#I'm not trying to be antagonistic

[notchainedtotrauma]

"In times like this the point of art and fun is to keep you from wanting to kill urself."

I'm just going to quote Toni Morrison: "I want to remind you that art is dangerous. I want to remind you of the history of artists that have been murdered, slaughtered, imprisoned, chopped up, interned. The history of art whether in it's in music or written or what have you, has always been bloody because dictators and people in office and people who want to control and deceive know exactly who would disturb their plans. They're the ones that tell the truth."

"In times like this the point of art and fun is to keep you from wanting to kill urself."

This is a statement that comes from a place of hope, but this is a dangerous and potentially deadly statement. Not because it's untrue, but because of its internal meaning. Zines are real political action. Drag is real political action. Gil Scott-Heron making music that was groovy and funky was also real political action. And it is heartbreaking and rhythmic and poetic and loving and warm

The very "fun" of art is what breaks down systems rooted in quotidian violence, and yes, OP, it does keep you from killing yourself...and your own.

Okay sometimes people on here are like "zines aren't real political action" "drag isn't real political action" even "joining X explicity political leftist group" etc etc but tbh all the real action they're talking about (killing people or destroying the government or just direct action of most kinds etc) can only be done by meeting people who are NOT hosting "kill everyone in the government" parties

[bixels]

I've been taking a script analysis course and using the knowledge to draft stuff for a GG20s pilot adaptation. Here are my very messy and unorganized notes/outline.

[ryssabrin]

i feel like people who don’t like solas or solavellan have such a warped perspective of what the romance is and how fans of it actually engage in it. like i’ve seen a lot of (most likely het dudes lol) on reddit say they tried it to see what the fuss was but felt it was “demeaning” and i’ve seen it described as literally a horror story where solas is manipulating and using and lying to a young impressionable lavellan who gives up her entire identity for him and becomes a complete doormat to all the awful shit he does. that’s never been my experience and i kinda just want to ramble about how i see it and what i find romantic about it?

so full disclosure, if veilguard had come out a few years ago with how they portrayed lavellan and solavellan i might have been pretty disappointed. i think there is a subset of the solavellan fanbase that likes the wolf/halla or student/professor thing and they play their lavellan younger and agreeing almost without question to everything solas says. i see the appeal but i never played my lavellan that way and i really like the dynamic of it when lavellan actually goes against his advice at times. solas is a character that needs to have his preconceived biases questioned. especially in inquisition when he’s still coming to terms with the fact that the modern people of thedas are in fact people lol. so i was concerned at the prospect of my lavellan being taken out of my hands and having to listen to her make excuses for him and submit to everything he says. (which tbf i don’t think is how she actually comes across in dav, but that was a worry.)

however when i replayed my canon dai run this year, i realized i was closer to the age i always saw my lavellan as (early 30s), and as my lavellan is probably the bioware pc i’ve always played closest to my own personality, i took the opportunity to tweak her a bit and make some different choices. i’ve (hopefully lol) matured and grown a lot since i was 24 and so rather than going for the snarky sarcastic cool girl vibes i opted to play her with more diplomatic and caring choices. it made me see the solas romance in a completely new light. rather than some sort of student/professor dynamic or a pride and prejudice-esque rivals-to-lovers vibe where lavellan is fighting for his respect the whole time, what stuck out to me was how much their connection builds simply because lavellan is kind to solas. she hears him out when he wants to give his opinions and advice, she respects his expertise on the fade and spirits, and she offers him comfort and friendship when she sees he needs it. she impresses him because he finds himself wanting to indulge in her closeness. he finds a connection to someone he never expected to and it makes him rethink everything about the broken state he put the world in.

it’s worth noting that lavellan is always making the first move. she kisses him first, she pursues him. he tries to brush off the kiss as a spontaneous lapse in judgement and she doesn't let him. he only ever gives in to her advances, he doesn't make them himself. he calls their relationship "selfish" on his end. he knows he shouldn't be encouraging her but he can't help but long for her companionship. that being said though if lavellan shuts it down he respects it. he probably feels a little relief because the temptation is now out of his hands lol.

