#I know the irl lore but it’s clearly very different

[okapiandpaste]

<< guy who got way too invested in the lore of the ikuhara show with the least lore 😔

[rouge-fauna]

thank youu

maybe its my inner discduo demons from the past, but i do think there is a very tiny chance for them to reconcile but its very slim. Tommy telling dream to get therapy and to spend time with his loved ones and saying he hopes dream isnt a bad person, its contradictory to calling him a movie villain ik but there is empathy there. Idk maybe im crazy maybe its backhanded im not good with tone. I agree with what you said, he feels hurt by dream but that doesnt mean dreams the monster, dream clearly didnt intend any harm. And now him showing tommys old dms to him and old clips praising him have people misinterpreting that as dream being manipulative. I think jack said on his podcast a while bak that dream unintentionally claims ownership over peoples careers, and a lot of people misquote that and forget that jack said  "unintentionally"

Ik tubbo and dream still plan to call likely based on the dms and maybe tubbo can then tell him his complaints about dreams video, dream can clarify things and then tubbo can relay it back to tommy. At least we can have them ending on neutral terms. I at least pray for some make up, or if they just have a priv call themselves.  Something similar to the ending we got in dsmp lore where they just talked and got to an understanding? Doubt that will happen since tommy blocked him but maybe via tubbo. The reason i believe tommys fans heavily influenced him to hate dream is because when tommy dropped dream, his fans swarmed tommy in public giving him gifts. There was also some inniters that were in tommys dms telling him how bad dream is. And the incident at tommys live show where someone shouted out that dreams a groomer which lead to tommy letting dream know he has to stop mentioning him publicly.  Its just depressing and i got so many irls now that never watched dsmp telling me about how discduo were never friends and were co workers and blah blah tommy only liked dream when he was a kid when its just all false, tommy and dream were still friends in 2022 to early 2023. I hate when people speak about their dynamic when they werent even there to even see it.

Pretty sure you don't call someone a movie villain and then have any kind of sincerity when you tell them to go to therapy. That was a slight and pretty damn disrespectful too since Dream just confirmed being autistic. If Tommy actually cared about Dream he wouldn't have made a video at all and let it go, instead he makes a video basically rallying his fans to march with pitchforks against Dream, after Dream's 3 hour stream where he spends a good portion at the end complimenting Tommy and such and saying how he didn't mean to hurt Tommy... etc. No, I'm gonna be honest I don't think reconciling is an option here, especially since there has been no remorse or apology from the brighton gang, who have bashed him for over a year. I still find the manipulation argument to be poor because if Dream was being manipulative then this behavior of complimenting and being supportive of Tommy would be different than in the past, but it's not. He said the same things in his stream, he's said the same things in the past, even during the dsmp he was praising Tommy [clip]. This is typical and consistent behavior he has of trying to put people up not down, so I think the people saying it's manipulation clearly haven't seen the whole picture. And I find it hard to imagine Dream trying to manipulate Tommy four years ago either, as Dream said "why?" what motive does he have. He already has friends, fame, fortune, what does he possibly get out of spending hours on a stream where he doesn't make a dime. Someone doesn't just do that, they do it because they care about the person. As far as Jack's comment, Dream actually addresses it in his stream and Tubbo responds with 'why didn't you ever say that in person then we were all under the impression you thought you made us,' which just spells autism to me, people misinterpreting Dream and assuming something and then it becoming truth because nothing is said explicitly to disprove it. Which shouldn't be necessary, but perhaps Dream was unintentionally giving off some social queues or vibes that made the others feel a certain way. Also, pretty sure that the stream and this new video aren't the only times he has praised the creators and such of the dsmp. So again, how long has he kept this con going for? And for why? It clearly isn't gaining him any brownie points with those creators or their fans...

As you said, some people are under the impression they weren't friends - which is so untrue. Dream has crawled out of bed to stream with him, you can tell they were close friends. That genuine bond and chemistry helped make the dsmp, and is why they are so fun to watch and why the videos Dream is in are some of the most popular on his channel. And yeah I think you are right like Dream said, Tommy does seem to have altered his opinion to match the fans who have hated Dream since before Tommy was against him. Though as I have pointed out in my previous [postI think part of this is actually related not in them being a cause but a mirror or actions repeating. Though it's probably a bit of both going on, I believe that people will and have always hated Dream because of their inherent human nature to hate autistic people. I think that is how the characters were easily turned against c!Dream and I think that is what has formed such a hate group against cc!Dream. Both can be true, but I think it more reflects a pattern than - because he was the villain so he shall now be the real life villain...

Anyways I don't have high hopes for disc duo at the moment, if anything Tommy's video where he called Dream a "movie villain" showcased just how far he is from reasonable at this point and Dream is clearly in quite the emotional state, I mean he has been from the beginning with the posting of that meme in the first place. I do hope though that perhaps Tubbo and Dream will talk on stream and have some kind of resolution. I do think Tubbo is a reasonable person and an opportunity for understanding does exist, though it is steadily dwindling with each stream. But I also think for there to ever really be a full resolution there has to be an acknowledgment of Dream's autism and the grace that should be taken into consideration, and until then nothing will really change much...

that's sad... hm perhaps it is because your friends never watched the dsmp that they think they were never friends, because I feel like watching those streams it's easy to tell.

[gladosluver]

storytime/lore: i was followed home

IMPORTANT INFO: my region has no sidewalks, so to get home everyday i cross the roadway (legally) and 100% do not trespass at all. if i had a car to drive, i would, and if i could take the bus, i would, but public transport doesnt pass through this part. IF YOU HAVE A CAR, YOU ARE USING IT. THERE IS NO REASON YOU SHOULD BE WALKING AROUND WHERE I LIVE.

okay onto the story now... my school is in another region so a bus brings me from there to another school, and i walk from that school to my house (about 10 min walk). today while going home i was waiting to cross the VERY BUSY street, and i see an all black LARGE VAN stop 40-50m away from where i was and this guy, also dressed in all black, steps out. and he started walking MY direction

(artist rendition below. thats my ugly persona btw i dont look that nice. those are also my beautiful eyes <3 sorry for staring into them without permission.........)

now like.. thats so weird. SO WEIRD. theres no reason you should be walking when YOU HAVE A CAR. ive lived here for at least 7 years and i have only seen someone walk on this road ONCE.

since i wait right next to the road im 1-2m away from oncoming traffic. its dangerous. now im waiting for all the cars to pass so i can (legally) cross the street, and at this point this random guy is like 20m away. luckily all the cars passed and i (legally) ran fast as hell across. i walked about 3 blocks before turning around and HES STILL FUCKING THERE. WALKING ON THE OTHER SIDE. PICKING UP THE PACE AND LOOKING AT ME.

this was in BROAD DAYLIGHT. additionally there was an event going on IN FRONT OF THE SCHOOL where LAW ENFORCEMENT came over to educate the kids and was showing them different police cars, fire trucks, etc. WHY ATTEMPT TO FOLLOW ME WHEN THE POLICE ARE RIGHT THERE??

so i texted my friends. i have 2 irl friends i talk to outside of school. ive got like 5 irl friends in total so there wasnt really anyone else i could cry for help to, since my parents are at work for most of the day and night, and i have almost no living relatives here

about 4 blocks from my house i pass an intersection that goes into another neighbourhood where there was a someone in a car waiting for their kid to be dropped off. i speed-walked 3 blocks down and when i turned around there was ANOTHER RANDOM ASS GUY at the intersection looking in my direction. he looked like he was being yelled at by the guy in the car (i guess he suspected he was following me). the intersection is also at the top of a hill with some trees in the way, so when he looked away I RAN FAST AS HELL ACROSS THE ROAD.

i didnt even care that there were 6 cars coming from either side. i just thought "if i get hit, i get hit. if its my time to go then so be it" but halfway through i remembered something. you wanna know what i fucking remembered? what made me break out into a SPRINT? i have undiagnosed health problems that make walking up STAIRS a challenge, and i you wanna know why i started SPRINTING AS FAST AS I COULD? i remembered that stupid danganronpa dub. i thought of how disappointed everyone would be if i literally got kidnapped and never got to finish it. so i ran. i ran home. i got inside, shaking and panting heavily, which didnt stop for hours, but at least i was safe. at least i could finish it. my true purpose....... dubganronpa...

the reason i took to tumblr was because i literally had nobody else to tell. again, i know like. 5 people. i worded this post so cryptically because i didnt want anyone to be concerned if i just blurted out "SOMEONES FOLLOWING ME I THINK THEY MIGHT KIDNAP ME" so i said it discreetly and kinda goofy so yall would KNOW something was up, but in a half-serious half-joking way cuz thats how i cope with awful strange events in my life

it left me with so many questions.. why would you stop next to a busy road to walk somewhere when you have a car CLEARLY available? theres people who like <1 minute away from the school who use cars because walking is so dangerous. the only reason i walk is because I LITERALLY HAVE NO OTHER OPTION. walking anywhere in my region is BEYOND a last resort. hell, ive contemplated driving illegally before i decided on walking home.

i cant even think of anything i did wrong to get followed by some strangers. to my knowledge, i havent done anything to piss anyone off since first year. why me? what do I have that YOU want.. i just dub danganronpa anime and give it more homoerotic undertones.. is that really a crime?

