#I hate him but he’s interesting enough

[pininiu]

Yeah…

Drew the Bulb Burglar

[artgletic]

case study of the self-identified god

[fiona-fififi]

Call me homophobic, but I don't actually think it's great representation to stick a complex, dynamic, newly-realized bisexual character permanently with a flat, boring, underdeveloped love interest just because that was the first guy who showed interest.

[ruporas]

special operatives (silly interaction beneath read more)

[ID: Digital Art in color of Trigun Maximum, characters included are Wolfwood, Elendira, and Legato in a casual meeting situation. The piece consists of orangey yellow lighting and purple shadows. Wolfwood sits on the left side, facing Elendira who’s on the right. He’s seated on a plain wooden chair with one knee up and he’s holding the strap to his Punisher in his left hand while his right sits against his thigh, He has an irritated expression as he speaks to Elendira. Elendira is sitting in a fancier seat, her right arm rests against Wolfwood’s propped up knee, her left hand holds her suitcase. She’s sitting cross legged with an amused expression. Legato can be seen in the back at the center of the image in his mobile body case, one of his eyes shown to be glaring at Wolfwood. End ID]

[ID: Sketch, uncolored comic. Elendira says to Wolfwood, “I’m not telling you to dedicate yourself to him, but just accept the situation at hand. We could get along better if we were on the same page.” Wolfwood responds, “Don’t peg me me for an optimist. I’m not dumb. But, I’m also not going to just live in resignation. Plus, I don’t have any interest in getting along with ya.” Elendira coos, “Aw, you sure? I have a wonderful shoulder to cry on when the weak people you’re trying to protect eventually dies in the coming months. Though, I guess it’s fine. Someone like you might just die before then anyway...” She snickers in her hand while Wolfwood is speechless and just glares. Legato is faintly drawn in the back, glaring at Wolfwood, muttering “worthless” repetitively. End ID]

[kacievvbbbb]

Mihawk is such a capricious dude, oh my god. The only dude you know who is always itching for a fight but only ever a specific kind of fight so he goes out of his way to take the path of least resistance for everything else.

Like he would rather leave than fight Don krieg, Sail away than decimate the marines, live in peace instead of challenging the other emperors for the one piece. And when they do he’d rather follow buggy’s idea of just being smarter about how they go about it instead of brute forcing it like the rest. He is constantly leaving fights but then a swordsman of mild repute and an interesting technique engages him in a battle and suddenly you have his whole attention. Like with vista it was obvious that he could have just cleared him like he did everyone else but he’d never seen the flower sword techinque and by god was he going to miss this chance. And so he engages him in what is essentially a spare.

Because Mans isn’t looking for a fight, instead, like a middle aged director of a short indie film, he’s chasing a feeling.

He wants to feel like his 19 year old self did when he was strong but there were people stronger. When there were still obstacles to overcome limits to exceed. When the world was large and exciting and he wasn’t just waiting for it to catch up with him. When he could look at Shanks as the person he is instead of the person he could have been.

He wants to look at Shanks and not see visions of a grinning red haired boy with 2 arms and a strawhat laughing in the dirt and asking for “just one more round Hawky I swear I’ll beat you this time”

But there is nowhere Mihawk can run that that boy won’t haunt him.

[thechy-fychannel]

y'all ever think abt how it was julie having the affair and it is even said multiple times that she was the one who left him, yet wilson was still the one who left their home and moved in with house. like. he couldn't bear to stay in their home alone. he immediately ran to house and stayed on his couch for weeks. suffered through his pranks and his laziness and his manipulation. telling him he wants him gone while sabotaging his attempts to leave. and he only left once he got a girlfriend again.

[ube-bluebay]

i have a problem

really long rambling in tags

[gingermintpepper]

Why did Apollo favor the trojans in the Illiad?

So, dear Anon, I've been thinking about how to answer this question since I got it a couple days ago and I think I kind of want to make something clear before I get into it.

The Iliad by itself as a poem only covers some of the events that occur in the final year of a long protracted conflict that had been brewing for at least two decades and was an active war for ten. Within the space of the Iliad itself, the motivations and affairs of the major players are often referenced but there are many, many parts of the story that are not there because they belong to a different story cycle that has been since lost or was never recorded with words. In the space of the Iliad Apollo's motivations are questioned a lot - his pride is questioned by Poseidon who thinks Apollo should be just as angry at the Trojans as he considering Apollo was treated equally as poorly by Laomedon while they worked together. His honour is questioned by Hera who chastises him for taking the Trojans' side when he'd proclaimed that Achilles would live a long life and prosper at Thetis and Peleus' wedding. His own sister calls him a coward for refusing to fight when Zeus gives permission for the gods to go wild on the battlefield. For all that there's this image of Apollo in the Iliad as some staunch and unwavering protector of the Trojans, believe it or not, I largely think of Apollo as neutral in the war.

