#FUCK FOREVER EVIL

[lesbian-cowpoke]

Things I will never forgive DC for in the new 52:

Any Batman storyline, really. (Especially Forever Evil, anything past Rebirth, especially especially the marriage and Bane storylines) (I suppose I can forgive Endgame bcs it gave us Duke)

RIC GRAYSON

Retconning the Arrow Family

ALFRED'S DEATH

THEY TOOK AWAY JASON'S GUNS

Heros in Crisis

The aging up of Jon Kent (and essentially losing the great amazing super sons dynamic)

[bongwalter10]

also. happy pride month to all the villains out there

[qqueenofhades]

my mom was defeatist when she found out biden dropped out of the race, but i told her i was having hope. seeing the posts about the donations rolling in, i think my hope is well placed

Hold your ground! HOLD YOUR GROUND!

Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day!

An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down -- but it is not this day! This day we fight!

By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!

[rustedhills]

Disney, releasing Wish: "so it's all about legacy--the new generation surpassing the old, overcoming the evils perpetuated by them, relinquishing singular power... and there's an old man in a tower, uh... animal sidekick, i guess..., ah... magic...?

Miyazaki, just out of frame, sledgehammer raised:

[kang-yo-han]

I’m rewatching Beyond Evil and I will never, ever be over the scene where Dongsik finds Yuyeon’s body. It’s a master class in acting by Hakyun. He’s devastated; he’s relieved; he’s so, so apologetic. He’s reuniting with the twin he lost. She’s dead. She’s in his wall. But she’s there. After twenty years of trauma and agony and endless wondering, he’s found her. There is joy in that, even when it’s wrapped up in despair. Even when finding her means he’s lost her all over again.

[brethilach]

gollum is a little freak but I genuinely get so upset thinking about him because we know that was still a lil freaky even before he and deagól found the ring but he very well would've had the opportunity to have a good live and BE good if they hadn't. and no matter what happened afterward, he couldn't go back home. even if he confessed to his crime he very likely would've still been kicked out of his community, or at the very least socially shunned to the point where he might as well just leave anyway. the ring would've consumed him no matter what, and for no fault of his own (or at the least, no faults that would ever warrant some cosmic punishment amounting to what the ring Did to him). by the time Bilbo found him he was far, FAR past the normal lifespan of a Hobbit. After the Ring was destroyed Bilbo began deteriorating at 130, and he had only beaten the current record for the longest Hobbit lifespan by a single year. Gollum was at LEAST 3x older than that. Very likely more. No matter what happened—even if Sam was a little kinder, Faramir was a little gentler, or Frodo was able to fully reach "Smeagól" in the way he so desperately wanted to, even if he helped destroy the Ring himself, or he didn't fall into the fire—Gollum would've died with the Ring. Even if the Quest FAILED and Gollum successfully claimed the Ring like he wanted, he STILL would've died (because Sauron would have never let him hold on to that thing for hundreds of years again, if his body could've even handled that). There is no reality where Smeagól would have a happy ending, whether he was "redeemed" or not. Yet all of it was such a fundemental factor in the success of the Quest (and even Bilbo's success during the Quest of Erebor). Definition of Doomed by the narrative

[prentisspilled]

That must be the ink.

[trappedinafantasy37]

There is a trend that I've noticed amongst fandom spaces around games, and it isn't a trend that is unique to Baldur's Gate. I have seen it happen in my other fandom spaces like Fallout, Cyberpunk, Dragon Age, etc. But people have a habit of having very strong opinions about companions/characters that they do not know.

It is comical to watch the abject lies people create about companions and use them as justification to dislike said companion because they know they don't have a valid reason to do so. This isn't unique to Minthara, this happens to ALL companions (ironically, the funniest and most egregious lies I've ever heard actually aren't even about Minthara). It's just glaringly obvious when it comes to Minthara as she is the least recruited and most killed companion in the game and is thus the least known. So the lies and mischaracterizations pop up more often, and there is an abundance of them. And it gets exhausting having to constantly fight these lies all the time. Especially when so few people actually know her and thus there are few who are able to defend her.

