#(he was in the direction we needed to go)

[bacchuschucklefuck]

doing chibi is a good design exercise bc it forces u to think on shapes n essential details, essentially thumbnailing ur designs. its also a terrible design exercise bc it ends up looking cute no matter what

[aq2003]

has anyone gotten the idea that odysseus' storyline in hades 2 is a depiction/exploration of trauma over his SA and how he's blaming himself for things that were out of his control? because that's the impression i'm getting from what i've seen. he talks about "goddesses" as his "greatest weakness" and that "he's not one to say no to them"...

when mel invites him to the bath, he brings up mortals having different standards for intimacy than gods and how it usually has a more romantic/sexual connotation. she then asks if he's uncomfortable and he has a startled reaction and brings up circe and calypso again (but never actually by name)

(this isn't ship/romance bait btw. odysseus knew mel as a kid and they're stated in-game to have a sibling/uncle-niece relationship)

also he grew apart from penelope after his return, but the game makes a point of showing that his love for penelope and telemachus is what drove him on at all so that element of his character isn't brought into question

[laurents-secret-diary]

oh damen we're really in it now.mp4

[spirkbitch]

everyone else on the bridge deserves a medal for enduring Kirk flirting with his boyfriends constantly

[shakingparadigm]

what is the theory that ivan manipulated the event where till and mizi met the wagyein?

It's not a theory, actually! It's confirmed that Ivan orchestrated the whole event. The true reason as to why however is still unknown. The information provides more context to this scene, though:

During the earlier times of ALNST the most rational explanation for this scene was that Till ran after a flower crown (presumably Mizi's) and Ivan followed him in out of curiosity. Now we know that Ivan was conveniently just standing there because he was waiting.

Side note, I find it heartbreaking (and maybe a little funny, sorry) that Till most likely didn't notice Ivan in this scene. That's just like him, isn't it. Always too busy running after Mizi while Ivan trails behind, an ever-present shadow.

I'm not sure how Ivan manipulated the circumstances for both of them to end up there, but it is confirmed that everything was intentional. What strikes me most is how they describe this particular scene:

I can't copy down what they said word-for-word (Patreon info), but they described Ivan watching "creepily" as Till and Mizi are faced with danger. We know that Ivan was familiar with the Cerberus wagyein beforehand, enough to touch its teeth and even to rest himself inside its maw. To Ivan, the wagyein is not dangerous, but to Till and Mizi, it could be. Ivan prepared the wagyein, led them there, and watched "creepily" from afar as Till fell on his knees, seemingly injured.

The closest I can get to making sense of Ivan's "scheme" is that he wanted to see how other children would react in a dangerous situation. Ivan's always been an observer, after all, and he's learned to survive by copying the more "normal" behaviors of his peers. This situation occured when Ivan was still young and had not yet developed his more charming mask, so perhaps he staged this encounter to study a situational response, to learn and mimic the emotion of fear. And what better subjects for the experiment than two of the most expressive and reactive humans of their batch? It helps that he was already fixated on Till beforehand, too. I think Ivan became irreversibly obssessed after this incident, especially since it's framed as a turning point in Ivan's life, comparing Till to the stars.

This is just my attempt at an interpretation, though. It could very well be for another reason. He most likely chose Till and Mizi specifically for personal reasons, not just for reaction. I'm still not sure on the purpose behind the whole thing.

The team wanted to capture Ivan's "dark emotions" through the shot of his stalking, which could relate to his more sinister intentions. His gaze can be read in a few different ways, though. Curiosity, interest, fear, etc. Maybe that's why they decided to redraw the shot in ROUND 6.

I think this better sells the feeling they were trying to convey.

[delicatepointofview]

gonna have to deal with people missing the point of louis singing 1d songs in festivals... don't get me started on the other covers

[fromtheseventhhell]

"Sansa = Ned 2.0 and Arya = Catelyn 2.0" is one of those takes where you can just tell people are more attached to the aesthetic than anything. "The Stark girls are most like the parent they look least like" sounds good on paper and people run with the idea, regardless of how it actually fits into the story. A majority of the justification relies on misinterpreting all of their characters + a healthy dose of fanon. What gets me is that this is the same fandom that insists that Lyanna, only compared to Arya in the text, is equal parts Arya and Sansa but Ned and Catelyn, two fully fleshed-out and complex characters, have to be more like one girl or the other? There's just nothing in the story to justify being so adamant about these comparisons. Arya and Sansa have parallels with both of their parents but at the end of the day, they are unique characters with their own stories. I'll never understand why people want to flatten these complex characters down to their most basic tropes and fit them into restrictive boxes just for a "poetical~" comparison.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

shoutout to Frank, he's gonna fall for / has fallen for the most suspicious puppet in the neighborhood

