#I wonder if people even knew at the time

[crusheswhimsandfancies]

Flintstones interview, 1994

[acecroft]

DINA MEYER as Detective Allison Kerry in Saw III (2006)

[feroluce]

This was all the way back from the end of 2.3.

Hey Sparkle what the fuck.

[helenofblackthorns]

reading tftsa is always an emotional experience especially when you get the short stories focused around the Blackthorns because the absence of Mark just bleeds out. like when you read about Julian being Helen's suggenes and Simon being the witness to Julian's parabatai ceremony you are just burdened with the knowledge that that's not who they would have picked if the circumstances were different. in a different life it was Mark.

[jessiesjaded]

I really, really wish people who don't have the capacity to properly take care of animals would simply accept and acknowledge that about themselves. This isn't even a post of me trying to be mean or judge anyone, I'm sure most people go into getting an animal with good intentions, but intentions and actions are different. If you don't have the time and the space and the care an animal needs, the animal will suffer. The fleeting joy of having a kitten or puppy or anything else doesn't last forever and they aren't toys to be put down and forgotten once you've moved past the inital excitement. If you don't have the ability to properly care for an animal, just accept that and simply admire them from a distance.

[vaguely-concerned]

I've been picking mostly only the essential flirt options with lucanis in the romance so far (I've personally found the dynamic much more natural and mutual when you do that, more like forming a solid friendship slowly and inevitably becoming something else and less like you keep pushing on him and getting little back b/c he seemingly just gets overwhelmed and goes into freeze instead), and I think rye is a pretty hard person to read at the best of times even though he's been Down Real Bad from pretty early on and their chemistry as people is naturally really good. so the way the almost-kiss plays out in this playthrough feels a lot like it has the added layer of lucanis realizing that no but for sure rook is flirting and not just being kind or a good friend* it IS actually happening it's not just wishful/fearful thinking!!! and then uh. maybe going a bit too hard a bit too fast in all the excitement at that revelation haha

*in lucanis' defense he has seemingly literally never had a friend who wasn't his cousin-brother before, under those circumstances I suppose some confusion is extremely natural if not outright expected lmao

[randomnameless]

Why do the FEH devs insist on ignoring Nabatean lore so much?

I recently had a surprisingly cordial discussion on redshit with someone about the "nabateans = colonisers" take, and one of the main points raised was that the game was purposedly foggy around Nabateans/Sothis/their story because it would obviously favor a certain narrative (and thus make another narrative look, uh, not that marketable anymore).

To be honest, we still ended up with a product that had a lead go "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and yet that lead is still marketable enough to have raunchy cipher cards and 5 FEH alts, so I actually wonder if, while pissing on that lore had that purpose, it was ultimately pointless since Supreme Leader can still sell goodies despite her incarnation in FE16.

And not only Supreme Leader - but the entirety of WC where we basically have 70% of the cast crying/complaining about their "mixed blood" or lack of and basically adding their 10 cents to the "this race and its blood is the reason why the world sucks".

I mean, can you imagine Sylvain selling any goodies and alts if Flayn replied to his "wah wah people only are kind to me and want to fuck me because I have Nabatean blood :(" by some uncharacteristic "good for you, I have to hide my ears, had to dye my hair, have to lie about my family because if the truth is found out about my identity, I will be hunted and vivisected like an animal and harvested for parts by people who call my kin abominations - just like what happens in the game where the same people who call my kin "abominations" ally with a classmate who calls me a creature and pretends I am incapable of human feelings based on my race".

FE Fodlan's main selling point is its cast of students, for various reasons, but even if I tried to kid myself, Nopes and FEH made it clears : students are the main selling point.

If you spare more time and attention to the Nabatean plot/lore, the students either grow from "likeable" to "despicable" or worse, you won't gaf about them because yeah sure, Hilda might be upset because people expect things from her due to her crust, but it would feel like a "peanut" compared to Seteth's irrational (granted, it's not so irrational since GW exists) fear that Flayn's newest friends would dissect her if they learnt she was a Nabatean, and being conflicted by finally letting her have human friends and form bonds she crave, or protect her due to the trauma from the genocide of their species.

Don't get me wrong, I love peanuts, I mean, not everyone can have a tragik of loaded backstory!

And yet, given how this verse's DNA is "can you fight against the red emperor who uwus about you", they had to add copious amounts of Earl Grey to their games so there's no clear-cut factions :

The "Your alien blood and its influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command" vs "I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

is turned to :

"Your alien blood Crests and its your church's influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command"

"I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

Sprinkle with the cast's hammering here and there that the "reforms" might be needed - but never develop on what they are - and add a few baseless and groundless takes as a toping (basically everything Claude says about tolerance and the general "isolationism/foreign policy" stuff) and you get FE Fodlan where the Red Emperor's war isn't seen as the catastrophe it is in the other entries from the series!

Now, for FEH...

FWIW, the F!F!Billy's trailer had them try to explain that Sothis was a bit pissed about her slaughtered/massacred children when Nopes never gave any reason about why she was pissed - maybe on Billy's behalf bcs Jerry's dead, but come on, she would indeed deserve the medal of the worst parent in the franchise if that was the case, since Billy can murder her daughter without Sothis taking over ! - but given that they cannot write/go against the source game those characters are from.