I remember there was a poll a few months ago that overwhelming voted Minthara as the least loyal and most likely companion to cheat on you. To me, that just screams that the people who voted for her in that poll have never had a conversation with her outside the goblin camp. Minthara is the most loyal companion. That is not an opinion of mine. That is a fact. That is canon to the game. She is canonically your most loyal companion. And it's not that she's the least likely to cheat. She never will. Again, not an opinion. That is canon to the game. But this is information people don't know, because they've never spent a single moment getting to know her. This is a lie being spread about her that will be used as justification to dislike her and to justify not recruiting her or justify killing her.

I have also seen people admit that their opinions about her is formed solely on social media posts from YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, or Tumblr because they just can't stomach having her in their party. As ironic as this is going to sound, but your opinion about a character should never be based on social media alone. The people who do this are missing out on the context of that post and often fail to use it in comparison with the rest of the character (especially since there is a high risk of a social media post containing misinformation or just straight up lies). People will take this one snippet of a character, and use it as if that it is all that character is. Posts on social media, including mine, are meant to be supplementary to your experience of a companion, not the sole foundation.

When it comes to these social media posts, no two people are going to have the exact same interpretation, which may cause confusion for an outsider looking in. Even amongst us Minthara enjoyers, we do not always agree, and that is to be expected. We are all different people who have lived different lives and thus have different experiences informing our interpretations. Even amongst my mutuals we do not always agree, and that's normal. But at least we have taken the time to get to know her and come to our own conclusions and can understand how someone else came to a different one. My posts, or anyone else's, should not be your sole source of information about Minthara or any other characters. You still do need to form your own opinion and that can only be done by actually spending the time to get to know them.

Recently, one of my old posts in which I talked about the relationship with Minthara and Karlach has exploded again. And I see the tags that people are attaching to it. The game has been out for 10 months now. And it makes me sad that people still have the wrong opinion about Minthara. It makes me sad just how little people actually know about her. It makes me sad that people are only now going to go recruit her for the first time, even though the knock out exploit has been here for months. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that my post has changed the way people see Minthara and encouraged them to want to get to know her. But it breaks my heart that I have to use another companion to convince people to get to know Minthara, because to them, Minthara alone just isn't good enough. They have already made up their mind about her, even though they don't even know her.

People are allowed to have whatever opinions that they want. But don't get online and share those opinions about a character you don't even know to people who do. It's like highschool level petty nonsense where people would rather believe and spread rumors about a person, rather than getting to know the person themselves and forming their own opinion. And, no, I don't care if your opinion is a positive one because even positive opinions can be inaccurate and wrong if you don't know the character. Again, this isn't just about Minthara but all characters and companions. And I'm only scratching at the surface level here. This essay would be significantly longer if I actually took the time to talk about how implicit bias, racism, homophobia, and sexism have all had a negative impact on fandom perception of Minthara and the other companions.

I will never tell anyone to do anything with their game they don't want to do, I will only encourage people to try new things. If you truly do not want to recruit Minthara or interact with her, that's fine. It's your game, your world, your rules, your vision.

But, I will say this. If the only conversation that you have ever had with Minthara is the one in the goblin camp, shut the fuck up about her. This cruel, heartless, evil person that floats around is a twisted version of Minthara that only exists on social media and was created by people who do not know her. This bastardized version is nothing like the version that actually exists in the game. And you would know that if you ever spent a single second of your time getting to know her.

[hindahoney]

Has anyone else noticed the weird appropriation of Yiddish for specifically anti-zionist spaces? It makes me deeply uncomfortable.

[esmes]

ooh, let the light in at your back door yelling 'cause i wanna come in ooh, turn your light on look at us, you and i, back at it again

[khattikeri]

maybe a controversial opinion but while i really love jiang cheng as a character he is deeply self-centered as a person. and seeing people fight tooth and nail claiming he isn't, or is just misunderstood, or that he has genuine valid reasons to be selfish when plenty of other characters make the difficult choice to forego status and opportunities for what they believe is genuinely right to do (read: wei wuxian, wen ning, wen qing, lan wangji, jiang yanli, mianmian, etc.)

it's just odd to me. especially if they're talking about the novels.

