#;; the plot is cool for most of them

[pencilofawesomeness]

How Fairy Tail could have had a really cool thematic parallel if they Committed to the Bit:

I often joke about my constant urge to spew essays on characters and topics I have thought too much about, but I refrain because translating all the thoughts in my head to words takes time and effort, and sometimes I am speaking to the void. However. I am spinning in my chair, gnawing at the bars of my enclosure, and frankly thinking way too much right now so I must scream.

It would have been so impactful if Fairy Tail emphasized Jellal being brainwashed.

Jellal is my boy, of course, but I���m not even just talking about the impact to his character: I mean the impact of the entire plot. This, of course, if we went the whole mile with the theming. The machination of being controlled, emotionally or magically influenced, or even unable to fulfill a desire due to an insurmountable obstacle, comes up numerous times throughout the plot, to both primary characters, supporting characters, and antagonists. While Fairy Tail is absolutely a series about friendship, it is also about choosing your path, with a large recurring theme of, regardless of connotation, about being selfish, and what that means on both ends of the spectrum. It’s a matter of free will, and the antithesis to this is all manner of external control. So really, it makes sense that this should be a thoroughly explored theme.

I could talk all day about all the different examples and aspects of this but I came here to talk about Jellal. First, the slavery aspect really hits the nail on the head, so we’re off to a great start—this, of course, applicable to multiple characters, which I really enjoy. Things go wild, however, when Jellal effectively chooses to trade himself for Erza in the punishment game and gets the ever-living shit beat out of him at the ripe age of eleven or twelve years old. He is, understandably, not in a good place, and he comes to the stunning conclusion that… he hates the slavers. Yeah. Checks out. Then, he hears the voice of ‘Zeref’ spewing rhetoric about hate, and it overwhelms; this, we know in hindsight especially, to be Ultear casting a mind-fuck spell in order to manipulate him, under the guise of pretending to be a figure young Jellal believed to be a god. 

When I first saw this flashback, watching the anime, I was unbelievably hyped. For all of Fairy Tail’s odd relationship with foreshadowing, I got the gist of it as soon as the magic went into his right eye and overwhelmed him. In Japanese media especially (largely due to the prevailing symbolism of the daruma doll), the right eye is a huge indicator of free will and the future—namely one’s goals. Creepy magic ghost entering the right eye with magic-bind looking things and immediately warping Jellal’s goal? A+ delivery. Of course, at the time Zeref—an unrevealed ‘evil’ entity—seemed a likely culprit, but Ultear being the puppeteer changes little of the result. In fact, it actually creates a super interesting parallel, but more on that later.

First, there are the consequences of Jellal being an antagonist who is not in control of his actions. I see people lament that it “cheapens” the severity of the arc and provides a cop-out redemption for Jellal, and while the execution of the latter certainly could have been different, I don’t think the premise of mind alteration cheapens the overall plot and theme of Fairy Tail at all; on the contrary, it could have been used to further emphasize intra- and inter- character conflict as well as provide a super engaging parallel for the end of the series. The theme of nakama, family, and friendship is huge, so what better way to emphasize that than to show a twisted example of it?

Jellal goes from ride-or-die loyal and ‘good’ to circumstantially loyal to an ideal (and the people attached to it) and ‘evil’ with the flip of a magic switch. Erza gets the immediate short of the stick when she is the first victim (aside from Jellal himself) to this meddling, and the caring friend she had seen days or weeks before is now cruel, insane, and full of threats—threats she takes heed to as she is cast from the island. Now, Erza is also a child, and one full of trauma, so I am not trying to invalidate her fear or blame her for any outcome. This also does not dive into the intricacies of saving friends at cost to oneself, and all of the conflict thereof; if anything, the complication of the matter bolsters the drama and impact. And then, we have the rest of the squad. Sho, Wally, and Milliana buy into the idea without any trouble, and they continue to buy into it as they get older. Beyond morality, it’s a power fantasy, and those are easy for formerly powerless people to latch onto. However, Simon is the only one who realizes that something is fundamentally wrong and twisted with Jellal… and his ultimate goal, developed over the course of roughly seven to eight years, is to wait it out until he finds the opportunity to kill him, or get somebody else to do it. Ultear, even after integrating herself into the group out of nowhere, gets away with her plan, because ultimately nobody questions that Jellal’s sudden change was anything but a result of trauma and his own will—even in a world with magic, where the very first arc revolves around the use and mistreatment of charm magic.