i feel like there’s also this perception that he’s constantly shitting on the dalish while lavellan just has to put up with it and that alone is reason enough to find the relationship demeaning. he mentions the dalish in one optional conversation chain where you ask him for his opinion on the state of the elves and then in the balcony scene where he realizes he’s misjudged the inquisitor after his personal quest. in both instances, lavellan can stick up for the dalish. in the optional conversation, lavellan can say that if solas had a bad experience with a clan once (which we know from dav is exactly what happened lol), that she’d like to correct that misunderstanding about her people.

it's worth noting as well that lavellan doesn't know solas is the dread wolf when he's criticizing the dalish. from her perspective, he's essentially a city-born elf who had some dalish look down their nose at him for not being a "true elf" like they are, something that not only happens in canon throughout the games and lavellan would be aware of, but literally happens to solas specifically, right in front of you. he doesn't say a single word to mihris and she doesn't know a thing about him other than his face is bare and thus feels comfortable referring to him with what is essentially a slur. but rather than confront her directly about it he just passive aggressively speaks to her in elven almost exclusively for the rest of the quest lol.

far from the dynamic being that lavellan is just putting up with someone talking down to her about her culture, i think it's reasonable to see her view is more that they're both members of the same marginalized group, but from different cultures. his position in criticizing the dalish is not punching down it's lateral. she loves her culture, but is able to recognize it has flaws and not every member in it treats other cultures well, particularly even when they're from the same marginalized group. (and it's also just really meaningful that the first "flirt" option you get in the solas romance is lavellan recognizing that solas has put himself in a very vulnerable position as an elven apostate joining the chantry-led inquisition and with whatever power she has she will make sure that it's not held against him.)

i do think the writing conveys that he does have his mind changed about the dalish at least a little bit, but one of his pet peeves is when people are ignorant and refuse any information that challenges their worldview. as a manifested wisdom spirit, it is a particular sticking point to him to not be listened to when he is providing knowledge. i think criticism of how he is towards the dalish is lacking without taking into account his nature as a spirit. obvs we didn’t know that in dai but we do now. when wisdom isn't listened to it turns to pride. "i told you so," "i'll prove i'm right," "you should have listened to me," etc. etc. he got his feelings hurt when the dalish didn't believe him (and according to dav, literally tried to kill him) and his ego's held a grudge ever since.

when it comes to the vallaslin, to me it’s less about solas wanting to dismantle part of dalish culture (he offers no actual opinion on the dalish during that scene) and more that it clearly bothers him a lot that he fought so hard to free the elves from slavery and the one community of elves that’s closest to the descendants of the people he wanted to free still wears tattoos honoring the very tyrants he wanted to free them from. if lavellan says she wants to keep them and that the dalish reclaimed them and they mean something else to her, he doesn’t argue. i actually don’t like that solas’s post breakup banter with cole implies that lavellan thinks he might have broken up with her over the vallaslin. it’s putting thoughts in the head of my character that i personally don’t see her having. the way the breakup plays out, there’s not a single indication that it has anything to do with the vallaslin. i like to pick the “i believe in us” option because it shows lavellan having some idea that there’s something solas isn’t telling her and that’s the main reason he’s walking away. and the irony of course is that we learn in dav that that was the moment he came the closest to just giving up everything to just be with her.

so when i played through dav with my solasmance lavellan and she talks about what drew her to him it all just felt so right. he was kind and wise and sad but he made her feel like she was the only thing that mattered to him. (and that was very almost true!) there was a passion and intensity to their relationship that made her think he was the person she wanted to be with forever. when she says "i thought i would have followed anywhere he asked me to" you could read it as her saying she would have joined him in tearing down the veil if he asked and depending on your lavellan that might be true (though in the next bit she talks about how she would have been trying to change his mind anyways). but you could also read it as what her mindset was while she was with him during dai. before joining the inquisition, she knew him to be someone that traveled the world looking for lost secrets and history. why would she not have wanted to join him in that? is that not something you do when you're in love with someone?

