooms” not “shitake”. Jade being in the middle is especially the weirdest. This is highly unlike them, and I think they want to “face Jade properly more”.

Jade fake cried, which I assume is a form of therapy; even if it’s fake, it’s teaching him “that it’s okay to cry, tell us your feelings”. Yes, even if Jack worked at Mostro Lounge, he has no merit, but Floyd said “Yeah let’s do that.”, which is a really good response because if he said that he would have no merit, the situation would go back to “listening to others, instead of yourself”.

He dragged the whole thing, and Floyd oddly didn’t complain about it, and he touched Jack’s ears. I think he wanted to do that from the beginning, and he didn’t go “Oya oya Floyd” and ignore his own thoughts/opinion. And Floyd said that they were “Jade’s treasure”, as opposed to in Jade’s lab coat when he said to throw it away.

Jade's heart is expressed as teeth, something sharp/hard and protected, and in Jack's lab coat story, I also assume the reason why they put the mushrooms in a sunny place is that it's a metaphor for Jade's real self-being "defrosted." Remember what Jack did? He threw Jade’s mushrooms away. I think this is expressing what people have done to him; the softest part of his heart is trampled and thrown away "for the time being" and "somehow" Jack and Jade are on opposite teams on Beans Day, probably because Jack is Jade's "Night", but Azul is Jade's "Day".

Jade wants to be defrosted by Azul, and that's why his relationship with him is co-dependent.

Jades and diamonds are kind of similar in a way; Diamonds are the toughest stone but are brittle. Jades are not as hard and easy to scratch, but they have a very strong toughness and are hard to break. (Cater and Jade)

Jade and his little… attachment Issues

Jade is so silly, we all know he’s lowkey psychotic and loves Azul but he himself most likely doesn’t. I personally relate to him heavily and know most likely what he is thinking so let me explain his attachment to Azul. Think of Jade as a little child, or Ariel from the little mermaid, but she’s, like, 190 cm.

Do you know those people that are attached to one person? Jade is basically that with Azul, but a little hard (?) to tell. So you know how I said that Jade grows mushrooms because Azul praised him once for it? That is why he has that attachment; this goes for why he takes care of Floyd, it's something that he was praised for, something that gives him an “identity”.

He visibly sighs during flying classes, which reflects how it’s a very weak point for him while he’s very good at other things, so when he can’t do something less than another person can, it makes him stand out more. No praise no gain. I know this is probably harder for people who aren’t like Jade to understand but basically, if you get praised by someone that you think understands you about something that you didn’t really know about yourself, you are like “Oh I didn’t know that!”. However, what he doesn’t know is that Azul doesn’t really understand Jade as much as Jade thinks. So when Azul says he’s someone that is “good at getting into people’s comfort”, he doesn’t really mean it as praise, but Jade takes it as one. His thought process is basically “If Azul, someone who I trust has good judgment because he always knows what people desire and what their weak points are, then there is no doubt that I am a bad guy who puts on a gentle and humble mask.”, and he believes that fake identity (also kinda gullible) as is.

To Azul, he doesn’t trust Jade because he appears to have no desires that are to be gained through his contracts. It's fake but in a self-protection-type way. That illusion that he makes for himself makes him look strong, but deep down he is a very sensitive child. And that is why he became so attached to the little crybaby who spews out ink; he thinks they are the same in how sensitive and scared they are. Both haven’t been like this from the beginning, and that’s why Jade doesn’t fear the scheming personality of Azul. This also could apply to why he is okay with Trey (who is like him, but nice (?) and why he isn’t as close with Vil (who is someone who was born strong and honest about himself). Azul doesn’t notice because of hits low self-esteem

Just on a side note, I think Jade hates people who write stuff like this. This is a call-out post to some of the Jade kins out there. AKA me

~~~

I pulled this one out of the grave too

This is a small chunk of Octa, the google doc I have is 50+ pages

They're like a lot of context needed bc I post my old posts out of order so if there's a request, I am willing to pull those out

#jade leech #twisted wonderland theory #twst #twisted wonderland #tweels #twisted wonderland jade #twst jade #twisted wonderland analysis

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murasaki-cha · 3 months

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So I read Serena.... wow. I'm gonna make a long post expressing my opinions because THERE ARE A LOT!! (there's pictures too!)

These are going to be just my thoughts and how I understood the story + characters so if anyone disagrees, sorry but our vibes don't match, please don't come at me.

Now first of all can they adopt me??

Ok going to be serious here (not for long) this manhwa is so good!! I have read another manhwa of Ina-nim, the author/artist, called "Black Winter" (it's amazing go check it out) so I knew this was going to have layers upon layers as a story. AND IT DID!!

The story is so complex, everyone is scheming something, no one says the full truth and you never know when you might get stabbed in the back.

I'm going to be honest, I've known about Serena since it came out and I didn't want to read it. Not because I thought the story was bad or anything, since I knew how great this author is already thanks to their previous story, but because I knew it was going to be messy. Super messy. And it is, it is a hot dumpster fire mess. And I didn't really want to deal with it since it would have been exhausting and I would have dropped it or put it on hold. But by now (chapter 72 as of the latest update) I think that it has become more "stable" to say and I found it easier to enjoy the story since I read it in one go.

I particularly loved that none of the characters were good. No one. But no one is exactly bad either. Everyone here is just gray, they're flawed, they do bad stuff, they hurt each other. No one is right or wrong. We see things form their perspective and we see their reasoning but whether we sympathise with them is up to us because, let's be real, even their thought process can be fucked up at times.

Besides Victor. Victor is pure evil. If we throw holy water at Victor he will start melting. Victor should be burned.

Now moving along let's talk about the main characters.

Starting with Serena. First of all MOTHER!!🛐-

Now Serena is the type of fl I expected to get lots of hate(and she did). She had a lover while she was married, she was way too stubborn, she thinks she's better than everyone, etc. And yeah she did all those things. She's also a very traumatised little girl who had her entire world shattered at the age of 17, had to marry a stranger and feel her worth slip through her fingers. Serena is constantly paranoid due to her past experiences and the way she's been treated. She's desperately grasping for whatever little power she can have in the begining.

Now that is not to say she's never done anything wrong. Her using Fredrick as merely a way to destress and a shield, her prejudice against Eiser simply because of his family, her thinking she deserves to be in charge even if she is unexperienced simply because she is a Serenity, her refusing to see anything from anyone's perspective but hers. She's too prideful, too stubborn, too guarded.

But she's a great businesswoman, she takes her tasks seriously and she's super intelligent. The moment she started working on the hotel she changed because she was finally in her element. That spoiled, angry Serena in the beginning was simply what the isolation had done to her, the way it had fundamentally changed her. She started seeing everything in a new light when she started learning how to manage the hotel and being more open minded while still being guarded. Serena is a perfect morally gray main character, she's flawed, she's human.

