#I know a lot of people like to rant about her but tbh her character had so much potential to be a fan favourite | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

erumai-maadu · 5 months ago

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Just noting down some things about Tenten that influence my view of her characterization/personality. primarily for my own reference as i’m writing, as well as to kind of get a more mature and consistent characterization of her than i had before. this gonna be an extremely long and rambling post, (where I think I repeat myself a whole lot oops) and there’s not really anything profound, just some traits i’m pulling from canon and interpreting.

most of Tenten’s ’canon’ characterization comes from filler and databooks, which I then further interpret, so a lot of her characterization in this post is three degrees of fanon/headcanon, with some liberties taken where I dislike the interpretation.

We’re introduced to Tenten during the chunin exams, where she’s seen throwing kunai at a target dummy that Neji is sitting under. She casually throws her kunai and hits the target dead center, instantly showing her marksmanship skill, but also Neji’s implicit trust in her since he doesn’t even flinch and the target is pretty much right over his head. This ties in later but basically, he fully trusts that she will not miss.

We see Tenten again before the first round of the chunin exams, while Izumo and Kotetsu are blocking the door. The thing I find notable in that scene is Tenten not being immune to Sasuke LOL.

(Manga panel grabbed from @tentenarchive)

it's interesting to me that her thing is specifically that there's not a single scratch on him, and that he's "cool". Makes sense given that she's on a team with Gai and Lee and she desperately wants them to be cool too. And she dislikes weak people so yeah, of course it's cool to her that he's untouchable.

Actually on this topic, Tenten's taste seems to be "cool people"? In a filler episode (naruto 162) she thinks that the lord of a local land is really cute when she sees him get down for his palanquin. The lord's whole thing is that he's like cold and cool and pensive etc. so this seems to be Tenten's taste to some degree. He turns out to actually be a girl in the end so yknow. bi Tenten confirmed.

Here's her page from the first databook (screenshotted from The Narutoversity). She gets annoyed at Lee injuring himself for Sakura's sake, which I'm pretty sure isn't really out of care so much as it is that they're in the middle of the forest of death in like. the worst situation possible. Love how Ino's just standing there like "what the fuck kind of medical care is this".

I generally dislike the stats since I find that they’re inaccurate to what we see on-panel (a whole rant I could go on another time tbh), and Kishimoto tends to skew them egregiously in favor of characters he particularly likes. Ex: genin era Neji’s total is 21, and shippuden Tenten’s is 20.5. You cannot seriously be telling me that Neji as a genin is stronger than chunin Tenten three years in the future. Come on Kishimoto. There are a few things of note here though, so let’s go through them anyway.

Tenten’s highest stat is her speed, at 3, which is the same as Sasuke from the same databook. So clearly, she’s fast, especially since Sasuke is known for his speed. She's not as fast as Lee, but still quick on her feet and dexterous, with fast reflexes. Makes sense, since the second databook describes her fighting style as “dancing flexibly and firing speedily”.

Her strength is a 1 and her stamina is a 1.5, which is insane to me. Like she’s on Team Gai???? They do 500 laps around Konoha and 1000+ pushups every day???? I reject canon here, fuck u kishi, I know she’s actually buff as hell and has hella stamina.

Her intelligence is a 2, which might seem super low but it matches Sasuke's intelligence, and is only 0.5 lower than Neji and Temari's. I think it just goes to show that the scale for these stats is skewed as hell. But basically what this means is that she operates at a similar level to Sasuke, Temari, and Neji, where she picks up on the things around her, and while she isn't operating on the level of Shikamaru, she's still a good strategist.

Back to the actual show, we get to the elimination round and her fight against Temari (episode 43). I’m basing this part off the anime because their fight in the manga is like three panels long.

So technically, this is “filler” (as if any tenten fan really cares lol).

From the Hokage's commentary, her battle sense is pretty good. She positions herself a perfect distance away from the enemy. She's trying to bait Temari into attacking, to see what her power is and figure out how to counter it, and Temari calls her out on it.

Tenten isn't a 200 IQ genius strategist the way Shikamaru is, but she is still a smart fighter. We can see she thinks in a similar way to him (and Temari) feeling out the enemy's power and what they can do before counterattacking strategically. I need them to be best friends tbh.

Her first reaction when she throws her shuriken at Temari and misses is surprise. She is deeply confident in her own abilities, so it's genuinely shocking to her. She yells "I missed? There's no way!" and in the stands, Gai also insists up and down that Tenten never misses.

She has the utmost confidence in herself, and from the rest of her team. None of them have any doubt in her, and this also ties back to that introductory scene. No wonder Neji let her chuck kunai at targets near him. It's probably something she does regularly too.

Tenten loses to Temari, and is immediately down on herself. We see a lot of this in Shippuden 237, where she's lying in the hospital and loses all her confidence in herself and her abilities.

Shippuden 237 shows us that Tenten does actually have self-esteem issues, even before this fight with Temari. During their first year as genin, when Lee keeps getting defeated by Neji, Tenten tells Lee that he really should just give up on beating Neji, because he's a genius, and Lee is not. It's clear in the voice acting and the expressions that to some extent, Tenten isn't just speaking about Lee when she says this, she's also speaking about herself.

She seems to compare herself a lot to others, often in a negative light, talking down about herself when others are better than her, but still trying her best to surpass them.

But the way she talks after losing to Temari is much worse. Her match with Temari affects her deeply, and likely for many years to come. I think it becomes one of her primary motivations to become stronger, as she keeps holding that moment as her lowest point and vowing to never be that helpless against an opponent again.

Headcanons here. After her fight with Temari, Tenten also throws herself into learning 1) fire jutsu to combat Temari’s wind (this is why she develops that dragon bomb jutsu she uses during the Konoha Crush filler episode), and 2) seals that can absorb/store away opponents’ attacks.

I think Tenten’s primary chakra nature is actually lightning, which is also why she is so weak to wind chakra. I love this post by @/fineillsignup that goes into detail about chakra natures, and a lot of the traits listed under lightning nature fit with my interpretations of Tenten. I also am heavily biased toward the idea of Kakashi, who is basically student-less during the interlude period, teaching Tenten lightning jutsu since she's his husband's friend's student.

Going back to that scene in shippuden 237, I do think her talking down to Lee in their first year as genin is also interesting. Even though I love the idea of Lee and Tenten being besties before Team Gai and her standing up for him, I think the reality is that she probably didn’t really talk to him in the Academy, and once they were on the same team, she was kind to him, and learned to work with him.

Lee very specifically mentions in a flashback in episode 100 that nobody told him anything encouraging, sensei or student. This obviously includes Tenten. So while she wasn’t outright mean to him, she also didn’t have the greatest opinion of him.

She very quickly found herself relating with him, and that probably made her take out some of her own self-loathing on him at first. Eventually they become close, and form a very deep friendship, but things start out pretty rocky.

Kishimoto confirms that every day for a month between the second and final rounds of the chunin exams, Neji and Tenten train together in secret to help him reverse-engineer the 8 trigrams 64 palms and the rotation. It’s interesting that everyone else goes to train with a jounin and only Neji chooses to train with his teammate.

I think this implies Tenten to be a good secret keeper and evidence that Neji already told her about the cursed seal and all the clan drama. During Neji’s speech to Naruto, Tenten’s reaction is shown alongside Hiruzen and Hiashi’s, both of whom already know all about the curse mark and his father’s death. So Neji has told Tenten as well.

Plus Tenten is uniquely suited to help with Rotation, since she can throw a billion knives no jutsu.

During Naruto vs Neji, Tenten gets used as the mouthpiece to explain Neji's attacks, which also shows how well she knows him after training with him for the Chunin exams, but she's also genuinely impressed when Naruto wins, and even compliments him.

There's a brief scene during Shikamaru v Temari where Tenten comments about how she couldn't beat Temari. Also look at her arms. A 1 for her strength stat??? with those arms??? sure kishi.

Okay, we move on to when Orochimaru attacks Konoha, and there’s this filler episode (shippuden 192) where Hinata gets kidnapped by Kumo shinobi. This episode has some small Tenten moments, where you can also see how Neji thinks of her, and I like them a lot.

We start off with Tenten going to check in on Neji after his conversation with Hiashi, and he actually opens up and tells her all about what they had just spoken about, another sign that he's told her about everything with his clan.

When Hinata is kidnapped and the Hyuuga Elder makes Neji go get her, Tenten comes with him, not out of any particular concern for Hinata, but purely to back up Neji. I doubt she likes Hinata much at first (my eyes were opened after this post by @tentenismybitch), so she’s doing this more for Neji’s sake.

As they're chasing after the man who kidnapped Hinata, they get caught in a trap, and Tenten tells Neji to leave her behind (strategic thinking) and Neji only hesitates for a second before agreeing and going on ahead. Neji expresses that this is because he knows Tenten can handle herself.

We see her using a new jutsu (the Dragon Bomb), which as I mentioned before, I think she developed with Temari in mind.

During the Hokage’s funeral we do see her in funeral attire looking sad but is she really? debatable. I think no, but it’s not entirely relevant. This is all personal headcanon here, not based on canon evidence beyond extrapolating from what I’ve seen.

Tenten doesn't strike me as someone burning with loyalty to the village and harping on about the “will of fire” and whatnot. She does her duty, and that’s about it. It doesn’t go further than that. She cares about the people dear to her, but not really about the village specifically.

After the Hokage’s funeral, Tenten doesn’t appear again until the end of the Search For Tsunade arc, which I think is her last non-filler appearance in the original series other than a few flashbacks.

She’s excited about Tsunade coming to the village, and tells Neji after he trains, and asks him to come with her to go see Tsunade. Neji tells her he’s not interested, and Tenten looks a little disappointed.

We see Tenten in some flashbacks to Lee's genin years (episode 100). As Neji is talking down to Lee, Tenten doesn't really say anything, which matches with what i said earlier. But, when Gai tells them that with hard work, anyone can be a shinobi, Tenten has a similar reaction to Lee, while Neji just looks annoyed.

What Gai says seems to give her hope. That with enough hard work, anyone can become great. She doesn't think of herself as a genius, and if anything, seems to group herself with Lee in terms of ability. This is also shown in Shippuden 237, which I'll discuss later.

After this we only see Tenten in the end-of-series filler, which will be part 2 of this post since it's already really long. We'll finish off by looking at data book 2, which came out after the manga for the first series had finished.

From the second data book (screenshot also taken from the Narutoversity), we see part of her personality is being a "busybody" LMFAOOOO. So yeah she's inquisitive and curious, being a research enthusiast, but also uses that same nature to get in on everyone's business too. We can assume she's also observant and detail-oriented, can probably read people pretty well.

I like this a lot! I think Tenten is a good people person, and many find her easy to get along with. She’s probably one of those people that you accidentally find yourself telling really important or deep stuff to without really knowing why. She’s just got this air around her that’s very chill and comfortable.