Which, I suppose, comes back to the question - why did Apollo favour the Trojans? The truthful answer is that I don't know. The Iliad and all its connected stories isn't something I've done enough research on to have an answer or a reference to an answer off the top of my head. The reasoning I'm aware of is that Apollo was a Patron God of Troy and really a god doesn't need any reason besides that to protect his people but it's not like Apollo abandoned the Greeks either. Calchas is the biggest example of that I can point to - descended directly from a priest of Apollo and one who attributed his mantic power to the god, Calchas was pivotal in ensuring the Greeks even got to Troy in the first place.

From a personal perspective however, I think Apollo was more dedicated to the house of Priam than he was the city of Troy itself. Apollo's affection for that house and all its members ran deep - from his admiration of Hecuba and Hector to his love and attempted courtship of Cassandra to his blessings given to Helenus, Deiphobos, Cassandra, Troilus and even his partnership with Paris - Apollo loved the house of Priam. When you think about the times Apollo lashes out against the Greeks, it's generally because they've done some nonsense to earn his ire. The plague was caused by Agamemnon disrespecting his priest, his aid in the slaughter of Patroclus was because he didn't respect him, his minor grudge against Diomedes too was because he tried to test Apollo's mettle and well, the less said about Achilles the better. Apart from his obvious favouring of Hector in the skirmishes, Apollo doesn't really oppose the Greeks. He has a ton of reasons to by the time the Iliad rolls around, including avenging the death of two of his sons, but he remains mostly satisfied with conducting his father's business and overseeing the war from a somewhat professional perspective. To me, it's always been less about Apollo caring about the fate of Troy as a city itself and more about him just really wanting to protect the people in the city that he's come to love and respect.

Of course, I encourage you to take my words with a big tablespoon of salt - like I said, I don't really know enough about the facts in particular to give a solid, confident answer but I can give you my interpretation of it. Maybe consult someone like @littlesparklight for a more comprehensive and grounded response 🤔

[vic-does-battlecats]

Minor spoilers for the already revealed chapters of the next A Starless Clan book Wind

[scruncheduppaper]

if i see one more ford hate post on my tl im genuinely going to go insane

YES hes a dick but a) hes a fictional character b) he CHANGES and DEVELOPS and REDEEMS HIMSELF BY THE END OF THE SERIES and c) ITS COOL THAT HE HAS AN EGO. ITS COOL

and also im starting to lose interest in fiddlestan because at this point its becoming clear that people only ship it because they dont like ford and they think that fidds doesnt deserve him AS IF THE CONFLICT ISNT THE APPEAL OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP??? AS IF IT ISNT THE POINT??? AND AS IF THEIR RECONCILIATION BY THE END OF THE STORY ISNT A PERFECT ENDING TO FORDS ARC im gonna bite someone i swear.

look someone on twitter said that “some fiddlestan shippers are just fiddauthor shippers in disguise” and its PISSING ME THE FUCK OFF because IM SORRY DO YOU GUYS NOT SHIP CHARACTERS BECAUSE YOU’RE INTERESTED IN DIFFERENT RELATED CHARACTER DYNAMICS?? WHAT ARE YOU JUST HERE FOR THE LOVEY DOVEY SHIT??? the REASON why fiddlestan is INTERESTING TO ME in the FIRST PLACE is because it elaborates on both of these characters with respect to their relationships to ford!!! there’s nothing wrong with the fact that theyre connected to him!!! these arent real people, these are characters that act as vehicles to explores messages in stories!!! of COURSE i only ship fiddlestan in relation to fiddauthor, why would i cut ford out here completely when it’s SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING TO RECOGNISE THEIR COMPLEX DYNAMICS IN RELATION TO HIM???

