#(Good opinion based on bad opinions)

[edenprime]

One of the strongest points of Mass Effect, if not the strongest, is just how well written the characters are. From Shepard, to the squad, to the side characters like Anderson and Bakara, to barely-there NPCs like Ereba and Charr the lovers, Etarn Tiro the enthusiastic turian merchant, Kargesh the krogan who wanted a fish, Lia'Vael, the quarian who gets falsely accused of theft, and the Salarian who wants to buy a memento to his asari lover to remember him by once he's dead.

I feel like so many of them are memorable, and they all serve a purpose to the overall world building. The krogan show that they are not the violent thugs the galaxy has made them out to be. The salarian shows the struggle born out of building relationships with people of a species with a life expectancy so beyond your own. Lia'Vael illustrates what Tali says about the quarians being treated like second class citizens. Those small little side quests have a meaning and a purpose, it doesnt feel like they are Just There, and they add more to the lore of them game to those who care about that stuff.

[roses-red-and-pink]

Lolol sometimes it’s so funny reading peoples posts about “Mormon” theology that is based on Exmo stories, tradition/culture but not doctrine, and like random statements by some church leader 200 years ago that was not put into doctrine/canonized, or that he was corrected/reprimanded on, and all of us look back on like “well that guy was racist/sexist. Anyways moving on…” like tbh it just makes me laugh. Like I know our theology is a bit different than mainstream Christianity but y’all don’t need to make it sound like we are out here truly believing half the stuff you say about us.

[aroaceleovaldez]

Mark Oshiro confuses me a little bit not going to lie. In the press tour for the first book all they ever talked about was how Nico is their son and Will is fine I guess. Then they said like 2 weeks before TSATS came out that they didn't understand Will's character at all and it's one of the main reasons why Will has so little POV.

Possibly unpopular opinion but I don't think it's a good, encouraging sign when the writer admits to not really caring about the deuteragonist or not even having a sense of how to write them...

Yeah, no. If you have no interest in 1/2 of the POV characters of your book, you REALLY shouldn't be writing it (or at least, not have that be a main character). Especially when the main way TSATS could have been improved is if it was primarily Will-centric instead of Nico-centric. Will basically had next to no established character prior to TSATS! He was practically a blank slate! But all the new stuff we got for Will in TSATS was so clearly disinterested and had no regard for his previously established traits (or the established timeline/canon). Which is annoying because fleshing out Will would have been the PERFECT opportunity to actually incorporate a lot of the topics that Mark Oshiro specializes in as a sensitivity reader, which was the ENTIRE REASON THEY WERE BROUGHT ON AS A CO-AUTHOR!!!!

As TSATS stands, there is no reason for Mark Oshiro specifically to have been the co-author instead of someone else. It's so clearly just a PR move from RR following the huge backlash Rick received due to his response to criticism on how he wrote Piper and Samirah (and Reyna and etc etc). This was immediately following Rick saying he wasn't going to write what would become TSATS because "it [wasn't his] place to." Most of the topics that Mark Oshiro specializes in either weren't relevant at all to TSATS or written very poorly (to downright offensively) in TSATS, so either Mark Oshiro wasn't doing their job or was not able to do their job for some reason, but either way it basically makes the theoretical justification for Mark Oshiro being the co-author/sensitivity reader irrelevant.

With Will, it was HUGE fanon back in the day for him to be trans. Trans!Will and photokinesis!Will were basically the two biggest headcanons for him (both largely popularized by Cherryandsisters). We know Rick is aware of this old fanon because he canonized photokinesis!Will. If we had gotten trans!Will, that would have been great! And then made sense why we specifically got a trans co-author! (Instead, if anything, TSATS canonized Will being cis.) If we had gotten Will being latino, that would have been amazing!!!! And also then made sense as to why they chose Mark Oshiro for the job as a latinx author/sensitivity-reader, versus potentially choosing an Italian co-author since Nico being Italian/Venetian was emphasized so much in the book (and done poorly! Yknow what they could have done to fix that? GOTTEN A SENSITIVITY READER FOR IT)! Based on the themes and focuses actually present in the book, it would have been most logical to get a queer, neurodivergent, Italian co-author or sensitivity reader who specializes in those three topics at least. But we didn't! So why was Mark Oshiro chosen instead when they only specialize in one of those topics? PR reasons. It's blatantly entirely PR reasons and no actual thought or care was put into this book (or, likely, TSATS 2 either).