now that im thinking back on the incident i realize i did have a few certain long sharp objects in my bag that i cannot name here (for self defense and also art supplies) AND MY BAG WEIGHTS ALMOST 3 KILOS?? IF I WHIPPED THAT AROUND AND HIT SOMEONE I THINK IT WOULD DO SOME DAMAGE

anyways im safe. for now. this weekend is going to be spent emailing my school asking them to make a bus stop at my house since the bus literally PASSES my house on the way to the school. i dont live in a neighbourhood, i live on the side of the road. its right there. why cant they drop me off man

GLADOSLUVER OUT

[biff-adventurer]

ok so this actually IS ffxiv related

this morning i saw some comments in a lore channel that uh... it was clearly a joke. but this kind of joke hurts me.

it's ok to make jokes about the garlean empire. IT SUCKED. the garleans in charge, sucked. the cultural purity ethos was god awful. they are meant to be villains. meant.

like the viator says to jullus, "they gave you slop to eat like pigs and you ate it all up." (this is the general idea of the jpn line)

but if we're going to look at them from the side of de-colonizing liberals, marginalized people who want to be empowered, it's not great to essentialize all the culture of any one nation down to its worst qualities.

i'm super NOT pointing at the game. i'm talking about player behaviour. like, if you call yourself a liberal, then you must look at these issues with real nuance. if you call yourself compassionate, you can't then turn around and dehumanize your enemies. that's not how this fucking works.

you look at the culture. you look at the history irl. you understand how they got there, why they got there, and you realize we're having these same problems all over the world, again. ethnosupremacy. racial supremacy. caste supremacy. those who deserve greatness versus those who are born in suffering because they fucking deserve it, apparently.

it's justified to take up arms against the intolerant. it's not justified to essentialize an entire group of people because of a political wave.

i come from the stance that garlean imperial culture, the ruling class and the capital, are highly roman influenced. but that the people and their homeland are russian influenced. and when you look at the russians, at the very least, they are not without their suffering. the people today are not happy with their government. they are not.

slavic peoples carry the cultural story of survival. that every generation has their own suffering they must endure. this includes the russians.

it's just not black or white. we can't tolerate intolerance. when people oppress, we need to say something. do something. that's the important part. so when you're in a fictional setting when you can be a literal fucking super hero, which is something impossible in reality, why would you make the choice to further essentialize and dehumanize your fucking enemy. that takes you back to square fucking one.

extremes work from the same logic, despite overtly espousing different ideas. when in conflict, we require balance. compassion is a balancing act between mercy and truth. how much mercy? how much are we straying from the truth? what level of responsibility is owed? do we owe?

everyone starts somewhere. when it comes to any kind of rp or story telling, everyone starts somewhere. but we are people who exist in a real world. fiction should make us better. it should help us think through problems abstractly so we can observe and refine our own ideals. i just can't agree with making sick jokes about how the nation where the villains come from is inherently bad.

emet-selch? awful. hate him. sphene? literally the better version of emet-selch, has empathy, still unforgivable in action and ideology.

the ancients actually being superior human beings? ridiculous, racist, steeped in ethnocentric bias. does that mean we can't have fucking beach episodes with artemis, apollo and fucking hecate? of course not. so long as we KNOW it is fiction. and that they are NOT superior.

it's all about knowledge and how you use it. it's all about compassion and the choices you make. stupid comments reveal your bias. don't settle on your bias. always reflect on who you are, what that means, what your positionality is, and what you ought to do. especially when you presume to put yourself on a pedestal of leftist ideal in the first place.

for context, i'm an indian who grew up with relatives who hated the british. my grandfather was born during the raj, my uncle said we name dogs english names b/c the british are dogs. my people, the punjabis, suffered a lot of bullshit b/c of the raj and its aftermath. but my first language is english. in the US.

so i'm not talking out of my ass.

[trans-leek-cookie]

the thingw the orcs in dunmeshi is sth i skirt around bc like u said it is. not a great modern take on orcs. obv not the worst it could be and kui at least did engage w trying to write a more involved lore on them rather than just having this be the same “orcs are big uncivilized brutes” version 8000000 but that element is still there. and i do think “its not the worst” is hardly what i would want to set my highest expectations to jdhdgksgd

tumblrs being a bitch n not letting me put images in so I'll just paste the text from the other ask

Nodding. ty for the info on the ways halfling racism can be compared to irl examples in “the middle east” like that rly is such a close comparison i wonder if it was at all intentional… AND FR on the whole . wishing we knew what they called themselves bc the “halfling” “half foot” thing i rly cant help but think abt how it feels like irl examples of certain groups being denigrated to category slurs its like. LOL. dunmeshi makinh me feel party to fictional racism and microaggressions against my will...

Idk Abt skirting around bc I think it's smthn we should face head on, but at the same time I'm not in a place where I can really add onto the discussion wrt orcs as a white/East Asian person. IIRC ppl have said tolkiens orcs are black and/or central Asian (Mongolian I believe) coded, which is meaningful cause he's influenced so much of modern fantasy, and thats. Y'know. Not great. Also the orcs in dungeon Meshi are essentially an indigenous group from what I remember so that's also a whole mess. Again, my opinions arent very meaningful when it comes to this, but I feel like it's incredibly disappointing to see an author who's clearly capable of nuanced and interesting commentary on racism in the context of real life and fiction (even if it's not always great it's clear she's thinking about it in some depth) really just. Fall back on tropes. Bc for the other races - human is a wider category than usual, tall men aren't always the Everyman, elves are long lived but that doesn't make them wiser, and halflings are mature, worldly and resourceful, which I feel like does a lot to break free of typical fantasy pigeon holeing. But the orcs are just sorta... The Bad Guy but Not That Bad I guess? Theoretically it's a departure from the "super evil forever no exceptions" idea of the but it's still so far behind what needs to be done to make it less of a lazy, racist trope.

Yeah, again I'm not west Asian or Arab like I said, but between reading stuff ppl online write n talking to my Iraqi friend + rereading dungeon Meshi and really trying to analyze it, it kinda stood out to me. I will say I was a little unconfident posting about it bc it's 3 things (4 if you count the name note) but theyre still really notable at least to me. The hand/foot cutting is I feel the most explicit? Because that's such a fucked up stereotype it just stands out immediately. I don't necessarily know if the half foot/middle east connection was intentional, because I assume Japan/Asia in general has a different relationship with West Asia (since they are the "far east" in comparison, so "Middle East" wouldnt really make sense?), but it could be one of those things that colonialism managed to spread. I'm not very knowledgeable about that, but even if it wasn't intentional I think it's a very interesting parallel in how language can be used to categorize people as "normal/other". So i can't say if its intentional or not, but it's definitely an interesting lens to consider the story thru. Id also say I believe halflings are said to be native to a place that's east from where the story takes place, but not the eastern continent (which is p much easy Asia). I've seen some ppl take this to mean eastern Europe, and I don't think that's wrong, but I think u could also think of it as west Asia? Idk if we ever got much info on it in story, so I might be missing some details. (Honestly I'd personally HC that halflings are generally mixed Eastern European/West Asian- not to conflate the two, but rather Im imaging the majority of them are in a kinda blended culture).

[funsize-cenobites]

Personal Headcanon thingy,

Sniper is Australian just as much as Superman was American.

His folks raised him as an Aussie, loved him as one, taught him as one and he never knew anything else. Hes from New Zealand sure but no one knew him there, no one cared for him there, and he never knew. I don't think that qualifies him as a Kiwi past point of origin and even then when defining origin do you think he would think of a place he only went once to meet parents who were utter strangers and had been willing to let him and everyone else go just to sit in space? Or do you think he thinks of the parents he very clearly loves and values the opinions of even when they arent aligned with him?

I was reading an older lore post of @blubushie (irl Sniper fr fr) earlier about Australium and the Piss joke and deeper lore connotations and honestly? I fucking love this. I mean, obviously anything is possible in such a wacky irreverent fictional world- Australium exists AT ALL- but setting that aside for just a moment.. not every Aussie could be a Saxton Hale and on the flip-side its at least heavily (hehe) implied that even Non-Aussies can become like him through the stuff (Classic Heavy).

People vary wildly, genetics and physiology make this stuff so much fun to think about. Im willing to bet Sniper was just 'A sickly child' to doctors and adults in his life. He was just one of the semi-rare extreme cases of a "disorder" that afflicted some Australians, making it harder for their bodies to process or know what to do with excess unprocessed Australium. Kinda like Gluten and Lactose intolerances etc.

Some have to watch their levels to ensure their body has enough time to take it in and some don't absorb enough naturally and take suppliments. Sniper wasn't, as far as I remember, ever really properly accused of not being Australian, just different. [EDIT: I'm a fool, I forgot about the MOUSTACHES. I'm not removing any of this but know going forward I'm aware of it. Check the reblogs, it was really cool!] Im sure thats not uncommon, especially when one of the pinnacles is the likes of Hale. And as far as we know its not like Mr and Mrs Mundy were like... poisoning their kid. Its not like "True Blood Aussies" are the only people who can handle it. They were just raising him as their own and that means making sure he had access to it, in whatever form he could have it.