and i hear people going like “oh well i just wanna see fiddleford happy!!” and im like. but without the conflict. like who is he. some twink you can just mold however you want?? without his Flaws and his Complex Relationships with his family and ford and his eventual descent into madness What are you Seeing in him?? not to mention the fact that i dont think stan would treat him better anyways lol

and also im getting the vibe that the reason a lot of people ship fiddlestan nowadays is because people like. dislike ford?? and i said this just now but like hes genuinely such an interesting character as well and it makes me sad to see that the only people who appreciate his character idolise him without seeing his flaws and literally everyone else just hates him like YALL TALK SHIT ABT LIKING MORALLY GREY CHARACTERS BUT WHEN A CHARACTER ACTUALLY IS MORALLY GREY YOU TURN AROUND AND GO LIKE “ehhhhh” like COME ON PLEASE YOU HAVE TO SEE THE VISION FORD IS STILL COOL AND IM GONNA DEFEND HIM WITH MY LIFE

its actually kinda pissing me off the amount of fluffy characterisation fiddlestan gets within the fandom, at the expense of ford, bc oh my fucking godddd PLEASEEE CAN WE HAVE THE ERA WHEN I FIRST DISCOVERED FIDDLESTAN BACKKK BECAUSE THE CONTENT THEN WAS SO FUCKING GOOD

[ardentpoop]

you guys really don’t get him tbfh

[bellybiologist]

Old art revisit for Oct 11th!

This Iida (from My hero academy) Stuffing+WG comic I did back in 2019 is making rounds on twitter for soooome reason, so I figured it's a good candidate to bring up!

Iida is my favorite in that show, but isnt/wasnt(?) a popular subject in the belly kink circles, so this was 50% made in spite of that. :P

[niinnyu]

Here's why I think the Gojo bait is not great writing and why you should maybe think so too (Spoilers till jjk 260).

We've spent the last few chapter consistently establishing a few things about our protagonist (Yuuji) and our antagonist(Sukuna).

1. Yuuji's father's soul is a reincarnation of Sukuna's twin: This instantly creates a connection between Sukuna and Yuuji.

As if you needed one outside of Sukuna's constant mockery of his former vessel's lack of "competance", and that most of yuuji's biggest losses can be attributed to Sukuna, building his wrath brick by brick. But surely adds to it all.

2. Yuuji feels incredibly lonely right now: Anyone he's created any sort of meaningful (?) Bond with outside of just 'hey you're an ally I can fight alongside with' is currently either dead or greatly incapacitated.

3. Also ofc the absolute damage that Yuuji has started incurring on sukuna. Damage that the slew of sorcerors before him couldn't. Forget about everyone teaching him abou love, Yuuji will show him Burning Rage.

This while also having hinted at Yuuji being possibly strong enough to do so on his own. He can go head to head with the King Of Curses with or without the help of his fellow sorcerors once he is able to harness this power.

Anything that was Gojo vs Sukuna feels absolutely irrelevant with the build up that Gege themself has been creating through the past few chapters.

Gojo's form right at the end of the chapter undercuts the pacing completely. Readers are more interested in those last 2 panels of Gojo which are completely removed from and rather jarring to the buildup between Yuuji and Sukuna. Fan interest in Gojo isn't their fault because that's what the chapter makes you focus on.

The only way I see this continue the buildup is if this is somehow Yuuji's doing or done with his knowledge, in which case it'd have been better to end the chapter by showing that Yuuji is aware of it and has an ace up his sleeve, bringing it back to the 2 relevent characters, and for people to stew in what Yuuji could be up to for a week.

But no matter what Gojo's visage there means, Yuuji in this moment has been so greatly undermined, not by his lack of strength, not by Sukuna outright demeaning him, but by the writing itself. By Gege.

And oh, how Yuuji deserves better.

[paimonial-rage]

wriothesley 3, 16, 17 :3 -- @milkstore

[Character Analysis Ask Meme]

What is Wriothesley’s mbti/enneagram?

Wriothesley is a 9w8 ESTP sp/so.

What is the best way to win Wriothesley’s heart?

Wriothesley is a simple man, and simple men require simple methods. Simply put, the best way to win Wriothesley’s heart is to flirt with him. He doesn’t need much more than that. Challenge him, tease him, take him by surprise. Play hot and cold. Accept his invitations for tea, then spurn his advancements the next. Present yourself as a catch, dance right out of his reach, and let his instincts kick in. But make sure you’re having fun too. It’s not a game if both people aren’t having fun.

What are Wriothesley’s strengths in a relationship?

Of the many traits Wriothesley was blessed with, two that stand out are his level-headedness and his tendency toward action. No matter what you may go through as a couple, he will not be overcome by stress or fear. You can always trust him to be solid no matter the storm. Not to mention you can trust he will not take the backseat in your relationship. If there is anything wrong, he will address it. But more than that, if he sees the chance to make you happy, he will take it, whether it’d be bringing home flowers or taking you on a date to something you want to see. In a relationship, he won’t let you feel alone.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

To elaborate more on the Pesterquest stuff -

Alternia is a hell world. It's shitty to live in, even if you're a highblood, unless you fit a very specific mold of person AND are lucky enough to be born of a high caste. Every troll character we care about is, in some way, fucked over by their relationship to their society; Eridan and Vriska get it the worst, having been forced to participate in the murdering side of things since they were young, but every lowblood is screwed and every highblood is made worse even just by their passive participation. Kanaya becomes less sympathetic because she seems completely at peace with the society she grew up in, and Feferi wants to enforce casteism, even if it's of a different flavor. Gamzee and Equius both hold genuinely casteist beliefs and attitudes, which slip out and alienate them from the people they care about.