(Now, as an aside, I unfortunately have some experience in friends suddenly changing. In real life, it is rarely so sudden and obvious, of course, and the culprit is usually those horrible little signals and hormones within the mind, and nothing so fanciful or external as magic. I had a friend take a nosedive into some truly batshit ideas—cult-starting worthy—and exhibit wild mood swings and displays of unprecedented behavior. It admittedly took me a moment to ascertain it among the known issues, but once the pieces clicked, it clicked. I wished I had noticed sooner, and even though she was more culpable of her choices than a person supernaturally influenced by an outside force, I still can’t hate her for all the harm done. This is all just to say that I have, especially in recent years, a personal perspective on this trope and an appreciation for the painful nuance.) 

Refusing to reveal this mindfuckery in the arc diminishes the severity of it a great deal, I fear. We, along with the characters, spend time believing he died an insane villain… and then when he comes back amnesiac, it softens his character but does nothing to contradict how awful he had been. It’s not until years later, arcs later, that we get this random instance of the long overdue reveal to tell us that the manipulation has been discovered off screen. Not only is this utterly underwhelming, but Jellal is now actively working with Ultear and is fine with it! He’s still (understandably, after all this damn time thinking otherwise) blaming himself and lighting his own pyre to atone for things started by a factor completely outside of his control, and every character lets him. The discussion of autonomy is wasted. So, too, is all the juicy emotional fallout. We don’t see Jellal grapple with the horrifying reality that he has not been himself, that years of his life were wasted as a mental slave instead of a physical one; we don’t see Erza beat herself up (likely unnecessarily) because she could have potentially protected him but she hadn’t out of fear, and then she condemned him unknowingly; we don’t see the others truly come to terms with the fact that Jellal had been stolen from under their noses and they never noticed; we don’t even get more than a glimpse in Ultear’s head, who committed the deed because she thought her means wouldn’t matter and then they did. 

It’s horrifying. It’s tragic. It was, perhaps, preventable—in that the problem was a punchable one, to a degree—except the people involved were just children, just human, and it wasn’t enough. Friendship and flashy magic power could not trump trauma and entrapment, not this time. No matter how I think the series could have and should have handled it (and I have several ideas, of course), Jellal’s story provides a haunting case of failure regarding the themes of friendship/community and freedom that our protagonists embody. 

Which brings me to the perfect opportunity to follow up this occurrence of stripped autonomy and loss of freedom with a culmination of the affected themes, plot points, and more: the books of Zeref. 

Namely, the idea that the etherious—sapient, cognizant, and fully capable of autonomy via every depiction given of them, from Tartaros to even Lullaby to especially Natsu—can be and have been resolutely manipulated and controlled via the books by Zeref. Now Zeref, infamously hands-off up until the finale, barely utilized this. The most we ever see is instilling a directive and supernatural need to kill Zeref in the texts, which serves as an externally imposed goal. (Sound familiar, yet?) Provided Larcade clearly doesn’t have these instincts, it is not a guaranteed addition either, which further adds to the sense of deliberation. Natsu experiences this only in the last arc, in what I assume is supposed to be a very tense and jarring plot of a friend and protagonist suddenly losing himself, but it does not get expounded on for long enough to hammer the point home. The plot point of reclaiming the book becomes about saving his life only, and not his autonomy. Not only could this have been emphasized to be properly horrifying and devastating, but the effect—and the suspense—would be doubled with the prior establishment of Jellal’s arc and the tragedy therein. 