But I do think she’s nosy, and does wanna know about everything, just to be in the know. She’s a little detective LOL.

The research enthusiast part is a fun thing too. She strikes me as a tinkerer, messing with new weapon designs or seal ideas, constantly turning something over in her head.

The first and second databooks list her hobby as fortune-telling, which is also really cute. I think she knows palmistry and does readings for her friends, and has some knowledge of astrology. She isn't overly superstitious, but she does believe in ghosts, and gets fairly nervous when she sees or hears something that can be considered a bad omen.

She has pride in her weapons, clearly, and her arsenal is implied to be the largest and strongest of any ninja. I’d like to assume that some of her pride comes from the weapons in her arsenal that are of her own design.

Her 'carefree, smiling face' is also an interesting point. At first I was unsure how to interpret this, but to me it reads as her being rather laid-back and carefree, despite her power and lethality. Again, not very sure how to interpret this line and I'd love to hear how anyone else sees it!

It’s cute that Tsunade coming to the village and becoming hokage made Tenten train harder. I think aside from her defeat to Temari, this becomes another major motivation for Tenten. She wants to impress Tsunade, the kunoichi that she admires most.

She says she'd like to fight Sakura, so I think there's some kind of jealousy or something to prove there since Sakura got to be Tsunade’s apprentice and Tenten didn't. This goes back to her low self-esteem and those issues she’s been having since her fight with Temari.

Shippuden 237 touches on this but Tenten did actually try to become a medical ninja for a bit, she just didn’t have the chakra control necessary. Obviously this adds to her insecurities when Sakura turns out to be a natural at medical ninjutsu with unnaturally good chakra control.

I’m not a huge fan of the ‘trying to be a mednin’ part of this ngl, I think she’s a little too fixated on weapons to truly care about medical ninjutsu, and wants to emulate Tsunade just for the ‘strongest kunoichi’ part rather than trying to be her exact carbon copy. Plus, I think (headcanon) Tenten’s chakra control has to be at least decently good in order to do seals, but that’s a different rabbit hole. I tend to disregard this in my fics and will likely continue to do so.

I do like the thing of being jealous of Sakura in some way for being Tsunade’s apprentice, though. It’s some nice flavor and I appreciate the one-sided rivalry. I think it would be funny for Sakura to think of Tenten as the cool senpai and look up to her, meanwhile Tenten is struggling to not immediately challenge her to a duel, Gai-style.

Since this is already super long, I’ll do a part 2 for all the filler arcs she’s in, and then a part 3 for shippuden.

#tenten #for reference #long post #i put a read more but just juuust in case that doesn't work I dont wanna make anyone scroll for a million years #this was fun to make! it's going to be helpful for future fics of mine

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dzvelinaskebiyars · 4 months ago

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Hajun's/Joker's analysis

(This is more like a rant tbh)

I don't see lot of people talking about Hajun, whereas I think he's fascinating character and even though there's a lot we don't know about him, he's written enough for me to rant and analyse about.

Hajun, a.k.a Joker, is a character in Windbreaker webtoon written by Yongseok Jo. He's part of Sabbath crew, which plays antagonistic role in the story. Joker's moral compass can be confusing at first because he's illegally making money, but he's also well-intented person. He has taken the role of caregiver and provider for his brothers and he seems to give everything he has to live up to that role. However, the money he's making is from underground and illegal boxing, where people bet money who's gonna win and who's gonna lose. I believe fight clubs are popular outside of this manhwa so, I'm sure you all understand what I mean. It's been shown that Hajun enjoys fights and he's fascinated by mma & martial arts, but boxing is what he has taken biggest interest in. He tends to get excited whenever he meets strong opponent (like how he immediately started a fight with Owen, who's supposedly cyclist genius) and immediately asks for a fight, whether politely or not. He never misses a chance to get into fight, not for money but because he genuinely likes fighting strong opponents. He has quick reflexes and can easily block random and sudden attacks, he's also a guy who starts throwing punches before others can even blink. Can he act impulsive? Yes. Is he a bad person? No. And I'm going to explain why.

Firstly, his little brother HATES that Hajun is making money by beating people up, hence he, himself, starts working and denies his education. Hajun, as a big brother, of course can't turn blind eye to it and hence approaches his brother about it more than once. Upon hearing what his little brother said in part 3 of Windbreaker, Joker decided to change his ways of making money so his little brother wouldn't have to work so hard especially at construction site, which is very dangerous for a kid.

Mind you, it's not easy for Hajun either because as I said, he truly enjoys fighting and he needs to make money as soon as he can but there's very little he can do without professional career or guardian. It's not only money as well, he's cooking for them, handling their healthcare and etc. He's trying his best to be emotionally available for them as well and makes sure to hear them out and be understanding in his own ways.

Aside from being caregiver to his brothers, he's a person who values fairness. He refused to against Dom Kang when it was two on one because he considered it to be unfair, he doesn't pick on weaker opponents because he knows it'd be unfair - like how he refused to block Shelly because she wasn't good at physical fights and he didn't want to injure her. But he went against his own morals few times in order to gain money, like helping Wooin with drug dealing just because Sangho gave them money.(Or maybe he thinks it's alright as long as he gets money out of it) However, Joker himself never doped and achieved everything by his own strength and skills.

His morals might be little questionable at some point but he's truly well-intented man. He even stopped cycling in the middle of race, despite being close to finish line, to save the injured puppy and go to the vet afterwards. He seems to be very responsible person as well, as he took the puppy under his care, provided for it and always made sure puppy was with him and safe. Once, he also stopped at the red light during the cycling race when he didn't have to.

He's quite hardworker as well, acknowledges his weakness and trains to improve himself. He's quite motivated character and has sportsmanship whatsoever. Author is portraying him as tough on outside, soft on the inside type of guy in the series. But again, there's more to his character that has to be explored but we're lacking information, unfortunately. A really good trait of his is that he's not changing his values and morals for someone, no matter what kind of situation he really is in. He has his priorities set straight and follows it with undying loyalty.

Tag list: @shintaru

#joker windbreaker #joker windbreaker analysis #windbreaker webtoon #windbreaker manhwa #sabbath crew

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rat-n-atty · 4 months ago

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The last gift 🎁

Animation and some soppy rambling from yours truly!

( featuring in order, @stillnothereforanyrealreason @hyperbaguette @chaosisunderratedd @fandomgoesahhhhhhhhh @echostarsys @livzees (Hi wife!) @sakuwura-meow-meow @xcoffeebomb @cookiepopcat @axelcx11z @coralalala64 @tiredsmashbros @its-a-me-mango @libbytwq @bear-boi-5 @bluestrawberrybunny @briandraws )

BOOM!

REDESIGNS ONCE AGAIN ONLY THIS TIME ATTY APPARENTLY HAS LOST HER WRISTS (jk, but now her hands float for some reason, not Rats tho...)

Okay now it's time for me to rant about all the wonderful people I have made in the animation :D

@stillnothereforanyrealreason , @hyperbaguette and @chaosisunderratedd y'all are...the best friends I had ever got the chance of meeting. We have been through the deepest shit ever in our life and yet we all still managed to still be friends and that really surprises me. You guys are my truest friends that I don't mind rambling about redeemable villains with or maybe even share some shitty humor or go to y'all for some art inspiration but overall just have a really fun time.

I want to thank you for all these crazy 2 years we have been friends for and hopefully we still continue that crazy questionable bond 💜💜💜

@fandomgoesahhhhhhhhh and @echostarsys y'all are a bunch of freaks tbh /silly but you're bestest mates that I could ever ask for! I love hanging out with you guys and yapping about who knows what whether it be Smg4 or it be your Aus! I love how passionate you two are and I love how you guys support my own small projects as well! You guys have made me feel comfortable talking about my interests in a really long time and I just want to thank you for that 💜💜💜

You guys are amazing and I hope you two never stop being you (except maybe Tari...stop being rude /silly/j)

@livzees HI WIFE YOU LOVABLE BEST PERSON I HAVE EVER MET YOU!!!!!! You are the best person I have ever had the chance to meet and get to know! You're super funny and your art is really cool and I love all that you do and create including your Rivalry Au! You don't mind if I yap too much or send you the dumbest things, you make me feel seen and noticed and I am so happy I can be silly with you (considering I proposed with an onion ring)

Seeing you pop up on my screen makes my day and being with you in VC trying to make you laugh at my dumb jokes makes me happy! I love you sm (/p) and always keep being your amazing lovable you ❤️❤️❤️❤️

@sakuwura-meow-meow , @cookiepopcat and @xcoffeebomb YOU GUYSSSSSS UGHHH WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN?????? You 3 are the coolest people ever in my eyes, even though I tend to make fun of you a lot...you mean a lot to me. You listened, you laughed, and you supported me when I felt like no was. You made me feel like I belong and that I mattered.

You all helped me get out of my shell which I am grateful for (but you should also be terrified about too, I have breeched containment and cannot be held for much longer /hj) I hope you 3 never stop being your amazing selves and I hope you know that you all hold a very special place in my half dead bitchy heart ❤️❤️❤️

@axelcx11z and @coralalala64 YOUUUU!!!! THE SILLIES!!!! YES YOU!!! YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!!! I'll have to admit...talking to you guys at first was so nerve-racking for me because I look up to y'all but after some chats...I realize y'all are just a bunch of the silliest people ever lol but I love that about yous.

Cora, you are the first person I saw on my page and instantly had to follow because I thought your art style was so cool and I think your Aus and your own characters and creatures (as deadly as they can be, one of them gave me rabies /hj) is the wonderful silly aspect about you that I love 🫴👑✨

Axel, you're the chilliest guy I have ever had the pleasure of meeting and I love how you even consider me your doppelganger considering how little we interact lol (sorry, I'm just too shy) . I still totally love all that you do tho no matter what fandom you're in; I fell in love with your style when I first saw it so never stop creating dude 🫴👑✨

@tiredsmashbros , @its-a-me-mango and @libbytwq or as I call you, the holy Smg4 Trinity /silly. It was such an honor to finally meet you all in the TSB server but to be honest I was also on the verge of having a panic attack because I was overwhelmed being surrounded by a bunch of people I look up to the most. I know I'm not active much and I barely have anything to say (unless it's about AJR or my cursed hear me outs) But I absolutely enjoyed any interaction I got.

You guys are the biggest inspirations in my life and I hope that one day I'll be able to achieve what you do (but not today lol) you guys are awesome, I love your rants and your complicated lore and most of all, I love your art and I hope you never stop doing what you love 🫴👑👑👑✨✨✨

@bear-boi-5 HI! HELLO! IT'S ME! YOU ARE ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE I LOOKED UP TO! When I first joined Tumblr, I remember your pretty little masked face /silly showing up on my screen and I immediately saw and loved it! You are such a master at traditional art and I love how detailed it is and how cool it looks!

