#I'm deeply sorry for rambling

[redlenai]

... Why I thought, all of a sudden, that Jimmy and Anya are way more similar than we want to admit regarding Curly?

You openly talk about your problem, your crisis, and he just... doesn't properly register it, doesn't react the way you would have liked him to, it is frustrating, Anya wasn't exposed to Curly for a long time nor we were able to see how much she resented him thanks to his inaction and diminishing the problem, but we surely got to see Jimmy's resentment, how many times did he talk about his problems? How many times did Curly hit the guy while he was down (Below him) by focusin on his own problems?

I've noticed two things in the fandom, Jimmy is Irresponsible, while Curly is told he is Selfish. Curly is good keeping appearances, being flirty with Anya with some very cliché one-liners, calm and collected to Swansea, friendly superior to Daisuke, and an understanding supportive friend. It doesn't remove the fact he is an enabler but I wonder, didn't he feel good knowing there was someone doing worse than him? Keeping him close to keeps his own spirits high? Like, it seems Curly has been working for Pony Express for quite a while, why suddently help his friend out to get a job as a Co-Pilot? We're not sure either if Jim had previous experience or if he worked on a different company but same field. While not justifying Jimmy, deep down I wonder if Curly unconsciously enjoyed the fact that Jimmy was having a hard life, would he break down even more now with these crushing and questionable work ethics? With the isolation and silence from Space? Without the only activity that probably allowed him to vent (Weightlifting)? With the stress of knowing that he could get his salary cut down just by daring to sleep more than 4 hours?

But hey, Jim should see the bigger picture too, there is a routine, there is a roof on top of his head, 4 hours of sleep is better than no sleep at all, the same meals over and over, but still better than nothing, at least working, right? Let's see him endure for a whole year, with Jim breaking down bit by bit, wouldn't that also make him feel like an even better Captain? Wouldn't that make him ignore the weight of his responsabilities, make it more bearable knowing someone is having it worse and looking even worse?

It sounds twisted, I know, but we all too deny a few things, push it to the back of our minds, do things unconsciously, relieve ourselves by saying "We could be worse...." when we're unsatisfied with our situation. People are so complex, it sounds twisted but hey, maybe one day we can be transparent, imperfect and honest just like Swansea

I can't stop thinking about how Jimmy would never let Curly forget how fucked up and shitty his life is, and how much better Curly's life is compared to his.

I feel like this is partially why Curly is so close to him. This is his friend and the only person on the ship he feels like he can be honest to because he keeps it real around him. He hears so much about his friend's awful life and so he tries to help him by convincing him to work for the same company he works for.

I wonder how long they were friends for. How good of a friend was Jimmy to notice Curly's mood during the birthday party and check in on him. How many red flags did Curly miss or ignore. How much of it was manipulation, or was any of it manipulation? Curly wasn't stupid. He's flawed and was put in a hard position. There's so much about their relationship that wasn't shown and likely will never be shown and I sit for hours thinking about it.

[chronicowboy]

buck and eddie's conversation on the fountain in merry ex-mas gets infinitely funnier to me every time it's like: your estranged wife who you're sleeping with on the DL comes to your place of work and announces to your nosiest co-worker and best friend that you can't talk without fucking, your platonic male bestie ✨ is absurdly quiet about the whole situation which is very uncharacteristic of him so you invite him to bring your son to a mall santa whilst wondering if you can ever trust your wife with your son again, once said child is out of hearing distance you bring up your bestie's silence, bestie replies that it's none of his business and you agree in a way that sounds like you're begging him to question every life decision you've ever made before immediately launching into a full explanation of the situation despite no homo bro sitting there awkwardly listening after doing the absolute Most to avoid this conversation because he's been talking about the situation with his future brother-in-law whilst christmas tree shopping, then he commiserates with you about the never-ending complications of sex with women, both of you are exactly three seconds away from wondering aloud whether sex with men is simpler, but then your son returns from santa's village with an elf who will tell your work husband that the two of you have an adorable son and he will skip away without denying this. just normal best friend things <3

[sxcret-garden]

,

[brainfilehasstoppedworking]

ShadAmy but Shadow grieves Amy the entire time. Not that she's dead yet, but he does know she *will* die one day and leave him alone. Her birthday passes and Shadow silently worries over the day he'll never be able to celebrate it with her because she'll be gone.

He'll see friends go by.

Amy will be gone.

And here he was.

Stuck forever in his 15 year old looking body, made to live forever. Immortality is a blessing and a curse. Especially when he has to live life alone, again. He'll lose all his loved ones again.

He grieves his Rose. Even when she's right there in front of him, he'll grieve her every second of the day because he just already sees the world without her in his future. His beloved Amy Rose. He isn't prepared to lose her one day. He isn't ready to see her light go out.

He grieves. And grieves. But he holds every moment with Amy in his heart, close to him forever. He'll always treasure her, even when she's gone.

