#ARTHUR CLENCHED FIST MEME

[yume-fanfare]

that one hiiro 3* where he makes tori a flower crown was already the cutest thing in the world but clown crown gave it an extra funny layer of meaning

[markantonys]

Re your Mat ranking I'm thinking of back when s1 first aired and people were complaining so much how they changed Mat's backstory but seeing how they're adapting his character on the show now it's honestly the best thing they could've done for his character

it's especially worth noting that those complaints exclusively came from readers. show-onlys LOVED mat straightaway in s1 and near-universally listed him as the most compelling of the EF4 and the one they felt most invested in. nynaeve, moiraine, and lan obviously had him beat overall, but if i'd run a poll during s1 asking show-onlys who was their favorite among mat, rand, perrin, and egwene, i'm quite confident that mat would've won in a landslide.

and it was precisely because of those backstory changes. in general Sad Childhood is a trope that audiences gobble up, as rafe & co knew very well, and for mat specifically it was an excellent way to convey the heart of his character (hero who thinks he isn't a hero) right away in the first episode (where we see him worry about being just like his shitty parents but then he charges into battle to rescue his sisters). for me at least, giving him tangible fears and insecurities about his nature makes his struggle with viewing himself as a hero emotionally resonate much more than the book version of "i don't want to be a hero because it's too dangerous and too much work" (a comedically realistic attitude for a fantasy character to have, for sure, but doesn't make for as powerful & moving of a character arc as "i've grown up viewing myself as a worthless piece of shit and now i need to be a hero and i'm terrified that i'm not good enough to pull it off").

in conclusion, the un-self-awareness in the "mat deeply sucks and is hated by all readers until book 3. oh my god how dare the show change mat's backstory in a manner deliberately calculated to make the audience understand, sympathize, and emotionally connect with him right away in the first episode?!" complaints will never not be funny to me

[shastafirecracker]

I have a minor grievance with Stampede to air out, brought on by listening to Adventures in Solitude by The New Pornographers which is of course the ultimate volume 14 of trimax song. In the last ep of Stampede, Vash and Knives both sprout one wing and fly completely normally. (It takes Vash a minute to get his balance but then he can fly fine.) And this seems to posit that like, they inherently only have one wing each, and that that’s normal and not a hindrance. Obviously the visual -wiggles hand- whatever is that if you put them side by side they make one whole entity with two wings.

However this is in reference to the final volume of the manga, in which they fly off into the sunset holding each other, each with one wing out for balance. But. But. Here’s my beef. Vash is the one who grabs Knives and takes off with him to save him from the Earth fleet/Chronica’s rage. Vash manifests a full ass set of angel wings. Except, in doing so, he’s burning through way too much of his power, and also he just got impaled in the gut by one of Knives blades, so he falters and starts to pass out. One of his wings falls apart. Knives then manifests a single wing to balance Vash’s remaining wing, and he does it with a look of terror and desperation- obviously he’s never done that before, and it’s easy to read into the moment that Knives is not used to trying to manifest something -useful- or -creative- with his blades. He just makes weapons. So his wing is strange, a weapon repurposed to a practical task, unwieldy. The thing is, Knives -can also generate feathers- like Vash but for all his bluster about how Vash never learned how to use his powers and Knives is so all-powerful with them, in the end, he has actually poured so much of his focus into becoming death incarnate - becoming Millions Knives - that he can’t even manifest the one thing it makes sense for feathers (his basic nature) to be: a wing.

And then the two of them fly away struggling with it, barely holding their forms and barely balancing each other, but finally crossing a bridge to work together to achieve something. Anything. Even if all they achieve is to escape (and do exactly what Vash always said: run away and wait for things to calm down, and then try to come back in peace).

So yeah my beef with Stampede is borrowing the visual of the one-winged angels and losing the meaning. I mean, I think Stampede creates some new and interesting meanings of its own - it’s leaning far more into the idea that the twins aren’t really whole on their own, that they need each other to be complete in a more ontological sense. But. As a filthy manga stan. I will always adore what Nightow did with these boys and their troubles, and how few words were needed to explore their feelings. So much of manga Knives is in his facial expressions. His anguish of loss and grief in the last volume is so damn palpable. Stampede’s only brushed over the surface possibilities of Knives as a character.

[jrueships]

THE RICH LESBIAN WINE AUNT JUDGEMENTAL STARE

[arithmeticanimaniac]

i know we all know and hate planned obsolescence but i need to vent because i finally got an ipad 4th gen to boot up and none of the apps work. not even the apps that come included with the ipad like pages. and the browser is so outdated i actually can’t use a lot of websites. the fury.