mxtx didn't give jiang cheng the name "sandu shengshou" as a quirky coincidence. there's a REASON she named him & his sword after the 3 poisons of Buddhism (specifically ignorance, greed, and hatred). it's crucial to the story that jiang cheng is NOT selfless and that wei wuxian IS.

it's important to accept that wei wuxian is, by their society's standards, not morally gray; he represents several Buddhist ideals in direct contrast of jiang cheng and multiple people attest to wei wuxian's strong moral character, which is a lot of why jiang cheng even feels bitter about him to begin with.

it's crucial, because by the end of the novel jiang cheng realizes the extent of this and begins to let go!

the twin prides thing wasn't jiang cheng wanting them to 100% mirror the twin jades. he does care about wei wuxian, but he wanted wei wuxian to stay his right hand man, in part the way wei changze was for jiang fengmian.

and if there's one thing you can notice about wei changze in the novels, it's that literally nobody talks about him. he is only ever mentioned when his cool mysterious mountain sect wife cangse-sanren is mentioned, or (even more rarely) when they discuss him as a servant to jiang fengmian. regardless of jiang fengmian's own feelings, wei changze was considered lesser to him and didn't seem to outdo him, since nobody's out there years later still waxing poetry about wei changze's skills.

it may not be the only thing jiang cheng wants out of a twin pride dynamic, but it is a big part of it. regardless of his parents' intentions in taking wei wuxian in and treating him certain ways, this twin pride right-hand man thing is what jiang cheng has felt owed since childhood. he gave up his dogs for wei wuxian, people gossip about his sect heir position with wei wuxian there... jiang cheng wants the reciprocation of what he views as personal sacrifices.

he is ignorant to the depth of what wei wuxian must've suffered for over 6 years as a malnourished orphan child on the streets. he hates how wei wuxian's intelligence, witty charm, and cultivation abilities are naturally stronger than his own. he does care about wei wuxian a lot and want them to be together as sort of-brothers, sort of-friends, sort of-young master and sect servant...

...but if it's between that unclear (yet still caring) relationship and being able to save himself just a little bit more, jiang cheng nearly always manages to clam up in the face of danger and choose the latter, which ultimately benefits himself most. maybe it's a stretch to call that sort of thing greed, but it certainly isn't selfless.

there are of course plenty of justifications for this. it's his duty as sect heir. his home and sect was severely damaged by the wen attack and subsequent war; he had to protect himself, etc.

but doesn't that prove the point?

wei wuxian may be charming, but in terms of pure social standing, he is lower and far more susceptible to being punished or placed in harm's way by people who have more power and money. to protect wei wuxian, yunmeng jiang's long-term head disciple and semi-family member, even in the face of backlash and public scrutiny would've been the selfless thing to do. this is what wei wuxian does for the wen remnants in the burial mounds.

jiang cheng does not choose this. it's not even an unreasonable choice for him to make! nobody else in the great clans is doing such a thing, stepping out of line to take on a burden that could weaken them in the long-run. wei wuxian himself doesn't hate jiang cheng for it; he lets go of these things and focuses on what good he can do in the present.

jiang cheng thinks further into the future - what would happen to him if he continued vouching for wei wuxian and taking his side? what about jiang cheng's face, his sect's face? would wei wuxian even care to reciprocate somehow? everyone expects him to cut off wei wuxian for being dangerous, for threatening his position, for...

do you see what i mean? to call jiang cheng selfless for falling in line with exactly what people expected him to do after the war is not only wrong, it's foolish.

"but they faked their falling-out!" okay. why fake it to begin with, except to protect jiang cheng and the jiang sect's own face? is that selfless? who does it ultimately serve to protect? wei wuxian canonically internalizes the idea that he stains all that he touches, including lan wangji, and agrees to the fake fight because he doesn't want to cause the jiang sect harm. regardless, it eventually slides into a true falling-out, and in the end jiang cheng is more or less unscathed reputation-wise while wei wuxian falls.

that isn't selfless. it's many things! it's respecting his clan and his ancestors, it's making a good plan for the future of his sect and cultivation... but it isn't a truly selfless in the interest of what's right rather than in the interest of duty and what's good for him and his family lineage.