So even then I don't see Sniper as having 'Missed out' on being Australian or that hes clearly not one because he doesn't look like Hale or punch things. I don't really like that idea. Sniper's parents are old and look fine (aside from the being dead part) but they look like... normal old people. I headcanon that Australium effects people in the specific ways of boosting certain physical and mental aspects such as, Promoting longevity (Obviously) but could also manifest in other ways too like maybe:

A slightly faster than normal healing rate.

Various minor but notable resistances to naturally occurring hazards. (venoms and and extreme heat/cold the like)

Promoting the growth of muscle and the reduction of its atrophy.

Reduced need for sleep.

Quicker mental recall.

Markedly better vision/ Hand-eye-coordination.

You get what I mean.

I don't mean these are all extremely noticeable but they are noticeable at all.

Basically, I headcanon that it doesn't actually automatically make you into this buff beat-em-up brawler who only lives to punch people because thats a bit boring and also Saxton Hale is an impressively unreliable narrator who happens to be really into punching people and anything else that breathes.

Instead I headcanon that Australia truly flourished early under the influence of Australium because of increased lifespans and abilities which allowed for a lot of wiggle room and dedication to anything a particular person might be interested in. I headcanon that they place a lot of cultural worth on Trying Stuff Till Something Sticks and finding something you Love to Do/Study.

Theres a lot of stuff and cultural norms that have become stereotypes due to how a lot of outside views shaped their self-image upon learning about Australium (Like how in America its super super common to have cishet normative ideals for ones future even in childhood) but when you're not a mean little kid anymore and you find Your Thing (or Things) it doesnt usually matter all that much what it is. Usually in adulthood the weirdest thing you can be is probably 'Not Being Into Anything' like anything at all. "You cant even tell me about one book you read that you really liked? What?"

Sniper, is a crack shot, one of the best in the business. Because its what he got good at. Because hes Australian. And they're all good at something eventually.

[etrosgate]

when i initially read the manga (+watched the anime), it was something i liked, but felt like there was just something lacking that prevented me from truly loving it. then i started reading the novel and it filled in all those lacking spots as well as fixing some issues i had and now it's easily my favorite version (even without having read all of it) and i really really love shiki in general.

EDIT: i forgot to link to the fantranslation!! it's incomplete, but they've gotten a good way into the book. (~78%) start reading from here, and make sure to read the cultural/translation notes between chapters! they're pretty important for this particular narrative

for shiki fans who don't know anything about the novel, here's some interesting differences.

most of them stem largely from the shift in target demographic. the original novel is pretty obviously for an adult audience, while the shiki manga was published in a shonen magazine. to facilitate that, they upgraded natsuno's role from a side character to protagonist.

while also being for age reasons, i'm pretty sure it was a decision also made to narrow the scope (for at least the beginning of the story). the novel is Very much an ensemble piece, with the first chapter alone having 8 different pov characters. it's to the point where singling out a protagonist is more of a matter of figuring out"who has the most pov chapters" and "who is most central to the narrative" than an obvious answer. i'd be most confident in saying that seishin is the protagonist (with toshio as the next closest to it).

it's a lot easier to get teens hooked on the smaller but more active natsuno+other kids drama plot, as opposed to in-his-30's seishin and 1 million various other normal people who live in the town gossiping about how so-and-so saw a car coming towards sotoba suddenly stop and turn back around before it got there lmao.

if you couldn't tell already, the novel is extremely slow-paced and mundane. up until page 545 (out of 1,271) when toshio has that conversation with natsuno and first begins to consider the possibilities of vampires, there is no overt signal to the reader that anything supernatural is occurring. it's largely a medical mystery, with some overall ominous feeling and the occasional character feeling like someone's watching them, natsuno realizing someone picked up some of the fragments of the letter he shredded.

for context, that same scene where the doctor realizes its vampires occurs about 43% into the book, while in the anime it's 20%. people who found the anime/manga too slow paced would NOT be able to handle the novel haha

and let me be clear, i fucking love that about it. the extremely grounded tone (and lack of those crazy character designs) suits the story sooooo well, and it benefits from taking all that time getting to know the village (even if it was really difficult to keep track of who was who). everyone feels very... real. people you can easily see being your neighbors irl, in the best ways and the worst. while still being clearly sympathetic, it also establishes how the cruelty that ensues from the humans in the ending came from flaws they had long before the shiki ever came.

i ended up just talking about shiki so i forgot the fun facts lmao

natsuno never becomes a shiki, he just dies.

akira also dies, as there is no natsuno to save him.

the novel opens with a prologue showing the ending, the pov of a fire fighter driving to deal with the fire consuming sotoba, who sees a man (seishin) driving away from the town with a coffin in his car's truck bed

tohru's a bit older, more firmly an adult and cool older brother kind of best friend

the kirishiki mansion itself has more of a presence (makes sense, considering the novel is intended to be a play on stephen king's salem's lot)

i don't htink this bit has been translated yet, but i do know the lore explanation for werewolves: if you have parents who are both genetically predisposed to rising as shiki, their child would be genetically predisposed to rising as a werewolf

when seishin arrives at the hospital and finds out about toshio's experimentation+killing of kyoko, he doesn't immediately leave. he initially helps him clean up, and only starts objecting once the conversation uncovers the fact that toshio doesn't view what he did as murder. in fact, it didn't even occur to him. they have an argument about it, with seishin unable to accept toshio's desire to kill the shiki when it is done with the intent of exterminating an existence because it's "unnatural", and toshio unable to accept seishin's inaction, as his refusal to fight the shiki means condemning the village to its death. and so they part, unable to deny the truth in the others' accusations.

[lorecatchup]

This is quick but, unzipped suit AND wiping the paint off his face

The way he's telling his own story about the return of Cody Rhodes in little subtle ways like this every week, instead of just leaving and switching characters, no one would blame him if he did???? But like, he CARES??? Enough to do this???? I'm?? 😭😭

Alright, here we go, last match

This moment at the start of the match 🥺

That's a wrap on Stardust 😔

His last match was on a Friday and Seth came back that Sunday, that's literally as close as he could cut it, like, what are the irl chances of that, you know???? Geez

I have some final thoughts but I'm so tired and I have a headache and my eyes hurt from crying earlier so I'll get back to that

okay, so in the lore, Cody like, has to have a reason to leave, like, clearly he is not happy just like irl Cody wasn't happy, but also like, maybe he also wanted to go back to just being Cody?? but he couldn't as long as he stayed with WWE?? But toward the end of his run I was watching his reactions to the Cody chants and like, it started taking on like, a frustration level that was different than I saw it before?? (like after his dad passed things sort of shifted?) Like he WANTED to be Cody again, but couldn't and these chants were like, getting to him in that way

The whole reason he let Stardust in was because he felt like he wasn't good enough on his own, but toward the end they were losing almost every match, which had to be VERY frustrating for him, like, he actually won more as Cody than he did as late stage Stardust

and I think he blames himself more than he would blame Stardust but I also think he began to blame WWE which contributed to why he left, and then he started /winning/ as himself (with Stardust's help but outside of WWE it's WAY more subtle)

[slightdisconnects]

OO - SUMIN, Slom

coming down from 15mg i was feeling a lil sad and lonely lol. i could feel the aura of bliss slowly fading away... i was wanting to curl with with a partner under a cozy blanket. while watching a movie they picked or watching them play their favorite game. they would ramble about the lore of the game or bits about their day. id sip on something sweet and warm and snacking on something. instead im alone in my cold apartment.

recently my friend married his friend making all my friends married or in long term relationships other than 1 person but they are more of a sometimes friend than an actual friend. i dont think of myself as a forever alone crying rage comic or usually too sad about it other than random low looow low points. i dont think about being lonely until i think of my friends getting married and going to the wedding alone. i also feel like all my friends will stop talking to me since now they are closer to having babies and moving away though its happened to some of them the ones that matter wont.

i dont even know if i want to get with someone because i want a romantic relationship or if i need more friends. i have 2 that i hang out with irl the rest are work coworkers. i cant tell i just missing having friends/group of friends to do stuff with like i did as a kid. really i never got the fun friend group that i wanted. i wanted my friends to have more overlapping interests with (anime, k/jpop, video games, crafting) and while i do have friends who like similar interests they are different enough. like for gaming i like sims and more "girly" games while they like fps or whatever. not saying mine is better but its suchs not being able to talk about similar games other than the one or so we both have played years ago. but i also do want to cuddle and hold hands and do coupley things. i also feel since i have so few friends/no relationship experience i get "too attached"/"closer" than i realize and more one sided. getting jealous of dumbshit that is like elementary level shit.

also both finding comfort and disgust with my "things". i love doing retail therapy, but then i see the boxes and trash pile up and feel bad about it. the earth doesnt need more garbage, i dont need to be wasting money on dumbshit, and so on. i feel that if i stopped buying shit the earth would be saved when thats not how it would work at all. i do find comfort with my collections or having cute things. but i also question if i actually like the stuff or only like it since my friends like it, or since its popular, or since its not popular, etc. but also since i dont have as many friends to hang irl i find "friends" in my things more like hobbies are my friends. "i get to spend time with "crochet" and we made a scarf" or "i hung out with "video game" and we explored an island". circling back to "not knowing if i like something". i get this feeling a lot and second guess if i actually like anything despite i clearly enjoy it. i think part of it becoming a phase and regret spending the money on it when it could have went to something else important.

