#Even if it still tastes good

[jaypelt]

Normally I'm the sorta person that puts things in the tags, but it's difficult to deliver the thoughts I want without it just running on too long. I'm personally not in the position to make sweeping judgements of how *audiences* prefer shows, as I've kinda tapped out of that whole thing and pay less attention to takes on media. Although expecting instant trauma and emotion sounds ridiculous. - In the Fullmetal Alchemist manga they don't even show the big Human Transmutation Moment until like... 23 chapters in. It's just dripfed up to that point. - You don't understand all of the specifics as to why Mr. Harrier Du Bois drunk himself into amnesia until you piece it all together from experience throughout the whole game. Culminating in Dolores Dei on the last day. - Kurapika's ice cold demeanor is as disturbing as it is because you've seen how much kinder he can be, and how far he's fallen since earlier in the story. It's not simply the things that happen to him either, but the actions he DECIDES to take. All of these examples present characters who clearly wear some kind of Big Shit on their sleeves, yet it isn't all given to you immediately. And with proper leadup to their emotional moments. Granted, they come from media outside of strictly western TV shows, but I think the lack of patience from both writers and the audience can represent themselves in any media. The goal is to make you *feel bad*, or feel at least feel *something*. And the idea is that this makes a story or character more compelling. How do you hook an audience? You hit em where it hurts. And sometimes it feels as if there's a certain gut punch feeling they're looking for. But there needs to be something of substance to actually CARE about. You need to build up your characters, your world, your story, before you start making people feel something. Especially in the case of characters, you need to establish who they actually ARE and what they care about. It doesn't always have to be the trauma. And trauma can take many, many forms. Negligence, despondence, listlessness, etc. The way they respond to it is often informed by the kind of person they are, even if that part of them may irrevocably change afterwards. Some may not even realize they've experienced it to begin with and are unaware of how it has shaped them. Characters are the beating heart of any story. Any good one is more than just all the trauma you can load them up with. Your plot can be mid as fuck, yet people cherish it anyway because the characters are good. Which, by god, can take form in more ways placing them in cold drop dramatic moments or delving into their backstory from the get-go. And every story needs a little time to breathe. Space out the big moments, build up to them when appropriate. Too much is emotionally exhausting at best, and feels insulting or manipulative at worst.

Man is it just me or are a lot of TV shows nowadays are written to have big emotional episodes in scenes with very little build up.

[rotteneldritchhorror]

One of my favourite things about being disabled is the excitement and happiness when you can do small things that others might find easy

It’s such simple joy to be able to make yourself a cup of tea for the first time (or the first time in a while!) or to just make a simple meal that you couldn’t before! Finally figuring out how to make something that doesn’t overwhelm you, etc etc

It’s a joy in the mundane that ableds need to learn from sometimes /lh

[myokk]

💘

[front-facing-pokemon]

[tswwwit]

Bless that trophy wife anon because they’re right. There’s no way mindscape citizens see whatever dipper does in the real world as a real career and he has no job in bill’s realm either, whether he likes it or not he’s entwined with bill’s world and his people and he can’t blame them for thinking his job is being bill’s husband.

That’s what pisses him off, the fact that they’re right.

No matter how Dipper protests that yes, he DOES have a job, the beings in the Fearamid don't believe it's 'real', or worse - humor him, then give Knowing Looks to the other demons in the room.

Meanwhile, Bill knows it's real - but sometimes he plays along like it isn't just to piss Dipper off.

[sonknuxadow]

the sonic twitter takeovers are canon when they say something i like and not canon when they say something i dont like hope this helps

[beatcroc]

pest control TWO!!!!! heres the first one

adn heres the obligatory bonus bc i can't help myself :')

[lovesickeros]

now that natlan is out it's tsaritsa yearning hours again because i am one nation closer to either being horribly disappointed or foaming at the mouth!

creator!reader w a little side of conflicted tsaritsa is such good food I can't not yap about it. a woman who has dedicated so much of her life to severing herself from "love" of all kinds and succeeding and. just being so confident that when she meets you she's bitter and angry and mean. because she can't stand you. she isn't supposed to love yet you worm your way into her heart anyway and you don't even know it.

especially in smth like an imposter au. she tells herself your just a tool for her to use but your treated like the Divine you really are, pampered and spoiled every step. tells herself it means nothing when she indulges you – let's you hold her hand in private, eventually let's you move aside the veil, just a little.