that brings me to my next point: even though wei wuxian hid the truth of the golden core transfer, jiang cheng spent nearly 20 years believing that the golden core "renewal" he was given was a birthright gift of wei wuxian's from baoshan-sanren, an immortal sect teacher of wei wuxian's mother's and a martial elder to wei wuxian.

of course we all know that's a big fat lie, but jiang cheng believed that wei wuxian gave up a critical emergency use gift to him for decades! he was lied to, yes, but jiang cheng immediately agreed without even needing to be convinced. the light in his dead eyes came back with hope the moment wei wuxian even said baoshan-sanren's name. he accepted wei wuxian's offer to give that up to him and take it via identity theft without missing a beat.

with how mysterious and revered baoshan-sanren is, that's obviously not a light sacrifice to just give up to anyone, no matter how close they might be to you. pretending to be wei wuxian to take the gift could even be considered dangerous. what if she found out and got offended? could wei wuxian be hurt by that?

jiang cheng doesn't even hesitate. wei wuxian is the one who mentions that if jiang cheng doesn't pretend to be him, the immortal master could get angry and they'd both be goners. and funnily enough, the day they do go to "the mountain", jiang cheng is the one worried and suspiciously wondering if wei wuxian was lying to him or had misremembered.

of course they've both been traumatized like hell prior to this point. but still: it speaks to how broken he was at the moment as well as to his character overall.

i digress: jiang cheng "gets his golden core back" via what he believed was a gift that should've been wei wuxian's to use in serious emergencies. rather than use it for himself, wei wuxian risked his own safety and gave it to jiang cheng... and jiang cheng still ends up embittered and angry, believing that wei wuxian is arrogant and selfish.

if he truly views them as 100% brothers and equals with no caveats, why would he think that way? it's not like he needs to grovel before wei wuxian for doing that, or to reciprocate... but this is what i mean when i say jiang cheng feels he is owed things by wei wuxian. wei wuxian's actions hold a very different weight in jiang cheng's mind, and jiang cheng himself doesn't ever act the same way, except once.

is it wrong for him to feel like he is owed something? it depends. many asian cultures, including my own, feel that a person owes their family in ways that may not make sense to westerners. for example, it's considered normal for a child to owe their parents for giving birth to them, or to other caretakers for feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating them, etc.

however, something like verbally saying "thank you" or "i'm sorry" to family is considered crazy- why would you owe that? you're supposed to inconvenience your family; saying thank you or sorry is the sort of thing you say to a stranger or acquaintance. i get half-seriously lectured by my elders on this a lot even now, even though they know such phrases are just considered good manners in the US.

this muddies up the idea of wei wuxian being jiang cheng's family vs his family's charge or servant even more. jiang cheng wants wei wuxian to be close... but ultimately doesn't really choose to use what power he DOES have to protect wei wuxian. he considers himself still owed something that in his mind wei wuxian flagrantly never repays.

this isn't even getting into how despite spending a majority of his time with the yiling patriarch he never once noticed that wei wuxian stopped using any spiritual power-based cultivation. even lan wangji, who met them far more rarely, realized that something was wrong and that wei wuxian had taken some sort of spiritual damage, hence the "come with me to gusu".

of course manpain is fun and i'm not immune to the juicy idea of them reconciling and talking things out... but jiang cheng is deeply mired in his own desire to be "above" wei wuxian in multiple ways, and doesn't realize the extent of wei wuxian's actions, the intentions behind them, and the consequences wei wuxian knowingly faced for them.

to not recognize this about jiang cheng, especially in the novels, is really revisionist if you ask me. i reiterate that i really do like him a lot. he's flawed, angry, traumatized and has poor coping mechanisms, an overall fascinating character... but he is not selfless nor ideal, and i seriously draw the line at people saying he is.

wen ning shoves this all into his face at lotus pier to disastrous results. it is the reason why jiang cheng's a total mess at guanyin temple, and the reason jiang cheng ultimately doesn't tell wei wuxian about the fact that he ran towards the wens on purpose.

for that one last act of his to have really been selfless, he needs to not seek anything in return. he did it purely because it was right to do to protect someone else. if that means wei wuxian never finds out about it, so be it.

that moment that ended up causing jiang cheng irreversible harm is not a debt that wei wuxian owes him. it hurts, but no matter how bitter it is, that realization is so important to him changing in the future.