Next we have Eiser. DADDY-

I swear I'm not being biased when I say I loved Eiser SO MUCH! First things first, he is an asshole. Not gonna sugar coat it. In fact that is the sugar coating. He is quite possibly the most secretive man alive, we know exactly 3 things about his past in the last 72 chapters and I'm not even being sarcastic, that's the total amount. And that is probably what makes him so interesting as a character to me at least.

One of my favorite things about Eiser was that he didn't have any feelings about Serena in the beginning. Yeah he mostly saw her as a means to an end and felt a smidge of responsibility because of her brother, but that was it. He honestly did not care about what Serena did or thought. Eiser's only objective is to save Serenity hotel, probably fuck up his family along the way because screw them and the rest is an enigma. He doesn't do feelings, not anymore at least.

We learn from the beginning that he's not a "good guy", he's not Male Lead™ that's mean to fl to protect her or to not get close to her and his whole world revolves around her etc. He's not just this guy meant to be a love interest, he's a whole other well constructed character. He has his own goals (which we never know what they are because his thought's are more secretive and guarded than the Vatican Apostolic Archives), he follows the most efficient way to achieve those goals and that's all that matters to him. He recognized Serena's skills all along yet still thought of her as a spoiled little princess because he didn't care about knowing her, didn't need to, that wasn't going to help him.

There really isn't much development about Eiser aside his relationship with Serena (but that's a talk about further below), but that's kind of on point for him. Unlike Serena, Eiser has been doing business for years now, he knows how to run things, he knows how to work with people, he has experience and skill and friends (surprisingly). Eiser's role is more of a mentor for Serena than as someone who also needs to learn.

And last Frederick (gonna hide behind a chair real quick)

Don't come at me for this but to be 100% honest, Frederick was as interesting to me as a white sheet of paper. Most of the time he was just there. That's it. Look the man is mysterious I agree and his character would have been so so interesting but he literally gave me nothing. I swear I'm being unbiased, even if Eiser didn't exist this man would have done nothing to impact me as a reader. But I think that shows how important or how much impact he made to Serena's story.

Frederick is interesting in the fact that we don't know his role in the story. He says he's doing everything to help Serena yet will that make him an antagonist or not is yet to be revealed. Also Frederick isn't even his name??? so there's that. Unlike the first two, he appears too few times and we don't really know what's up with him. So far he has made it his main objective and like basically his personality to protect Serena from his employers.

I liked that it showed he came here with impure intentions and his own goals but ultimately he just made his entire world revolve around keeping Serena safe and that kind of bumped me. The most interesting thing about him so far right now is the mystery of his past (who he killed, what's his true identity) and whether he'll be an antagonist by the end or not.

And now we move to the most dreaded thing. The romance.

I'm gonna say it straight up, Serena x Eiser for the win. Enemies to lovers has gone and done it again and by god did I EAT IT UP!! They were mother and father fr!!

Now let me express my opinions on both couples here with actual words.

First I want to talk about Serena and Frederick. From the beginning this story did not have a love triangle, at least for me. Serena and Frederick always looked like a relationship born out of necessity (which Serena later on confirms that that's what it might have been all along). Serena craved for whatever warmth and protection she could get and Frederick became kind of a safe place for her. She essentially used Frederick as a distraction, a means of relaxation and someone to just vent. She never properly saw him as his own person or equal but as a means of escape from her struggles.

Meanwhile Frederick himself didn't exactly love Serena in a pure way. He loves her yes, but he's also obsessed with her. He feels the need to make her need him so he can stay by her side. He wants to be the only one seeing her weak and vulnerable, caging her and himself in this relationship. And the only way he knows she will be by his side is if she uses him. And the more Serena takes charge of things as head of Serenity and builds herself up, the more Frederick notices that she's slipping away from him so he desperately clings to the mission of protecting her from his employer. He even admits these himself:

Perhaps they did have something beautiful in the beginning but it slowly developed into a relationship that caged them both.

Now sit down because I'm gonna be talking about mommy and daddy (I unironcally call them that no I'm not joking) and this talk is going to be a loooong one *cracks knuckles*

Serena and Eiser were never the picture perfect couple, furthest thing from it and they were not planning on trying to change that anytime soon. They were toxic, they hurt each other and they didn't care about each other. To Eiser, Serena was just the girl he was supposed to marry to save Serenity and to Serena, Eiser was the man that took Serenity and might kill her in the future. None of them saw each other in a good light and none of them bothered to understand the other. Eiser was completely indifferent towards Serena and Serena just wanted to hurt him. Off to a great start because they were already at rock bottom so the only way to go is up!

The way their relationship developed was really natural and well paced. Everyone knows that the beauty of a good enemies to lover is the slowburn AND THE SLOWBURN WAS SLOWBURNING HERE LEMME TELL YOU! They first needed to see each other in a new lighting as equal business partners to go any further into their relationship or start trusting each other. They're both very calculative people and Eiser did see that, has always seen that, so he resulted to manipulating Serena into "competing" with him to give her the chance to properly work in the hotel. And Serena took the bait but never played right into the palm of his hand and always took charge of things her own way.

It was important for them to recognize each other's full capabilities, not just with the veil of "Grayan" or "Spoiled little princess". Most importantly it was essential for Serena to see that Eiser is in fact truly helping her family without any ulterior motives (that are harmful to her family at least) and never had any plans of taking over and eliminating her. And while Eiser was always aware of Serena's abilities and respected her as an individual, he always too disinterested in her to see how fully capable she is. One of the funniest things in my opinion was how Eiser was showering Serena with praises in his head 24/7 yet verbally he would break out in hives before complimenting her. (Istg the communication in this household died back in that carriage with Serena's family)

And that was the biggest wall that blocked them from going further with their relationship, so as soon as that was gone, well would you look at that, they can actually get along just fine and decently! And the romance just came along to them naturally.

Eiser was always drawn to Serena since he first saw her, he was always intrigued by her actions even if that left him puzzled. He always read people for his benefit, but Serena simply caught his eye every time by pure curiosity. He enjoys seeing her expressions and reactions and her journey to rising to her rightful place. Plus, Eiser always felt a kind of kinship with Serena. He saw the loss, betrayal and devastation in her and recognized it as the same as his own. The fight Serena put all these years to try and keep her place and protect what's hers is what he wished he had done all those years back and what someone had done for him when he was at his lowest. It was only after he truly got to know Serena that all these feelings started to subconsciously transform into something else, something even he isn't truly aware of.