[chewing-the-drywall]

Headcanons where Izzy's glove reveals a burned hand that happened at the same incident that burned Calico Jack's arm

[carbonateddelusion]

nobody talk to me until I'm done listening to mary on a cross for the thousandth time and thinking about 80s eddie and jack

[reticent-fate]

I think one of the more painful things about experiencing the varied forms of dissociative amnesia is that you can recognize someone, have a whole packet of data about them, but zero emotional attachment to whoever you are supposed to feel an attachment to.

I'm thinking about this a lot bc we seem to go through a weird not-quite-reset period around certain periods of the year because our system just remembers being in public school (system designed to excel at school while "dumping" traumatic material to minimize chance of failure).

As a result, I'm a little more attuned at the moment to the fact that we have so many people we either do or have talked to that we suddenly feel/felt obliged to cut out of our lives because they feel like strangers to us.

I don't know if I've seen this consequence of emotional amnesia talked about in plural communities, but it sure is terrifying to experience and be aware of considering there's nothing I can really do about it! 

Now that we're better aware of the system, too, it's a lot easier for us to understand that a lot of our behavior in the past was self-sabotage related to this; leaving entire groups of support, casually cutting off people, so on and so on...

Meanwhile the Mii Channel music is playing in repetition in my brain because the scholar subsystems are stuck fronting rn because of this and all I can think of is how much I wanna psychoanalyze myself like I'm a thrilling essay tbw. We love a healthy coping mechanism (/hj).

-Tia

[bylertruther]

THERE'S A FUCKING BYLER STAR WARS AU FIC THAT JUST DROPPED TODAY AND NONE OF YOU SAID ANYTHING TO ME?! FOR SHAMEEEEEEEEEE STARTING THE YEAR OFF WITH NOTHING BUT FAKE FOLLOWERS N FRIENDS I SEE...... RUNNING AWAY WILL BYERS STYLE WITH TEARS STREAMIN DOWN MY FACE FR

[zacala]

saw someone praise someone else for correctly using ; and I got angry because I use that a lot in writing but not in casual conversation. that should've been me I'm so mad

[lovinggreeniehours]

WHY DOES EVERY PICTURE I SEE OF LAI.OS WITH BUTTON UPS ALWAYS HAVE THE BUTTONS FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIVES. LEAVE ME ALONE

[enthusiastofshit]

[kaiju-krew]

Hey there! Firstly, big big fan of your art and headcanons, ty for your cool and awesome big brain ❤️ Now that you’ve seen the movie, I’m wondering what your thoughts are on Shimo??? I’ve just seen impressions of her so scattered. (I saw your post on how she will NOT be treated as a pet, and I so appreciate that.)

I will say, for me the ‘old gal’ vibes are so strong and I’m here for it. Like when Goji blasts his atomic breath into the sky at the end and she’s looking at it with such awe and her cute super gummy smile, it reminds me of when a grandma gets shown some common piece of technology that the rest of us are used to, but she just can’t heckin believe it because she lives in a damn cave??? I loved that.

hi hi! omg u think i have a big brain...... compliment of the century.... i must have ppl fooled bcuz i am viscerally dumb most of the time

anywAYS. gxk spoilers below (and a lot of ranting)

shimo my beloved💙 i appreciate most interpretations of her, besides people who are just straight up caling her a dog. and like, not in the way i’d compare goji to a cat? for me it's more mannerisms based, so for goji my main expression/mannerism inspirations are cats, wolves, and komodo dragons (obviously), and for mosu it's owls and cats, with a crumb of horses because of their 'ear' communication so i use that with her antennae.

sorry for tangent but anyways. i dont need someone barking at me that i call goji a cat/draw him acting like a cat so calling shimo ‘kong’s pet dog’ is fine. i think its the difference between goji having the personality i characterize him with + mannerisms inspired by other animals, vs. him having no personality besides Being A Cat. like, he’s a dumbfuck but he’s clearly an intelligent creature capable of communication and understanding. i make a lot of shitposts but truly in my personal hc i’d never reduce him to ‘pet level intelligence’

i think i’m extra touchy about people calling her ‘kong’s pet’ because like. dawg. did you watch the movie? she was JUST freed from being skar’s slave/beast of burden/abused pet whatever you wanna call it. why would you want her to become another creature’s pet again?(obviously minus the abuse) idk mannn it just feels…. reductive somehow. she clearly shows intelligence and understanding when she realizes what’s happening during the fight and helps to kill skar. i just refuse to reduce her entire character to kong’s pet status bcuz that makes me uncomfortable asf.

as a disclaimer, you’re welcome to have whatever hc you enjoy. me expressing my personal thoughts on the matter isn’t an attack on anyone who characterizes her that way, i’m just not interested in engaging with it in the slightest.