really she is like the fear paralysis i get when thinking of what ifs and not having the correct answer or the "correct" "answer" is way too extreme. shes not always tired depressed tho. shes always tired, but can be tired happy or tired and angry and so on. shes also bother very neutral (flat face, chill, slower(motionwise), relaxed state), but can be very intense (emotionwise). i feel outside front =\= inside emotion very much masking. both can be the mask coming back on and coming off as a breaking point.

i say she has she both feels like a sona but also her own character. one i can use to help work through stuff. but her name is val short for valerie! she goes by both, but enjoys "val" since it feels like a nickname and she matters to that person. she is 20-30 years old, but can regress to her 14-16 year self(regress as in kicking up habits from that era(staying up late, spending a lot of time online, nostalgic media, etc). she both feels shes lost in life, but also heading in the right direction and the good part is coming soon, but also she made the worst mistake and its only going to be worse and she should kill herself in 5 years if shes still in the spot.

i still dont fully know or understand her, but :3 also, the bear ears and tail are both important and not at all. i think partly shes like my bear sona and the other bear girl id doodle from time to time. she also is like a bear sleeping a lot, size(i know she isnt drawn too well here, but she is supposed to be plus sized), and probs more im not thinking of ^q^ she also has angel wings wings and a halo (glowing) from time to time.

[orchidego]

I’m thinking about the Manacled to Alchemised pipeline but in a very real sense I’m actually thinking about the Draco Trilogy to Mortal Instruments pipeline.

One thing I never understood is the enduring misconception that the Mortal Instruments is a poorly reworked version of Clare’s Draco Trilogy—has anyone read the trilogy? or have we lost the lore?

I’ve read both* and the plots had no substantive overlap. The most you can say is that she reskinned** her Ginny and Draco and Voldemort etc. and put those characters in her new plot with new worldbuilding. Which to me is not taking a fic and forcing it to be original fiction against good sense, but rather just…creating original fiction. So let’s get that out of the way. But okay, perhaps we talk about the transition of fanfic author to trad author. Even with her adequate worldbuilding***, the character relations really suffered from being derivative, and the plot was all over the place. I would argue that Clare only hit her stride when she created a new cast of characters in the same world with more refined worldbuilding, i.e. Infernal Devices. Which means she had to be several degrees removed from fandom origin to get there.

It all worked well enough for me in 2008, but I was a young teen reading a book for young teens. Alchemised is not going to be a young adult fantasy that happens to have a reskinned Draco—something that 13 year old girls would rightfully devour. It seems it will be the same broad strokes of plot in an entirely reconstructed world, and I have no sense of how derivative/authentic the characters will feel.

I’m deeply curious about how Sen is going to internally reconstruct her story so that it both stands on its own as adult fantasy**** and has similar emotional weight—but also I see that she’s done a lot of research/work/thinking for her own worldbuilding and mostly I’m hoping she drops her sources because [I love homework]. And of course, there’s a difference. Clare’s unique weakness was that she clearly couldn’t even write her fic without heavily relying on outside material to the point of plagiarism. There’s no way she could have reworked that fic to make it original. So, I mean. I guess we’ll see.

What? As if I have anything valuable to say about what makes a successful transition or if it can or should even be done. I’m just saying it’s clearly a Herculean task and I will be tuning in. Also I want to have this conversation with someone irl but I don’t know anyone who would possibly find this interesting. But man. Much to consider.

*I lost my files of the trilogy when I broke my 3rd generation kindle. I know this sentence makes me sound ancient. But I’m not quite old enough to have been an original reader, I read it probably simultaneously with TMI in 2008 ish. I wasn’t integrated with fandom during the plagiarism scandal because I was, um, 5 years old and my mother had just decided to start reading the first Harry Potter book to me as a bedtime story. The true genesis of this blog post, if you think about it.

**this is actually clear and true, imo

***I could accept an argument that a fic-esque frame still noticeably exists but I mean, I think it was ultimately enough to hold its own for that kind of YA fantasy. From what I remember! And there’s no way I’ll be doing a reread to check.

****I’m hesitant to say that the plot aim is romantasy because while I think the target mainstream audience is or probably should be ACOTAR fans—from a monetary standpoint, just—I know nothing about the conventions of that genre and if Manacled fits because I don’t read in it. You’d think I’d be of the aughts YA fantasy to adult romantasy pipeline, but I fell off somehow. Anyway it seems most probable that Alchemised is adult fantasy, which comes with its own set of genre expectation.

[lookbluesoup]

Good addition! Yeah, I am glad the Omega quest does offer a chance for the WoL and/or player, at least, to state their own opinion about it!

And yeah I mean I don't expect them to just completely regret everything or turn on Hydaelyn completely. The Ascians were committing mass murder on their own too and just letting them kill everyone to force the Rejoinings wouldn't have been right at all! Hydaelyn did play an important role in saving the Star. Just would have expected there to be a bit more questioning about decisions she made for them, secrets she kept, etc. and less trusting her implicitly all the way to the end and beyond as if everything she did was completely justified, like she's still divinity LOL

I definitely walked away from it thinking they meant plants and animals and... aether in general, based on the shade of Hythlodaeus's explanation! He just says living energy, not souls, and ofc in the Sundered world you don't need souls to cast magic or even summon Primals, you only need a healthy natural world around you and ample aether/belief.

I assumed restoring the souls that were integrated into Zodiark would take less energy than averting the Final Days themselves. Those souls aren't even back in the Lifestream, you see them wandering around outside Zodiark's prison, and Elidibus could physically separate himself from Zodiark, too.

But a lot of that does come down to interpretation and it's one of those scenes I could imagine having a lot of subtlety or slightly different meaning in the original language, so I'm really not certain, that's just my best guess based on what seems logical to me!

And also irl the concept of a "soul" versus "living thing" seems to be interpreted very differently depending on who you ask. I know in some animes like Wolf's Rain there's completely sentient characters like Blue who, because she's a half-breed, isn't even allowed into Paradise. And of course in some religious circles there's insistence that only humans have souls, not animals. Seems heartless to me! But not knowing the writer's stance on it, that could affect a lot.

But yeah! Throughout the game it seems pretty established that souls "recycle" and reincarnate over and over into new bodies bereft the memories of their previous lives, but I don't know if it's ever really clearly stated that new souls are created, even the lore in the Through His Eyes story just says that souls manifest into bodies born naturally, which could mean new ones or just that bodyless souls floating into the lifestream jump into them:

And though not everyone gets the Echo, a lot of people who didn't have it before manifested it when Elidibus created the star shower and images of Amaurot - people of course far weaker than the Warrior of Light.

I took Emet Selch's comments on your greater wholeness to mean that not every fragment survives the Rejoinings. I seem to recall (but don't have the source, unfortunately, so I can't 100% be sure) some dev stating that G'raha has been rejoined an equal number of times to the WoL, which is why he's also so strong... and either way, implies other Scions who also have the Echo are missing a greater number of soul pieces than you.

I know there must be more lore out there that I'm missing, I know vaguely some side quest stuff but not well enough to quote it or speak on it, which could definitely change things a lot! But you're right, at least as far as I know, it's not super duper clear on that LOL

I also feel like the conclusion of the Pandaemonium raids might actually clarify a lot of the uncertainties here. They've already set up a lot of parallels and inversions with the main story (I haven't run the 7th Circle yet at the time of writing this, also, so forgive me if I'm misguided here!) But it's made a few passing mentions of stuff that would be on-topic here if expanded upon, like souls and the Ancients relationship with grief:

And yeah, that's a good point about the Codex entry! I assume it's left vague for players to make up their own mind about their Azem and why they weren't involved. I was thinking of the scene in Anyder where they seem perplexed by Azem's lack of answer - implying Hydaelyn's followers, at least, didn't know of any accord between the two, and she didn't see fit to fill them in:

(Also way to speak like a cult leader Venat, some very strong 'only we know the truth, we will be isolated and hated by everyone else' language there LMAO)

Hydaelyn in Endwalker

At the risk of looking stupid online I'm going to field my perplexions about Hydaelyn that've been bothering me for months lol This post is... a little Hydaelyn critical. But I do offer that in good faith, I LOVE the character and I'm not trying to just trash her, I'm genuinely interested to hear other perspectives about it. (But please be nice, everyone is entitled to their own take)

Also this is not in response to anyone else's post. I haven't even seen any Hydaelyn posts circulating lately. I'm not vagueing anyone or trying to start drama. Just trying to sort out my own feelings about this character.

So my main takeaway from MSQ was that love is, ultimately, what saves you. That humans (including Ancients!) aren't perfect, and cannot love perfectly, but the shared love of you and others is still what saves you.

And, also, that grief is a part of life. Mistakes are a part of life. Conflict and loss happen, but they need not destroy you. Stand for doing right as best that you can, forgive yourself and keep trying, keep loving - both yourself and others.

There was an incredible amount of emphasis on not judging or hating one's enemies, about accepting the humanity in all of us and coming together, which I really loved.

There was also, of course, a huge rejection of self-sacrifice and martyrdom.