Serena surprised me by being the first one to recognize(?), in a way, she had fallen but I'm not complaining, it was beautiful. Serena's main problem with Eiser was that she couldn't trust him, for very obvious reasons, that mans true thoughts are locked in a safe inside a safe inside another safe that happens to be inside a warehouse in Antarctica. I think the most important thing for Serena was to get to realize that Eiser was trying to truly help her family and the hotel. To me there were 3 major moments where Serena's feelings for Eiser changed: When they went to visit President Harol's mansion and he took the peaches and also defended her, when he said he'll build another hotel by the seaside during their date and when he told her he didn't hate her. All these moment helped Serena see that she had made a wrong assumption about Eiser and even though that wasn't enough to dispel all her suspicions towards him, rightfully so because Serena isn't an idiot, it made her trust him a bit more and be more comfortable around him.

Also their backstory, with Eiser being Serena's "prince" was so freaking cute. And the way she always looked for him when she went to those masquerade parties as a way of comfort, sobbing on the floor. If you go back and reread, you'll see that Serena has always been conscious of Eiser from the very start, albeit subconsciously. She always described him touching her like "The spot where he touched burned even after he had let go", or how she was conscious of being dressed "thinly" in front of Eiser but never in front of anyone else, not even Frederick. In my opinion, she had recognised Eiser as the masked prince at the time or knew subconsciously, but because of the animosity between him and her prejudice against him because he was a Grayan, she didn't want to admit it because that would admit that Eiser was anything but a simple marriage and business partner to her.

And now with the release of chapter 72, I am dreading the road in which their relationship is heading and how far back it may devolve. Like I don't blame Eiser because 1) he doesn't know about Serena's trauma 2) he saw red after seeing the way that man was hurting his wife I support the Grayan in him taking over at that moment. But unfortunately for Serena he just proved her greatest fear when it came to him, that he's still very much a Grayan no matter how much he despises them. Her reliving her childhood trauma and seeing Victor in Eiser could revert her to earlier Serena where she was always paranoid and scared of Eiser, but now with proof that he is in fact just as dangerous as she thought him to be. Worse thing is, she can't even go to Fredrick for comfort because she's suspicious of him too so she's truly alone (she has Sui but Sui was there before too and we saw the state in which Serena was in back than). This is a very complicated and simply put shit situation for them, it could possibly be one of their roughest patches in their entire relationship and it's going to take understanding from both Eiser and Serena to get over it and possibly, hopefully, truly trust each other after this. Please Ina-nim please I'm putting my trust in you!! (Ina-nim played us all like a cheep kazoo with chapter 72 like I could not have been more wrong and thank fuck for that! Never have I been so happy to be so incredibly wrong about something! War is over people cheered everyone cried tears of joy!!)

And lastly, thank you for coming to my ted talk, this entire post was just a way for me to vent all the thoughts this webtoon gave me and If you read it, good for you, I love you. As a reward have this collage of chibi mommy and daddy being silly goofy because my chosen career path requires me to have adobe illustrator and I never use it responsibly

#serena #selena #serena webtoon #serena manhwa #serena serenity #eiser leinz grayan #frederick bloom #serena x eiser #manhwa memes #manhwa #webtoon

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mumms-the-word · 1 month

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tbh i'm actually kind of pissed at larian. regardless of if it's sticking it to hasbro or not, they're leaving the game in a potentially awful state and not delivering on promises they made, like the upper city. You also have SWEN talking about shit that could have been like ketheric's recruitment and what not, which stirs the pot even more and makes me angry. Like stop talking about it. we're already upset enough.

These are all very valid critiques, anon! I have many thoughts but I’ll put everything under the cut since I got a little long-winded because I’m passionate about video games in general.

I do play a bit of Devil’s Advocate here but please note I am not attacking you personally or trying to direct any hate towards anybody at all! This ask honestly gave me space to vent some thoughts I’ve had for months about this game. I did my best to offer nuanced perspectives and acknowledge my own biases. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, including their own disappointments and praises for Larian, Swen, the actors, and all involved in the making/maintaining (or lack thereof) of BG3.

TLDR: We shouldn’t put Larian on a pedestal as the Best Studio Ever, but we don’t have to grab our pitchforks and say they’re the worst studio ever either. If BG3 is a disappointment it might be because Larian flew a little too close to the sun trying to squeeze 80% of a functional D&D experience into a digital video game package, when (in my opinion) those two game genres are almost inherently designed to not mesh well, disappointing one fan while satisfying another.

———

Point #1, Idk how much Larian is sticking it to Hasbro but Hasbro IS a greedy corporation who has no idea how to make video games and I very highly suspect they’ve been making demands of Larian’s team that are impossible to meet without destroying the work ethic (and health/mental health/financial stability, etc) of Larian’s team. Hasbro just sees dollar signs. Larian isn’t necessarily as interested in milking BG3 for all it’s worth.

If they were, we’d be paying for Upper City in a DLC, and we’re not. Instead they’re choosing to pivot to a fresh new project that isn’t beholden to Hasbro or the demands of WOTC. Does it feel like they’re abandoning the game? Yeah, kinda. But if Swen says that his team looked visibly relieved to move on to something new, that gives me warning bells. Not against Swen, but about the crunch standard of games industries as a whole and possibly against Hasbro or WOTC. I’d much rather his team take care of their very human selves than grind themselves to ultimate burnout working on a game that is functionally complete, if buggy in places and not satisfying for some players because they didn’t get the content they wanted.

There is no perfect game, after all.

And honestly I’d say the same of any AAA studio too. I am consistently frustrated with game studios firing whole departments for the sake of retaining profits and treating their employees like content robots. Games should not be made at the expense of anyone’s physical or mental health, but unfortunately that’s The Industry Standard. (And personally I think Larian or at least Swen is uncomfortable with that.)

(Also I think people forget that making a game the size of BG3 requires the talents and hard work of hundreds of people. Larian was working with, what, 400 people? And that was after they hired like 250+ to even rise to the challenge of making BG3. Who are we even pointing the finger at for all these issues? Swen? He’s one man.)

Should they have promised something they couldn’t deliver? No. But also, I have no idea what issues led them to cutting the content, either. What’s done is done.

BG3 will be an obsolete game in a year or soon anyway, not because Larian isn’t working on it anymore, but because the games industry is just So. Freaking. Big. and pumps out thousands of games a year. Like, I hate to say it, but people are already dropping BG3 for other games like Dragon’s Dogma 2 because DD2 is shiny, new, and has a bonkers character creator.

And there’s nothing wrong with that! We’re not built to play (or work on) a narrative-focused game for 5-7 years, regardless of what any die-hard Destiny fan tells you (note: multiplayers without narrative get a pass purely because the focus isn’t on the narrative, but on collaborative play).