something else that i find really compelling about solavellan is how solas relates to the inquisitor (not just lavellan) as a figurehead stripped of their personal identity. he knows from personal experience exactly what that's like. in the romances (not just solas's), the inquisitor is able to find someone that knows and cares for them for who they are, not what they represent. this aspect of the inquisitor's arc is honestly why i like keeping the vallaslin. my lavellan wants people to be able to look at her as the inquisitor and see a dalish elf. it's one small act of defiance and in reclaiming her own narrative. so thinking about what she might want to do after her responsibilities to the inquisition are over, it's reasonable to think she might want to just go wherever solas goes? because she loves him and feels like herself around him. even her asking him to let her come with him in trespasser feels more motivated by the fact that lavellan sees solas isolating himself and closing himself off and she's sad about it because she cares about him. that was why she wanted to grow close to him in the first place.

and i genuinely don't think it's all that wild that lavellan still holds a torch for solas 10 years later. i personally was friends with this guy in high school i always had a crush on, and towards the end of senior year it looked like it could actually end up turning into something. but then he immediately left for a summer abroad after graduation and eventually moved out of the country full time for school. we kept in touch off and on and caught up when he was in town, but nothing romantic ever happened. for years after i would catch myself thinking every so often what could have been and what he was up to. for solavellan, they were actually together. they had mutually expressed feelings and though their time together was maybe a few months at most, it was intense and passionate. they split up not because anyone's feelings changed, but because of solas's baggage. it's really not unrealistic for lavellan to continue wondering to herself what would have happened if he had been honest with her sooner. if she could have convinced him to change course. and it's not like she has the luxury of retiring and just not thinking about him anymore. that's not a conscious manipulation on solas's part to string her along, that's just the reality of their situation.

and even with all that in mind, in dav lavellan is still able to have the self-awareness to understand that the good in him that she believes exists and all that they had together and what she meant to him could all just be wishful thinking on her part. that she's giving him the benefit of the doubt "imagining his broken heart" when he doesn't deserve it because it makes her feel less foolish. she's not blindly faithful to him. i just loved everything about that scene and every word out of my lavellan's mouth felt spot on and perfect for how i saw their relationship. i could not have been more relieved lol.

as for the ending, i really really dislike the bad faith read that the only thing that matters is mythal and that he somehow loves mythal more and if that weren't true then lavellan alone would be able to convince him to stop. varric says about solas that he wants to be a hero, but it's easier for him to play the villain because it means he didn't fail, everything bad he's done is a choice. once you've done one bad thing, betrayed one friend, manipulated and sacrificed some pawns, committed one lil genocide, etc. lmao, it becomes easier to do it again. you've already crossed your moral event horizon and now you just have to find an end that justifies the means of all your misdeeds. what i've said about solas before is that what's frustrating is that he does genuinely feel remorse about the shit he does, but he needs to believe it's necessary and he will keep doing it. he needs to believe it will all be worth it in the end. it's not that he thinks feeling sorry makes up for it necessarily, but that he had to do it. he had to be the one taking on all of the bad things to hopefully one day do a good thing and it will all work out.

(as a side note when solas says "i would not have you see what i become" in trespasser i always thought that meant he was going to resort to some awful corruptive magic or something but it turns out what he actually meant was "i'm about to be a real asshole and do some incredibly awful things and i don't want you to see that side of me" which is much sadder.)

so when rook says "you don't have to do this" solas counters with "i've betrayed and fucked over and killed so many people who trusted me and if i stop i will have done that for nothing." so then the inquisitor jumps in with "as one of those people, i'm telling you that you can stop." but then we get to the heart of it. he thinks he failed mythal when she died the first time and was unwilling to listen to her as flemeth. he needs to make that mean something. he needs to justify to himself what mythal made him into. so he needs to hear from his mythal, not morrigan's mythal who has the benefit of the wisdom and hindsight centuries of living among mortals gave her, but his mythal, the one closest to who she was when she died that what he is is broken. that she's the one that broke him and he alone doesn't have to bear the weight of everything he did because of her. it's not about loving her, it's about the specific relationship he had with her. with that baggage unpacked, he's not only able to let go of his prideful need to prove himself right by tearing down the veil, he's also free to choose what he always really wanted: lavellan.

and still! yet again! he does not ask or assume anything on her part. she offers! of her own free will. something that really rustles my jimmies about a lot of solavellan criticism is that people act like lavellan has no agency. that she couldn't possibly make the choices she does of her own accord and it has to be solas manipulating her. that has never rang true to me at all. she always made the first move. i think this more uncharitable read might unfortunately be encouraged by how many actual solavellan shippers play into the wolf/halla thing but i personally don't think that's the dynamic that weekes actually wrote. it is lavellan that pursues solas, not the other way around. and weekes was honestly so careful in how they wrote the romance so that when solas's identity and plans are revealed, it doesn't feel like he intentionally tricked you or took advantage. i actually really like the ambiguity of whether or not they slept together because to me it does feel like that's a line solas wouldn't cross, but i get why that doesn't matter as much to other solasmancers.