[abby118]

barracks

(from the Thor: The Dark World movie storybook)

[etoilesombre]

[chirpsythismorning]

Shawn Levy on set for these scenes even though he didn’t direct either of the episodes… aka these must have been scenes he felt were important enough for him to be there, in person, so that he could make decisions as an executive producer hmmm

[lollytea]

Huntlow situationship gives me such intense brain termites you don't get it

[theplatypusblue]

I think it’s neat in hindsight, looking at the interactions between Lloyd and Sensei Garmadon in seasons 3-4. Because for all the support he gives his son, there are points where it seems like Garmadon just… fundamentally disagrees w him about things

Like Garm is more of a realist when it comes to facing off whatever the current threat is, which is a contrast to Lloyd’s youthful hope + optimism or whatever. I don’t remember everything that happens in those seasons but I feel like you could point out a couple instances of Garmadon being like “we have to do this thing” and Lloyd being like “no we can’t do that that’s mean :(” or something to that effect. Of course he’s still supportive of Lloyd’s pursuits in the end, but that fundamental difference in worldview is still there.

And then in March of the Oni that “pessimism” of his gets cranked up to 11, and that drives a lot of the conflict between the two of them. It’s so clear how it wasn’t just the evil resurrection stuff that made him so dickish that season, but it was also just like… a part of who he was from the very beginning. It feels consistent in a way and that’s just so neat to me.

[astranauticus]

stultifera navis rerun AKA thinking about Iberia hours again because a lot of the Iberians have such fascinating relationships with the concept of home but specifically Thorns and Lumen are eating at my brain. like where do you call home when the place that is your home Just Fucking Hates You? Elysium's rewinding breeze specifically makes a point to hammers home how differently Iberia treats its Liberi and its Aegir

(which is especially interesting since this comes right after a conversation where Purestream commented on how despite Leizi being a high ranking government official, there are still some experiences that are universal for all Yanese people - because the experience of what Iberia itself is like isnt universal for all Iberians)

But all that being said, Thorns also straight up states that Aegir is not his home, and yeah, how could it be? How could a place you've never been to, never truly known, ever be your home? How could it ever feel like a home?

so where do you go when the place that you are from hates your people and the place your people are from is completely unfamiliar and alien to you? Thorns' answer at the end of the conversation with Aya is: my home is where i chose it to be. my home is where there are people I care about and people who care about me

in the complete opposite direction, Lumen's oprec asks: why do you still stay in a place that wants you gone? because the people of Gran Faro like Jordi well enough but when push comes to shove, they will want the only Aegir in town gone

and yet, when Rald the messenger offers him a chance to leave Jordi turns him down and when he's forced to escape Gran Faro after the people there literally try to send him to his death (or worse) at the hands of the Inquisitors he keeps trying to go back because like everyone in stultifera navis, Jordi is clinging to his own dreams of a golden age

but the shape of that dream is unique to every character and for Jordi, his dreams are deeply, inseparably bound to the Eye of Iberia, the legacy his parents left behind

and it's this dream of becoming someone great, of bringing about that golden age that his parents devoted their lives to help create that ties Jordi to this nothing town because despite everything, despite the mistrust of the townsfolk and the hostility of the Inquisition and the danger from the ocean, he simply cannot leave it behind

(or, because i personally dislike the official translation,)

"I just see this place as my home"

so yeah. not sure what overall point i was trying to make here i'm just. deeply in love with these stories about chosing what is and isn't your home, of saying you will not call a place your home because it has given you no reason to or saying you consider a place your home even though it has given you every reason not to. deeply unwell about them <3

[where-the-water-flows]

thinking about a world where Li xiangyi does actually get murked in the donghai battle / of poison, but through a series of events, ends up kind of... wandering the world as a ghost for a while, which isn't great and gives him so much time to think about everything he fucked up, and then, because his life is a farce, ends up eventually accidentally possessing this brat.

this very familiar brat. this brat who has spent the last several years training and all but breaking himself to get strong enough, healthy enough, based on a dead man's words, this brat who just got his ass kicked out of the baichun court (again) and is already making plans for how he can conceal his identity to get through the exam next time.

this very familiar brat he would fucking like to unposess as fast as possible, actually, only it appears they are fucking stuck with each other, and ok, maybe finishing unfinished business will let him, y'know, move on to his well deserved punishment of the afterlife, and thus: it's time for a weird ghost road trip.