To back up for a moment, this parallel is further accentuated by the fact that Ultear and Zeref are clear mirrors of each other. Ultear was afflicted by a magic condition outside of her control and she was enslaved as a lab rat for it. When she broke free, she perceived her mother to have abandoned her, so Ultear, in her unresolved anger and grief, aims her entire goal to rectifying it, which culminated in planning to undo the entire timeline in order to make the one she wanted all along. Any casualties, any cruelties—including the mental enslavement of a slave child—are means to an end, and will ultimately be forgotten. Zeref lost his entire family to tragedy, and in his grief, he refused to forfeit the idea of regaining what was lost, namely his brother. He became afflicted with a curse—a magic condition outside of his control—and experienced cognitive dissonance for it. Ultimately, this miserable existence culminated in the idea of erasing the timeline entirely and forging his own. Any casualties, any cruelties—including subjecting his creations to the same lack of complete cognitive control—are means to an end, and will not matter. 

I mentioned that selfishness is also a recurring theme and this is a prime example of the dark side of it. For Lucy, claiming her independence and following her own path against the wishes of her estate, it is a wondrous thing. Freedom cannot be achieved without some selfishness, and this is a wonderfully handled theme in Fairy Tail, where our protagonists unabashedly put their friends above concrete morals and follow a creed to live their life to the fullest—the eternal adventure. For characters like Ultear and Zeref, their personal desires—born of horrible tragedy and frankly understandable things to want—come at the cost of the autonomy of everyone else, especially the pawns they use to further their goal. This, in true fictional hyperbole, begs the question of where the line in the sand is to be drawn, of what is acceptable on a moral standard and what is not. It is, of course, colored by the protagonist’s point of view as clear antagonism, but as a viewer of the media it provides to us to question when protecting one’s ideal becomes irrevocably an attack on the sanctity of others. 

Which brings us back to the matter of the books. The intended horror of Natsu losing control of himself, I think, could have been really emphasized in order to highlight these aforementioned themes. Imagine if, instead of a complete menagerie of new characters as the final invading force, Zeref’s key piece of his invasion was Natsu. With the intended goal of undoing time, having Natsu kill him is no longer necessary, so it would be more pragmatic to use Natsu instead as a weapon of mass destruction for his goal. Not only is he inside of Fairy Tail, but Zeref is, theoretically, doing this for Natsu too, and he won’t remember this upon success—nevermind that the Natsu we know, that presently exists, that we have watched develop over the entirety of the series, would be forever erased regardless. 

Armed with the knowledge of what happened to Jellal, and how he ultimately had no one to intervene for him, this increases the urgency within the characters and will likely expedite their discovery of why Natsu turned against them out of nowhere. This time, a resistance is launched, and characters have the chance to intervene on the behalf of a friend. Gray couldn’t save Ur, Lucy spent years ensnared by the will of a family member, Erza didn’t recognize Jellal’s plight until it was too late, but they can save Natsu, and save him quickly. Fairy Tail, Team Natsu especially, can rewrite the book of E.N.D. solely for the great cause of freeing their friend and handing him back his free will, and in the process, Fairy Tail saves their own future as well. This doesn’t preclude the ability to free Zeref from his curse, but with or without that we have a beautiful culmination of fighting for the sake of a friend, for the individual and for the whole group. This time, friendship wins. 

I just think it could have been really cool.

[moeblob]

So does he, Gallagher.

[cent-scratchnsniff]

something bad did indeed happen to that man. spent abt 25 minutes trying to find a better picture of that one (1) offical piece with his eyes open that wasnt compressed or tiny

[wassupmygays]

god its so cool and Important how. despite all the bright colors and flash fabrics and jewelry, all of the socs are really just carbon copies of each other. theyve all got the same base, just recolored like a character selection page on a cheap game.

all the guys have their crisp, clean, bright shirt, their nice stiff pants, belt, and white shoes. add in some rings and maybe a chain or somethin, and thats about it. add on their matching letterman jackets, and theyre practically identical.