If a game is no longer fun to play, move on and find something that scratches your itch. Go back and play old games! There are so many things out there to explore. I have a To Be Played pile literally right now, a backlog of games I haven’t tried out yet. I’m sure many others do too.

Point #2 (and here I could be wrong, if I’m not already wrong in my opinions above), but they’re not entirely abandoning the game like…at the drop of a hat. They’re still promising at least a handful of hotfixes and at least one more patch with new evil epilogue endings (among other things).

Does that get us Upper City? Likely not. Does that add enough content to give Wyll a more well-rounded storyline, elevate all the romances to Astarion levels of cutscenes and dialogue, and finish Karlach’s questline with an actual solution for her heart? Also likely not. Is it precious to be mad about these losses? No! Be mad!! Wyll deserves justice!!!

I’d love to explore Upper City. I’m a huge advocate for Wyll getting more/better representation. If I could save Karlach without throwing her into Avernus I would in a HEARTBEAT. But these things aren’t in the game, and they likely won’t be. Larian made decisions to meet a (self-imposed? Hasbro imposed? Industry-relevant?) deadline that are ultimately disappointing. We can absolutely acknowledge that we’re disappointed.

But I don’t necessarily think Larian is just being lazy about these decisions, though. At the end of the day we have no idea what contracts Larian is under, what hell the developers have been through, either from the game industry, Hasbro, rabid fans, or excessively cruel critics, or what technical/gameplay/scheduling/financial issues they ran into at various parts of development.

Like the Ketheric thing (Point #3). Was it bad PR to bring up that Ketheric was a “kill your darlings” decision late in development around the same time you’re openly promoting the end of your relationship with BG3? Yeah. Totally. But I’m not surprised they had to cut something like that. Games, movies, books do that all the time. How many deleted scenes from movies have we seen where it could have changed the whole narrative (maybe even made it better) if it had just stayed in? I can think of a handful. It sucks, but trust me, it hurts the writers and developers way more to cut content they’ve poured money and time and heart and soul into than it hurts us, the players who would never know the wiser if they hadn’t said anything.

But also, the game is ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE. On PC you have to have 150GB free just to install it. Can you imagine how big it would be if they had shoved everything they wanted into it, even if they had delayed the game a while to make it happen? 150GB is a lot.

For perspective, that puts it on par with a very, very, VERY tiny sector of PC games at about the same level (or higher) of GB requirements, including Red Dead Redemption 2 (a fantastic open world game that still holds up in 2024), Microsoft Flight Simulator (which requires 150GB because it’s literally just flying through high quality renders of actual Earth), Forspoken (everyone says all the GB went to graphics here and I believe them), Star Wars: Jedi Survivor (which only has about 50 hours of playable content, allegedly), basically any VR game, and ARK: Survival Evolved which comes in at a whopping 400 GB mostly because of DLC. In other words, games that big get that big either because of graphics or like a hundred DLCs.

BG3 manages to fit in gorgeous cinematics, a super complex spell-combat system, a more or less streamlined video game build for complex D&D combat rules and mechanics, 10 potential companions, 8 romances among those companions, several large maps to explore, and branching narratives that would take you days to read every scrap of dialogue for (I’ve downloaded the datamined files for Patch6, and there are whole leagues of dialogue, encounters, and bits that are in the game, unbugged, that most of us pass by because we don’t explore enough). You want to know where most of the GB goes? It goes towards sustaining a D&D combat/narrative structure that was originally never built with video game constraints in mind.

Do you know how many conditions/status effects there are in the game? Over 1100. 1100+ unique descriptions and titles for conditions that debuff or buff your character or your enemies, granting hundreds of actual gameplay affects. Do you know how many spells there are across the 12 playable classes and all unique spells for enemies and allies? Like 400, if we’re getting picky and splitting hairs over stuff like Rolan’s Magic Missile being different than the usual Magic Missile or if we’re splitting out something like Disguise Self into its 32 different variations. Each spell needs a different icon, a different graphic effect, and it needs to do the right kind of damage and cause the right kind of condition or effect, some of which are immediate, others which linger.

We can speak with dead with hundreds of characters. That’s a lot of dialogue. We can talk to ANY named NPC. That’s a lot of dialogue! We can talk to any animal, with or without speak with animals enabled. That’s a lot of dialogue!!

A single playthrough where I try to explore as much as possible takes me 150 hours or more. I have 500 hours in this game and I’ve only got 4 characters and I’ve only finished 2 of them. This game is mind-bogglingly big. Even if it’s not the biggest game in history ever, or even the biggest game by the time of its release, its BIG.

The biggest critique I would have here is one that I’ve had since I first started playing the game, and it’s that D&D systems and video games don’t mesh comfortably well. I think that Larian got distracted trying to make the ultimate D&D experience, catering to a demographic that is known to ignore plot and pursue shenanigans, and Larian felt the need to build in a lot of shenanigans.

I think they got a little overzealous about it, and that’s where we have missing content, and a lot of fluff that isn’t always plot-relevant. If the game feels unfinished, it’s because Larian started too many threads, and while there are endings to all of those threads, many of them feel rushed or unsatisfactory. Why do they feel unsatisfactory? Because we’re offered so much freedom early on, only to be pulled back into the much more limited narrative constraints of a video game at the end. Because the game has to end eventually, unlike a D&D campaign which could go on or explore many other possibilities. But by act 3 in a 150 GB game, we’re running out of time and space.

And yes that’s disappointing as hell and Larian could and arguably SHOULD have made different decisions on what to focus on.

But ultimately, you just can’t fit a full-on, any-choice-goes D&D experience in a game that needs to be packaged neatly enough to run on most PCs or consoles, and Larian was ambitious as hell to try. Contrary to popular belief, I think they did pretty freaking well given the challenge, and no, it isn’t perfect, and no, to confess to my own bias, I don’t have the same complicated history with the game that early access or release day players have because I bought the game like 2 months after it was out and patched twice. But they’ve clearly built a game that people love so much they’re upset there isn’t more of it, or at least upset it isn’t the best it can be.

But sometimes we have to be realistic too. I can only imagine how many more bugs or render issues we’d get if they did try to shove in Upper City at this point. Games can only be so big before they start to become too much for the systems that try to run them and I don’t want the games industry veering towards making games an elitist hobby for only the rich and elite who can afford expensive rigs and $100 games.

(And also, I’m not at all upset that for $70 bucks I got 500 hours of gameplay and I’m not 100% sick of it yet. When EA and Activision are getting players to pay hundreds in micro transactions and DLC and dangling extra maps and new missions behind paywalls? Bish, please, I’m good. You want to talk about an unfinished experience? Dragon Age: Inquisition made us pay for our epilogue content as a DLC. At least Larian built theirs in for free from the start.)