It doesn't help that we're also actively being told that the published version of TSATS was a rough draft. Or that their editor blatantly isn't doing her job. Or that "The Sun And The Star" was the working title that they just kept cause they didn't bother to make an actual title. And that the final version is full of explicitly last-minute scenes that weren't checked over at all (the final Bianca scene, for one). Or the ACTIVELY ADMITTING TO SOURCING IDEAS AND INFORMATION FROM FANS! That last one is kind of important because at this level of publishing that is a HUGE no-no for legal reasons. You can get into a lot of trouble for that and there is a reason why it is Ye Olde Fandom Law to never try to pitch your ideas or headcanons to the source creator(s) and keep fandom separate from the creators. There is a REASON why Rick Riordan is so distant from the community these days and it's for PROTECTION AGAINST LEGAL REPERCUSSION. Mark Oshiro being the exact opposite while also ACTIVELY ACKNOWLEDGING sourcing concepts from fans does not bode well! It has to do with copyright stuff.

It's just. So. Sighhhhhhhh >->o <- me lying on the floor about all of this. It's sad being able to see the glimmer of what could have been at the very least a decent book underneath all this. If anyone involved in the process had actually cared just the tiniest amount.

[alithographica]

y'all wanted pvp enabled on tumblr, I think that's exactly what this awful new note preview feature is because it's really making me want to fight people

[bonefall]

I'm thinking of writing a Grey Wing redemption/pissed off fic where Grey is the one who kills Clear Sky/Skystar (a la Scourge) after he threatens Thunder/Thunderstar and another of Grey's adopted kits.

But idk how Grey gets that pissed. Thoughts?

Idk anon I'm gonna be honest, that feels really unlike Gray Wing. I'd say to use Thunder for a plot like that, tbh, the character that canonically makes several loud and angry rejections of Clear Sky's violence.

I don't like Gray Wing but he's very well characterized, y'know? Even at his absolutely most pissed moment in-canon he can only taunt Clear Sky into killing him with his Star Line. He's verbal, not physical.

He's able to land a little hit on people here and there, but he usually requires an entire group to do damage (Tom the Wifebeater and One Eye). Overall he's really bad at fighting. Good hunter, bad fighter. Even before his asthma he was kinda pathetic; killed Fox with a lucky hit, tried to attack Clear Sky over Jagged Peak and got curbstomped

And like, on that "verbal" thing, he's incredibly nasty and catty when he's upset. Barking at Turtle Tail for having the wrong friend, smugly watching Bumble get dragged off, shouting at Thunder several times over various things, the... whatever the hell the Erins thought they were doing with Jagged Peak (i still maintain that gray was actually totally right to scream at him that One Time, fuck u jagged peak).

I feel pretty strongly that his anger is primarily vocal. He's more likely to start yelling than hitting. If it does come down to an actual death match, he's more likely to get turned into tomato paste lmaoooo

So if he ever DID kill Clear Sky, I'd suggest it be an accident or as a result of one of his plans. In addition to his lack of physical capacity, honestly? I think Gray Wing would buckle if he had to make that choice.

He'd have his claw on his throat and be unable to pull down. Might be able to start screaming, "YOU TOOK MY BROTHER FROM ME!" or make a really harsh speech, maybe even cast Vicious Mockery. But I don't think he could ever ACTUALLY do a Yellowfang, let alone a Scourge. Not even if he saw Clear personally kill someone he loves.

If he ever actually did get Clear Sky killed, he'd also, honestly, probably change immensely for the negative. OR AT LEAST needing a long time to recover and accept he had no choice. I can't imagine him being able to live with the "guilt" very well, it would weigh on him. The "gentleness" would melt away as he becomes overall quite miserable and snappish, like he usually is when he's not happy.