i also think there's this perception that solavellan is a ship with an unhealthy power dynamic that needs to be "fixed" in some way or at the very least apologized for before you're allowed to like it. for me it's honestly kind of the appeal? not that there's some goofy dom/sub thing going on lol but that in spite of how "superior" solas may or may not feel to lavellan and the modern elves, he still falls hook line and fucking sinker for her. lavellan has so much more power in the relationship than she realizes. she changes his entire perspective on modern elves and his ultimate goals so bad he had a complete crisis of faith and had to run as far away from her as he could. how could he have broken the world so badly he needs to catastrophically break it again to fix it if it could create someone like her? someone he wants and cares for so desperately? it's the push and pull of him trying to stay away but selfishly indulging as long as he can that's so juicy to me! it's so good and i just wish other people could see that, even if they don't care for the character.

anyways. i don't have a conclusion. i don't want anyone to think i'm vaguing about them. this is honestly the result of some thoughts that have been brewing for a while and a lot of common criticisms i've seen over the years. i didn't want to respond directly to anyone in particular bc i learned my lesson about not doing that waaay back in the shenko fandom iykyk lol. i just really like the ship! i think it's tragic and romantic and lovely and poetic and mythological and all that good stuff. it humanizes solas as a character and makes me think about empathy and compassion and how much faith you can have in someone if you love them. or how it might feel to sacrifice love for something you think you need to do, only to ultimately realize you never did and find that love patiently waiting for you to get your shit together. or to love someone and know they love you back and that they love you so much they had to leave or they would have given up everything they thought they needed for you and then to be able to actually get through to them and get them back. "she could save him if he'd only just let her"! it's a very niche wish fulfillment fantasy and it's me! i'm the fan being serviced!

[bitchthefuck1]

At this point I'm just assuming that every person who uses public transit in London has been shoved out of the way by an MI5 agent shouting "MOVE MOVE MOVE" at least once in their lives. it's like jury duty, everybody gets a turn

[terrestrialnoob]

The glasses thing is a meme reference and why it was in the tags. I didn't think it was important enough to put in the post itself, it's a joke that means "you can't just ignore the things you don't like", like how "pissing on the poor" means someone completely missed the point of your post.

Why is Peter Gaffney metaphorically dead? Created by Elmer "Butch" Hartman, Steve Marmel, AND Peter Gaffney. Gaffney who was a writer on all Danny Phantom episodes except Phantom Planet. Not to mention the other 20 or so people who wrote and directed the show, and of course the animators did a lot too. You can't take all the work of all those people and credit it to two guys so you can blame everything you hate on one and everything you love on the other. This is not directly at you, everyone brings up Hartman and Marmel on this post, but not Gaffney, the one who doesn't post on social media. Bad people can make good art and we just have to make peace with that.

I like fanon better, too. But, in canon Danny never died. That's all I'm saying.

The ghost DNA is a major plot point in the Dani episodes! It's part of why she's unstable she has Danny's human DNA and his ghost DNA but needs a third mid-morph DNA to stabilize, theoretically. It could be too late to use that for her since the mid-morph DNA is specifically what Vlad wants for the Prime clone, and Dani gets stabilized by a power-up serum later.

And I think the spirder-man parallel stands. Science accident alters kid's DNA and gives him super powers. They're different powers sets, sure, but in-universe lore has them working the same way. (And, there's a difference between internal lore and external lore. In-universe lore is how the magic system works by extending chi into the world around you while out of universe lore is the magic system based off the four classical elements)

Y'all know Danny isn't canonically a ghost, yeah? That his "half-ghost"/halfa status is because he got ghost DNA infused into him? That he didn't die/half-die and become a ghost/half-ghost and just has ghost-like powers? He's supposed to be a Spider-Man rip off, Danny's not a ghost the way Peter's not a spider. Danny is a Ghost Mutant: mutated to be ghost-like, the way Peter is a Spider Mutant: mutated to be spider-like.