[shattteredvisage]

the four casket spaces left in logan's mausoleum. a stone fortress that he bought but didn't build himself. literally made by a man who sold pet supplies. carved into the side while he is laid to rest in the middle, forcing them to orbit him forever. he knew his children would be the only ones to never leave him - loyal dogs until the end. and because it's what logan says will happen, the world shifts to make it come true. the cage is open so why won't you leave??

[squuote]

took me forever to kinda realize this but I do love how the narrator often changes the dialogue every other reset because it follows along in suit with this piece of dialogue in the countdown ending

which basically implies that more often than not, he completely switches around the story to his whim whenever he gets a bit too bored with the previous concept he wrote up. Even if it’s not connected to this dialogue, I love that it fits so perfectly. I know it’s like a big portion of the countdown dialogue and I’m sure everyone has already realized it but I don’t think I ever saw anyone bring it up. just how many iterations of this story has the dude made up.

[redpandavvstuffs]

"We need more clomplex female characters!!!"

Yall mfs couldn't even handle her 💀

[the-meme-monarch]

hello!! i really love ur work, n ur scc stuff!! they are so fun n awesome!! if u dont mind can i ask if u could give more insight on their parents?? or like how did sweet and cap'n went to live with k_k??

TEEHEE THANK YOU :] currently im thinking k_k isn’t their Legal Guardian. sweet & cap’n live in the library dark world w their parents, but before cyberworld’s fountain was Opened they could just go back and forth between them, and the music shop is close enough that they can just walk there ! with it Now opened however, cyberworld is kinda closed off from any other dark world, i imagine this is how it works with any dark worlds(the only reason in chapter 1 you just just walk from castle town into card kingdom is bc castle town is a Pure Dark fountain dark world and they’re right next to each other)

the way i picture the Whole Entire Dark World is that Every room has a dark world in it, they have a fountain innately, their fountain being Opened is what allows lightners(like the fun gang) to access that room’s dark world. and having their fountain open blocks them off from any other dark world that doesn’t have an open fountain/is a pure dark world like castle town. i hope that makes sense. but then like ralsei says, Closing that fountain destroys the world it had, turning it fully back into the room it was, it no longer harbors a dark world, effectively killing every darkner there.

but so with cyberworld’s fountain opened they wouldn’t Be Able to go back home, and then they had to be relocated to castle town what with kris having to Close cyberworld’s fountain and that rendering that world inert. but hey their parents are Suffocating so. even if they can go back(and they can, since the library’s dark fountain isn’t open) they are ok w taking an extended break from them.

perhaps a kinder alternative is sweet and cap’n convinced their parents to let them stay w kk for the school semester so they’ve been staying w him for a while now pre-the-game’s-events. maybe their parents had to go on a business trip or smth

as for insight on their parents ! im not really sure how to talk abt it ! their brand of abuse is kinda hard to pin down! you look at all these specific instances and you can say ‘yeah, this is abuse’ but you try to put it together and it’s like. but they care. they only said that because they care. and you genuinely believe that they care. but it’s still abuse. they love you but it is still abuse. and a lot of the time these instances of abuse are not enough to Remember what happened but they happen enough that this feeling of resentment about it stacks up and it’s always there, even when the abuse aren’t happening, you remember it even when you get along. their love feels… not quite transactional or conditional but you feel like you Can screw up badly enough that they’ll stop loving you. so you feel you have to be perfect for them but it seems like it’s never enough. you feel like you’re losing. k_k lost. he got tired of trying. of Having to try. he feels incredibly guilty that he just Left his siblings behind like that. he had to play Third Parent to them growing up and now as far as he’s concerned he’s Abandoned them. and they still want him. he’s worried they’re fighting for his affection just like they are w their parents. he doesn’t know how to express that he wants them too. that his love isn’t conditional, ever. and yeah, sometimes sweet and cap’n are mad that he left. dealing with it all was easier when he was around. but they know in his position they would have done the exact same thing.

[highdefinitions]

who else up wondering about the reason to take more

mitch marner & twin-sized mattress by the front bottoms