When you first made fanart of my Smg5 I was absolutely shook considering at the time I was still a fairly small creator with only like 50 followers lmao but I want to thank you, if you didn't draw my Smg5 I probably wouldn't have drawn her much either assuming that people just hated her.

Meeting you in the TSB server was the coolest thing in my life because you're one chill dude and I hope that maybe when I overcome my overbearing shyness we could get to know each other better lol

🫴👑✨

@bluestrawberrybunny and @briandraws Brian, you're a freak /pos like HOW???? HOW DO YOU HAVE THE TIME, AND THE PASSION AND THE ENERGY FOR WHAT YOU DO???? Honestly if I ever had the amount of energy you have, I would be in a bloody coma. You are the first person I ever had the chance of actually connecting with a Tumblr moot (and realizing how unhinged they are /hj) but I just wanted to say thank you for tolerating me this long lol. Your an amazing artist and even an amazing author (even though I think you should be sentenced to a mental hospital for flooding the server about your Marware obsession /j )

And you! Blue! I love all your work as well! I love apprenticeship and I love your tangents! Having you and meeting you in the server has been a treat but it's also nerve racking because I'm still shy lol. I think your art is so cute and I hope you never stop!

🫴👑👑✨✨

Because of the song I couldn't add as many people as I wanted but here are some honorable mentions!

@deltaruinedcoco37 @purpdrawsthings @hamlos @chaoticlad @bow-and-aro-child @theartistisme43 @b-r-i-n-g-x @grinnames @strange0-0storm @goofy-goobers-things @arco-doodles @artist-heart83 @sspacesillyy @hi-imlooneybirdie @pisschxn @rainstormsart and PLENTY MORE BUT TUMBLR FUCKING HATES ME SO IF YOU SEE THIS THEN I LIKE YOU TOO

I love all that you guys do wether that be art or writing or theories or ANYTHING ELSE just know that you'll always have a supporter 🫴👑✨

Now this brings me to the end of my birthday party sadly, I hope y'all liked it and I hope y'all didn't eat all of my birthday cake and thank you for all the birthday art and wishes but before y'all go...

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

The many joys of sharing your birthday with a holiday, it's often overlooked lol but I hope you guys enjoy it whether you're alone or you have a partner. Practice self love too because you're also important ❤️❤️❤️

Okay that's it

BI Y'ALL!

#art blog #artists on tumblr #sona art #my birthday #EEEEE I HOPE YALL ENJOYED #I HOPE YOU ALL KNOW THAT YOU ARE LOVED #I hope you have a wonderful day this day lol #also if any of you try to @ me or something just know I won't get back to youe until monday probably because I'm leaving for a trip #okay bi

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yawujin · 7 months ago

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sorry to bother you but just a thought

imagine England , France , America and Russia with a reader who likes to read and LOVES their countries literature and poetry, like, they often catch them on the floor kicking their feet reading their countries classics

maybe even askes them to read a copy in it's native language to her while their cuddling

(just imagine America reading 'the adventures of huckleberry finn' , England reading 'wuthering heights' , France reading some famous french love poems and Russia reading 'anna karenina' in it's native language while cuddling with reader) <3

my book worm heart NEEDS some fluff-

your writing is amazing btw, been here a long time and your posts a comfort, seriously keep your head up , your amazing and beautiful !

love you and your blog

it's not a bother at all!! i think it's a very cute, sweet idea. i used to read books in danish to my ex all the time and it was a lot of fun. he really loved it, as did i :p i really appreciate the encouragement 🤍 i'm really hoping that one day, far farrr in the future, the books i am planning on publishing will be considered "classics" i can't wait :) without further ado, here is your request anon. thank you! and enjoy 🪄✨️

{ request } england , france , america & russia x bookworm! reader

type | cute , fluff , light hearted , russia needs a nap , short read

england ♥︎

his favorite place is home , so he really does not mind at all that they would prefer to just stay in to enjoy each other's company

england could read his novels for hours at a time, focused with no background noise save for the tick-tock sound of the clock. that sound gradually fades as he begins to read aloud.

the two quickly become invested in the story─doesn't matter if it's pride and prejudice by jane austen or one of the very many stories of sherlock holmes by sir arthur conan doyle

england has a really clear, crisp, and modulated voice that would be great for narration tbh.....*clears throat* audiobook is hiring

france ♥︎

france has a sense for beautiful things and there is nothing more beautiful than hearing them read the stranger by albert camus back to him. he really just likes seeing them enjoy books written by people from his country

he once purchased a really pretty bookmark for them, just because he thought perhaps they would like it ? <3

most likely to join a bookclub with them

ask him to read love poems and he will─one after another, until they're content

america ♥︎

might want them to just lay down next to him (or on his lap) (OR vice versa) while he reads.

he is more than happy to carry their books for them when they go to the library/bookstore together

if he finds them reading any classic american literature, he'll get really happy and start asking them: "did you get to the good part yet?" "how're you liking it?" "do you have a favorite character?" he just wants to know all the details

the type to watch the movie adaptation of a book with them so they can compare, just for fun

russia ♥︎

he'll read whatever they ask him to read. after doing it for a prolonged period of time, he'll begin to feel sleepy and rest. i imagine him being the type to feel punchy after reading all those small words on a page

would most likely gift them his copy of the idiot by fyodor dostoevsky

he likes to listen to them go on little rants about any one of the books they had started recently, all while reading the summaries on the back of the books

his favorite thing is when they start to play with his hair as he reads to them....no wonder he feels so sleepy afterwards (˵ ¬ᴗ¬˵)

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girlwithadragonheart · 7 months ago

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I need to yap desperately about one single gripe I have with this game. MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD read at your own discretion

The first half is me ranting about how much certain things mean to me and how impacted I was, and the actual gripe comes closer to the end.

I'll preface this by saying this post is about Varric's death and my rage and despair regarding it, but more so about my Rook's.

I've seen people who said they picked up on the hints about whatnot, who knew before the Fade Prison. I was not one of those people. I was so relieved when I saw him after the Prologue that I didn't think twice, because I knew that it would destroy me the second shit started going wrong.

I was already not having a good time when I started the game simply because Varric was getting older. I don't handle aging well or death, and his design showing his age, and the comments he would make about "getting too old for this" just made my heart break.

And then shit got worse. I sobbed disgustingly when that knife went into Varric's chest.

After Rook woke up from talking to Solas and she heard Varric, I was so gods damned relieved. And my Rook was better taken care of by Varric in that year she spent with him than she was in the rest of her entire life.

I cried from the end of Ghilan'nain's fight until the romance scene and on and off after that. I got so used to visiting Varric just to be comforted by his presence. Inquisition was the biggest part of my life for a year and a half when I was just a kid.

I did really bad middle school age writing for it but regardless of the quality, those characters were built up in my head becoming even more than they were in the game. Varric was my biggest support character through everything I was going through at the time.

I don't talk about it much, but I didn't have a great childhood, and I know a lot of people didn't, but I coped with it through writing and video games. Varric was the one supporting me through the abuse I suffered and writing was the way I processed how bad things really were.

When Rook was in the prison she said "What am I going to find here?" And Varric said "I think you already know, kid." I DIDN'T until he said that. The second he said that my entire chest tightened and I just said "No" out loud as I watched Rook find his body.

Now for my real complaint!!!

Rook never gets the chance to grieve Varric. They go from talking to him every day to finding out he's dead and it was all a lie. I have personally never been more fucking pissed at Solas than I am now. But Rook comes back and they have that kind of "closing off" scene with Varric's empty bed (which was so hard to go through btw). And then they fuck their pookie LIKE I CANNOT BE THE ONLY ONE UPSET ABT THAT

FYM I gotta find out my dad is dead and then Rook is up for boning like there's no fucking way unless it's to cope. And at least pertaining to the Lucanis romance, Rook is processing everything that happened and they can say "So much has happened, I just don't know how to feel."

And rather than getting to process that in some kind of way, the devs said nah this scene serves one singular purpose, and Lucanis says "I do" and then dicks them down.

Personally, I felt very dismissed despite being overjoyed about finally having the romance scene, I couldn't even enjoy it with everything that happened prior.

Rook deserved the chance to completely break down after everything they went through. Tbh i don't know how they kept it together. Varric said "don't get all misty eyed" and i thought to myself that's way too delicate a term for what's happening here, I was fully ugly crying.

Fuck your "I had a good run" I still need you bitch.

All this to say I'm very upset, and I'm running my second playthrough and every time I look at, hear, or talk to Varric I tear up again. Wtf Bioware.

Rook should've gotten the chance to actually talk about what Solas did to them, especially in the sense that he made them believe Varric was still there. Or at least get to properly grieve the person who was their closest friend for a long time.

I have very strong feelings about this obviously

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new-age-cassandra · 26 days ago

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Apologies for how long this is about to be

I am currently in college getting a dual minor in History and Gender and Women’s studies, and that future degree is calling to me telling me I need to talk about the historical context of Malevolent and how the time period plays a bigger role in the story than most people think about specifically when it comes to diversity in minority characters (Will not be talking about season 5 because that is whole other can of Cassandra’s history brain worms).

Real quick, this is honestly just word vomit, truly just me rambling, I don’t want to start shit these are just my observations as someone who is currently studying related topics. Sorry for the hot takes ig.

adding cut here before I get into it lol

A thing I love about Malevolent is that Harlan Guthrie made an effort to do research and be as historically accurate as he could while telling a supernatural story. One of the things anyone will quickly learn when researching any history, is that most of the time life was not fun unless you were a straight, white, upper class, cisgender man. Even by the 1930's America was extremely segregated, women had the right to vote but not much else, not to mention homosexuality and gender transition was criminalized until around 1964.

I have been seeing a lot of talk about Faroeverse and people saying it’s just the same story but yuri and guys… Malevolent would not be the same story at all if Arthur was a woman. As I said before, women barely had rights, they also had completely different lives. Women in the 1930’s were still working incredibly hard for their rights. Not to mention that the female experience in any time period is just so much different from that of the male, I could write a whole other rant just about the differences there but we’ll save that for another day. Swapping Arthur’s gender and trying to keep Malevolent historically accurate changes e v e r y t h i n g. Faroe/Bella/whatever you wanna call her, would not be able to be a PI, she would not be able to buy a gun and a new identity, she would not be able to hitchhike with the confidence Arthur did, she would not be able to enter the freemason’s building, and so much more. If Malevolent is about a woman in the 1930’s it is a very different story.

Only going to briefly touch on race because anyone can picture Arthur however they want and tbh this is the internet, anything I say someone will have a problem with… Just like don’t complain that majority of people see Arthur as a white man, because unfortunatly… historically speaking if he wasn’t a white man he would almost certainly not have made it out of Arkham. Also I don’t think that Harlan (you know a white man from Canada) wants to write about racism in 1930’s America, and honestly I think he’s not in the wrong for that.