(Could be very interesting to give someone else the kill after Gray can't bring himself to do it. Like Thunder jumped in to save his life, but it causes their relationship to fall apart completely.)

Overall I'd treat the premise as more of a "tragedy" than a "catharsis." Not based in anger, but immense pain and frustration.

[fromtheseventhhell]

"It's powerful, it's visceral, it's dark, it's like a Shakespearean tragedy. There’s no Arya — a character everybody's going to love. They're all flawed. They're all human. They do good things. They do bad things. They're driven by lust for power, jealousy, old wounds — just like human beings. Just like I wrote them."

Seeing people debate which grey characters can still be considered "morally good" and somehow Arya never makes the list, so it's the perfect time to bring back this quote from George which shows exactly how he views her character 🫶��

[felignis]

i think chappell roan enforcing her boundaries to creepo parasocial fans is so fucking awesome and based and she should be allowed to do whatever she wants forever

[rynnthefangirl]

Ranking Breaking Bad seasons by how insufferable I think Walt is

5. Season 4 - Despite the child poisoning, still Walt's most tolerable season. The man is just in a constant state of panic for 13 episodes straight, it's hard not to feel a bit bad and root for him. The best Walt is a Walt whose ego has been replaced by absolute terror.

4. Season 3 - Absolutely awful in how he treats Skylar in the first half of the season, but makes up for it in being so ride-or-die for Jesse in the second half of the season. Killing the gangbangers was perhaps the only selfless thing Walt does the entire show.

3. Season 1 - Pretty okay this season, you kind of just feel bad for this pathetic chemistry teacher. But points off for constantly lying to and gaslighting his wife.

2. Season 2 - Ramp up the lying and gaslighting to his wife, but add in treating Jesse like garbage and egotistically insisting they expand their territory, thereby getting Combo killed and setting off the eventual events of S3-4. Not much good to say about S2 Walt.

1. Season 5 - Do I even need to explain? This man's ego is as 99% pure as his meth. 0/10 absolutely insufferable, want to punch in the face every second that he is on screen.

[ettadunham]

sometimes i remember the hunger games and how nobody actually paid attention to what was in those books

[storm-of-feathers]

hazbin hotel is the exact opposite of "bad idea good execution" bc all the pieces are there for something so good but it's made by someone insufferable and she forgot to put the Good in it

[amethysttribble]

I often see Turgon framed as having, like, this particularly heated hatred of the Sons of Feanor (and Maedhros specifically is the target more often than not) but I don’t think I’ve ever really seen it in text?

Like, the entire host of Fingolfin is noted to have “little love for Feanor and his sons” after the Helcaraxe, and considering Elenwe’s death I can see where this has been extrapolated from, but he tends to be assigned a lot of vitriol that he never expresses canonically to my knowledge. He doesn’t get in fights or make statements of resentment and undying hatred, he’s mostly just doing his own things with Finrod and Gondolin

I really don’t think he is specifically spiteful and uniquely angry at them, at least not to the degree I often see ascribed to him

[cephalopodiums]

Analysis of 'Aska i vinden' in a Disco Elysium context

So, another post about a hbd-core Swedish song inspired me to finally make this analysis of 'Aska i vinden', a song mentioned in DE.

Game quote: [failed the Shivers check in front of the FELD-building] YOU - "I am trying to ask the wind." TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "Ask the wind or 'Aska i Vinden' is the name of a Vaasan lullaby," he remarks. "Maybe that helps?"

'Aska i vinden' does not actually translate into 'ask the wind', it means 'ash in the wind'. It also isn't a lullaby irl, it is a pop song and I have not found any mention of it being inspired by a lullaby, it seems to be a wholly original song. (Vaasa and Vaasan is the DE equivalent of Sweden (roughly) and Swedish btw, if you didn't know that.)