and she hates it. hates how easy it is to let you break down the ice she's built up for years.

all you do is smile and she feels like she can't breathe. because despite how violently she rejects love in all aspects, it always bleeds through eventually. she despises it but the way you brush your thumbs over her cheeks makes her bitter and warm and it infuriates her to no end.

she hates you and she loves you and she can't stand you and if you were ever taken from her she'd destroy every inch of teyvat if she had to go get you back.

and ironically enough I think she'd also be the one to initiate any first kiss. maybe she's still trying to convince herself it's just a fluke and itll make her realize it meant nothing, it means nothing. desperate to fix whatever you've done to her and instead it just makes it worse.

a horrible mess of a woman who gave up on love just to be confronted with it when she finally accepted it's absence.

[plushie-lovey]

FINALLY!! At long last, I've gotten my hands on a Pumpkin Kitty, after a whole year of wanting and waiting.

Her name is Latte! (Short for Miss Pumpkin Spice Latte) You can also call her Miss Spice!

[9ofspades]

It’s disability pride month, and if you are disabled in the U.S. from Long Covid I want you to know that you’re not alone, and you’re valid in whatever you feel. Whether that’s sorrow at your new problems or rage at society for failing you, you are valid, and it is truly messed up that society is continuing to fail you.

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

me stubbornly forcing myself to drink green tea and rest from my THIRD COLD THIS MONTH

[whydotheycallmechimney]

every single one of Elijah’s love interests are incredibly hot and badass woman, and that’s just what happens when you’re the sexiest man in the entire tvdu

[sharkgirldick]

Incredibly fucking pissed that have to get up for work instead of getting to finish my sex dream about a trans guy fucking my face. Sigh.

[alicornze7]

"Moonlit dance"

A full body reference of their costumes since I liked how they turned out

successor of this post lol

[ganondoodle]

Regarding Demise: He is an interesting concept, as is the whole eternal cycle, but for that to actually become something worthwhile the games/stories would have to actually DO something with it. So far they are introduced in Skyward Sword and thats it! No other game even references them. And, yes, that cheapens EVERY other game because there is this implication that its all out of the control of the actual characters in the story because of this one asshole that we only ever saw once! Why not have Ganondorf realize that he is possessed/manipulated by this weird old Demon God? How would he react, would he embrace it, would he rebel, would he be broken by the realization that none of his actions were ever *his*? I dont even care which of these options they pick, as long as they pick any of it and do just ANYTHING with the concept.

Or maybe Link or Zelda figures out the Cycle and starts looking into breaking it because endlessly repeating Demon Attacks kinda suck and you dont want that for your descendants.

Or have a game focus on them remembering bits from past lives and having to piece it all together or, again, just ANYTHING!

The closest they ever came to was with BOTW Zelda praying to Hylia, aka HERSELF, to unlock her powers, which is some brutal narrative irony, but not much more.

And regarding the whole Zelda is Hylia thing, I've seen some headcanons about how Skyward Sword Zelda is terrified of herself after learning that, because she now has to assume that everything she did was planned by a version of her that she no longer is. Is Link her friend or is he the useful pawn that Hylia needs to turn into the Hero? Does she even deserve his affection when she probably manipulated him into becoming her champion and fighting, possibly dying for her all her life?

Thats juicy, thats something you can do something with but Nintendo really does like to plan those stories game per game without any care for the larger story.

Which I guess is the Irony of it all. They tried the whole larger connected story/universe thing once: With Skyward Sword. After all that was also the time we got the first Hyrule Historia & "official timeline" as well as "How it all began" in the game itself.

It felt like the start of a new era for Zelda games and stories and then it just... wasn't.

And while I get that they want to focus on gameplay over story, I will never stop mourning the stories we could get/have gotten, if they put a bit more thought into things.