DOUBLE ANYWAYS i just needed to get that outta my system. TIME FOR CUTE FUN IDEAS YAHOOO

i’m seeing mixed info about her age so idk where she actually sits there?? i remember seeing something like she’s the First Titan but i also think the novelization of the movie said she’s only 3 million years old?? when im p sure they’ve said goji is 250+ million years old so…. i have no clue there lol. personally she feels less jaded and grumpy than goji does to me so my brain automatically sees her as similar or younger bcuz of my Grumpy Old Man bias.

i’m still workin out my ideas for her but based on how the movie ends i like to think she helps kong with relocating the apes to a better home, and they mostly live in HE. her n kong venture up for surface dates bcuz she gets what she fucking deserves 💙

goji nearly has an aneurysm the first time they come up, since mosu literally takes them for a lil tour of monster island. bro standing there clenching his fist like the arthur meme, he begrudgingly knows she’s right and eventually he gets used to it

i got more ideas cookin for her but this post is already too damn long cuz of my ranting time to stfu

SHIMO BEST GIRL 10/10

[menlove]

remembers the demo of be my baby where you can hear john say "I need him" like. arthur fist clench meme.

[c6jpg]

dainsleif quest

the lore drops. fucking impeccable. but also i feel edged the fuck on. like we learned a liiiiiiiitle but also get 10 thousand unanswered questions as well

that's pretty standard for dainsleif quests though ig

the quest itself. can we even call that a quest it was so anticlimatic ajkdfladjsf like just content-wise i think that genuinely might have been our worst dainsleif quest the lore was CARRYING this shit and all we got was more questions and it felt SO short

as an aside its also criminal how long apart these quests are bc i honestly already kinda forgot what happened in the previous one (caribert) and i had to like. really use my brain to remember the lore we got then

DAINSLEIF BROTHER????????????

just in general like. my mind was exploding when we were talking about the five sinners of khaenri'ah. i want to learn more about them so bad

"i'll tell you all you want to know" YOU'RE NOT TELLING US ENOUGH DAINSLEIF ELABORATE

WE DESERVED A PROPER DAINSLEIF VS ABYSS TWIN ANIMATED FIGHT CUTSCENE. HOW DARE YOU JUST FADE TO BLACK ARE YOU KIDDINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

ngl when we first saw caribert i actually thought this might be dainsleif's brother and i was like NOOOOOOOOOO THEY CAN'T NPC DAIN'S BRO

i just KNOWWW his brother is gonna be so sexy whenever they reveal him. sorry i had to say it. anyways.

caribert man... his whole deal honestly felt like a sidequest within the quest but that was sad :(

not to be a #scarastan but i was just thinking so hard about the parallels between caribert and scara, implanting vs removing oneself from the memories of the world. both doing it to bring comfort to others, even if futile. i'm not smart enough to expand on this but i'm sure yall know what i mean

anyways okay. so the loom of fate can weave ley lines, that name makes sense now. now can literally anybody please explain what the fuck yall want to do with it

honestly the twin reunion scene felt kinda. idk. flat? like i was more hyped about the abyss twin vs dainsleif part kadjlsflds (speaking of which the way dain clenched his fist lmaooooooo i was just thinking of that one arthur meme)

i do love the detail that the twins call each other by their canon names though

was kind of 🙄 when we got hit with the "yeah btw you won't remember any of this once we're out of here." okay plot convenience

actually is it even plot convenience? like literally what harm would there have been of the traveler remembering???? what are they gonna do???? the only actionable thing of substance we learned was that the loom of fate was completed which dainsleif should have figured out anyways since he got the eye taken from him????????

actually i think it was great that dainsleif got bamboozled though. dude has been carried by plot armor for too long

sea of flowers mention interesting (i have no thoughts on this just interesting esp since i'm pretty sure that's the place shown in the teyvat trailer)

so basically confirmed the heavenly principles are asleep/inactive for some reason. idr if it was explicitly mentioned before. i actually DID wonder why we didn't get some celestia nail action smiting after all the shit that happened in fontaine, a lot of people thought that was gonna happen too with the whole celestia is floating right over fontaine

and then we wake up and the quest just ends??? LET ME TALK TO DAIN HELLO

also like. why did dain want to confront the abyss twin again??? maybe it was mentioned in an earlier quest and if so i forgot but either way i don't understand wtf dain was up to by luring the abyss twin out

no literally that felt like half a quest

objectively i think that quest kinda sucked but i will forgive it solely because of the lore drops no matter how tiny they were and bc i did really like caribert's story

[incessantchime]

By technicality alone. I was an Inquisitor for the longest time. One who unwisely elected to make use of a captured reliquary to cure myself of a curse, only to supplant it with another. Aside from lasting nightmares, the deal was very short-term. Kindred like myself have next to nothing that we can offer to the Fallen.

Tbh

Demons sound like desperate wet cats.