all of the girls have their pretty dresses and styled hair, but thats really it. their dresses all match the popular style at the time, their hair is perfectly placed and not really Theirs. theyre all styled to be popular, not individual.

and they're all so colorful! because they can afford new fabrics and bright colors and expensive dry cleaners to wash them, though they're careful not to get dirty. theyre so bright and colorful but so painfully similar

contrast that with the greasers, who are all relatively in the same color palette. theyre in basic t-shirts, and denims, and leathers. work clothes. theres no split based on gender, ace wears pants with the guys. they are all down in the dirt and grimey, they all have to move and work in these clothes.

but theres so much personality in their outfits! even just the little things, like jewelry or headbands, tells so much about each person. ace's headband is a scrap from the shirt on her back, showing her resourcefulness. darry's flannel and work pants showing his grit and hard work. the patches decorating steve's jacket, showing his passions and the things he fights for. Johnny's vest showing his heritage, and his too-big clothes showing how hes got hand-me-downs. two-bit's tattoos, shown proudly and boldly on his bare arm for the whole world to see.

the greasers might all look 'the same' at first glance because theyre all in grays and dirty whites and denims. but god there is so much more heart and character and diversity in their outfits and therefore in their lives simply because theyre not worrying about sticking in a top spot of society. theyre not worrying about individuality being a weakness to tear them down. theyve got much bigger things to think about. theyre so free in that sense. free to be themselves, free to be with each other and support each other. because thats all they got; their hearts and each other.

the socs dont have that connection. they dont have that chance to be vulnerable and share a part of themselves so constantly. they may live where the grass is greener but are they really so much better off, if they can never truly show themselves?

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Rewatching 97 because I just need to get on with it but GAWDDD at this point I'm literally not watching all the rogueneto scenes IT'S SO UNCOOL 💀💀💀💀 ERIK WOULD NOT DO THAT WTF DISNEY

its just really funny in regards to 97 specifically because they never even interact in 92 (or if they do its incredibly sparring) so it's just the most out of nowhere thing possible. like oh we're doing this now ok

[foldingfittedsheets]

So listening to Molly Ostertag on the release of her comic book that originally released as a webcomic like…. Got me thinking.

Maybe book.

[booksandberries]

my brain is just pinging between kagihiranose and sasamiyagawa

[myokk]

Secret Val here, I just wanted to know if day 2 and 3 sent because my wife was soooo bad when I sent them 💀. Not pushing you to answer I just wanted a send confirm

HELLO SECRET VALENTINE♥️♥️♥️

I DID get your asks & I’m drawing up some quick sketches for them🥰 unfortunately I got the worst chilblains in the world over the weekend and my fingers are stupid and swollen and hurt a lot🥲 not cooperating very well rn…(the picture I posted yesterday was drawn over the course of a few days bc I kept taking breaks🥲🥲🥲)

[riacte]

so hey guys i finished dungeon meshi yesterday and i'm still thinking about it

[mothoscope]

Cringetober Prompt 2: Tsundere Had Steins;Gate on my mind a lot recently so here is a Kurisu Makise.

[yannig]

Would you look at that Huaien: long term consequences of your bullshit that you're not gonna be able to ignore! Who could have foreseen this!

[bright-hope-spot-19]

You know, I was just chilling when I remembered something I saw a long time ago. Now, for context, I was scrolling through YouTube one day, as one does, until I stumbled across a very peculiar Naruto short. Now, the channel this short belongs to is an ATLA centric one. As in: the guy has very interesting videos analyzing every episode of Avatar: the last Airbender. That's why it struck me as weird when I saw he'd made a Naruto short cause he'd never made any Nart content before. His channel was purely ATLA. The short was kinda analyzing the scene where Kankuro and Temari were introduced. As you can imagine, it was less of an analysis and more centered on this guy praising Temari and saying, "She had a better role than Kankuro" or something along those lines.