Putting a friendship simulator into the middle of all this is... a choice, I guess. I'm not going to begrudge anyone for wanting that or liking that, but it's going to be inherently at odds with what Alternia is and is meant to represent, and thus, fundamentally at odds with many of the characters' arcs and even basic personality traits, so heavily are they influenced by the shit society they grew up in.

For a non-Eridan example, Karkat loathes himself in massive part because his society loathes him. He's kill-on-sight and lives in daily terror of death. He wears a symbol at all because not having one marks him as even more of a freak, even though he knows that that symbol is connected to the empire's biggest rebel, whose footsteps he is expected to follow. The reason he's so obsessed with being leader-y and earning his teammates' reapect, or the respect of anybody, is because he's so deeply insecure about whether or not he even deserves to exist.

If you soften Alternia to the point you can write a lighthearted friendship simulator in it, then that characterization... goes away. Karkat is no longer motivated by deep, overwhelming insecurities, which drive him to idolize the society that deems him unworthy, mistakenly believing that if he can find validation in that society, he'll feel less bad about himself. Instead, Karkat is just kind of an asshole!

It's the same way with Eridan. He and Karkat are equal and opposite in this way - while Karkat is marked for death by his society, Eridan belongs to the extremely privileged caste of sea dweller royalty - even moreso than Feferi, as Feferi is slated to be murdered by the Condesce as soon as she comes of age (and her ridiculous optimism is likely something she cultivated in outright defiance of this fate). But it turns out that being a sea dweller sucks shit, too, if you aren't the extremely niche type of person that society deems "correct."

Eridan is not actually casteist and genuinely likes his land dweller friends - and this is unacceptible. Not only that, but smaller "unacceptible" offenses are wrapped up in big ones - despite not liking murder and feeling guilty about it, murder is objectively the correct thing for Eridan to be doing, constantly, to the point of it being "all [he's] ever done practically," because if he doesn't fulfil the duty of his bloodline to be murdering lusii (and by extension, their charges, who are culled when their lusii die), EVERYBODY dies. The constant push-pull of trauma, societal expectations and obligations, the fate of the species, and the fact that he is inherently not the "right" kind of person for his society, are pretty much his entire character. He's basically a walking ball of anxiety and emotional turmoil.

So, again, if you soften Alternia to the point where you can write a story about Eridan wanting to see Shrek in a public theater (something he would not actually be able to peacefully do in canon Alternia - at least not without taking off his cape, hiding his fins, and going anonblood - as sea dwellers are considered ridiculously hostile to the point even Gamzee's nervous about being on the beach for too long), Eridan ends up being just kind of an asshole!

Pesterquest!Eridan is, and I cannot stress this enough, fundamentally not the same guy as canon Eridan. They have practically nothing in common, from the fact that PQ!Eridan is willing to do something for leisure, to the fact that he isn't widely feared and the movie theater doesn't empty out in a panic when he turns up, even down to the fact that he likes femme fashion (canon Eridan goes to Lengths to lean into masc fashion) and Shrek (canon Eridan is a hipster). Hell, even the fact that PQ!Eridan SMILES is a massive deviation from canon!Eridan, who has never once been depicted smiling, and probably hasn't for many sweeps.

Also that he has that much beef with Sollux when, canonically, the two had a lukewarm mutual dislike and didn't even bother interacting until Feferi was added to the mix and Eridan became mad that Sollux was dating her. He wasn't even casteist about him until then, and after, even Sollux and Feferi don't think he's casteist, they just think he's ashenflirting so he can get into a quad with Feferi. Like come on, if you're going to feature another troll in Eridan's route, 1) make it be Karkat, and 2) have Eridan cheat on you the whole time with Karkat like he does to Feferi.