(fang doubing has doubts about the literal fucking ghost in his head, who is very clearly lying about, uh, a lot of things, but on the other hand he is learning like, so much about investigating and also just every topic under the sun it feels like, and it's not exactly being a proper detective, but... he's got a year, anyway, and maybe showing up with a solved case or twelve under his belt will convince them to give him a chance)

[stardustdiiving]

How evil is arlecchino and what is she cooking

As of 4.2, I’m really curious what they’re planning with Arlecchino as a character, especially as a villain/antagonist/morally dubious character, and how far/which direction they may go with that

Intuitively my impression is we’ll see her do something way more “villainous” than she presents herself as being for majority of Fontaine’s AQ in front of us right—(which isn’t a surprise given that, you know, Arlecchino nor the House of Hearth have never been presented as 110% ethical LOL) but I find myself not being in complete agreement with most analysis or speculation threads I see about Arlecchino’s morality and the like, level of sinister people seem to ascribe to her.

Idk how to put it, especially in regards to her children I do agree they are not a wholesome found family, that Arlecchino is not above pulling strings or using them for her own ulterior motives, but I kind of hesitate on the idea she only cares about the Hearth children as a means to the end/things she can control and there’s nothing else going on with her characterization wise there. I’m not saying that impression seems remotely unreasonable or unfounded, but just that it feels there’s something intentionally missing in how we are supposed to conceptualize her as a person

My main reasoning for this hunch is the fact they have not elaborated on Arlecchino and the previous Knave—who Arlecchino is stated to have taken over the position from by force. The extra tidbits I think about are that 1) Arlecchino was previously an orphan in the Hearth 2) the previous Knave is described as way, way crueler to the children of than Heart than Arlecchino was from when she took control of the House

Often, people’s major indicators that the House of the Hearth is kind of super fucked up are the NPCs we meet in world quests who are part of it and clearly suffering. But one thing I haven’t ever seen people mention w this that i think is a very interesting detail is, in The Very Special Fortune Slip Inazuma worldquest, where we stop this House of Hearth guy (Efim Snezhevich) from manufacturing tension between Watasumi/the Shogunate to restart the war with his other Hearth subordinates, at the end of the quest we get this dialogue that reveals he had been acting under the previous Knave’s directives:

It’s also mentioned he’s employing this plan in an attempt to “rebuild the prestige of the Knave” following Signora’s death, iirc? Now, see, the dialogue itself says that this is “assuming our captive is telling the truth” so who knows what’s really going on, but I find this a really odd/interesting thing to highlight. I’m a bit fuzzy on other world quests with Hearth members, and am not saying none of them were acting and subsequently being treated poorly by our Arlecchino, but like, this gives me a lot of questions especially when paired with implications this previous Knave seemed to be way worse

Like, what drove Arlecchino to take over? How unexpected and controversial was this within the House? Assuming the above information is all true it definitely says something this guy went rogue and acted on what the previous Knave would want and didn’t think our Arlecchino would greenlight it, which does feel consistent with the previous Knave being described as basically worse & crueler than our Arlecchino. It also makes me question how much house of hearth things we’ve seen outside the main story are the work of our Arlecchino or if there’s a bigger divide of loyalty. Heck, I could be wrong but it doesn’t even seem like we know if the previous Knave is dead or not

This isn’t me saying Arlecchino couldn’t possibly be treating hearth children worse than she wants us to know, especially ones who aren’t her “favorites” the way the fontaine trio seem to be, but I really don’t feel sure about making a solid conclusion of her exact level of malice the way ppl r generally understanding it rn when it feels there’s going to be more about her. Just the idea of she, as a Hearth child, clashed with the previous leader who was known for being cruel, overtook their position and took on less harsh methods of leading that made at least some members with more power/possible closer proximity to the previous Knave go rogue and try to commit atrocities in the previous Knave’s name…I feel this leaves a lot of room to suggest there’s more going on with how Arlecchino is as a person

I don’t mind if she’s just very evil and deceptive bc if she totally had me fall for thinking she was less evil than she actually was that’s fun tbh. But I feel people suggest that’s all her character could be with no degree of like, “sympatheticness” or deep grey morality and that if her character did go there it would be automatically poor writing and genshin walking back on making a truly evil woman when IDK. I feel you can claim at this point they have left it open ended and it’s never been completely confirmed she’s pure evil. Also sometimes I just get a hunch and feel cautiously confident in Genshin executing certain characters well. Not all characters, just certain ones. Especially given Fontaine’s character writing being very good and a character like Lyney feeling very solid to me when any development with Arlecchino would likely involve him and his siblings as well, I honestly feel open to the idea of Arlecchino being satisfyingly written to be both villainous/morally dubious but “sympathetic/likable as a person” in ways outside of just her ruthlessness if that makes sense

If I’m wrong/they drop the ball with it more than I anticipate I’ll eat my hat but I am pretty excited about her character and which way they decide to go with it. I will say the only potential impression I have of where they’ll go with her has been wondering if it will go in a “cycles of abuse” direction—I’d be surprised if they ever elaborated on Arlecchino’s character especially in how she feels about things and her also growing up as an exploited child of the hearth wasn’t relevant