[gaylactic-fire]

Zelinkers on here will meticulously go through "evidence" of their ship's canonicity with a fine tooth comb and write thesis level analysis essays about it.

Then they see the school and Zelda's diary and go "Ooo she has baby fever ooo she wants kids" and think no further on the implications of Zelda becoming a teacher based on her own childhood and the calamity.

Head in my hands. Groaning in agony. Etc.

[cottoncandysprite]

Y'all ever look back and realize your least fav character in your fav show was actually the one most painfully similar to who you were when you first watched it

[drwafton]

Made fanart of you-

I'm sorry if this version of you I made you a God-

"I have to say this art is well done! I wouldn't exactly call myself a god though. Still I appreciate it."

[elephantlovemedleys]

just feeling the insanity in my bones.....

[gophergal]

Since I had someone follow me just now I would like to make a quick note:

I may not be otherkin/therian or even fully understand it, but I do support y'all! My best friend is a velociraptor and I love them very very much, even if I don't understand what it means to feel like you're something other than human

[sitelenco]

i'm a midget (in a good way xd)

here's another dose of MetaTuri to brighten up your day, with a sweet topping of protective MK yippieeee!!

i kinda find it quite funny that i draw Galacta a lil buff like that and i gave him scars, i think it fits him well khshkdhkfs

anyways hope you have a wonderful time and take care! ⚔️👁‍🗨

[loregoddess]

2am Temenos thoughts I'm now typing out in the morning: I like Temenos' English voice acting but it has a very particular tone. Do you think that has any influence on his (mis)characterization?

Oh hmm, y'know I hadn't considered that but you might be on to something, because voice line delivery does affect how people perceive a character, although I think part of it may be localization choices and direction of the voice acting as well. (I had way more thoughts on this question than I was expecting to, hence the cut bc of length).

Like, I've seen discussions about writing quality vs. quality of voice acting ("whether the character writing is good, or whether the voice acting carries the character" is a debate I've seen several times), and also I've seen people talk about how differences in the voice acting performances across different localizations affect how the character comes across differently (i.e. there's a series of videos that were popular after BotW came out where every cutscene was compared in all the languages the game had been dubbed in, with a lot of people talking about how Zelda's breakdown in the "Memory 16: Despair" cutscene seemed way more emotional in some languages than others). So like, the vocal performance does factor into audience perception, no argument there.

I went ahead and looked up compilations of Temenos's voice lines in both English and Japanese, and while I'm very much not fluent in Japanese at all, and therefore can't pick up too much on tonal shifts, I will note that a lot of the anger Temenos spends so much time masking seems to come through a bit more clearly in his JP voice lines (his JP unique battle line against Kaldena is sounds especially furious, and while the ENG delivery of the same line is definitely angrier sounding than most of his other ENG battle lines, there's something that feels a bit rawer about the JP delivery, at least to my ears).

This is no shade at his ENG VA, since I think the voice acting was pretty strong overall (although the recording quality of some of the lines is another matter, but again not the VA's fault), and I don't think the JP is better or worse than the ENG voice performance, since (recording quality aside) they're both solid performances, but they do have slightly different feels to them.

I personally felt the ENG delivery of the story dialogue lines often gave Temenos a sort of slightly playful but aloof tone, but either by choice of the voice direction or simply due to how the VA's voice naturally is, the anger (while it's definitely there) doesn't come across as noticeably angry or aggressively as I've seen with some other VA performances. Which isn't a bad thing per se, bc even in real life no two people show anger or even sound angry in the same way, and I think Temenos's ENG voice still works for his characterization.

And that's of course just looking at one emotion. I'd have to do a lot more digging (or replay the game w/ the JP voices turned on) to see how the voice line delivery sounds for scenes like Jorg's death or the ruins of the Kal.

Unfortunately, since I can't translate like, 90% of what's being said in the JP lines by ear, I can't compare them against the ENG localization to see if the word choice of the localization shifts the tone or implied meaning any (although for what I can translate by ear, the localization seems to be a fairly close 1:1 for the battle lines at least, and typically I don't have a lot of beef w/ localization when I can get my hands on fan translations of original JP text to compare/contrast). I do think the word choice for localizations affects how a character is interpreted, even with good localizations--except, again how said word choice is interpreted usually reveals maybe more about the audience than the author.

For example, I know a lot of people read Temenos calling Crick "Little Lamb" as flirtatious, and I guess I kinda get why that interpretation exists, but to me the nickname always seemed...not condescending per se, and not intentionally mean, but almost as if Temenos is teasing Crick for his unquestioning faith and calling him childish for it. As a result, my reading "Little Lamb" as "your unquestioning faith is childish, I'm going to tease you a bit about that until you've matured" makes it seem like Temenos is putting a lot more distance between himself and Crick than reading "Little Lamb" as a cute, flirtatious nickname does. Now, I rarely read romantic undertones to a lot of dialogue, and shipping is the least important thing to me when I'm engaging with a story, so my interpretation of that line probably says more about me than it does about the intention of the writers.