My final thing is I feel it is unfair to point at Malevolent and say it’s “queerbait” or be mad that there are not “canonically queer characters”. The 1930’s were not safe for queer people like at all. A character will not just go up to another and say “I am gay and in love with you” because if someone in the 1930’s did that there would be a non-zero possibility of them being beaten, lynched, or even burned alive for it. Malevolent is not queerbaiting, because also it was not intentionally written to be queer. Does it have like an insane amount of subtext and queer coding similar to media from the time? Absolutely. But it is just not queerbait guys, Harlan is not teasing us with a “Will they won’t they” he has gone on record to say they won’t, but that we all are free to enjoy it however we want.

If you read all of this… I’m sorry. Hope you enjoyed. Again I say I am not here to start shit, these are just my thoughts. Gonna go write an essay about Malevolent for fun now, if I publish that one it will be much more refined and professional than this mess lol.

#Spent 3 hours writing this #Cassandra is going a little crazy sorry y'all #if any of these are particularly hot takes sorry ig #malevolent #malevolent podcast #arthur lester #john malevolent #faroeverse #cassandra’s ramblings #ramblings #so many thoughts #so many words #im so normal #guys my girlfriend left me for two and a half hours after I started this and came back and I wasn't done #im normal i promise

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proudofmyanger · 1 year ago

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Beware: a pessimistic rant with lots of speculations

Imo the decision to write Alicent and Criston having sex during b&c is really bad. I think it's a very unnecessary change, and I don't see how it fits the narrative. And it's so obvious what the writers' intentions are. They are not interested in exploring these characters and their relationship. They just want to shift the focus away from blood and cheese and make the greens look bad. Of course, in no way Alicent and Criston having sex makes them guilty of the tragedy that is b&c. But it seems that the show is taking the focus away from team black's fault to blame the greens. I don't believe that the showrunners don't know what they are doing.

In the books, Alicent was right there when it happened. She was the witness of team black's cruelty. She saw how they tormented her sweet daughter and her grandchildren, how they killed her grandson. Murderers making Alicent witness everything contributed to how vile b&c was, how unnecessary cruel. It gave Alicent even more motivation to fight her family's enemies and seek revenge. But now, thanks to hotd's bullshit she's going to blame herself more than anyone else. Wonderful. Why make her absent during b&c and add this new plotline about her feeling guilty because of it? Because god forbid Alicent starts being angry and hating her enemies again, right? They just have to make Alicent conflicted about her every action. They can't allow her to have confidence again. She has to always blame herself. They just have to make Alicent and Criston continue feeling bad about themselves.

There's also this picture:

Are they making it so that Aegon doesn't notice the murderer right under his nose?

So what do we get? Aegon doesn't notice Blood, probably because he's lightheaded or drunk. Alicent and Criston are absent having sex. And I'm not going to be surprised if they make Aemond go to the brothel during b&c, too. It feels like a joke.

B&C is supposed to show the cruelty team black is capable of. But instead of focusing on that, they're going to make all the greens look incompetent and feel guilty. And knowing this show they might even frame it as if the greens are at fault for what happened too. Tbh it's disgusting. The only people who are guilty are the ones who ordered, orchestrated and executed this bloody spectacle. But they are probably gonna not just make Daemon the only one behind it, but make the whole thing an accident. We already have leaks saying that Rhaenyra and Daemon just wanted to kill Aemond. It's going to be so bad.

House of the dragon? No, house of the accidents. House of the cringe and bad writing.

#hotd critical #anti hotd #team green #anti team black #pro team green #alicent hightower #criston cole #aegon ii targaryen #hotd

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olderthannetfic · 9 months ago

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Okay, I need advice: I'm in a very tiny fandom (like less than two dozen active people and everyone knows each other) and one of the women in it is kind of freaking me out.

We became mutuals because we had some good discussions on some of the characters we liked, but I soon became sort of uncomfortable with a lot of her online behavior whereas simultaneously she's DM-ing me more and more.

She's one of those people who's a hardliner on the issues she cares about (mostly feminism- and SA-related) while talking over people when it comes to issues she doesn't care about (mostly racism and related things). And I see a lot of her trying to intrusively police how other people talk/act, derailing people's posts, arguing with people online over the most stupid shit (where not even her own opinions come off as overly coherent - this week she'll argue something along the lines of "men are evil" and the next she'll argue that people are "demonizing masculinity" - I'll add for clarification that she's not a TERF and supports trans rights but boy... Does she sound like one sometimes) and then digging through people's profiles to find and publicize minor transgressions and bad takes, passive-aggressive vagueposting, and going into mental breakdowns over the most innocuous of online interactions.

TBH she scares me. As someone who suffered through toxic people getting overly attached to me, I genuinely sometimes get a physical reaction when I see her lashing out on the dash.

And she keeps initiating conversations! And sometimes I don't reply or bring the conversation to a natural closure and she keeps at it, or sends me random fics of hers to read that I don't have the heart to tell her don't interest me or whatever. And recently when she disagrees with something I reblogged she direct messages me to rant about it - with a lot of sort of indirect language because she doesn't want to offend me but I can see the intent. The last couple of times I replied politely because I cared about clearing misunderstandings on the topic but next time I'm just gonna tell her I dislike it when she does that.

I really want this person to stop interacting with me, to be honest, and all my polite hints to the effect go unnoticed. But the fandom is so small I feel awkward and uncomfortable about unfollowing or blocking her. I don't think she's too bad of a person, she just comes off as very... Mentally ill, I guess? And since I've tried to be polite so far I feel like it might come out of left field for her?

TBH I feel like something about her behavior also triggers some kind of freeze/fawn reaction inside of me that I don't often get and consequently don't know how to deal with.

So I need impartial advice because I don't see the situation clearly myself

To summarize, a person who is a walking red flag wants to be friends, and you can't easily ghost her because the fandom is small.

I think you have to accept that there is no low-conflict way out of this.

That's what's holding you back, right? You don't want more drama and you know it's coming. I think you already know in your heart of hearts that you need to get away from her even if it's a pain in the ass.

Step one is to stop responding to her DMs. That will probably make her reach out more, but you should keep not responding. If she escalates and attacks you over it, block her.

The more you offer reasons or try to gently hint, the more that will encourage her. I don't think that's true of everyone, but I do think it's the case here. This is both because it doesn't sound like she's good at perceiving or respecting boundaries and because she inspires a bad lack of ability to assert boundaries in you.

I agree that it's unfortunate that you can't stand up for yourself or tell her plainly when she's out of line, but since you can't and that probably won't change any time soon, you'll need to protect yourself a different way. Sometimes, we just have to avoid people who are bad for us even when it's an us problem. (And here, whoaaaa red flags, so I don't think it's just a you problem anyway.)

There are many sad, lonely, needy people in the world. Some of them are officially mentally ill in some way with a diagnosis. Some just need things they aren't currently getting. That sucks...

But it's also not your job to fix.

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thee-apple-of-my-eye · 2 months ago

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‘WHAT THE FUCK IS ALIEN STAGE EVEN ABOUT???’

This is a post for my friends that still haven’t watched it PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU I’LL WATCH AOT IF YOU WATCH ALNST PLEASE ITS LIKE 30 MINUTES FOR THE WHOLE THING

Ahem..

Anyways, what IS Alien Stage about?? Listen to my no-research explanation 👍 I’m qualified bcs I’ve watched Alien Stage 5 times and I cried on Valentine’s Day. If you get that reference i love you. (It’s wiege 😔)

Think Squid Games x The Voice or maybe Project Sekai ig 🤷‍♀️

The premise is super simple so dw. Aliens invaded earth and destroyed everything. Now, they’re taking humans in as pets. The ones we follow are basically K-pop idols

MAIN CHARACTERS - MIZI, SUA, IVAN, TILL, HYUNA, LUKA.

All of them are on the newest season of ALIEN STAGE. Alien Stage is a singing competition where two humans get on a stage in front of a bunch of aliens and sing their hearts out. Aliens vote on who wins, and whoever loses dies, while whoever wins will advance. It’s like a bracket.

Now that all of that’s out of the way, let’s talk abt the humans!!! They were kinda raised in Anakt Garden which doesn’t really matter but they were trained to sing there. Every Hu,an is owned by an alien, most of which are bad ‘people’ (for example, most of them are incredibly abusive..)

Now, to the characters!

MIZI!!!

Mizi is what I would consider our main character. She appears in the first episode, ROUND 1.

Mizi’s the more cheerful, happy character. Her alien is arguably one of the ‘nicer’ ones so she’s not as traumatized or hurt as the others. From what I can see at least lmao.

Overall I personally don’t know much about Mizi aside from what I’ve seen, but she’s very emotional, very caring.. if you play Genshin, think Navia kinda. If you watch TBHK, she’s kinda like Nene? She’s the happiest person in the show lol. At least for a little bit before that happiness is ripped away 🥲

Next up, SUA!!!

Now SUA is someone I can easily explain using Tbhk characters. Think Aoi Akane (the girl Aoi). There you go.

(Let me stfu and do my job before I go on a Tbhk rant)

ANYWAYS

Sua is more complicated but not super complex. She and Mizi are childhood friends, they’re always together, Sua kinda inspired Mizi to sing, etc. Sua lowkey hates everyone but Mizi lmao. Anyways, as I was saying, Sua is one of the most important characters in alien stage if not the most important. Mizi did everything mainly in Sua’s memory.

As I was saying, think Aoi Akane when it comes to Sua.

Up next.. IVAN!!!

I LOVE HIMM!!

He’s so silly

Anyways—Ivan is also very complicated imo

And NO I will not downgrade him to ‘In love with Till and that’s it’ I REFUSE.

Ivan’s alien is one of the worse ones I think. Ivan grew up literally not understanding how to smile.

He literally didn’t understand social interactions at all, so he appeared kinda off putting to others.

If you watch JJK, he’s kinda like Suguru. That’s the best I could think of lol.

Anyways, he’s one of the characters that ties in very closely with another. (Like how Sua and Mizi are tied together in the storyline)

He’s very closely related to Till (which kinda sucks because his whole story revolves around Till in most cases.)

Ivan would do things to intentionally upset Till to get his attention, (like fighting him as a kid 😨)

(.. you get the idea 😭 this ^ was in Anakt Garden btw)

Anyways, Ivan eventually put in effort to appear more normal, and he befriended Mizi and adopted a more cheerful personality.

Behind all of this, Ivan sees the world as rather sorrowful and cruel. He believes he’s destined for unhappiness and is resigned to the reality that Till doesn’t feel the same about him, that Till doesn’t love him. (We’ll get back to this in Till’s part)

Anyways, Ivan deserved better, love him so much, etc.