Anyway, on to the lyrics analysis below the cut

Swedish lyrics │ English translation │ [DE parallels]

Jag kan se att du nått din gräns nu I can see that you have reached your limit now [Parallels to Dora having enough of Harry] Jag kan se vart allt tar slut I can see where it all comes to an end [Parallels to the end of their relationship] Jag kan se alla miljarder stjärnor I can see all billions¹ of stars [Kinda parallels the Inland Empire portrait] Tändas upp bara för att dö ut Light up just to die out [This line and the previous parallels with the quote 'In dark times, should the stars also go out?' from the communist side quest]

Jag ser dig nere på T-centralen I see you down by the central station² [While not a metro station, I feel this parallels the aerodrome in being large/prominent transportation infrastructure] Du rycker till när våra blickar möts You flinch when our gazes³ meet [Parallels with the discomfort Dolores Dei/Dora felt when Harry talks to her when she tried to leave for the aerodrome] Jag ser hoppet i dina ögon I see the hope in your eyes [What Harry saw, or probably more accurately thinks and wants to have seen in Dolores Dei/Dora's eyes] Tändas upp bara för att dö ut Light up just to die out [Maybe this is what happened, Dora hoping for just a normal goodbye and then realizing no, Harry will try into the last moment to get her back]

Spring, spring för ditt liv, du kommer aldrig hitta hem Run, run for your life, you will never find your way home [Parallels the thoughts Lonesome Long Way Home/Hobocop] Spring, spring, spring för livet, vänd dig aldrig om igen Run, run, run for your life⁴, never turn back around again [Parallels the thought Cleaning Out the Rooms and the various warnings the skills give when Harry wants to find out about his past, for example the letter in his ledger] Spring, spring för ditt liv, för du är närmre än du tror Run, run for your life, because you're closer than you think [Parallels both that Harry is close to death at all times and that his memories are also close, sometimes just needing reminders or a bit of thought to return to him] Snart så är vi aska i vinden Soon we are ash in the wind [Parallels both the inevitable death of everything by pale if 'we' is used to refer to the people of Elysium and if 'we' is used to refer to Harry and Dora together, their relationship, being over to the point of only being ash in the wind, Harry and Dora no longer being a 'we' or an 'us' like Dolores Dei says: The atoms don't form us anymore: us, our love, our unborn daughters...]

Det finns en plats där alla minnen hamnar There is a place where all memories⁵ end up [Parallels the pale and the thought Cleaning Out the Rooms] Där allting rensas ut Where everything is cleaned out⁶ [Parallels Cleaning out the rooms to a T, and maybe the origin point of the pale, the nothingness, not the gradient or curdled milk] Kanske en plats där vi kan andas Maybe a place where we can breath [Parallels that Harry has a little more "room to breathe" now that he has lost the baggage of his memories and also this parallels the lung and breath imagery in Elysium] Där vi kan andas ut Where we can breathe out [Same as above, maybe parallels this line from Conceptualization about the pale: Instead of air, you exhale thoughts. There are no trees that eat thoughts.]

Och jag kan se att du nått din gräns nu And I see that you have reached your limit⁷ now Jag kan se vart allt tar slut I can see where it all comes to an end⁷ [Same as above, but I want to add a parallel to Le Retour, girlchild revolution and the end of an era] [Also just this line, I want to add the parallel to Harry knows about the end of Revachol] Jag kan se alla miljarder stjärnor I can see all billions of stars Tändas upp bara för att dö ut Light up just to die out [Same as above, but I want to add parallels to the communists in the revolution (having stars as a symbol) and also the disco stars of The New, they may not be billions but it is often used hyperbolically]

Spring, spring för ditt liv, du kommer aldrig hitta hem Run, run for your life, you will never find your way home⁸ Spring, spring, spring för livet, vänd dig aldrig om igen Run, run, run for your life, never turn back around again⁹ Spring, spring för ditt liv, för du är närmre än du tror Run, run for your life, because you are closer than you think Snart så är vi aska i vinden Soon we are ash in the wind [Same as above but I also want to add the parallels to these Shivers lines: SHIVERS - Your hair is an oily mess flecked with ash from neighbouring coal plants. Smoke stacks rise somewhere in the distance. SHIVERS - COME MORNING, I CARRY INDUSTRIAL DUST AND LET IT SETTLE ON TREE LEAVES. I SHAKE THE DUST FROM THOSE LEAVES AND ONTO YOUR COAT. (La Revacholière would carry the ashes of people to a nice place)]

So yeah, there you have it. There are some more parallels in the translation notes and I will put just the lyrics in a reblog on this post, if you want them alone without my commentary.