I saw all those themes in the Dark Knight quests a LOT (especially before the English translation changed so many scenes), and I assume Ishikawa was continuing that theme from Shadowbringers onward.

So again! I don't hate Hydaelyn!

But I feel like... at least in the English translation, she is still treated with excessive reverence, like a goddess, by the Scions - even ones it didn't really make sense to after her origin came out, like Y'sthola.

And at least on my first playthrough, while I like Venat a lot and love the drama of the Final Days pushing everyone into points of desperation, to their breaking points, and her decision to sunder the world definitely did ultimately help (help!) make it possible for us to defeat the Endsinger... I dunno.

To me she was still subject to the same arrogance as the rest of the Ancients. Whether her decision paid off or not, she still took into her hands the fate of the entire Star, she still made a decision that would result in millions of deaths.

And if we're going by Hydaelyn's own assertion, that each reincarnation is their own person, not just a missing piece of a whole... then to achieve her goal of a better world, she killed all the remaining Ancients except those three.

She chose to create a world where death and trauma would affect generation after generation - and she can say that it was for the greater good, for the world to survive. But that was essentially the Convocation’s justification too, in creating Zodiark and orchestrating the Rejoinings. Committing genocide to prove that genocide is wrong… is not noble.

The cutscene with her sundering the world, where the people insist they'll return to a world free of sorrow underneath a burning sky, could also NOT be how it actually happened. It had to be representational of her feelings and conclusion. Becoming Hydaelyn took coordination with her followers and planning.

At least in English, idk about the original Japanese, Hythlodaeus's shade describes the time of the Sundering as if the world wasn't in utter ruin at that point. It was beginning to heal, they had restored some natural systems, but the Ancients were short in numbers. At that point, they were done sacrificing their own people, in time they were going to sacrifice other life - plants and animals, to restore those lost brethren.

At the very least, Hythlodaeus's completely different account shows that the two sects of people post-Zodiark were viewing their sacrifice and end goal in completely different ways. Ethics aside, whether the competing goal was achievable or not… we will never know, because Venat stopped it from happening.

But I don't think either recounting has a monopoly on the truth. There was no One Truth, there were just competing needs and perspectives. And though Venat insists that unity is necessary to avert the Endsinger - she perpetuates this division. Azem refused her followers call to help summon Hydaelyn, and I think that's significant.

But I'll also acknowledge that Azem didn't manage to save the Ancients, either.

And you could argue that the Ancients were their own worst enemy. They kind of were.

Hermes was a really, really great caricature of severe, untreated Depression. And he had the powers of a god. His creations were sent to find a specific answer in the world beyond, and like their creator, they didn't have the tools to process hearing an answer other than what they were expecting. They were trapped in their own perspective. He was looking for answers in the stars, instead of in himself. Their own pain and inability to engage with emotion in a healthy way overwhelmed every encounter they had and created the very reality he so feared.

He did not use the proper channels for peer review before sending them out on their mission. Those rules, those checks and balances, that community approach to design, existed to protect the Ancients from their own power, and he deliberately acted in secret. He isolated himself from society, convinced himself his pain was something nobody could understand, made an island of himself and doubled down on his own jaded beliefs.

I don't know what kind of mental health facilities were available to the Ancients - we just don't have that information. But I do know that he was treated with patience and forgiveness by a significant number of colleagues, and his quirks weren't held against him. People did try to help and accommodate him, even if they didn't always understand. He had been promoted to a powerful position. I don't know if it's fair to blame anyone in particular, or even their society, for what happened. Because again... everyone was doing the best they could with what they had.

If anything, the problem was that literally any Ancient could have made a similar mistake in the right situation. They were ALL that powerful. Eventually chaos would happen. Sundered souls can certainly create destruction, but not on the same scale.

I don't personally agree with Hydaelyn's decision not to reach out to the Convocation. I understand being careful, and thinking through what the next step should be before acting. But there's a LOT of "maybes" in this argument:

And ultimately, it's her doing the same thing as Hermes, putting the power of judgement over an entire people in her own hands. She's assuming that she is in a unique position to decide the fate of the entire Star. It's not evil. But it's arrogant. She wasn't special among the Ancients, gifted with some unique wisdom. She was doing the best she could from her own perspective.

Plus... if half your population, and then another half again are about to sacrifice themselves... what have you got to lose by outing Hermes and/or trying to work with the Convocation to avert that loss of life? We don't have all the details, I'm willing to accept that there were circumstances that made it impossible, or at least made Venat decide against trying it. But even so. What did you have to lose leading up to the summoning of Zodiark? There was already panic and destruction at that point.

Hydaelyn sacrificed a lot of people to accomplish her goals. She made a goddess of herself and manipulated people like Minfilia on that basis. She killed so many children and stole so many lives even just by reincarnating Minfilia over and over on the First. She misrepresents the nature of the Ascians to the WoL, keeps secrets, and essentially charges you with being a crusader in her Holy War.

It's Emet- Selch who tries to bridge the gap. Not Hydaelyn. It's him who's willing to consider trying to achieve his goals without bloodshed, if you, the WoL, are strong enough. He says this to himself, out of anyone else's hearing. There's no reason for it to be a lie.

And just before Mt. Gulg, you can see Emet starting to question his beliefs about humanity because of the WoL's accomplishments. Hydaelyn has nothing to do with that. It's all you. And Emet succumbs to his own weaknesses too, so we never get to know what that might have happened if you'd had more time with him. He's not better than her.

But I think it's significant that he's the one who reaches out. Who's willing to consider a compromise at all.

In war you make sacrifices, I get that. But she was not more heroic, somehow, than the Ascians. Both sides were doing terrible things and denying the agency of mortals in order to achieve their ideal world.

So to me... she was not a benevolent incomprehensibly wise mother figure. Much like in real life we go from being kids who trust our moms implicitly, to adults who realize our mother was human and made mistakes, I think we’re supposed to recognize that Hydaelyn didn't do everything right and its our job to carry the future forward for subsequent generations, to learn from what came before, and hope that our own children do the same and forgive us for our own mistakes.

I think its very important to note that the WoL is just as much the Convocation's creation as Hydaelyn's. Without being rejoined as many times as they were, the WoL wouldn’t have survived. She saves you from the Ultima Weapon, Emet-Selch saves you from Elidibus, and its their powers combined that save you and your friends from the Endsinger. You are the legacy of each side’s imperfect love, equally.

WHICH brings me to my point of perplexion. Hydaelyn continues to be venerated. NPCs who know what happened continue to emphasize her side of things. I feel I must be missing something, because to me, the finale of Endwalker essentially shattered any idea that this was a Light vs Dark kind of story. People made choices. People made mistakes. It wasn't good or evil. It was human. We survived in spite of our mistakes because love was more powerful than our imperfections.

The Scions sacrificed themselves one by one just like the Ancients. And got brought back using energy from the Star... not all that different than what the Ascians had planned to do with their own brethren. I just don't see much functional difference there in the sentiments between either side.

I don't think we're supposed to hate Hydaelyn. I don't think she was evil. But I don't think she was better than the Ascians.

So while I don't expect, or want, characters to be condemning her left and right in the narrative, it's still baffling to me that there's such consistent, explicit reverence for her.

[rea-can-yeet]

This is more self-indulgent to me but hahaha it's just that my little cousin wanted to play pretend winx club which reminded me that there's a brainrot I've read before about creator/reader being a fairy in winx club and now I present to you an addition to that idea.

Yes, I'm aware that this will expose me being an avid fan of the show, it's a guilty pleasure hnggg, so I kinda know a lot of the world building and lore of this show as well as the magic/spell rules and culture. But I'll try not to drown y'all with info dump and only give the necessary things uwu

Like imagine--

Reader is a member of the winx club, and the founders of this club (aka the show's casts) have already graduated a few years ago so reader is a second year since i wanted this to be near our irl decade, and is currently honing her enchantix powers that she just acquired by sacrificing herself to save Billie Eilish from an accident. I mean who wouldn't?

So yeah, she's training and stuff. And this is where we slide genshin. Why was she able to save Billie when she's a fairy studying in alfea? Das because she's just like bloom who is a fairy that grew up on earth, meaning she can go home for some vaca, which happend to be the vaca where she died saving her idol. Since she's from earth, that means she's very cultured, right? Hell yeah, she brings her pc and other stuff to surf the internet and play one of her fave games, GENSHIN IMPACT.

Now her surface origin is out of the way, les go deeper. Remember how bloom turned out to be some fairy from a somewhat erased fire fairy kingdom? It's kinda like that with reader but I'll get to that and what kind of fairy she is. As much as I want her to be biologically from earth like roxy i need to stick to just ONE idea TODAY

Everything is all fine and dandy in alfea until the head mistress has assigned some assignments to the second years that have obtained enchantix powers. They are to go to their respective realms through the infinite ocean (in case no one knows about what the infinite ocean is, it's basically an underwater realm that connects all the oceans from different realms like earth, solaria, titania etc etc.). The reason behind this assignment is to assess whether they have the potential to become the next fairy guardians of their realms. Yeah sure, they're only on the enchantix level and still on the way to belivix and so on, but potential can be monitored clearly enough with a fairy that has enchantix, and also for the sake of this brainrot so this is reasonable.