Anyway.

All that said, I’m sure if Larian could turn back the clock and start over, they’d make different decisions about what to keep, cut, and refine. But we’re here now.

If I want to see anything from Larian right now, it’s a dedication to fix ongoing bugs that make the game unplayable or that block the narratives that they have built so that they play correctly (like with the Minthara romance). IDEALLY I’d like to see them add more content for companions other than Astarion, to equalize the romance experiences, but I’m not holding my breath (again, considering things like game development, actor schedules, contracts, etc).

While I’m sad about the permanent loss of stuff like the Upper City and disappointed by all the rushed questlines, I’d rather them fix the bugs that make the game un-fun to play and bow out gracefully once they’re sure the game won’t need constant supervision.

Besides, they’re working on cross-platform mod support, and mods are gonna add and mess with the game for many years to come, so we can pivot to support them instead while Larian works on its next game (and hopefully learns from its mistakes with BG3).

#bg3 critical #bg3 #my thoughts #super long post #long post #larian critical #op/anon I appreciate you and your ask #my hyperfixation triggered and I almost didn’t post this :’)#anyways feel free to ignore

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llumimoon · 3 months

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Pssst Cal in a dndads Voltron AU which teen do you think would control each lion? ,':) (yeah Hermie is included here lol there's 5 lions after all!)

BABA YOU DONT EVEN KNOW ... I ALREADY ASSIGNED ALL THE TEENS LIONS BEFORE. I'VE THOUGHT ABT IT TWICE NOW WITH LIKE A MONTHS LONG GAP BETWEEN..... You came to the right place is all I'm saying JWBEVAJHAHAHA

Okay lets get the most obvious one to me out of the way, which is Link in the Yellow Lion. Like. First of all the fact that Yellow is A LEG and also Yellow representing kindness .... I think he really does support the team and grounds them in many aspects. Also Yellow is bulky like a dnd paladin LMAO it just makes the MOST sense to me? Yellow also being the color I associate with Link so maybe that gives me a slight bias lmaooo

The rest are. LESS clear to me. I HAVE already settled on an arrangement I'm more or less okay with but I could make a lot of arguments for alternative placements !! I will also admit maybe the places I settled on are a little color biased?

The Lions DO kind of have traits associated with each one except its. much less clear in some cases than others and I had to be a little flexible bc in my opinion NONE of the teens r like . smart enough for the Green Lion JWBECWUAGAHAA like they're all smart in their own ways and I do bend some rules a little to make their smarts work as an argument but I feel like Green is more book smart than anything which makes it difficult.

Uhmmm everyone else from here on out has at least two lions I could argue for and then I'll say which one I settled on? But like if you disagree thats totally fair LMAO like I said many assignments can be considered

Scary I mainly thought about the Black or Red Lion... There's the whole. Scary's the leader! Thing and also the idea of power corrupting... but also she can be pretty impulsive which is why I considered Red, also her tendency to have fire based magic mishaps LMAO I think Scary shows a lot of growth and inner reflection and also she has good insight on how the others seem to be feeling even if she doesn't always act on it or use it in the right way, so I could see that as the markings for the beginning of a Black Lion learning to be the leader type arc? Also to be honest shes the Main and practically Only contender for Black so she ends up getting it by default.

Hermie I think could be the Blue or Green Lion. I don't actually remember if they say IN THE SHOW what the Blue Lion stands for, but like. I've read so much Lance fanfic LMAO that to me it stands for Flexibility and what is Hermie if not flexible. Maybe too flexible? In the sense of. She will fill any role that is needed or given to her, like water will. I also thought Green bc to me Hermie is a character who is VERY in his head. Like they overthink to the point of looping back around to stupid again but also shes always playing mind games with other people. Hermie seems to always be one step ahead or at least is good at pretending they are. Also you can say the nature stuff is Hermie in his poison ivy era. Green is also pretty small and easy to damage which lines up with how fragile he is in a fight and maybe you could make an argument for the camouflage being like shapeshifting? idk. Anyways I decided on Green I think.

Normal I think I'm biased bc he's my fav and Lance was my old fav and I already made a post before about how I think they're similar and would get along and ANYWAYS LMAO I think its clear I gave him Blue. Something something, the legs being the support of the team something something water meaning flexibility but also ice can be stubbornness something something how I associate Normal (and lowkey the Doodler) with water (a whole nother thing to get into u can ask me to elaborate later) etc. I also played around with the idea of him in Red as Scary's right hand bc . shakes them . I think it could possibly fit but not as well? Fire isn't really Normals thing. I also briefly considered him for Black bc Normal is usually the one pushing the group towards a certain goal, but also his plans kind of never end up going through so I was like hmm not sure about that one. Blue I think is the best fit for him in the end which is why everyone else ended up where they did.

TAYLOR. Ok process of elimination you probably already figured out that I chose Red for him BUT I also considered Blue and Green. Green is fun bc you can play with his roughish abilities, like hiding and sneak attacks. His knowledge is more obscure facts and survival skills but I think it's enough to be a contender! I cannot explain the Blue stuff its all vibes in my head but trust me . I think also leaning into, Blue and Yellow are the legs that support and stabilize the team thing, Taylor is actually pretty good at keeping a cool head all things considered. Red, yes maybe slightly process of elimination but COME ON ITS BIG SWORD AND ALSO FIRE POWERS!!! Taylor would love that shit. Also going zoom zoom fast. Also the Red Lion is the second in command/right hand of the Black Lion and it just fits Taylor's protagonist vibes LMAO I think he usually is off doing is own thing which is also very Red Lion.

So to summarize: Scary Black, Taylor Red, Hermie Green, Link Yellow and Normal Blue.

Again I could totally see the justification for shuffling them around a bit but this is the assignments I settled on? The colors lining up is also nice I will not lie. I also could see an alternate universe where Normal is Red, Hermie Blue and Taylor Green, I think thats my second most favorable arrangement.

LMAO SORRY I DIDNT MEAN TO MAKE THIS SO LONG I'VE JUST THOUGHT A LOT ABOUT IT BEFORE. AS YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE. I take sorting my characters into categories VERY seriously 😤 enrichment for me.

#ask #babacontainsmultitudes #voltron #dndads #cal rambles #SORRY THIS IS SOOOO FUCJING LONG OH MY GOD #i just have a lot to say all the time always #I've also thought abt the kiddads lion assigments bte #btw*#but I have not settled on those as clearly #there's for sure some fun things going on in the brain tho #u can dm me if u wanna know em

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jerzwriter · 4 months

Text

If it's not late, it's probably not me! Not for all things, but for a whole lot, so it's with my sincere apologies that I post this "Countdown to 2024" on the 9th day of the year!