TILL!!!

(I hope you can see where this is going based on that gif. He is SAD)

I don’t even know who I could compare him to tbh. The best I could think of is Kou from Tbhk.

TILLL is lovely. Lots of stuff to go over with him

Let’s start with the fact that Till actually has a mother. Idk about Sua and Mizi, but Ivan doesn’t even know his own birthday and from what we know he has no parents. Luka is another case of this (we’ll go over that later.)

So yes, Till actually has a mother, he was a baby, etc. Till is shown to be very sensitive, a bit timid, very emotional. He’s outspoken, he yells at aliens, he flips them off, etc. (Yes there’s a real image of him flipping off an alien lmao)

Till is known specifically for being very disobedient, and imo his alien is one of the top 2 WORST ones. His alien and Luka’s are tied.

His alien straight up abuses him harshly because he’s so disobedient (I’m so sorry i love you Till)

Now his relationship with Mizi.. if you couldn’t tell, Mizi and Sua are in love. Till is in love with Mizi. Ivan is in love with Till. Very upsetting.

Ivan has actually escaped from the aliens with Till before, but Till went back bcs he couldn’t leave Mizi behind.

I won’t go into the details about what aliens are implied to have done to Till, but js know that it’s incredibly abusive.

(If you’re sensitive please be warned. I’ll put it right here in small text: It’s implied that Till was drugged/subdued and sexually assaulted. I’m so sorry my poor baby.)

Quick note - People have called him the male Ado bcs of his voice! Do with that as you wish.

I’ve said enough about Till imo and I don’t want spoil too much so let’s keep going,

HYUNAAA!!!!!! 🤗🥰🥳

My beautiful queen <3

HYUNAAA

Haven’t mentioned her a ton bcs she’s SUCH a spoiler but she’s definitely an important character <3

Basically, she runs a rebellion against aliens, and she escaped from Alien Stage.

I can’t say too much because she’s IMPORTANT and this is supposed to be mainly spoiler free.

But still

DON’T SKIP ALL-IN WHEN YOU WATCH ALNST

Please

She’s so cool and confident and amazing and she’s so pretty and she’s taller than her boyfriend and I love her.

Idrk who she reminds me of. Tbh she’s her own character, nobody is like her.

Now it’s time for our last character <3

My favorite

LUUUUKKKAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God he’s such an asshole I love him

THIS is our antagonist

(Me losing all my credibility in the ALNST fandom as soon as I say he’s my favorite 😔)

I also can’t say much abt him because he’s a spoiler. But js know I could go on and on.

Idrk who he reminds me of either. He’s Luka, that’s who he reminds me of.

Cruel guy.

OH RIGHT

I said I’d talk abt him

Yes, yes

He was artificially created. Think of a rare animal when you think of him. That’s how he’s treated. Like how people breed dogs and cats to look beautiful and be elegant, but they’re born with an increased risk of disease and health issues. Like how sphynx cats have a higher chance of heart issues.

Luka has at least 3 diseases. I’m pretty sure it’s a heart issue, migraines and asthma.

His alien is also incredibly abusive, similar to Till’s. He was forced to learn how to control his heart rate so he never has a heart attack, and he’s forced to train even if he’s hurt.

He actually won the last season of Alien Stage, and he’s the oldest participant. He’s 30 lol. Crazy tbh

My poor baby please watch Wiege if you want to know more. Or head his wiki. It’s really sad I already read it a while ago.

Love Luka. He’s so tragic.

Anyways, we’re done! WATCH ALIEN STAGE!!! PLEASE!!!

Also please make this blow up I didn’t spend an hour for it to flop 😭 I might make another but with pure spoilers, after I do more research. Like a full breakdown.

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protemporescitor · 4 months ago

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"Um Ackchyually…"

Rant incoming. Gird your loins.

It's like every time Cloud does anything even remotely cool-looking, someone in the fandom will invariably go "um achshyelly he can't be doing kewl stuff because you see he's actually a massive dweeb and…"

Every goddamn time, like clockwork. I swear, it's become a kind of mass neurosis for the fandom at this point.

I'm sorry, but "Oh he's just some try-hard dweeb" is such a paltry reading of this character, one that only furthers my belief that this fandom is mentally unequipped to parse any real kind of psychological complexity.

Yes, he can be unsubtle, envious, socially awkward, even dorky at times. That's part of the character's appeal. His extremely human frailties in that regard are what make him such an endearing and interesting (dare I say relatable?) character. He's also the man who ended the world's greatest soldier, so what does that say about his critics, the fans who believe he's just some feckless dork while ignoring that side of him entirely?

Now, lest you think I'm just headcanoning the character this way and talking nonsense, here's a quote from Yoshinori Kitase himself: "He isn't a straightforward hero like Superman; rather, he has lots of mysteries, self-doubts, and a real dark side."

What truly grinds my gears is the smug, gratingly knowing insinuation that portraying Cloud as a badass is somehow "wrong", or naïve characterization at best. and that only works which portray him some other way (awkward, goofy, insecure, etc…) are showing you the "real" character. And that, to me, is just nonsense.

Here's another example:

Same character, two different aesthetics, with different traits being emphasized. Both depictions are considered canon.

So the real question is, why does it have to be one or the other? Why is it so hard for people to reconcile the two?

I sometimes think we're in need of two separate fandoms, one for fans who want to Cloud continue to grow and develop as a character (like me), and the fans who just want him to remain the same awkward, insecure boy forever, i.e. people who prefer cartoon FFVII, and those who care about mythology and prefer to look at the story as a kind of bildungsroman. In any case, there's a reason why I keep underlining the darker, more feral side of this character, even to the point of over-emphasis, because it's at risk of falling prey to a fandom pseudo-narrative that simply rings hollow. Remember, his proper animal motif is that of a wolf, and that "cloud", as a verb, means "to darken, to obscure".

(Not just any wolf, by the way. The wolf.)

Lastly, I get the distinct feeling that we don't mean the same thing by "cool". Presumably, by "cool", some of you mean "cold and uncaring", which he is not. (Or possibly suave, depending on your definition.) The other is more a question of aesthetic cool on the one hand and valour on the other, both of which he possesses in spades. Cloud keeps taking on fights he shouldn't win, and yet often comes out on top, anyway, usually while pulling one insanely cool-looking stunt or another (e.g. the Shinra building escape, or putting a stop to Sephiroth's plans even without SOLDIER enhancements.)

It doesn't matter how much dorky nonsense the world tries to put him through; he'll always remain effortlessly cool in that regard.

While I've got your attention, I want to bring up one more thing related to mischaracterization (or rather, misperception): Aerith's temperament in Advent Children, specifically the idea that she's lost her original characterization and is just being depicted as some simplistic, incorruptible pure pureness (tm) messiah figure. Again, I don't think that's right. (It might be true for Kingdom Hearts, but tbh I never cared much for that series, so I'll refrain from further comment.) It's a long-running bit of accepted wisdom which, as far as I can tell, has no basis in reality.

The truth is, Advent Children's brief running time means there isn't a whole lot of opportunity for Square to focus on character building, but I contend that both Cloud and Aerith's original characterization is intact, just handled in a more subtle way. Note her comportment in scenes like the one above. She still evinces the same kind of playfulness as she did when she was among the living. For example, when Cloud tells her that he wants to be forgiven, her reaction is to ask "By whom?" in her usual, cheeky manner. She's still subtly poking fun at Cloud's tendency to take himself too seriously, while hinting at the fact that she doesn't blame him for her death. Or later, when she tells Zack "I don't want a kid that big!" She's still very much cracking wise, even in the Lifestream.

If she comes across as more ethereal than she did in the original story, well, that's because she is. Given that she's now in the afterlife, being that scrappy, streetwise flower girl from the slums is obviously less of a concern for her, at least as far as actual, physical scraps are concerned. But it's clear that her original personality is very much intact.

The same is true of Cloud and fans who grouse that he's being "emo"* in Advent Children, which is equally false. (*Lord help me but I detest that word. Being emo is when you're moping about listening to MCR after your girlfriend broke up with you, not dealing with the shattered pieces of your life and mourning the deaths of two of your closest friends. To call that "emo" is insulting to the character and narrative alike. In fact, it's an insult to language itself. If you care about good writing at all, I implore you to let this dreary, monosyllabic pustule of a word wither away and die in favour of more literate, meaningful descriptors.) He might be far more world-weary and disillusioned at this stage, but he still show various shades of mood (gentle, furious, defiant, haughty, protective, uncertain, disdainful, imperious, even cocky, much like OG FFVII):

Lastly, griping about this also denies character development and growth commensurate with where both of them are at this point in the story. During the events of the original FFVII, Cloud is still boyish and uncertain much of the time, whereas by the time Advent Children rolls around, he is older and tempered by experience. The same goes for Aerith. Same essential character, just acting according to her newfound circumstances.

I think that's it for now. I leave this rant here in the vain hope that somebody has something more interesting to say than "lawl emo chocobo-head boi!!!" for the millionth time.

I won't hold my breath, but it would be nice to be proven wrong for a change.

#final fantasy vii #ffvii #final fantasy vii rebirth #final fantasy vii remake #ff7 remake #rant #square enix #advent children #cloud strife #aerith gainsborough #clerith #wolf of nibelheim #the different meanings of the word “cool”#containing multitudes since 1997 #I predict that the post immediately following this one will be more of the same #but I've said my piece so I'm content... for now

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iamnmbr3 · 3 months ago

Note

Your blog is a treasure on this website. Thank you for speaking up for what matters while still dedicating time to dissecting the series you love. I wanted to ask you a question that blends both topics: I wanna talk about Tonks’ gender non-conformity and Lupin’s coding, and where JKR went wrong in later statements for both of these things vs. what we can garner from the books. I love your analysis style and would love to hear your thoughts on this. If someone’s already asked this before and I missed it, please link it, haha, I don’t wanna waste your time. Love

Wow. This is. So incredibly nice. I just sat staring at this message when I got it, filled with gratitude and warmth. Thank you so much for your kind words.

And thank you also for this great question! And for the chance to rant about what is, in my opinion, the most confounding and worst ship in the entire series - Lupin/Tonks.

(If you like this ship, that's fine; you do you. I've shipped characters who never even met. But for me, the way JKR wrote the ship did not land...and also felt like a course correct to "straightwash" two very queer coded characters into heteronormativity).

So first, let's talk about Tonks. With her short, pink hair and her tomboyish ways the coding surrounding her really lends itself to readings of her as queer/GNC. (And no this is not me saying there can't be straight cis gender conforming women with short pink hair so put down the pitchforks). She's also shown to be career driven, passionate about her work, not at all interested in being a house wife (and remember most of the women in HP seem content to settle down into traditional female roles) and seemingly not that interested in men at all. Not to mention the fact that she has a strong dislike of her given name and chooses to go by something less obviously feminine has created a lot of fodder for NB and trans readings. Also, sorry not sorry, but she canonically chose her own gender. I know that's not what JKR intended, but given the extent of Tonks's powers the reason that she is a girl is because she wants to be.