They tried a bit, with B!Supreme Leader and Hegemongard's FB, but then it stopped (because she had no "new unit" released since then lol) and I can understand why : Hegemongard came out before the Supreme Emblem, and Hegemongard hates dragons who are seen/perceived as gods by some of their human followers. Come FE17, and now Supreme Emblem accepts Alear because they are "one of the good ones". We can come up with HCs and details and talk about what are emblems or if Hegemongard's views were only hers at the end of AM all day long... But imo, Doylist wise, it still feels it's a retcon because the devs from the main games tried to scrap and remove the most "controversial" traits she had.

For the other characters... Well, you see what Marianne is in FEH (but even in her base games), she's one of the few characters who reacts - in a way - to the partial history about relics and demonic beasts and all... only to give sad uwus to Maurice.

FE16 (and Nopes) refused to have any "student" character react to the Nabatean lore/reveal, about what are relics and all. There are no lines, Claude shared some knowledge in the explore section of VW's last chapter, but we don't have anyone muse or think or even talk about what are relics, what are crests, and what kind of fuckery their ancestors or the ancient humans of Fodlan did.

With that in mind, FEH can't do much : either they write Marianne in a retcon-y way like what happened for Hegemongard (and they're not afraid to piss on characterisation, look at Lyon!), or they flanderise her "character" and develop her around 3 lines she had in the game in her paralogue, and continue to give sad uwus about Momo when he was at best a guy who slaughtered and murdered so much that he abused the Nabatean turned into a relic to the point where he turned in a demonic beast even if he had a matching crest, or at worst, had been part of Nemesis's piñata party in Zanado and was something of a genocider.

Tldr :

Why FE Fodlan never gaf about Nabateans : earl grey + the marketable cast has to stay marketable and you can't sell peanuts at the same price you'd sell swordfish

Why FEH dgaf about Nabatean lore : they can't afford to retcon characters + they have to sell peanut alts with the same seasoning they had in their base game.

For what it's worth though, I think FEH is more daring than the base game(s) given how they gave more lines and screentime to Rhea - through her different alts - than GW. And they even designed her Halloween!alt's lines to piss on some of Claude's assertions, while the various FB involving members of the church also - indirectly - reply to some accusations thrown their way in FE16 when, FE16, never gave them an opportunity or lines to explain that those takes were full of dung.

*"but random, maybe she doesn't know that the crests she often decries is "dragon blood"!"

It's highly debatable, especially given what she and Hubert throw to Billy in CF - but even if she doesn't, Doylist wise we still have a character who, knowingly or not, says "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and who is never called out on her prejudice. That's more of an issue regarding the general writing though, she has to be a red emperor and took pages from Ashnard's book, and yet, the player must still feel bad and want to romance her, so her mindest/goal cannot be looked at too closely, because, I guess, even the devs thought it would be difficult to romance her (thus sell goodies!) if more light was shed on the "blood from this race corrupts our people" schtick -> which in turn would also make characters whose backstory and gimmick rely on "crying about crests" be way less likeable, thus marketable and able to sell goodies.

[athousandblessings]

OK, so. I need a distraction. During a recent casual ol' chat with a snzblr pal (who I will keep anon here unless they want to speak out!), I found out that I have a lot of followers for snzblr. I mean in comparison, on average, or something? I don't write fics or make art or wavs, and yes I did get a bunch of followers early on for a couple of generic "this is a thing I like!" posts, but that's died down a lot since then, so... Anyway! Sometimes I feel like I have a lot, sometimes I feel like I have a small but fair share? But I guess I'm just curious! So please, if you're inclined to share....

[gottagobackintime]

I find it fascinating to witness the straight audience of any media not being able to pick up what the makers of the movie/show puts down.

It’s like when people reacted to the “You wear fine things well” scene in Our Flag Means Death with “aw, they’re such good friends” whereas the queer audience went “omg, this is happening”. We all had access to the same scene, we’d all watched the build up to that scene but the straight audience wrongly read it as friends/straight whereas the queer audience had suspected they were building up to a romance but this was the confirmation. Even the creator of the show was baffled that people were surprised that Ed and Stede fell in love. Because he thought they had made it obvious.

And as I said, we, the queer audience picked up on it. And I feel like the same thing is happening with Ted Lasso. Do I know that Ted and Trent will get together? No, I am unfortunately not a writer on Ted Lasso. But you can’t deny that there are clues pointing to it. But the straight audience barely pick up the fact that Ted and Trent like each other, be that in a platonic way or romantic way. I’ve seen several reactions to the last episode of season 2 and ONE of them included the scene where Ted reacts to Trent not being in the press room. All of them severely cut down the scene in the parking lot. One of the scenes most of us Ted/Trent truthers point to as a huge piece of evidence for it going canon. The parallel of them meeting in an empty parking lot, just like Ted and his ex-wife and Roy and Keeley. But because Ted and Trent are both men it couldn’t possibly mean anything. And Ted has an ex-wife and a kid so he can’t possibly be into men, as if there is no such thing as being bisexual. “But I’m pretty sure Trent has a family, he has a kid right?” So? He could be divorced, we also have no idea if his daughter has another dad or a mum. And the same thing applies to him, it doesn’t mean he can’t be into men (take also into account all of James Lance’s interviews, and his choice of shirt in one of them, friend of Dorothy anyone? He's the captain of this ship, we're just along for the ride tbh.)