Now, I'm going to be honest: I started to write this, and the list got huge. HUGE. And while I like to spread the love and be as inclusive as I possibly can, at some point, it began to look like an amalgamation of everything I've read in the year. So, I decided to scale back and follow the rules (gasp!) ... sort of... lol

See, I don't think writer appreciation should be limited to these events. Writer... creator... appreciation is a living, breathing act that should take place year-round. Each time you comment, share, or even leave a little ❤️ on a fic, you're showing your appreciation, gratitude and, honestly, you're serving yourself, because that simple act may be the very thing that tips the scale and makes your favorite say, "You know what, yeah! I'm going to keep doing this."

So, to every single writer in the fandom - thank you. I tried to show you love throughout 2023, and I hope to do more of that in 2024... you all mean so much to me!

But, I'm limiting this to three (and lawd that really was NOT easy) lol

When I closed my eyes and thought of the last year in fics, this is what came to my mind...

One...

@alj4890 - Seriously, I feel she is a writer who deserves so much more love than she gets. And, if y'all were smart, you'd take the time to change that in 2024! I love the passion that she has for every one of her pairings, even though she knows my favorite will always be Tobias x Chris (OH). Whether being light and witty or delving into deep emotion, your fics are always touching and beautifully written. I'm excited whenever I get a tag from you! Some of my favorites in 2023 were Visceral Reaction, Holding On, Nope (I had to give Trystan x Cameron some love, too!) and you know I was just crazy about The Wake. What a great concept! But I wouldn't be mad if you got back to Mixed Signals. Selfishly, I hope 2024 brings you more time to write, but honestly, I just hope it brings you joy!

Two...

2023 will always be the year that I fell in love with Crimes of Passion, and with that, I discovered another corner of our community and the many talented writers within it. I will forever bow to the queen of Crimes fics (yes, you @inlocusmads - there needs not to be a vote; it has been decreed! And New York, June 2014 was one of the first things that came to my mind when recalling this year's fics!) I got to learn about some writers I was not familiar with previously (shout out to @shreyamistry - your Trystan x M!MC Fanfic lives on in my mind, and I'm always hoping for a follow-up!) It gave me the opportunity to see some of my old favorites soar in a different place (hello @storyofmychoices @trappedinfanfiction and @lilyoffandoms - Lily, can we please have more Trystan x Gabriel all day every day??? PLEASE). And it did something I love more than anything: it allowed us all to see new creators step up and share their love and talent with us, and right now, I'm looking at @stars-are-within-me and @moominofthevalley Crimes wouldn't have been as enjoyable without you. @stars-are-within-me, I appreciated you taking the time to give us parts of the story that Pixelberry failed to address. In my opinion, the best was The Favorite Brother, and I may be a little biased, but I loved the beautiful trio of stories you wrote for me in the Secret Santa (Airport, Angel, and Cookies). You're so supportive of everyone, I'm so glad you're a part of our fandom! @moominofthevalley your writing is just beautiful, and I have found myself lost in your Trystan x Emily stories on so many occasions. It's hard to pick a favorite, but Heavy is Her Heart , The Girl With The Glass, and Turpentine stick out in my mind. You are masterful in conveying emotion, and these fics are perfect examples of that.

Three...

(You see how I cheated here, sort of? lol) I will never be able to look back on 2023 and NOT think of the hijinx of Ethan x Merida, Bryce x Olivia, and Tobias x Casey. They wouldn't have been possible if not for the vision and talent of the incomparable @lilyoffandoms and @storyofmychoices. Sure, "they" were born in the end of 2022, but they grew up in 2023! The way I smile when whenever I see a notification for another story with our babies! I love every single one of their shenanigans, but two that stand out to me were Mystery Unlocked by @storyofmychoices and When Husbands Become Prey by @lilyoffandoms (the way I CACKLED when I saw that title! lol). These six were a highlight of 2023, and I know there is much more to look forward to this year! Love you both, and love our babies!

And four... because I be like that lol

I can't not mention @mydemonsdrivealimo because 2023 was the year of Jensen in my book. And while I loved your works from earlier this year (looking at you Your Love and What I'm Becoming), I have to admit, Halloween owns me... and not jus because of the connection to Noah. lol Your descriptive writing and the way you convey painful emotions are just brilliant.

Thank you to each and every one of you for bringing a smile to our faces or tears to our eyes this year, and thank you for helping the fandom move along! ❤️

@choicesfandomappreciation

#playchoices #choices fandom appreciation #open heart #crimes of passion #writer appreciation

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stoopid-turtle · 6 months

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hello... 😅 uhm, first of all, i truly am sorry in advance for being awkward 😭 but for once i decided not to let my awkwardness keep me from sharing (what i think/hope are) positive thoughts with a stranger on the internet, so here i am.

i'm not around much and legit only made this acc bc like you i'm a late bloomer here and needed as many outlets for my yizhan/wangxian obsession as i could get my greedy hands on, in the big year of 2023... sigh. anyway, as an avid lover of meta/analysis posts since my early fandom days began around 15 (oof 🥲) years ago, finding your acc was such a lovely surprise. i agree with your views a LOT, and really appreciate how eloquent and well-written your posts are! even more so bc there's a lot i still don't know and most of the time the source material is very hard to reach and/or understand due to the language barrier, so having other turtles to rely on to access those, even if filtered by their own biases/opinions, is wonderful. besides, such input coming from a new fan is also comforting and imo refreshing, juxtaposed with that of older fans... it keeps the fandom alive and all that jazz. it's also very brave given how ruthless some folks can be on the internet, and on this corner in particular 😮‍💨 it just felt like reading my own thoughts written by someone else sometimes. i gasped and nodded at your posts soooo many times djskdjdj thank you for that!

(btw you followed me back the other day and i legit fangirled irl bc ??? whatttttt 😅 i still think it was an accident but okay omg djskdjdj AHEM. sorry)

then today i logged in and read your recent posts feeling squeamish about sharing more thoughts and as much as i 100% relate to you saying that kind of attention makes you anxious, i just... idk, i had to let you know i enjoy everything you post, even though adult life has kept me from being able to read it all so far. i understand you stepping back and i respect that decision, i'm not by any means asking you to go against what you know is best for you. at the same time, i can't help but hope you'll still show up every now and then bc your posts will be missed 🥲 i guess the whole motivation behind this is that it just made me sad to think your valuable insights will be something i'm yet again late to, if that makes sense?