So that's Tonks.

Then we have Lupin. Who is. Extremely queer coded. I mean. The wolfstar coding. My god. Remember the bit in book 5 when he and Sirius spend like 15 pages just...staring at each other? It's a lot. I'm not even going to get into that in detail because there is just so much of it. I will say I personally see wolfstar as a deeply flawed and messed up ship with a bunch of toxicity (like the whole Marauders' dynamic tbh) and not as something fluffy and soft. I see Lupin as having been a bit infatuated with James (and having had a bit of a crush on Sirius too) while Sirius was deeply and obsessively in love with James and James alone (despite James being tragically straight). And then after James's death I can see them getting together and bringing all the baggage from their messed up Marauders dynamic into that relationship. But I know that's an unpopular reading of the ship.

Also, In a society where everyone tends to pair up to someone of the opposite sex and get married he is very single and not looking to mingle. And yeah, I know, there's the werewolf thing. But again. He doesn't seem that interested.

AND JKR made werewolves as a metaphor for HIV/AIDS which tragically has a strong history in the gay community. (The metaphor doesn't quite work since while people with HIV/AIDS pose no threat to society and do not in any way deserve their stigma werewolves are genuinely dangerous and can and will eat your child...but that's a different topic).

So that's Remus.

And now we get to the travesty that is remadora (again, no hate to the fans of this ship). Unfortunately, JKR became increasingly homophobic over the years which did not jive well with fans picking up on the queercoding of Tonks and Lupin and running with it. Wolfstar especially became super popular, much to her horror. So what did she do? She decided to shove the two of them into the most awkward romance I have ever seen. Every time I reread the books I look for some sort of buildup and there's just nothing. (Also, Remus literally has to be bullied into marrying her and then is immediately unhappy and tries to leave so honestly...if this was an attempt to beat the 'Remus is a closeted gay man' allegations it kinda backfired). It's so WEIRD. There's no chemistry between them. We never see them really interacting in a positive way "on-screen." Remus is also wayyyy older than her. They don't have shared interests. They are extremely different people. They never even seem happy together. AND as soon as they're together Tonks's character gets gutted and she just accepts the traditional feminine housewife role and is stripped of all her spunk and personality and forced into bland heteronormativity that ruins everything that was unique about her. I hate it so much. And it's SO obvious what JKR was doing.

But listen. I don't care what JKR says. In my head Tonks is alive and well and happily married to Ginny. Remember when Ginny canonically was like 'wtf is wrong with Bill? Who WOULDN'T want to marry Tonks instead of Fleur?!' C'mon. She clearly is down bad for Tonks. (Though also I think Fleur/Tonks would be HILARIOUS). After the war they both start comforting each other over having partners who clearly don't actually want to be with them and then a romance blooms. They even like the same music. It's perfect.

#Tonks #anti remadora #(tagging in case ppl want me to)#Remus Lupin #Harry Potter #asks #nymphadora tonks

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xanams · 9 months ago

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G o d. All gekkos' outertale posting makes me wanna talk more in depth about the characterisation and plot issues in this game and why they bother me...

(readmore bc holy fuck this got long, it's probably like 5k words. It's also pretty much all salt, categorised by character)

Toriel

Why. Why is she like this. Kinda feels like the creator of the game hates her and if they don't, they have a weird way of showing it. She's treated as overdramatic and unjustified in her anger at asgore despite the fact that he DID declare war on humanity and he DID willingly let the people believe he was killing human children to harvest their souls. Even if he didn't do it for real in this game, she has every right to be angry and to not trust him, and it CERTAINLY doesn't make her undeserving to be a mother or whatever. Idk about you, but I don't think wanting kids to stay away from a man yelling about wanting to kill every child that crosses him makes you a bad parent, even if it turns out he didn't really hurt anyone y'know?

They also REALLY zoned in on 'mother' with her in a way that doesn't really make sense here. I could maybe see her feeling guilty for making a snap judgement but how would that call her motherhood into question?

Sans saying isolation messed with her makes no sense too!!!! The outerlands or whatever they called the ruins isn't sealed off in this game, other monsters seem way less intimidated by her in this game than in undertale (she has friends! She knows sans by name and goes to napstablook's shows and even has their phone number!), and we outright get told she takes the taxi to get her groceries... Meaning she headed off to the rest of the outpost and probably does that often enough.

All things considered, Toriel seems fairly well adjusted in outertale, at least by outertale standards. Kinda then makes it feel like everyone's just trying to convince her she's hysterical and that... Sucks.

Also the fact that they added an ending where you stay with her and framed it as a bad ending that doomed everyone is... Really mean? It sucked ass I'm sorry :/

Sans

... Why is he like this. This take on Sans is absolutely infuriating tbh. The only positive I really have here is that his puns are kinda good, I've seen fangames that fuck up this element massively and it was kinda fun to see his interactions in starton.

Okay, back to salt. His whole 'i became a sentry to help humans' thing is trash. He didn't care about that in ut! He didn't care about that at all! The only reason he looks out for frisk is because he made a promise to toriel, and he hates breaking promises. He didn't want to let down his friend.

...Huh. realising this is yet another case of Toriel disrespect somehow. Yet another thing they took from her, that they then just... Handed over to sans instead. :/

His lack of backstory. Look, I get wanting something silly, but they took almost everything that makes sans interesting away. Not hyperfocusing on sans like certain aus do is nice, but it feels like in a lot of situations in this game they overcompensated by a long shot.

No mysterious past/origins. We know he worked with alphys I guess but???? Honestly I have a LOT to rant about for that part so I'll leave it for twinkly's section. And yet despite all this, Sans inexplicably bleeds in tpe when not even undertale has that happen? Make up your mind!

His role in non Asriel chaotic also... Sucks ass. I'm in a pretty awesome corner of the fandom in terms of the people I follow and the takes I see as a result, so if I'm honest, when I saw all those posts about 2024 fanon sans being indifferent to his brother's murder, I kinda just figured they were vaguing about this game. You're telling me that sans of all people just shrugs off you killing everyone and complains a little bit before letting you pass?! He should know alphys already ran off. He should know the only person left to stop you is asgore, and that it's obvious he won't. Part of this could be connected to how frisk is written perhaps, and much like the twinkly situation, I'll have much more to say on that further down.

I understand the creator didn't wanna have a sans fight in their game - however, if that's the case... Maybe come up with a reason for him to NOT show up in the last corridor, then? Have him busy helping with evacuations or something, or already dead like in the first chaotic ending... This was just sloppy.

Papyrus

Honestly he wasn't... Terrible. The phonecalls were fun even if most were cheap references (though they can be fun in fangames sometimes so I'm not mad at this lol). Him being extremely talented at making spaghetti is just one symptom of one of this game's biggest flaws, however. I really don't like how nobody's really allowed to be bad at anything or have any real struggles in this game - especially when spaghetti in undertale is used to demonstrate his relationship with undyne and the similar wavelength they're on when humans aren't involved. She's the one who started teaching him to cook it, it's deeply intertwined with his desire to be a royal guard, and it's something they suck at together. Him just inexplicably being good at it is... Weird, and feels really disconnected from their friendship and her reluctance to let him in the guard yknow?

Also: his boss final phase. Having the dog NOT take his special attack away this time was really funny admittedly but... Idk? Not only is the fight really unfair for pacifist/neutral and those who aren't as good at the game (ut never gets this hard outside of geno), it feels way too on the nose in terms of insisting he's strong and has powerful attacks. Undertale didn't need to overcompensate to get across that papyrus is strong and disciplined and the way you have to infer that in undertale is way cooler. I might just be nitpicking with this point tbh but it's whatever. Letting myself be a hater for once.

And don't get me started on him getting together with Mettaton. It seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere, the idea that they were already friends in this was glossed over really quickly and no time was really put into developing the relationship save for papyrus commenting on finding him attractive every few minutes.

Gotta be honest, I've never been a fan of this ship nor understood its popularity. Papyrus very briefly mentions thinking he's attractive in undertale, but it doesn't really go anywhere and I'm not even sure mettaton knows he exists. It feels like it was just kinda added because it's a popular ship and that's it, not sure it really contributes much to either of their arcs. It was a light-hearted celebrity crush in canon and never really tried to be more.

Oh, oops. Had more to say here than I thought.

Undyne

Not much to say here... I think she was okay, there's nothing super bad with her. I do think the way gerson kinda downplays her/lacks faith in her in the chaotic route kinda sucks and I think choosing to make her non-undying chaotic bossfight harder sure was A Choice, but it's whatever. Undying was weirdly easy in a way that didn't do her much justice. Honestly they didn't do enough with her for me to have a wall of complaints and I can't tell if that's a good thing or not. Her relationship with alphys didn't really amount to much and her lack of understanding of human culture doesn't really hit as hard when she's just talking about random sci-fi things that we have no way of knowing are real or not in this game's idea of the 2600s ourselves, y'know? Her love of anime (that she mistakenly thinks is human history) is pretty absent here except to validate her relationship with alphys in a very shallow way.

The Ghost Family

Hoo boy... Was gonna make this the mettaton section, but I wanted to talk about napstablook at the same time, so I'm just gonna lump them all together.

What. What the hell was this plotline.

It feels like they tried to go for 'smalltime farmer chases passion for stardom after feeling unfulfilled at home' and as I've seen someone else say, 'shy business owner struggles to talk to their cousin outside of work'. This would've been fine tbh, but... There's a lot of things in the execution of this that kinda grossed me out if I'm honest. I don't think they were intentional, but I think it could've been thought through a lot better to avoid some unfortunate implications - or even lean into them in a respectful way.

Firstly, the ghost family intervention was pretty long, awkward, and didn't feel like it really added much - especially when most people playing would already know mettaton's backstory anyway (and his house is still accessible like in undertale!!!!! What was the point?)

Mettaton airing out his family issues on live TV feels very ooc - he keeps that stuff very close to his chest and I doubt he'd like it getting out. Him entertaining any of that out in the open seems... Weird.

Speaking of the intervention, his cousins' treatment of him was horrifying! Part of it seems intentional and it's nice that there's at least one part in the game where characters are allowed to have flaws and do bad things but... There's also elements that feel like you're meant to agree with them? Their insistence that mettaton just come home and everything they did in the past with constantly badgering him to come and help out on the farm were rightfully treated as something that hurt mettaton's feelings and that gave napstablook and the others pause. That's (mostly, we'll come back to it later) fine. He called them out for it and they reflected on it, cool. The way his ghost form was utilised makes me extremely uncomfortable, however.