Now, the assignment is simple. Go to the teachers that have sirenix (only fairies with sirenix can gain access to IO wherever they want) to be sent to the infinite ocean, the pillars of the infinite ocean will cast a spell on the fairies that enables them to travel through universes and realms of oceans to reach the oceans of the realms where their powers originated (ex. A solar fairy will automatically be sent to the realm of Solaria, a tech fairy to Zenith, etc etc.).

This spell is strong and has NEVER made a mistake (they're spells casted by the pillars for crying out loud). Basically, this spell just sends the fairies out to the currents and the fairy's subconscious and biology will do the rest as it drives them to their roots. Once you've reached said realm, congrats sis you're confirmed as a fairy citizen of your mother realm and therefore qualified to vote or to be a fairy guardian candidate- you passed test one and on to test two.

Knowing what kind of fairy the reader is, of course she already knows where her ass is going. If she ignores her other powers that seem abnormal from her fairy element (and kept it to herself and away from the headmistress cuz they're not really a concern yet and just regard it as her still not completely in control of her powers, I mean they're just mild and easily ignored additions, barely even a hindrance) she's sure to end up to one realm in mind.

But instead of emerging from the ocean waves to see the expected realm's culture on the beach, you're met with an oh so familiar place, the very beach you started out as a traveler.

Which is weird cuz this place is supposed to be fiction and the spell of the pillars of the infinite ocean are known to never make mistakes.

Since you're in the middle of an assignment that determines your potential to be a fairy guardian, you should start to worry a bit. But who are you to NOT check this place out? It's not like you wanted to be a guardian anyway, the assignment was to see potential, not to be given the title. You go and explore, excitement in your veins like the same way it did during your first day in alfea.

Aaaannd then all went down hill from there.

So yeah, I'll end this idea here... Leaving a little comic down bellow.

Oh? What kind of fairy the reader is? Well, when facing the acolytes and having no other choice than to transform, she does so in front of them. Of course, it could be any element really, but since the idea is about how reader's winx powers are seen as a sign of her being the creator, it has to be something outside of the vision elements in genshin. I wanted to use tecna's power but that's an idea for another time.

So imagine, the cult cornering the creator that they assumed to be an imposter

and suddenly she pulls out a musa move.

Music for optimum experience and nostalgia

Yup, reader is a chaotic Fairy of Music.

[eggofritts]

The third and final of three D2 acrylic charm designs! I will be making these semi-transparent 2.5-inch charms and limited stock since I’m not sure if there’s anyone else interested in these as well.

My current impressions of the siblings below! Of all the D2 characters, I have the most brain rot for them…

Mara Sov

Since I was a fan of Seth Dickinson’s writing, I had done some preliminary research on what he wrote for Destiny lore. One of those things is the creation of Mara Sov and much of her lore. I also saw a Tumblr post showing a lot of people did not like her and that she was a controversial character in the game. This interested me more to play it and make a judgment for myself. I didn’t get to see who Mara Sov was until the Parasite exotic quest and even then was kinda confused as to who she was and her significance. I really like the dialogue during that quest since it was one of the first few instances during the early parts of my D2 journey that showed any hint of vulnerability from a character. Reading the Parasite lore page about Mara feeling gratitude at witnessing the vision of herself becoming the Witness’s disciple intrigued me even more!! Anyways, I say all of this to say that I ended up really liking Mara Sov. Marasenna, The Awoken of the Reef, and The Dreaming City were my first lore books I ever finished reading. I love how terrible she is, 10% of the time when she is viscerally vulnerable, and how complex she is. I am also obsessed with how her character relates to others such as: ofc Uldren/Crow, whatever freaky little friendship she got going on with Eris Morn, the parallels between her, Savathun, and Ikora as people who revolve their life around secrets, Petra and Sjur as her girlfriends wraths, and parallels to Caitl as rulers who rule very differently 9soon we see them interact in season of seraph...? bungo pls).

She has done so many morally reprehensible things. I can see why people don’t like her and can’t imagine her being likable, but unfortunately, I tend to really like terrible fictional characters. I have friends who are some of the kindest people I know and are extremely driven by selfish means. They were the ones who taught me that being selfish isn’t inherently bad and a person can be judged much more holistically. I’m not saying my friends are nearly in the same ballpark of being an egotistical, cold, and manipulative queen like Mara Sov, but that mix of good intentions in coexistence or clashing with selfish goals is familiar to me and I enjoy the moral struggle. That is a lot more interesting to me than being another NPC that just spouts quest objectives. Also to my more shallow tastes, I love a woman who would coldly step on me tyvm. Mara often fails and I would like to see her fail more, suffer the consequences of those failures, and succeed maybe like 50% of the time LOL I like women who are dominant but also fall from their dominance. I am very much a supporter of women’s rights and women’s wrongs LMAOOOOO (Note: I mean this last sentence for only fictional characters in case anyone decides to take this in bad faith. IRL war criminals are war criminals that deserve bad deaths regardless of gender.)

(I thought her hair was kinda ugly at first, but I got used to it so now I like it LOL)

Uldren Sov/Crow

I vaguely was aware of Uldren simply because of his relationship with Mara for awhile. Then I met Crow and realized “oh huh he’s clearly got a lot more going on then just being Mara’s brother”. Then I read Marasenna and realized his dynamic with Mara was a lot more complicated than I realized. I love complicated sibling relationships!! I thought it sucked that much of Uldren’s narrative arc happened in Forsaken which is now in the content vault and I can’t experience it for myself :^(((((. I recently finished reading The Forsaken Prince and thaaaat was really good wow. I wish we can see Jolyon in game considering he was an important person in Uldren’s life. Maybe it’ll happen whenever Crow decides to confidently approach the people that were important to his past life head-on. I really did enjoy the story when catching up on Season of the Risen and Haunted. During the Sever missions, I constantly kept going “omg Crow you’re going to let the little voice in your head keep saying things like that? Oooowww…” Like Uldren was mean afffff 😭 I understand the Crow fatigue for vet fans, but I just came in like a couple months ago so I am all ready to go to see what else the narrative team has in store for my guy. I am looking forward to his growth as his own person with a renewed sense of purpose. I didn’t realize Glint was important to Crow until revisiting dialogue during Season of the Lost and reading more of his lore so I didn’t include him in the drawing. If I ever make more of these charms, I’ll draw Glint in and maybe Petra (after studying up on her lore).

I am extremely mentally ill over the Sov siblings. By extension, I will soon be mentally ill over everything Awoken-related (I need to get on Petra Venj stuff holy moly), but I need to read more of their lore stuff first.

[aroaceacacia]

i think if the hermits specified that they were playing characters way earlier on nothing would be like this. i was anti shipping way back because i didnt wanna thread the line of irlshipping (+ am not interested at all) im glad theyve specified more recently. along with the lives series being good when it comes to it clearly being a character story based dnd esque lore level series while hermitcraft is more "mostly building with a side of bits and a little lore". maybe if they made a super clear statement now people would discourse about it less. idk just the thoughts of someone who was there

tbh I think that like, to an extent. they shouldnt Have to? idk maybe this is just because i was a yogs kid but I remember the way they would do in character stuff like maybe half the time and usually just called each other by irl first name but the yogs fandom decided after their own discourse "ok characters go by usernames/character names and not irl names, and these are Characters being played by Actors".

like cant we all agree that - just from what we see on camera - these people do not act exactly the same in videos vs streams vs offline. the way joe would put on a very fast and energetic voice for recording segments and then return to his more natural cadence afterward for the livestream. and as such isnt it natural to assume theres a degree of separation between the real world and the fictional world they play in, and the fictionalized version of themself they show us

i would not call myself a character or persona, I share my thoughts freely and as I have them, but by the nature of this being a text-based blog abt a specific subject I'm interested in and having a full life and history outside of this world, people who just follow me here will not be able to know me, they know an idea of me. and things like bears become associated with me because of my minecraft skin, which became an OC very different to myself but with a similar name to what call myself online (genesis fogg vs genesis frog), and I use that bear as my icons for my social media and as my image in zines. i am not the bear, but on some level, i am represented by the bear. I Am Not Actually A Sentient Brown Bear Who Serves A Fear God. simon lane is not actually a dwarf, although his character honeydew is. idk at this point I'm rambling but you get the idea

[jjkyaoi]

I am getting so tired of how poorly some people in this fandom treat c!tommy and how differently from any other character they treat him, for example c!ranboo. It shows so much after every single stream, especiay this one and its such a pet peeve of mine because its so unfair.

If people don't like c!tommy thats absolutely fine, but don't pull stuff out of your arse to tear the character down.

When c!tommy lost henry and was clearly grieving and feeling terribly, c!ranboo didn't really deal with that very well and did a bad job comforting him and thus sometimes came off borderline mocking. And that is very justified and in character from his pov because he is not at all equipped to handle peoples mental breakdowns and shouldn't have to be, hes basically a walking mental breakdown himself. Not once after that stream did i see a comment anywhere that was like 'c!ranboo is ignoring tommys trauma/isnt taking it seriously!!bad friend!!'