However! The vocal delivery of the voice line doesn't really give us any insight either, bc while I didn't hear it as sounding flirtatious, lots of other people apparently did. Now, it's not like I know what goes on with the direction during the recording sections, how much information about the characters and scene and story the VAs are given, and how that information, or lack thereof, affects how they voice act, so again no shade on the VA or even the voice direction as a whole, but as you noted, choices were made in the direction that made it so Temenos has a very particular tone.

Now again, it's hard to say how much this does or doesn't affect a person's interpretation bc, well, vocal and tonal interpretation isn't like, a science or anything. Depending on regional dialects/cultures, two people from different areas can interpret the same voice delivery in two entirely different ways (i.e. the "are city people, esp. people from NY, really rude or are they just from the city" discussions I've seen floating around about whether it's rude or not to walk into a deli and order your food w/out any small talk, and how it's more about where a person grew up that will usually inform their initial reaction to that question).

If I had to guess, I think the mischaracterization I come across for Temenos seems to stem from the fact that he puts of a façade 99% of the time, and rarely lets it slip. Unlike say, Therion, who goes through an entire arc and speech about how he's actually okay with wanting to care about and trust other people, Temenos rarely shows any vulnerability because his character arc wasn't about accepting vulnerability like Therion's was. Instead Temenos's façade plays into aspects of how he interacts with other characters, but isn't treated as an obstacle to overcome per se, which also means that the audience may miss that it's even there in the first place, mistaking the façade for the actual core characterization.

We get some indication of the "slipping façade" in the vocal deliveries, i.e. the angry "Kaldena!" battle line, or (if I'm remembering correctly) the voice lines leading up to the Arcanette boss fight, but the thing about Octopath is that it's only partly voice acted. Some of the parts where I read Temenos as letting his mask slip a bit, or otherwise him showing more emotion or vulnerability than usual, were in travel banters, which are entirely silent so we don't get to hear how the VA would have tried to navigate those scenes. Would the banters being voiced have changed interpretations and prevented popular fanon mischaracterization? Maybe, maybe not.

Possibly more importantly, Temenos's façade is notably friendly, or at least nicer than the "edgy loner who uses snark and sass to keep people at bay" façade that's on the opposite end of the "characters with trust and intimacy issues" spectrum, and most characters I've come across who seem to try to keep people from getting too close to them by being friendly tend to get mischaracterized by fans bc the "friendly mask" is so convincing and not as noticeably phony as like, being an edgy loner who's actively pushing people away despite craving friendship/love/etc. is. So this could just be a fandom thing in general, and not unique to Temenos or directly affected by vocal performances (i.e. Klavier Gavin from Ace Attorney is another character I read as masking a lot of trust issues and using friendliness as a means of keeping people away, and that is not a common reading of his characterization, at least not when I used to haunt the fandom, and AA has almost 0 voice acting so this isn't due to voice performance).

There is, of course, also the school of thought that "correct" interpretations don't exist bc everyone has their own experiences that are true to them and their interpretation of media is reflective of that, so I'll be the first to say that it's not that my interpretations of Temenos's characterization are more or less correct as compared to someone else's. And honestly like, it's a piece of fiction, so I'm not going to get upset about what the popular fanon characterization is, even if I personally think it's mischaracterization, bc I can also just ignore it.

Although, there is also a sort of fanonization that's become more frequent in fandom spaces where even characters with less complex writing get mischaracterized (simplified, smoothed over, etc.) in favor of popular fandom trends. Again, not the devil per se, but it definitely an unusual trend that I've seen an uptick in. It's almost like a commercialization of fandom, except maybe not as malicious...yet.

Anyhow, I've gotten a bit off topic, and this will be an endless set of tangents soon if I'm not careful.

So uh, yeah! The shortest answer to your questions is, yes I do believe the vocal delivery of a character's lines will affect how that character's characterization is perceived and interpreted, although there's other things that affect interpretation as well (word choice for the writing, audience's personal tastes/experiences, trends in fandom, etc.), and that a mix of these things will weave into whatever the popular interpretation and fanon characterization for that character becomes. But also everyone will still come up with their own unique interpretations of characterizations, so non-fanon interpretations will always exist as well.

[the-one-who-lambs]

I'm sorry, I forgot it lived

There's a distant longing like a star, oh, I'm so sorry

In that corner with no warmth, did you wait for me?

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

why is it that I find a physical copy of one CD by an incredibly popular band that I want to own and it turns out the disc was stolen but my sister can go to a different thrift store and come home with like 6 CDs including one by a decently obscure artist that we both happen to be into

[sskk-manifesto]

Finally got around to watching ep 11 (´；ω；｀)

[welcometogrouchland]

YOU want canon superbat because you want to see them kiss. I want canon superbat in order to force Jon and Damian into a belligerent step siblings dynamic, ala Drake & Josh. We are not the same ///j

[quatregats]

Anyways. Having a good time writing Hornblowerfic rn