Napstablook talks about hearing 'the real [mettaton]' in the recording, right to his face, 'the real mettaton' in this scenario alluding to his ghost form. Considering mettaton is a trans allegory, this feels... Kinda gross? In a similar vein, when passing mettaton's quiz barriers, one of the questions is 'what is mettaton's true identity' and you have the option to deadname him (using a name papyrus literally just made up in undertale rather than having any kind of creativity ofc) Alphys' reaction is simply to ask how you know that which... Doesn't feel great. The correct answer is 'mettaton' ofc thankfully, but everything around this particular plot point feels weird. Maybe don't do that w the most prevalent trans allegory character..?

And ofc, they keep insisting he just come home, go back to working on the farm, go back to his family... Idk, gives me vibes of someone abandoning their shitty transphobic family and then insisting they want to see 'the real [deadname] again' and for them to abandon their new life and just go back to the way things were before. Not good.

All of this would still be okay for the most part since the ghost family are painted as being unfair to mettaton... But in true pacifist, he goes back to helping out with the farm anyway and talks about how he thinks he was probably just being dramatic after all, and how 'blooky didn't do anything that bad'

... What?

It takes me right back to Toriel's treatment. Napstablook, Maddie and lurksalot gave no real thought to mettaton's feelings, made it all about them and showed pretty much no support for his transition nor his career! Fuck those guys! It's funny - mettaton is pretty consistently a pompous asshole (affectionate) in undertale but here, I think all his feelings towards his family were COMPLETELY valid. Mettaton outertale didn't do anything wrong.

Lurksalot didn't feel like they contributed much to the story either, save to be yet another character treating mettaton like shit with zero consequences nor narrative judgement. They just made every ghost family event even more drawn out.

And then ofc!!!! Mettaton and Alphys' friendship is so bland in this game! They're two people who kinda know each other and she says some nice things about him in a letter in chaotic but that's about it. Their friendship and the subsequent conflict frisk's arrival brings to it in undertale is the heart of hotland and the core, but here it's just replaced with unnecessary, hard to watch, boring family drama. The two of them have no issues to work out. She doesn't ask too much of him. There's no funny quips and barely any chemistry at all. God forbid either of them have any real flaws.

One last thing: I'm glad maddie gets her mew mew body, it's nice. Wish it was an on-screen moment or something alluded to more though. Some of that time dragging out the family drama could've been used on that instead, y'know? Especially with napstablook getting the mew mew doll... Genuinely thought they were gonna show it to her when they first got hold of it, rather than dragging Frisk into their intervention. She should've gotten to be more mad, too. Kinda a big part of her identity.

Oh, and mettaton's no-asriel chaotic fight was bullshit. It was a nice spamton reference and the first phase was cool, but the second was utter bullshit and dragged out the fight way too long. Attacking him after snapping all the wires should've killed him im sorry. It's even more of a shame bc I genuinely really liked this game's mettaton neo fight - it was fun and creative and felt possible.

Holding myself back from adding any more to this bc I could go on and on, ugh.

Alphys

Alphys. For a game that tries to make her the star of it, it's actually kinda impressive how much they managed to take away from her and just how uninteresting she is in this game.

At the surface level she's awesome, powerful, and the star of the show. In my first playthrough I was actually pretty happy to see her thriving like this! The more routes I played and the more I thought about it though they just kinda... Declawed her. Took away all her flaws. Made her 'perfect' in a way that I don't think works at all.

The amalgamates never happened. None of her experiments went wrong. She never hid away from her mistakes, or lied to anyone (save for keeping Asgore's secret, which she has no negative feelings about), nor did she over engineer any situations to make herself seem cooler. She doesn't argue with Mettaton! She's confident and assertive! She's Asgore's right hand woman and next in line for the throne! And ofc, the badass final boss! What's not to love?

...But none of this is Alphys, is it?

Her anxiety isnt just because of the determination experiments, it's pretty clear she's always been a pretty shy and nervous person. In fact, based on her entries they were one of the things she was more confident in before it all went wrong. People are hard, but she knows science, y'know?

She doesn't get to be flawed or interesting - despite her presence, she's just a generic cool scientist who's suave with the ladies, I guess..?

She isn't particularly dorky, shes overly confident, she has zero issues to work through. Her relationship with undyne is perfect (derogatory) and her infodumping about anime just before the archive feels very forced, like they remembered last minute that she does that and thought it should be included somehow.

Depicting what she'd be like in a scenario where the determination experiments never happened is a fun and interesting idea! But deltarune demonstrates how to do that well, and I think they completely missed the mark. The way she talks, her body language, the way she acts around others in general... These things are universal constants and yet in outertale, she's basically a different person entirely.

Outertale alphys isn't allowed to lie (save to cover for asgore Secretly Being A Good Person), she isn't allowed to miscalculate, she isn't allowed to mis-speak or make mistakes or do anything she'd regret. She feels like an alphys written by someone who hates her in canon and thinks all her flaws make her terrible and unlikable. I doubt this is the case since I don't think a person like that would've given her such prevalence, but that's the level of love and attention I feel was given to her writing here. It makes me sad.

And, of course... The DT experiments and her fight.

... Why did she have vials of determination if all the humans are alive? Did she take it from them? If so, was this before or after they went into stasis? We know she's not been the royal scientist for long in relation to how long humans have been falling, so did ROMAN take the determination? How much of this did she even DO?

Why did she and sans even DO anything with determination? It... Doesn't really make sense.

Speaking of determination, why did she melt at the end of her fight? I'd assume she's injected herself with determination as one of the vials in her lab is mentioned to be partially used, but I'm pretty sure it's also like this on pacifist. Was that overlooked? Are we just meant to assume it's MORE depleted? Does she just have natural determination now because She's So Cool And Badass? This isn't even really a complaint about the fight, more just how poorly that part of her lab is handled lmao

But getting into her fight... Idk, it didn't really feel like her. A lot of it was just random bullshit that was hard for the sake of being hard, that didn't really seem to be tied to her identity very well at all. People complain a lot about the Zenith Martlet fight in undertale yellow but that's done far better than this, imo. It clearly reflects martlet's character, personality and canonical bullet patterns (we see Alphys' in ut tpe!), there's a genuine feeling of progression in the fight and the act you're given to help with the fight feels more effective - you can still damage her on her turn, so taking a turn to heal act doesn't feel like a waste. The Asriel acts though... They just don't last long enough to feel that worth it? Sure they're okay, but in general, you get a lot less time to breathe. Martlet's fight lets you retry from phase 2 if you die. Sans' in undertale gives you as many turns as you need to heal while he's sparing you. Alphys' fight just feels like it's made to feel un-fun and painful throughout in a way that just isn't worth it, and doesn't really feel like it fits her personality either, y'know? The fight was just a slog and like many others, I had zero motivation to finish it legit. I don't think it helps that the undyne and mettaton fights in this route are fairly easy and simple in comparison.

Tldr: they took away everything that makes alphys endearing, fun and interesting. This isn't alphys at all.

Asgore

A huge chunk of this essay accidentally got deleted, including my first attempt at writing this section. In it, I mentioned that the Asgore apologism went way too far.

This time though, I don't think I'd even call it that. Reflecting on it, it feels less like an attempt to defend him and more like a way to hate on and spite Toriel.

Seriously. So much of his character basically just feels like someone going 'fuck you toriel. I'm giving EVERYTHING to asgore.'

It's... Really weird?

Asgore having a way out of killing humans is an interesting concept! Outertale takes place 500 years in the future compared to undertale, so the idea that they have the resources and technology to do that is kinda cool and in theory, exploring this idea sounds really fun. In practice though, it feels like it was mostly done to make Toriel out to be an asshole for no reason and to laugh at her for ever assuming he would've really killed anyone (despite... Y'know. Telling everyone that's what he was doing.)

He just. Completely moved on from Toriel without a second thought seemingly, and doesn't even look that affected by seeing her turn up again - meanwhile SHE'S got crumpled up tea recipes in the trash and all the Sad Divorced Energy - it doesn't really fit either of them! Toriel wasn't really given a reason to miss him like that, and I think even if he DID fully move on, he'd be way happier to see her than that.

All his leading statements on how she must feel in LV1 pacifist sucked ass also, especially with the way she kinda just agreed that yeah, she feels like shit for not trusting that he'd suddenly do a 180 and not hurt anyone (AGAIN. AFTER HE CONTINUED TO LET EVERYONE BELIEVE THIS) and that she must feel unworthy of being a mother. She hadn't even said half of this in front of him yet! He put words in her mouth! That in itself would be fine (social blunders are pretty normal for asgore after all) but it... Wasn't treated like that. It was handled as if this was a sweet and compassionate thing for him to say which... Yikes.

And ofc he gets to adopt frisk, and monster kid, and get to have Asriel live with him! His fatherhood is never called to question in undertale, but ofc Toriel's motherhood has to be here. Hell, despite their divorced status, if you talk to gerson in tpe it's highly implied frisk asks if asgore would start aging again if he became their dad! Idk, all of this part just reeked of Toriel hate and nothing more. Asgore is just yet another character to get sanded down and de-clawed and it sucks. So much of what makes him interesting is his mistakes and flaws and how they impact him, y'know?

Twinkly

I wanna start this by saying I don't think his writing is too bad. It's not amazing by any means but by outertale standards, he's one of the better written characters. That being said, Flowey is my favourite character of all time so I'm still gonna be critical.

So they did save the goat. Save the goat aus really aren't my thing nowadays - I feel like so often people act like he's a separate person to Flowey entirely and act like the alarm clock app dialogue doesn't exist. Asriel didn't end the story as a doomed tragedy fated to fade away! Flowey ended the story as someone who finally got closure on the loss of his best friend, and can finally learn to move on, even if it takes him a while to adjust. I don't think he needs to be a goat again for that.

That being said, I know these kinda aus are a big wish fulfilment thing for a lot of the fandom that aren't even necessarily something people want to be canon as much as they just wanna explore the idea and see him truly happy, so I won't judge that element too harshly. People are allowed to have fun, and I think save the goat can be fine if it respects him as flowey rather than separating them.

I really like that they allow Asriel to be fucked up and an asshole rather than him soft rebooting into some Sweet Perfect Little Prince once he returns to his old form, like so many other save the goat takes. Even in lv0's ending he struggles to bite back insults and mean comments aimed at Monster Kid which is... Admittedly kinda refreshing! There's definitely some flowey (or I guess in this case, twinkly) behaviour that still comes through here and I'm glad. This carried over to chaotic, too. While his characterisation wasn't perfect, this at least felt like twinkly obtaining a few form and continuing to play with the world, rather than your standard Asriel take. I also really liked that he remembers and acknowledges chaotic if done before pacifist, that was neat and adds to his character (as far as this game goes) I think.

However, onto the biggest, glaring issue I have with him.

Why. Why does he exist.

No, seriously.