But after c!tommy makes one tiny offhand comment about c!tubbo having thicker skin, from his pov also fully justified and in character, its suddenly 'ooh he isnt taking his trauma seriously!!!bad friend!" Or again today, with them deciding that ranboos 'tubbo is only using me for my items' (which was absolutely a joke and not serious lore) isn't cannon, but tommy accidentally blowing up tubbos stuff, (like tubbo did to him on his birthday btw and Nobody said a word about it BECAUSE IT ALSO WASNT CANON NOR INTENTIONAL) is.

I see people bragging about not watching c!tommys pov and not c!ranboos despite them having about the same viewership numbers during lore streams. They complain about c!tommy taking away attention from others and being the protagonist, while declaring c!ranboo who is also involved in many plotlines the 'next protagonist' in the very same sentence...

Some people just pick and choose anything that makes c!tommy look bad and put both c!ranboo and cc!ranboo on a pedestal. And don't even get me started on their totally invasive takes on the irl friendships. At this point they should just admit that they hate cc!tommy, stop watching his stuff if he annoys them so much, and shut up.

this isn’t ranboo critical in any way at all, because it isn’t his fault that people in this fandom behave this way/there’s a bias between them, but yea, you’re right.

i don’t know what it is, but people seem to be more open to supporting c!ranboo than they do c!tommy under any circumstance. and it’s like, that’s fine, you’re allowed to have characters you’re more open to supporting/you like more than others —god knows i do— but it gets the point where when you’re actively comparing the two characters/saying things like “ranboo wouldn’t ever do this” or “ranboo is so much better at __/for __ than tommy is!” is like. Okay Pal. i don’t know what it is, if i’m honest. i don’t know if it’s tommy’s abrasive personality that throws ‘em off, but the double standards in this fandom never fail to astound me —and, it isn’t always with ranboo. there’s a lot more people that are willing to be forgiving with any other character than c!tommy. there’s always the “i’m not excusing c!tommy but i can understand why he did __” or “he shouldn’t have done __!! he’s evil!! a monster!” but when it comes to anyone else it’s just “they popped off 🥺🥺🥺 deserved!! never did anything wrong!” and it’s getting to the point where i’m genuinely tired of it. people in this fandom take any opportunity they can to bash on his character but when it’s anybody else it’s just crickets, and they like do this funny little things /s, where they make fun of apologists for c!tommy for only liking a character if they’re nice to him, but then turn around and do the same exact thing and when said character isn’t nice to their fave they’re the devils incarnate, so it’s hypocritical for them to stereotype c!tommy apologists as people who only care about certain characters if they have a positive opinion of tommy when they do the same thing.

i’m just sort of tired of it. when c!tommy makes the slightest mistake i’m always anxious to check tumblr or twitter because i already know —i’m already expecting thousands of people to have turned against him. there’s such open support of c!tommy one second, but once he makes one harmless mistake it’s suddenly he’s unforgivable once again and i’m getting tired of people not bothering to understand his character and brushing him off as horrible but when it comes down to anyone else they’re way more open for second chances.

i don’t fucking understand it, is the problem.

genuinely, i don’t . i don’t understand why the vendetta against him goes so far, and i’d be open for people to tell me why they hate him but half of he time they don’t have a reason beyond him being annoying/the mistakes he’s already made up for and theyre just choosing to hold a grudge against him for.

i don’t care if you don’t like c!tommy, don’t take this post as an opportunity to debate with me (/srs), because i’m tired of explaining to deaf ears why “hey, he isn’t actually that bad guys”, because it’s 4:51AM and i’m being driven by spite and pettiness only. i will bite your head off /hj

[ckret2]

Alright let’s talk GVK spoilers!!!

My reactions as best I can remember them!

- love how Kong is humanized from the very first scene, like every time he shows up he’s humanized so much more than other titans are. If that was at the expense of other titans being made likable I wouldn’t enjoy it so much, but like, Godzilla is made pretty lovable over the course of Monsterverse, Mothra is too, and all the titans featured for long are given recognizable emotions that let us see them as more intelligent and feeling than “just” animals; so all of them are made understandable/likable/sympathetic. But of them all, Kong is the only one really humanized. Which makes sense, because like, big monkey! Basically our distant cousin!

- And they kept playing, like, normal songs for him, which cracked me up.

- I really appreciated how you could SEE the titans in this movie. After all the weather effects to hide the titans in KOTM, there was such a clear difference in this one from the very start. Kong in the daylight! Godzilla makes his first attack at night, and even then you can see him much more clearly than you can for most of KOTM! Nice!

- after the Iwi were portrayed as silent stoic witnesses in Skull Island, I really appreciated that they took an Iwi character, made her a main character, and gave her dialogue and a real role to play in the story while also keeping her deaf/mute. I think that was a good way to improve on the way that the Iwi got got sidelined in the last movie while still maintaining the worldbuilding!

- I didn’t appreciate so much that, y’know, they murdered the rest of her people off-screen in order to do it. Couldn’t they have gone “her parents died so she got adopted by a Monarch agent that was close to her family, but like, the rest of her tribe is fine”? Or at the very least “their island got fucked up so they had to be evacuated but like they’re settling in somewhere else”? “They’re living under this island dome with Kong and they know what’s up and Monarch’s keeping them in the loop and they decided they’re chill with their new dome home, but this one girl likes to go on adventures with Monarch”? Something? Did we have to kill them all off? Y’all make up an entire fictional indigenous culture and then murder them off-screen when you don’t need them? Just let them live.

- a few minutes in I was like “hold on, we’ve got two characters that speak sign language, we’ve got a giant gorilla, gorillas learn sign language, is there any reason they can’t teach Kong?” and then later I was like “OOOOOH!!” Humans and titans learning how to communicate with each other has been one of my favorite themes to explore in Monsterverse fanfic so I was absolutely tickled to see it getting explored in canon, too.

- That said I think it’s hilarious that the girl managed to teach Kong to sign without, like... anybody seeing. Kong’s hands are above the tree line and there are cameras everywhere, how did NOBODY with Monarch see him signing.

- Bernie’s weaponized being an annoying coworker to such a degree it can only be called an art, and I really appreciated it.

- Godzilla’s extra chonky in this movie and I dig it. Roomie noted he was extra crocodilian and I dig that too.

- “There’s been no confirmed titan sightings in three years” I don’t buy that for a minute. They’re BIG. Rodan NESTS IN VOLCANOES. They found a MOTHRA EGG. Humans have A SCARILY WELL-FUNDED ORGANIZATION DEDICATED SOLELY TO FOLLOWING TITANS AROUND. Like, most of the lore in GVK that I don’t personally like, I can be like “eh... I can tweak it just a little bit with headcanons to make it work for me...” but NO confirmed titan sightings? You expect me to believe ALL of them moved underground when we’d previously seen them all prefer to live above ground? You expect me to believe that now that they’re all AWAKE, they learned how to HIDE?? Uh-uh. And at the end of KOTM there was stuff in the credits about using titan droppings as biofuel, obviously they’re still walking around up top! Can’t take that from me. Nope.

- Who the FUCK is Ren Serizawa and how is he related to Ishiro Serizawa? IS he related? Maybe they just dropped the surname as another “yeah this is a Godzilla movie for Godzilla fans” easter egg but I have a hard time believing that he can’t be somehow related to the other character with the Very Important Last Name who was so important in the last two Godzilla movies. If he is related I’m sure it’s been explained in a tie-in comic or the novelization or something, I’ll look it up later.

- I had to look up how much weight huge battleships can carry while writing a KOTM fic where Ghidorah hitches a ride on one, and y’all, I had to pull weird gravity-negating magic to get him to ride on that boat. Godzilla and Kong woulda sunk that boat like a rock. All I could think during that scene is “this wouldn’t work and I know that because I DID THE RESEARCH and I wasn’t even getting PAID.” I’ll choose to believe that Monarch gets special heavy duty ships designed to carry titans but nobody mentioned it because it wasn’t relevant to Kong’s journey.

- The bit where they could see where Godzilla was swimming because he’d got half a ship hooked to him that was bobbing around on the surface, didn’t Jaws do something like that with a buoy? It’s been ages since I’ve seen Jaws. Anyway good reference.

- Insert “they’re gonna need a bigger boat” joke

- I LOVED the part where they shut down all the ships to get Godzilla to leave. Both because, one, it’s a spectacular callback to KOTM’s “turn off all the guns so he knows we’re not a threat” that makes it seem like now that’s just what Monarch knows what to do to get G to chill out, and two... we know that Godzilla backs off either when he’s killed his enemy or when his enemy has yielded to him. At the end of KOTM—and the end of GVK—the act of yielding is presented as very ceremonial and uniform across species: everyone lowers anything they’ve got that could be dangerous (claws, fangs, beaks, axes) and bows to show Godzilla they’re not gonna fight. Battleships, obviously, can’t bow, but even without being inducted into whatever secret titan cultural intricacies might be going on, humans have figured out their own way to “bow” to Godzilla: cut all the power, so their ships can’t move and can’t use weapons. I know the movie presented it as “playing dead,” but c’mon, if Godzilla could hear MechaG power up from halfway around the planet then he could hear that Kong’s heart was still beating, and he’s been around enough boats to know humans can turn them off and on when they want. The humans bowed to Godzilla. He accepted that they yielded and left.