¹Billions in short scale specifically. ²T-centralen is actually a specific Swedish metro station, it is the biggest station for the Stockholm metro. I chose to translate/localize it to central station to aid in understanding the scale, importance and meaning conveyed by the word T-central. ³My translation is probably a grammatical bastardization of the idiom meet [somebody's] gaze, but you get the meaning of it and it stays truer to the Swedish version. ⁴The sentence 'Spring för livet' does not literally tranlate to 'run for your life', but it is it's meaning. Literally it translates to 'run for life'. ('Spring för ditt liv' actually does literally translate to and mean 'run for your life'.) I find the change of phrasing fascinating, as it can ad an additional way to read that line of the lyrics as 'running for the concept of life itself'. ⁵Here you can translate the word 'minnen' (it is in the definitive form) into both 'memories' and 'the memories' because they are both definitive, but the translations have different connotations. Both connotations are in the Swedish meaning of the word 'minnen' and there is no way to specify which one without use of additional explanatory words. I chose the phrasing of 'memories' to better fit with the parallel to the pale, but 'the memories' could also work well, as the connotation of that is that it is Harry's memories and it fits with the next line about cleaning out, as it is that what he does with his memories according to the thought Cleaning Out the Rooms. ⁶The phrasing 'rensas ut' (it is in gerund form, passive voice) can be more accurately be translated to 'is cleared out' (gerund form, passive voice), but 'is cleaned out' (gerund form, passive voice) is also a perfectly good translation and I chose it to parallel the thought Cleaning Out the Rooms. ⁷I did not foot note this earlier because it would make the grammar of the translation and the current word is more accurate in meaning, but... The word 'gräns' can not only be translated as 'limit' but 'border' as well. And idk, the word border reminds me of the porch collapse, especially with the next line about seeing 'where it all comes to an end', or the alternative translation 'where it all ends'. Which is exactly what you see at the porch collapse, you see where the world ends and the pale begins. So if we take these alternative translations and suppose the 'you' being referred/spoken to is the world, then you can think of it as the singer seeing the porch collapse, the approach of the end of the world. ⁸A fun thing just in the act of translation, not necessarily a meaning you can extract from the Swedish text but... If you literally translate 'du kommer aldrig hitta hem' it is 'you will never find home'. And you can read that translation as not finding a place that fits you, in the societal sense. Like the various Copotypes and political leanings Harry tries out/thinks about to try and find himself, who he is, and what titles/roles (places) fit him. He is trying to find home, in an identity sense as well. And it doesn't have to be *back* home, it just has to be home, a new one will suffice too. ⁹I think the word 'again' could actually be left our in the translation, to give it another connotation that is included in 'vänd dig aldrig om igen'. I interpret the meaning of the Swedish sentence as both the meaning 'never turn back again' implying the singer has turned around before and 'never turn back' which does not imply the singer having turned back before. But am a bit unsure of that though, so take it with a grain of salt.

[mummer]

just took absolutely catastrophic mental damage reading this

[punkass-diogenes]

I love it when Zionist Jews accuse me of only being anti-Zionist because of some kind of desire to be seen as one of the Good Jews. Oh, honey, I am a Bad Jew by every possible metric. NOBODY likes me because I actually have principles. I was not put on this earth to be liked. I was put here to be a pain in the ass.

[justanotherfanartist]

i got the kind of autism where I make theme songs and leitmotifs for my characters that I haven’t written anything about but have a complete fuzzy image of in my head

[kittenfangirl20]

To me it feels like someone who feels like you can only like characters who are 100% morally good are some of the most toxic people I have run across. There is nothing wrong with loving a character for being a hero or a good person, but it is odd that some people think that characters you like must be a reflection of your moral compass.