Eridan is just overall a wild choice in a friendship sim - I can't even blame them for just writing an OC and putting an Eridan skin on top - because societally, Eridan isn't even supposed to have non-sea dweller friends. The sea dweller/land dweller race war is something the Condesce deliberately put into place in order to keep land dwelling nobility in line, and Equius cites it as one of the reasons he never got along with Eridan. Like, the very fact that Eridan talks to two land dwellers on friendly terms (Kanaya and Karkat) is a MASSIVE deviation from what he's "supposed" to be like, and a huge hint that he's not as casteist as he'd like to appear. You are genuinely hundreds, if not thousands, of times likelier to end an encounter with Eridan either orphaned or dead than as his friend. He's an unstable maniac, and there's a reason so many members of his team don't like him even though he's legitimately not casteist and they mostly seem aware of it (nobody really complains about or even notices Eridan's casteism by the time they're on the meteor - his contradictions are really obvious, and it's likely that they've more or less realized that he's full of shit).

Again, I don't begrudge anybody for wanting or liking PQ. Who cares, really. I'm just saying that as a canon discussion blog, there's not really any place for PQ because it's so far removed from canon that, like, there's not really anything meaningful to discuss about it. The setting and characters in PQ are fundamentally divested from canon, and not even in an AU way. And it's totally fine if that's what you like, but, yeah, like.

Was Eridan written well (where "well" = accurate to canon): no. Maybe he's fine as an OC with an Eridan Minecraft skin slapped on, but that's not my beautiful son, that's not my baby boy.

What did they get wrong about Eridan (where "wrong" = inaccurate to canon): all.

What route would I have written for Eridan: he shoots you with a gun and you die. And then maybe cheats on you with Karkat

[yellowocaballero]

Continuing the JJK posting: Gojo is such a mystifying character.

Action show where swinging out the gate you introduce a character who is so incredibly powerful you then have to, before every fight, establish why Gojo can't just show up and fix the problem in seconds. His existence weakens the stakes of everything. The rest of the show you are backflipping ridding yourself of him. He jobs two major bad guys off the gate and every subsequent extensive fight with them feels like cleaning up his leftovers. Put him in a box, he's ruining the game balance. So absolutely broken. As a writer it makes your job so difficult, but it's also the entire point of him. "Hey I want to write the single most badass character of all time who can do the most insane shit but I will also engage with that", rock on king.

I think he's most interesting when understood as somebody who is fundamentally alien and removed from ordinary human thought processes. In his world there is absolutely nothing he cannot do, and the thought 'maybe I can't do something' just doesn't occur to him. He is capable of doing whatever he wants and of killing anybody who tries to stop him from doing what he wants. If he is not doing something, it is because he does not want to do it. If he wants to do something (kill all of his superiors) and he's not doing it, it's because he doesn't think it's the most effective route towards what he has decided to do. I think this informs the majority of his actions (and, importantly, what he doesn't do)(murder). I think he's reasoned out that you should have a general reason to do things, and it feels like sheer luck that he places value and meaning in human life, and as such you shouldn't kill them without a strong reason. Watching the flashback arc, if I hadn't seen a) JJK and b) Naruto and you asked me which shitty teen became a law abiding school teacher and which became a mass murderer I would have guessed the wrong ones.

Anyway, the way I like to think of him, he's a raging narcissist with a god complex to match. Horrifically, he's actually a good teacher, but he is also a teacher as an ego/'raising my child army' thing. He would be the kind of mother who is a good mother but lowkey had kids also as an ego/unconditional love/lots of attention/'surely my child will worship me' thing. Gets randomly into new hobbies, obsesses over them, gorges himself on the novelty factor, before dropping them in a week once he gets too good at them. Rinse and repeat. The only hobby that does not eventually grow boring is annoying people, so it's his only hobby. Geto told him age 15 that he'll never have any friends if he keeps on casually reminding people that they live on his sufferance, so he developed another back-up hobby more conducive for friendship of helping people forget that they live on his sufferance. This has convinced him that he's a god of subterfuge, intrigue, and trickery. Does eat women out, but is convinced that this makes him God's gift to women, and is actually pretty terrible in bed because his partner's desires never even occur to him. Is convinced he's as good at sex as he is everything else. Sex is actually the one thing he's bad at, but he's not ready to hear that.

In S1 he overall left me with the general impression that his entire idea of how high school worked was sourced from anime, and as such decided that being a teacher involved nothing but field trips, sports games, beach episodes, sports festivals, etc. Did not know how the classroom component worked so he skips it. Jossed, but also left me convinced that it would be very funny if he was an immortal 150-whatever years old and had founded the high school himself out of, you guessed it, an ego thing, and never once properly learned how high schools worked and just arbitrarily made his own aging students the new principals so he could continue engaging in training the kids who are too Misfit (TM) to get apprenticeships and living his fun slice of life anime life and raising a child army of kids who will worship him any day now. Annnyyyy day now. Any day now.