I actually feel like its harder to make the 'cycle' into an interesting plot point when its a .. divine thing that happens, and not perpetuated by the people (though not impossible, given how the series is build up it would need alot of work to not make it worse still..)-

i actually cannot stand the idea that ganondorf is possessed or manipulated, made eviler by demise somehow (demise is dead, leave him beeeeee hes not some evil master mind behind anything aaaaah) bc it STILL takes away ganondorfs agency and character and gives right into the whole hes basically born evil and just pushes the fault tm onto someone else it in turn legitimizes that the kingdom of hyrule and its high rule (heehoo) is right and if only gan wasnt manipulated hed be good tm, aka allied with the goodest guys, hed gladly accept their invitation and join their holy empire of goodness tm if wasnt for da demon

(and i love to say, who decides what is good tm and evil tm? bc hyrules monarchs making every other tribe their subordinate and persecuting shiekah for example isnt what id call good but its fine bc the good holy guys did it in the name of "peace" -what is their idea of peace? everyones under their rule and must worship their god? uh oh- and resistance to it is gonna get you labelled as evil!! (unless you join their holy kingdom and become their vassal of GOOD) what good and evil boils down to in zelda is .. being allied/ruled by the kingdom of hyrule and being opposed to them, even if its only not wanting to be subjugated by them)

i can see the appeal to some degree, but i dont like the idea of ganondorf even being able to be manipulated or possessed, what makes his character, before it got flattened into well he just be demon in the eyes of the average fandom, interesting is his unbreakable will, that drive to keep on living and resisting those that want him dead, its poetic and sad, to the point that (until totk ...) it was really just ONE ganondorf that refused to die and came back over and over (also something i found a compelling thought for botw, that after all this time theres nothing left BUT his will to resist, its a tragic idea that rly spoke to me)

my personal idea of the cycle is that its only a cycle bc they, the kingdom of hyrule and their belief system, keep it going, its not a divine thing that needs to be broken (though the divine surely messes with it, just for the bit i guess) but something that keeps repeating bc hyrule is so soaked into the idea that their princess once was a god and hers is the right to rule it all in light- so anyone who doesnt agree must be of the demons from the darkness seeking to destroy the world, and what means the 'world' could just mean the kingdom of hyrule- in botw even with the calamity people went on and lived, same in windwaker, they dont need the holy kingdom to live- (who is to say the 'monsters' are bad for the land, to me they mostly looked like well adapted territorial beasts, and the bokblins etc clearly arent mindless monsters either, why do they need to be eradicated? they attack you? ok dont go into their territory, or defend yourself, you dont need to exterminate something just bc it could be a threat at some point)

(i do agree that conflict with zelda being interesting but uuuh .. well they never did anythign with that huh)

in the end, demise was just a throw away villain, and if i may get my tin foil hat back here, i feel like the whole creation myth skyward sword does was really just a way for them to get out of the predicament of having to consider a villain to be treated like a person to save themselves from having to think about what they imply and can just go, well this is the evil demons, this is the good gods- ironically enough the attempt to get out of having to consider complicated writing it ends up reversing straight back into the WORST of kinds of implications .. that arent even subtext anymore, if totk is anythign to go by, the most 'simple' or 'easy' narrative to go for might not be actually simple, just a so often retold one that it appears simple if not made aware of its dark maw, the status quo repeated ad nauseam

(and if i may, the whole gameplay over story thing is bs in my eyes, that sounds like the typical attempt of dismissing any critique, just like the stupid, and frankly, offensive "its just for kids" argument, story and gameplay are inherently intertwined, the story influences the gameplay, the gameplay influences the story, especially in a series like zelda that is a futile thing to go for and a reason why the stories themselves lack depth, how are you gonna have an epic adventure that drives you to get through any amount of puzzles and battles if there is no story to motivate you, at this point it feels like the series has set itself up for catastrophic failure bc i imagine, people might just keep buying and playing the games bc its attached to the series, bc they hope to see characters they loved return, new ones that will grab their attention, perhaps be taken away by a world that meant alot to them once before, hope that there will be something exciting-

i am not saying the series has no value or doesnt do anything well (hello who am i) but how many times can you repeat 'this guy good he fight evil guy he get the pretty princess as reward' without any interesting twists or narrative, even the most beloved characters can only keep it passable for so long, even the best gameplay loses its potential if its surrounded by cardboard characters and a story so "simple" as offensive it fits into a single page, i often wonder how a game would be seen if it wasnt titled -the legend of zelda- ..

it hurts especially when looking at its long history, how much estblished thigns it could exploit and expand, the potential the series has is still immense, it hurts to see it be wasted over and over :(

[flushwithdarlings]

i often think about how the calamari in the elfsong tavern must have been absolutely phenomenal for astarion to remember it after 200 years and not stuff like his eye colour.