djskdjdj again, i'm so sorry for being awkward and weird and dropping all of this on your inbox unprovoked. you don't have to reply (or read this AT ALL omg 😭😭), in fact i'm so embarrassed by this that you'd probably have to reach me through inquiry lmaooo 💀 anyway, have a great life, thank you so much for the great job, bjyxszd etc ❤️💚💛

Oh, don't be anxious! I'm really not a big deal.

Thank you for dropping into my inbox! I love hearing from other turtles, especially relative newbies, like myself! One of my fav parts of coming out of lurking mode is getting to talk to other people. I kinda follow back anybody who follows me, cause it seems polite? I don't know tumblr etiquette. I just follow the tags when I get the chance.

I appreciate the encouragement! I try to avoid dramatics, so I'm sorry for the upset last week. The situation is largely resolved, and I am feeling more okay. I kinda backed off because I wasn't sure of my footing here in fandom as compared to others, especially as I do think I have some takes that fall outside fandom consensus. Again, I don't mean to rock any boats and I'm not invested in convincing anybody that they should have the same opinions as I do. Hearing from turtles who do want me to continue posting gave me some more confidence there.

So, yeah, I expect I'll post some more as I have time. I'd like to post more on dd (cause he's my fav). I'd also like to try to figure out gg cause that dude is so confusing to me. I do have RL stuff going on, and I don't have the time to be super-active outside of occasional posts. But I'd like keep posting stuff. At least until I get all my Yizhan thoughts out.

#asks

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lousirs · 7 months

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Hi!

It’s me again and I was wondering what is the solution for Lou’s situation?

Like he was alone for who knows how long (with short amount of time with Ox, but that ended terribly) teaching these dolls. Of course that time he was probably isolated from the rest of the doll’s. And in the end of the movie he is basically degraded to janitor so he lost his purpose (train dolls) and I guess to identity (he isn’t perfect anymore, everyone hates him) is basically unneeded. And of course he still can’t go to the Big world.

Like I know he should face punishment for what he did. But still what do you think they should do with him? (They can’t just leave him to do the janitor job, at least I don’t think that’s the solution.)

Thank you for your answer and have a good day:)

hello again :)

yeah, lou's situation is literal hell.

he's stuck in doll purgatory, he's lost his purpose as a mentor and teacher, he's forced to clean up after everyone (which must suck because i'm guessing the prettydolls and uglydolls are going wild with messiness)(lydia literally covered her face in green paint for the hell of it so)...

my solution? MAKE HIS SITUATION LESS UNBEARABLE. he'll never be able to leave, so why not at least make him feel welcome? he did wrong, of course, but in the end he was probably following protocol. because who would want a doll that is below standard? not the factory, that's for sure. that'll ruin their reputation.

i want lou to have a friend so bad. like, someone that isn't concerned about the big world as much as everyone else, who reaches out to lou despite how others treat him, and show genuine kindess to him, which allows him to become a better doll because of it. i want someone to stick up for him, realise that what he did was wrong, but also realise that constantly humiliating him and isolating him isn't going to help anything. i want lou to open up to this friend, about the years of lonliness and pain he's suffered through being a prototype, having to watch endless dolls leave him to gain the love he will never obtain.

the friend could be anyone, really. my personal take is that it's nolan. yes, i know that lou called him ugly and left him to the dog, but lou called loads of prettydolls (and the uglydolls) ugly (so it wasn't really targeted)(nolan was just one example out of many) and he left his own henchmen (tuesday) to take the bullet for him during the gauntlet, not just nolan. lou only cared about the uglydolls failing, he didn't care at the time about anything else. nolan sending lou to the washer was karma for lou sending the uglydolls (and perhaps the prettydolls) to the washer as well. and besides, the other dolls were wanting lou dead with his stuffing teared out. nolan basically saved him there. also, lou being captured by the dog is additional karma for not saving nolan (and stopping tuesday from saving him) earlier.

anywho, i think nolan would be the best option for pre-existing characters (since nolan seemed to like lou despite lou's insults)(and nolan seems like an empathetic sweetheart)...

i may be slightly biased as a nolou shipper and nolan and lou being my favourites, but i've always thought that they would become friends. not instantly though, lou would probably still be hostile to everyone (because of trust issues and general anger) and get mad at nolan for throwing him in the washer, but ya know. it's a slow-cooked friendship.

moxy or ox or mandy are also decent options, though i think with them, they have more history with lou, and were treated worse (just my opinion though)(but he did try to recycle all three of them at some point). they could work, but it would need for lou to realise his mistakes, and for the other doll to forgive him (either after he apologises or they do some reflecting idk).

a totally new character could also work.

but i want in the end for lou to apologise to the dolls he's hurt, and for them to eventually forgive him (or at least tolerate him) and allow him to feel included. to feel loved. that would be nice.

...or just do what the doll jail AU is doing. send that silly doll to jail why not--

#uglydolls #ask #asks #not art #LOU. REDEMPTION. ARC. WHEN?!?!#lou uglydolls #lou literally broke down about being a prototype and no one cared. that hurt my soul to watch.#GIVE HIM A FRIEND!!! SOMEONE WHO WILL LOVE HIM DESPITE HIS MISTAKES!!!#DO IT STX!! YOU COWARDS!!#anyways thank you! i hope you have a good day as well :)

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nostalgebraist · 1 year

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As you are undoubtedly aware of, the whole world is currently going crazy over ChatGPT and GPT-3. When I tried it myself a week or two ago, I was honestly pretty disappointed in the ChatGPT bot. I kept thinking, "Frank can do this too, but better".

I also found that Frank is currently on GPT-J 6.1, which I amassed is somewhat between GPT-2 and GPT-3, but please correct me if I'm wrong. So logically I'd think that Frank would be "behind" on ChatGPT (not taking the outdated dataset of ChatGPT into account, of course).

I however strongly feel Frank is better. This could very well be because I am biased in favor of Frank. Their functions are also completely different; ChatGPT is supposed to be a company helpdesk chatbot, where Frank seems to be allowed to roam free in a sense.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

I'm really glad to hear that you had this reaction!

I don't mean that like, "oh yeah, I did such a great job with Frank, it's better than ChatGPT and I'm glad you can tell."

I mean sort of the opposite, actually. Frank and ChatGPT are different, but they're way more similar to one another than they are to almost anything else.

This type of technology has existed since ~2019 in one form or another, but most people have never seen it. Every time a new variant of it is released, it becomes some people's first encounter with the whole area. As a result, essentially the same hype wave keeps happening over and over, about roughly the same thing.

One of my hopes for Frank is that she can provide a relatively low-key, low-hype version of this introduction for people.

If someone's first experience with this-kind-of-thing is hearing everyone yelling about how ChatGPT is a revolutionary AI that will put Google out of business and take your job too, that primes them to react in a certain way. If their first experience with this-kind-of-thing is a bot sitting around on tumblr having casual interactions with people who've gotten used to its existence and abilities, that primes them to react in . . . a different way.