- Mark Russell looked like such a dad in this movie, like he’s retired 100% from being a rugged action hero and now he’s just Pure Dad. I like him better when he’s a dad, it’s a good development for him. He got like 3 lines and I’m like “I appreciate this character development.”

- Despite all my qualms about how conspiracy theories and extremist groups are handled in Monsterverse (and WHICH conspiracy theories they decide to reference), I really love Madison and Bernie’s dynamic. The adult man who’s the excitable wide-eyed believer in every BS conspiracy you can possibly imagine; and then the serious, severe Teenage Girl On A Mission who’s hypercompetent because she was raised for five years by a friggin doomsday cult militia; and despite having wildly different personalities they’re just, in total agreement about everything. Handled just a BIT differently (like, leaving out the more gross IRL conspiracies) they would be a wildly fun comedic duo—especially with Josh the Only Sane Man coming along as the hapless sidekick. And they all play off of each other so well! Both in a comedic sense, and in more serious moments—when Bernie talked about his wife, there was a real moment of empathy between him and Madison with very little said. I’d watch an entire movie just about the three of them. I’d watch a TV show.

- On the one hand I wasn’t too much of a fan of KOTM’s “all titans... are inherently In Tune With Nature... nature has a Balance, because that’s a Real Thing and not an anthropocentric concept to describe how we like nature to act, and they automatically restore it... because they’re like, some kinda borderline divinities or something... we should probably be worshipping them...” thing; but, now that it was totally absent in GVK, I sorta miss it. Like I feel like there needs to be a balance, a few humans who are like “i lowkey worship these dudes?” and a few others who are like “they’re cool but like, that’s a lil extreme” and that neither side be presented as Right in how they regard titans’ relationship with nature.

- “All titans come from THE HOLLOW EARTH” nah I don’t buy that it’s silly. Basically, what I object to is the idea that all titans have some sort of intrinsic similarity (they all come from the same hitherto-unknown location; they all are part of the same pack that has the same alpha; they all are fueled/fed by the same energy source; etc) rather than letting them be SEPARATE species whose only unifying traits are “they’re all big enough to fuck everything up everywhere they go” and “they’re big enough that the typically-insurmountable barriers between different biomes (mountain ranges, valleys, long distances with terrible weather) aren’t insurmountable for them, so even if they’re specialized in different environments they still all have to deal with each other pretty often.” I’ll make some exceptions for convergent evolution (i.e., claiming multiple titans developed similar traits that are relatively easy to spontaneously evolve and a prerequisite for a creature to survive at such a large size). But I can’t buy “this big gorilla has more biologically in common with this big crocodile-iguana than he does with, say, gorillas,” or most of the other “all these titans have THIS IN COMMON” claims that Monsterverse makes, including “everyone’s from hollow earth.” So I’m tossing that out the window and substituting my own headcanons. Some might’ve evolved there but some evolved on the surface. Maybe a majority of them like ducking in and out of the hollow earth like some kind of titan shortcut system. Kong’s species, I can buy, IS native to hollow earth, considering that they built a whole-ass society down there with tools and architecture.

- I’m SO curious about the little underground Kong home, the Godzilla motif in the floor, and the axe that appeared to be made with a Godzilla scute. What’s the story there??? We know Godzilla’s species and Kong’s species are ancient rivals. Is it because Kong’s species hunted Godzilla’s to steal their scutes to make weapons, seeing them as a valuable resource the way, like, early humans considered woolly mammoths a valuable resource—thus making that Godzilla on the floor equivalent to cave art of mammoths made by people who hunted them—until the Godzillas got pissed and started fighting back en masse? Or were Godzillas and Kongs already enemies when Kongs decided to start making weapons out of their corpses? Did they use to be allies, fighting together, with Godzillas voluntarily offering shed scutes and/or bones of their deceased members to Kongs, and that place used to be a shared home until they started fighting?

- What about that power source, is it something that was already there that both Kongs and Godzillas started to deliberately harvest for technology/atomic breath? Or did Godzillas automatically channel that stuff and Kongs exploited/borrowed/traded with Godzillas to utilize it too? Or is the power from Godzillas who collaboratively poured a bunch of power into the place thus that Kongs were able to use it too? I doubt Godzilla’s species CREATED all that weird energy but the question remains of whether, like, they channel it FROM underground, or naturally produce the same thing in their own bodies, or what.

- Godzilla using his atomic breath to dig a hole STRAIGHT TO KONG just to KICK HIS ASS is hilarious. How lucky that Hong Kong just HAPPENS to be straight over Kong’s house! Were all the tunnels to the hollow earth made by pissed off Godzillas who wanted to kick monkey ass??

- I loved the aesthetic of the battle scene in Hong Kong, with the brightly colored neon building outlines, VERY cool look. The choreography of the battle scene was great too, especially

- we literally broke into applause when Kong shoved the axe handle in Godzilla’s mouth. Love it, perfect callback, that was the ONE thing from the original King Kong Vs Godzilla I was hoping to see referenced and there it was.

- You could really see a difference in how Kong and Godzilla fought—Kong doing a better job at using tools and the environment, Godzilla fighting more like a reptile. They seemed to emphasize Godzilla’s more animalistic behaviors in this movie to accomplish that contrast—he was down on all fours and moving like a crocodile more often, he was clawing at Kong’s chest—but even though it seemed a bit different of a combat technique it also didn’t seem out of place compared to how he fought in prior movies. And we’ve already seen that if Godzilla’s involved in a fight and one of the combatants knows how to use the environment, it’s typically not gonna be Godzilla. (See: Ghidorah using the reflection in a building’s windows to see what’s behind him, and recognizing a nearby power source and biting it to juice himself up.)

- So many of Godzilla’s enemies seem to have specialized in negating his atomic breath in order to combat him! The MUTOs directly suppress his ability to use it—and it makes sense that that’s an inborn ability they have, since they evolved to use Godzilla’s species as prey. Kong has a weapon that both acts as a shield to absorb the breath and turn it back against Godzilla’s species—they didn’t evolve to counter Godzilla, but they developed tools once a rivalry happened. Ghidorah’s the exception—which makes sense, since he came from space—but even at that we see him using tactics specifically to take into account Godzilla’s most powerful weapon (such as keeping one head on lookout for when he starts glowing so that they know when they need to dodge).

- LOVED the reveal that MechaG was based off of Ghidorah’s brain, it has vibes of both the Kiryu Saga and the way that Heisei MechaG is based off of Mecha-King Ghidorah. Not the most surprising plot twist, since we’d theorized that they might use San to make MechaG, but I wasn’t 100% sure they were gonna go with it until they finally did. Even when I was going “huh, the mecha pilot’s chamber looks weirdly organic” I didn’t make the connection to WHY until the reveal, lol.

- “Ghidorah’s necks are so long that the heads have to communicate with each other telepathically” that’s COMPLETELY WILD but I love it, it follows very well from their prior portrayal as telepathic empaths in Heisei, it lines up with their emphasis on electricity (because BRAINWAVES AND ELECTRICITY, hey ho movie monster pseudo science!), and it very much compliments my own private headcanon that they’ve got some psychic/mind control abilities.

- The movie ended with both “Godzilla won, technically” but also “since they teamed up as equals, the ending doesn’t FEEL like ‘Godzilla wins, Kong loses’ but rather ‘they both won against a common foe’” and since I’m on both Team Godzilla and Team They Should Be Friends, I’m happy with this outcome. Plus since the last time they fought, the Japanese movie company graciously let the American monster win, so it’s only polite that the American movie company graciously let the Japanese monster win.

- There were just a few too many humans in this movie. I was intrigued by Ren but we didn’t get much out of him, but like I guess somebody had to be in the pilot’s seat other than the Apex CEO. Didn’t care for the author of the hollow earth book, I feel like his role was superfluous. Didn’t need the Apex CEO’s daughter there at all, coulda done without her. How about this, combine all three roles. Instead of having a whole-ass author who knows about the hollow earth, just casually reference that Rick from KOTM wrote a book about it since he was the expert, and (since he wasn’t in this movie) say that he tragically died going to explore the hollow earth himself, and that way we’ve got the book with the “titans are from there” theory AND an excuse to share the “humans die when they go underground” info. Now, have Ren be working for Apex as a pilot for Mechagodzilla, but have him be MechaG’s pilot because he’s also a good pilot in general, and can fly those HEAV things. Have Apex send him to Monarch to be like “hey, you guys trust me right, since I’m Ishiro Serizawa’s relative? We at Apex have heard all about your failed hollow earth expedition, and due to Ishiro I’ve got some past ties to Monarch so I’ve got high clearance with y’all, so I could bring over this useful Apex tech that’d let you go underground and use what I know about hollow earth from my past time at Monarch to help guide things.” Once they’ve got the little chunk of energy stuff and go topside, he hustles it straight to Apex and straps into his seat to run MechaG. Bam, you’ve combined “person who knows enough about hollow earth to help the expedition,” “person who represents Apex’s interests and gets the energy,” and “person who pilots MechaG” into one character, in a way that takes three flat/underdeveloped characters and turns them into a single interesting character with a lot going on and some intriguing ties to the rest of the cast.

I think that’s everything?? Hoo.