That surprised me, cause? Anyone who's watched the scene can tell that, before Gaara showed up, the scene was completely centered around Kankuro. He was the focus of attention. He was the one who got into a fight with the Konoha kids, starting the conflict. He was the one who threatened to murder both Konohamaru and Naruto. He's the one who first got his abilities foreshadowed by making Nart trip on his strings. He's the reason Sasuke and Gaara even showed up in the first place. He's the one who also starts a conflict with Sasuke cause he doesn't back down from Sasuke's warnings. He stands up to him, making Temari even more worried. He's the one who immediately gets a duality added to his character when Gaara shows up, and he immediately starts apologizing, showing more facets to him. Kankuro's not a coward cause we've seen him stand up to Sasuke, but he shows fear towards Gaara. It just makes you more curious about Gaara and Kankuro.

What did Temari do in their introductory scene? Shrug her shoulders and stand in a corner while Kankuro created the conflict with the Leaf kids, absolving herself from it. Kankuro was the center of that conflict, while Temari stood outside of it. Blush at Sasuke when he showed up. Be used as a plot device to explain the chunin exams (which literally, anyone else could've done). Then, she started begging when Gaara appeared, which doesn't make sense for her. Kankuro got into trouble. He was the one beating these kids and making death threats. It makes sense for him to be scared. Temari was just minding her business. She'd done nothing wrong to really warrant Gaara's anger, yet she's as terrified as Kank. Now, we can say it's because knowing Gaara and how unstable he was, he really could've killed her too, for just existing. So, it makes sense that she was scared. But you see, that only makes sense when you're doing a re-watch and already know Gaara's backstory. For a first-time viewer who doesn't know who Gaara is or why they're so scared of him, Temari's fear is unwarranted. It just paints a negative image of her, that she's easily scared. Unlike Kankuro, she didn't get a 'moment of courage' confronting the Konoha kids before showing her being terrified of Gaara. Of course, that notion of Temari being a coward would be disproved later on in the arc, but overall, it's not a good 1st impression. So, it baffles me when her fans not only imply but affirm with their whole chests that of her and Kankuro, she's the one with the superior introductory scene.

Kankuro got to show the main traits of his personality at the moment: irritable, mean, cruel, takes joy in the suffering of others, kinda selfish, but also proud, confident, stubborn, and cocky. It also shows a strained bond with Gaara that makes you curious to know more bout them cause, as I've said: Kank had a reason to be scared, Tem really didn't. The fact she was so scared with no real reason, immediately joining Kank in appeasing Gaara, just does one thing: show her as a peacemaker. It's not a good role to be stuck with cause all it means is that other people around her (her brothers in this instance) create the conflict, and she has to assuage it. It means she's more of a reactor than an actual active participant of the plot.

It tracks cause it happens again in the forest of death. Now, another thing I wanted to mention is that Gaara is never shown actually threatening her. The two times the sand sibs were caught in an argument (their introduction and the fod), he's threatening Kankuro, not her. Now, people just took this and wrongly assumed that it points out to him loving her more than Kankuro or favoring her in any way. Which is simply not true, lol. Not getting death threats doesn't mean he loved her any more than Kankuro cause there's also a lack of any positive interactions between them to point to a possible less toxic bond they could share. It's like, to give an example, when there's students in a class, and one of them is sent by the teacher to the headmaster office for misbehaving. We can't just assume this means the teacher loves all the other students more than the misbehaving one, cause that one got punished and the others didn't. Of course, teachers will have their favorites, but to ascertain who the favorite is, we'd need to first see the teacher showing that favoritism. Like, giving extra points, being gentler with, and always siding with one particular student. That's when we can assure the teacher has a fave. This simply doesn't happen with Gaara and Temari: yeah, he only ever threatened Kankuro onscreen, but at the same time, he never showed Tem any favoritism. So, the notion he loved her more or she was his favorite and understood him the most is utter bs.