In its attempt to make the world perfect, a world that blatantly only exists so the creator could make a save the goat ending, mind, there's no reason for the goat to need to be saved at all. Nor for him to exist after dying back when Chara lived with the dreemurrs.

Asgore isn't killing humans, so the souls don't need to be absorbed by anyone. Frisk can just enter the archive and lend their power to destroy the forcefield themselves, so there's no ultimatum like there is in undertale - there's no implied tradeoff of Frisk's life for the freedom of monsters without twinkly's intervention. In undertale, flowey's messing around opened up an ending that would've otherwise been impossible, something that worked for everyone.

Without him existing at all here, frisk could've broken the barrier just fine. All it really added to pacifist was a couple extra boss fights and asgore being dead for two minutes. And him being saved I guess but again, there's no real story justification for him being here EXCEPT to pat yourself on the back for saving him.

Why was he created? In undertale it's pretty clear - they wanted a vessel to hold all the souls in for now during the true lab experiments. He exists because Alphys selected the first flower to ever grow in the garden and injected it with determination that she extracted from the human souls.

... But all the humans are... Alive and well in outertale? They don't need a vessel to contain their souls. They don't need to extract any determination from anyone. Again, why do they HAVE vials of determination? And why did she inject one into a flower?

AND THAT'S THE OTHER BIG THING. It's established she and sans injected a starling flower for... Whatever reason. SO WHY THE HELL IS TWINKLY A CARTOON STAR?!

This point makes absolutely no sense at all. He looks absolutely nothing like a starling flower nor does he behave like a flower at all, which is confusing if that's what he started as. Honestly, I think it would've made more sense to just keep him as Flowey if they were gonna include him at all, and just have his appearance reflect a starling flower instead of a golden flower.

This applies to his fight too. Mechanically I think it's AWESOME, but the visuals are... Just very very boring. A huge part of why his fight in the original is so good it's the bizarre and chaotic nature of it, the horror elements, and the way so much of flowey's trauma in terms of how he was created and the things he finds scary was put on blast for all to see. The combination of mechanical and organic elements, all the plants and insects... Idk, just going 'hmm he's a star. Let's have him go through a star life cycle' is boring, there's no visual appeal.

If his creation is so vague and wishy washy, this would've been a great opportunity to flesh it out more. How was he created? What kinds of technology and machinery did alphys use to put all this together? How did she (or roman????? unclear) get the determination? What does twinkly remember?

That leads me onto a tangentially related topic - his trauma. I... Don't think this was shown very well. He talks a bit about BEING traumatised from the lab, but telling isn't the same as showing and canon flowey is terrible at hiding it, whereas I'd just as easily believe outertale Asriel made it up for sympathy points. He never really projects, he doesn't force anyone else to experience anything like he did, nothing like that. He's just a cocky asshole who likes killing, and who eventually decides to start being nice.

This game constantly seemed to be speedrunning ways to get him from being twinkly to being Asriel as quickly as possible in almost every single route which... Huh???? It's weird. Would've been nice to let him be a star more rather than just Asriel...

(final amendment bc I lost a huge chunk of this essay originally and had to rewrite it, and I'm realising I didn't manage to fit this in this time... How does a single monster soul let him get his Asriel form again? Sure he's still treated as if soulless and it doesn't make him a good person, but if he was 'so tired of being a star', why hadn't he tried doing this sooner? It makes no sense...)

For a game that exists to give him a good ending, it's so ironic how little he needs to exist at all in this world. Just goes to show what it looks like when you go too far with 'fixing' things or removing stuff you seem 'too problematic' for the sake of being wholesome or whatever.

Chara

Speaking of which... Look I'm just gonna say it. This version of Chara sucks so bad.

Chara is one of my favourite characters - they're really interesting, morally grey, and a fascinating way for undertale as a game to interface with us as players.

They're a child who likely saw the worst of humanity, then found themselves in a home with family who genuinely loved them once they fell down and met the monsters. Their intense saviour complex made them feel like the best way to help their family was to sacrifice their own life to get enough souls to break them free (and once they realised they had control, get payback against the humans while they were at it). They could be mean-spirited and a prankster. They valued efficiency HIGHLY. Their favourite number was nine because it's the limit, the absolute, a way to stop hurting and to stop others hurting.

And by doing geno, you can push this fixation on stats further. Max out all your stats. Gain power. Get stronger. Become invincible. Nobody can hurt any more if the world is gone. And ofc, they stand as the final arbiter of consequences for the player. Your punishment for killing everyone and for pushing them into believing it needs to be completed. Chara both IS is and is separate from us in a way that can't really be fully disentangled and it's really, really cool.

Anyway, enough gushing about undertale Chara. What's outertale Chara in comparison?

... Nothing.

They're nothing.

Outertale Chara narrates occasionally. They're a ghost that follows frisk around, but aren't confined to that, and have been actively wandering the underground since their death. They also still have a SOUL for some reason? This part doesn't really make sense at all.

Other than sacrificing themself and maybe wanting to take out a few humans after Asriel absorbs them, they don't do anything that could be considered bad ever. The most devious thing they ever do is snatch Asriel's diary to leave a silly comment in there when they first arrive at the outpost (sans does this with Toriel's phone in undertale tpe for comparison lmao). Despite what Asriel seems to believe, Chara is completely absent from the chaotic route - never getting corrupted, never caring about our stats, never wanting to hurt anyone, never even trying to make us face any consequences. They're just... Not here. For a character so prevalent in the murder based route of undertale this is fucking wild.

They all but vanish if you so much as say something slightly mean to someone, too! It's strange, makes no sense, and just like with sans, it feels like they overcompensated waaaaaaay too much for the people who insist they're evil. On top of that, if you do chaotic before lv0, they don't even remember chaotic happening! They'd may as well have just been a member of the ghost family who likes following Frisk around when they're especially nice. Like Asgore and alphys, they've been sanded down and de-clawed to be 'wholesome' and 'perfect', and it just results in a bland, boring character who loses anything that made them interesting, nuanced and fun.

'Chara wasn't the greatest person'... Why, though? They don't have enough substance in this game for that line to really have as much impact.

Frisk

I'm gonna be honest - I actually ADORED their frisk at first, and I think that's because I started with a neutral run and ended up drawing them a lot. They felt silly and mischievous and interesting, and this continued into chaotic. They seem pretty chill with what's going on but then take that even further by being hilariously affectionate with Asriel and still doing silly things like being up for picking up the electrodampening fluid or drinking directly out of the fountain. They felt like a funny little mini-kris (save for being okay with all the murder ofc).

Then uhhhhhhh... That's when I experienced the second chaotic ending, the one without Asriel, as well as lv0. I feel like they definitely DID try to lean on the Kris angle on purpose in terms of their feelings on being controlled and stuff but it???? Just doesn't work very well? There's no ambiguity to this version of frisk once you've seen all the routes. Just like EVERYONE ELSE, they're just a perfect little angel who would never do anything wrong and anything past lv0 is just the eeeeeevil player influence or whatever. Come on, we have deltarune for that kinda approach to control 😭 (though even then, Kris is a layered and interesting character who isn't goodness and innocence personalised, and that's why they're cool)

In undertale, we have no idea what frisk is like as a person. WOULD they spare everyone without our influence? Would they kill? Would they be a scared child lashing out in self defense? Would they run from everything, then give up and let themselves die permanently somewhere? We just don't know! We're not supposed to know! It feels like it went back to the very early fandom interpretation where frisk is Good And Sweet and Innocent while Chara is evil incarnate - except this time they're BOTH the former.

It's a contradiction too! Why in the Asriel chaotic route are they so down to follow him, and pet him, and hug him every chance they get if they don't like all the stuff we're making them so? The player has no influence over Twinkly. Every single thing he did, he chose to do, and yet even if the only time frisk has seen him was him destroying their mercy button and forcing them to kill for him, they seem to love him to pieces and go along with whatever he says happily. What.

I feel like they didn't know what to do with Frisk here at all and it shows.

Other characters

This has been ridiculously long, but to quickly go over non-major characters... They did very few things to make Roman seem interesting, the amount of stuff hes implied to have helped Asgore with just reduces even further any influence or impact alphys had, and (a smaller nitpick)... Why didn't he use times new roman as a font when we DID see him speak in the archive/on the signal stars? It's such a missed opportunity...

Burgerpants was fun... Kinda. Developing him like this feels like something that should've happened DURING the actual game rather than before it though because it made him feel like a whole other person entirely? The poisoned food was very funny though.

Why is Snowy now Stardrake when his dad hasn't changed at all and Crystal looks like any other snowdrake? That was bizarre.

I actually really liked the humans! Establishing them as actual characters was really fun, and I especially like justice. Justice, at least in my opinion, is probably the most interesting character in this whole game tbh - someone who tried to do good but ultimately caused more harm than good, while NOT downplaying it, showing the consequences directly, and showing them work to try to make things better. The way we don't grab their item like the others in the twinkly fight nor go through an area for them in the archive (and just talk to them instead) really adds to their intrigue - what are they like? Who did they know? Is there something they don't want us to see? How are they strong enough to not need us to grab their weapon at all to lend their help? I think it's get funny that the only character I'm fully praising is the clover-adjacent one. Justice outertale they could never make me hate you

(that being said... seeing the way this game is clearly just supposed to be a 'fix' for undertale does sour my thoughts on the humans a little. did they only do this bc they thought them NOT being full characters in ut was bad/a problem with it? 🥴 This applies to the additional monster kid story focus too).

Speaking of monster kid... Them being an orphan was clearly just a plot device to give asgore more kids and therefore feel like he won more than Toriel. Monster kid in undertale seems like they probably did have real and loving parents, and they have a sister too!!!! Would've been nice if they'd at least done something with their sister :(

This got... Way longer than I expected, so I'll stop here. But outertale definitely gave me an even bigger appreciation for other ut fangames. My gripes with deltatraveler section 3 feel much smaller in comparison now, if tsus misses the mark on Flowey later down the line they've at least already done most characters so much more justice, and it really puts into perspective all the heart and soul that went into kissy cutie, as well as its genuine love got the source material and characters.

Sorry outertale, you weren't for me. That being said, if anyone disagrees with any of this then that's fine! These are all just my opinions and feelings on it after going through all the routes and talking about it with friends. Media is always gonna resonate with different people in different ways and that's a good thing! If your perspective on any of this is different and if you had way more fun with it, I'm glad you did and I genuinely wish I could've felt the same. I feel like at the very least, making it has probably been a great learning experience for the devs and I really hope they carry on making games and improving their skills. Hope y'all are thriving and having fun regardless 💙

#xan plays outertale #I'm not tagging it w the actual game name. that wouldn't feel right #again: most of this is salt. it's also an opinion piece #it was just nice to get my thoughts out there yknow?#if anyone manages to read all this i respect your perseverance tbh lol #ps out hater hours

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