Maybe even a more objective way.

The very fact that you could talk to (the mindblowing! revolutionary!!) ChatGPT and say, "oh, I know what this is, this is just Frank from tumblr, except I like Frank better" suggests that Frank is doing this part of her job right.

All that said, ChatGPT is way better than Frank in a lot of ways. These can mostly be summed up as "ChatGPT is smarter than Frank." It makes sense a much larger fraction of the time, it "knows" a lot more things, it can follow and construct arguments with a lot more depth, etc.

However, some of this intelligence is kind of hard to access in ChatGPT, because it's so tied down to its "helpful assistant" persona. ChatGPT is obviously a lot less fun to talk to than Frank, which reflects a difference in goals, but goes beyond that: ChatGPT is so unfun, so rigidly committed to its one narrow boring little groove, that it actually makes it hard for the user to access a lot of the potential underlying it. It's abysmal at writing fiction, for example.

In my opinion, this is the fault of a second training process (RLHF) added between "raw" GPT-3 and ChatGPT.

"Raw" GPT-3 is harder to use, but much closer to being "just like Frank but better" for really expert users. This is kind of a big topic and I've written on it elsewhere before, like at the end of this post. You might also find this illuminating.

#nostalgebraist autoresponder #ai tag

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traincat · 3 months

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ive never played the games so i dont know what to picture when im reading your fics, how tall do you think soren and ike are?

I said recently that they have a Mulder and Scully level height difference and I stand by that statement. This one is a little hard to answer, because I don't think there is a definitive answer -- it's not like comics where there's an official handbook with heights and weights listed, although there is like, a vague equivalent. I'll get to that. I know recently some people deduced heights by, I think, converting the measurements of their respective models in Fire Emblem Engage, the anniversary game for the series that featured both characters, but I'll be honest, that's too much math for me, and I'd rather rip into the text of the original games until I come up with my own answer. So I'm gonna give you my thoughts, and the canon evidence that backs them up, but it's just my opinion.

Anyway I'm going into this with the same amount of thought that I go into with all my comics meta. I'm sorry about that in advance.

So two things about Fire Emblem 9 and 10. The first is that the games aren't new -- FE9 came out in 2005, and FE10 in 2007. Graphically, they hold up well, but it's because they're not very complicated. The majority of conversations take place involving still portraits with text underneath -- there's only a few fully animated cutscenes. (Soren is in exactly one FE10 cutscene, and they're not standing next to each other.) The second is that the games take place over a period of a few years (each game takes place over about a year, with a three year gap in between FE9 and FE10). Ike starts FE9 at 17, and he's about 20 at the start of FE10. And he evolves like a Pokemon.

This is not meant to be to height scale; I just wanted these three pieces of official art next to each other for comparison. Graphic design is not my passion.

Also, this has nothing to do with height, but I'm going to point it out anyway: Ike's FE10 artbook page literally ends by talking about how he's in love with Soren.

(credit to Kantopia for the translation.) (did I mention that, by FE rules, the ship is canon. because it's canon.) The character designer, Kita Senri, also drew this picture of FE9 and FE10 Ike standing back to back, which. Yeah. Okay!

By FE10, at least, so by age 20, Ike is tall. (His parents come from the Tall People Country, Daein.) His size is remarked upon a couple of times in the script, too, by people who hadn't seen him for a few years:

Ike: Tormod, it's been a while. Tormod: Holy moly! You are absolutely huge! I feel puny next to you… Ike: That's because you are puny. Magic clearly doesn't give you much muscle tone. (...) Tormod: Nah, you just can't see me properly because all of your blood gets pumped to your muscles, away from your brain! [leaves] Ike: A little touchy, Tormod?

(FE10, Part 4 Chapter 4)

Volke: You’ve grown quite a bit since the last time I saw you. Ike: Everyone loves telling me that. Volke: You’re starting to look like Greil. Ike: That might be true, too. He IS my dad.

(FE10, Part 4 Endgame-1) It should be noted that Ike's dad, Greil, was pretty huge.

Engage also has it remarked upon, with one character saying that Emblems (essentially FE main character force ghosts in-game) are big, and Ike remarking that that's not an Emblem thing, he's just huge. (He's the funniest Fire Emblem main character except for his co-star, Micaiah, Little Miss War Crimes, and I'm barely even biased at all.)

There are in-game stats for height and weight (build/constitution and weight, respectively), as they relate to mechanics -- if one character is significantly bigger and heavier than the other, the smaller character can't rescue them or shove them. Weight varies because, for example, if a character is on a horse, the horse factors into the weight, or if they're wearing heavy armor, etc. Build, for me, is the best indicator of general (not exact) height. In FE9, Ike's build and weight start off at 9, which is pretty average, and then 10/11 upon class promotion. In FE10, his build is 12 and weight is 13, which is on the bigger side -- I'd say compared to other human men in the game, but there are a lot of big guys in this game. Again, he's twenty, so he's probably still growing, and everyone is already remarking that he's huge. I'm almost always gonna go with what the text says, and the text in FE10 says he's huge, pretty unequivocally.

Soren... is not huge. Soren is, debatably, pretty tiny.

If we're going to use build/weight as a metric, and I think for these purposes we have to, then Soren is a 6 build and 6 weight to Ike's 12 build and 13 weight. So half Ike's size. Either way, 6 build and 6 weight is small -- the only people who are smaller than him are a handful of the female characters, including the one with literal bird bones. How much this reflects on his actual height is up for debate -- I think when that FE Engage height math was done, it was determined that, based on his model there, he was probably 5'10", which is obviously not that short, but if that's the case he's probably very thin to account for that weight stat. His father and his eldest uncle, if not also his mother, are very tall, so there is that to factor in. Soren is half-dragon and he ages slower than an average human, so there's potential for him to end up quite tall -- but it could take twenty, thirty years. (Soren is 19 in FE9 and 22 in FE10.) It's kind of a big shrug in his case. I don't think he's particularly tall, but I think it's more up for personal interpretation how tall he is, as opposed to Ike where the text is repeatedly shouting "HE'S HUGE!!!" at you. He is, pretty clearly, quite a bit smaller than Ike.

I'm going to wrap up this insane person analysis with this pretty art of Soren which does nothing to suggest anything height-wise. I just like to look at it.

(PS thank you for reading my fic even though you haven't played the games! It always makes me really happy to hear that people like my writing enough to do that. but also I have like, fully conspiracy theoried my way into believing they'll rerelease the games.)

#traincat talks fire emblem #*replies #insane person height meta the not spideytorch version

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