Then we have the wonderful “I’m so not homophobic, in fact, you are homophobic because you think Ted is gay just because he likes musicals and has ‘feminine’ traits” um no… it’s the fact that he kind of acts in a way that an ally wouldn't. Yeah, he called himself an ally in that one episode. But every single person who is now out as queer who at one point considered themselves an ally because "I’m not one of them but I sure think they're neat" raise a hand 🖐️ (been there, done that. Was very into queer things before I realised I myself am one of them). What it always comes down to is "it's pandering", "it's tokenism" (having the main character on the show be queer wouldn't be fucking tokenism), "not everything has to be gay", "why can't men just be friends, there is a severe lack of male friendships on tv". And like the last one makes me go??? There are a MILLION friendships between men on TV. There are even multiple friendships between men in Ted Lasso. Beard and Ted, Ted and Higgins, Ted and Roy, the himbos and so on. Having Ted and Trent become a couple wouldn't really change anything because there are still friendships between men. They also claim that Ted is needed as the "straight without toxic masculinity" representation. As if Beard isn't right there. The man who has no problem going to an immersive show about the menstrual cycle. Has no problem with shrieking when he's surprised and so on.

I also like that if we'd get Ted and Trent together, we'd get two middle aged queer dads. Which isn't that common. It's not even super common to see people realising they're queer late in life on TV, and yet it happens every day. Because let's face it, most queer men on TV kind of look like Colin, and I don't mean that as a bad thing. And I'm looking forward to his storyline. But it's also nice seeing middle aged or old people finding themselves and being allowed to be who they are (see Ed and Stede from OFMD). Also would enjoy seeing people lose their minds when they realise they've been fooled this entire time. It'll be like Black Sails all over again.

I do not have any doubts about the fact that, had Trent or Ted been a woman and they saw Trent give up his career because of Ted's influence, they sure as hell wouldn't protest people thinking they'd become a couple. But because it's two men it's just delusional for some reason (homophobia).

What I'm saying is, it's clear that the straight audience has a hard time picking up subtext and clues that the makers are planting. Because they've never had to do that. Because they are always clearly represented. They don't have to look for minor side characters and hope that they might be queer. Because the main character is straight and most of the supporting cast too. When you've grown up with a lack of representation or with representation that is meant to be subtext, you'll learn to pick up on it. And you do look at media differently. I just wish that the straight audience could listen to us for once, without getting defensive and dancing around the fact that they are uncomfortable relating to a character that turned out to be queer.

[kirby-the-gorb]

[moonchild-in-blue]

Oh.

[the-vibing-ghoul]

some people will be all about mental health awareness and leftist ideals of at least tolerating the mentally ill who show ''ugly'' symptoms until it's someone they know and ''care'' about having a bad day and acting like it in a way they don't find appealing

[weepylucifer]

glorious 25th makes me think again about that one idea i once had for a discworld spinoff set in the future that would deal with the natural conclusion to the industrial revolution arc: communism comes to discworld

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Genuine question do any other writers feel a kind of loss when they’ve finished a story/have moved on to a new project? Like I actively miss my characters and my plot line and I love my current project but I also find myself constantly thinking of the previous and how I could find ways to expand on it… I don’t know if it was because that was the first work I completed and shared so it has a particular place in my heart or if I’m going to feel this way after finishing my current works in progress as well, but I don’t really have the words to explain the way I feel without being part of that project every day even though I still spend time every day with my new ones

[swagging-back-to]

people who look down on GEDs are repulsive filth actually <3

[queerlyvictorian]

Okay but somebody has to talk about the way Brennan including an in-world storyteller at the top of the first scene in the first episode of main campaign, vaguely name-dropping world geography and some of the lore on the different casters, is MASTERFUL exposition.

I also can't get what seem to be Umora's version of sorcerers and warlocks out of my brain. Warlocks, okay, making a deal with a spirit makes sense makes sense.

BUT.

SORCERERS BEING THE CHILD/DESCENDANT OF HUMANS AND SPIRITS??

I want. Give me. Give me nowwww. I want a character (NPC or Guest PC) who is the child of a human and a Wild One like Eursulon who lost their spirit nature. I want the product of star-crossed lovers and MORE TRAPPED SPIRITS. The mechanics of that whole process [as explained in the Children's Adventure, Episode 5, not specified here so I don't have to tag spoilers] is so fascinating.

The mark of excellent fantasy/speculative fiction worldbuilding for me? When I can start speculating at the possibilities. When there are so many possibilities that your brain starts to populate the world with unfathomable diversity without that ever being spelled out to you.