It's also skipping over the fact that this was all done to show a particular tension between the brothers. One she was excluded from as the peacemaker. As well as the fact, Kank was the one chosen to stand next to the main character and narrate the entirety of the Gaara vs. Lee fight. It's not similar to Temari explaining the chunin exams, as narrating Gaara's abilities is something only him or Tem could've done while explaining the chunin exams could've been done by anyone else, cause it's more general information. Kank was chosen for the narrator role to show he has more private knowledge of his brother's techniques and abilities. Temari has almost no shots pan towards her, except for when Lee took off his weights and started kicking Gaara's behind, we get a shot of her surprised face with the others. Outside of that, Gaara and Lee were the active players, Naruto, the reactor, and Kankuro, the narrator. By the end of the arc, he's also the one picking Gaara up, commenting on his beat-up state after the fight with Naruto, and the first to react to Gaara's apology, while Temari says nothing.

This is all to say: Temari was indeed a 3rd wheel. Some of her stans are right when they note the fact that the two brothers seem to have a special bond she just seems to be excluded from. Even the anime studio seems to have picked up on it, as her whole infinite dream revolved around her, wishing they'd care more about her opinion. Yeah, people can interpret that as the distance that comes with being the elder and only girl, who just naturally grows to see her brothers form a closer bond. But the truth is: she really isn't better written than Kank in any way, shape, or form. That's a fact you gotta live with sweeties.

[ask-cloverfield]

Poorly optimized Robot girl her fans constantly on and whirring and whirring and borderli9jne steaminga nd heat distorition iot

[blazeshardcat]

its never clear if morgana & arthur's fates were inevitable, but id like to think there was a way out for both of them. and if that's the case, it makes me think about kilgarrah

like what if kilgarrah was so bitter about being locked under camelot that he used specific bits of prophecies to manipulate merlin towards a future where the pendragon dynasty is wiped out?

i know we see other druids/magic people talk about the same prophecies, so it can't be ALL fake. yet with how limited merlin's exposure to magic-users is, there's no telling how much kilgarrah's cryptic ass might've "forgot" to mention.

and yeah, this is blatantly against kilgarrah's best interests, cause it means magic never returned to camelot. but, well... the whole plot of merlin happens because uther was so consumed by rage and grief that he chose to destroy the lives of thousands of people out of revenge. is it out of the question that kilgarrah might do the same?

[spotaus]

Late Night quick thing (New Age Sillies)

Bad news: That joke post about including Reset + Orchid is definitely not canon. (I legit got sad thinking about Reset being in a universe where Orchid isn't- because their stories are so so intertwined- but Nightmare 100% would NOT risk the whole twins exploding Error's soul thing.)

Good news: This means I COULD include Kane (Reset's older brother who usually dies in timelines where Reset is born) and use it to develope his character a bit more! Also! Perhaps a Blue × Dream kiddo is finally in the stars for me to design?

[danielnelsen]

ok prediction time

(it’s my first time playing bg3, i know nothing about the plot; DO NOT SPOIL ANYTHING FOR ME. currently im at moonrise towers and the extent of gale’s plot is that he’s been stabilised by elminster and has also just made the shadow lantern. shoutout to astarion for being the only one not to tell me that was a bad idea, that’s when you know you’re making good life choices)

so what i’m getting from this is that the big moral choice in gale’s story is gonna be to get forgiveness and acceptance from mystra (presumably before/without using the orb) vs embracing his own ambitions and, having a vague idea of the intensity of some of the endings, possibly going way off the deep end with that

while i don’t know the full story for other companions, im feeling like gale was probably the best choice for me in terms of playing an origin because im an extreme completionist and im going to get sage inspiration points all over the place, but im also going to push *everything*. i want to follow every potentiality to its end, make dodgy deals, play all sides, etc.

and surface-level that sounds good for playing as astarion (definitely getting a lot of charlatan inspiration), but what it really means is that i get a lot of approval from astarion and also i feel like it’s gonna affect the way gale’s story ends a lot more. gonna try not to go too far off the deep end but it’s gonna be pretty tempting lmao. i’ll just keep downing these tadpoles and ‘trusting’ my hot dream guy. nothing can possibly go wrong!