Canonically anyway. Sure, I personally like the interpretation and angst of Schrodinger's Boy, alive and dead at the same time, but it is fanon and not canon.

[wyrdle]

pitiful tragedy

A semi-continuation to my previous Ikutsuki and Ryoji comic, because i'm really wanting to share my blorbo (Ikutsuki) brainrot lol. Ikutsuki... the tragic pitiful antagonist you could've been if anyone bothered/cared enough about you in meta and in narrative lol.

[flying-cat]

Preparing myself to read a Persona 5 fic because it sounds super interesting but Maruki is a tagged character which means there's like a 70% chance that he's being mischaracterized

[burinazar]

[orb spoilers through episode 19 or 20, i forget which]

Jolenta coming to have Nowak's mannerisms and facial expression style wasn't a surprising choice and is in hindsight actually an obvious thing for them to do but I was still so surprised and taken aback and it works SO WELL as both a parallel and ironic inversion, because you get the sense that her hardships after the timeskip are why she has that nonchalant smile now and that, just like Nowak's nonchalance when torturing and killing, it came about through hardening oneself to brutality and learning to let it all roll off of you as the necessary price of your survival or the survival of your convictions.

And you just know that Nowak probably spent his life (pre timeskip) thinking something like 'well if i'm a jaded killer because of the life i've lead, at least i know i've done it all so my girl can life in safety and never have to choose to walk a path like that'. Just like the contrast between his bloodied hands.stained sleeves and the fact that he carefully bought her gloves. And, well. Look how that all turned out in the end.

[howtodisappearcompletelyand]

20/10 stars little guy

[nagitoedit]

[ID from alt text: A digital bust drawing of a dark purple cat. The cat has thin and long fur, large ears, and strange grey eyes. The cat appears to be fading into mist. End ID]

one of my not much talked about OCs, shadow. she has shadow powers. im not completely decided on what it exactly is or details on how it works but she can kind of... sink into shadows, almost like a pocket dimension, and travel through shadows. i first made her in around 2015.

[legionofpotatoes]

everyone hates crunch and everyone wants the new dragon age to have 4x the scope with 8x the quantum content

[imminent-danger-came]

MK: "We don't have any other option! We have to trust him." Red Son: "*laughs* Great speech noodle boy! Super motivational!"

(2x00 Revenge of the Spider Queen)

-

Red Son: "*laughs maniacally* I, Red Son, will bind the powers of the celestial artifacts with Spider Queen's own venom, save my father, and reforge the world as I see fit! *more maniacal laughter*" Mei: "Red Son that was amazing!" MK: "Such a good hero speech!" Red Son: "-Villain speech! And perhaps my best of all time!"

(2x00 Revenge of the Spider Queen)

-

Lady Bone Demon: "Save your hero speech child—I've existed long enough to know when it's over. MK: "You still think that the universe really wants anything, from any of us?" Lady Bone Demon: "Don't you?"

(3x14 Destiny Fulfilled)

-

Sun Wukong: “ENOUGH! I’ve never let anyone dictate my destiny in the past, and I’m not about to start now. None of us are! We can’t change who we were yesterday or in a past life, or a hundred life times ago! We live with the choices we’ve made, for what matter is the choices we make RIGHT NOW! Only we decide who we are and what we do with the power we have!”

Curse MK: "Nice hero speech bud! But I know better—deep in your hearts, you don't believe a word of that."

(4x07 Pitiful Creatures)

-

Hero speech.

[clockwork-krow]

I will never find it NOT funny how one of the sideplots in DR season 2 is literally just. some pathetic 22 year old guy having beef with a petty 15 year old girl over who gets to be second-in-command of their grumpy furry boss

[total-drama-brainrot]

Season two's overall treatment of Caleb, and the last minute addition of how much he covets honesty, makes me wonder what an actual antagonist/villain Caleb would play out like.

Because an honest antagonist sounds like such a fun deviation from the norm. You very rarely see a villain who doesn't have to lie/cheat/manipulate their way through their respective plots, so having a guy who's so dead set on honouring his moral code to the point that it's detrimental to his relationships (and also potentially his place in the competition) would be a fun alley of thought to go down.

At the end of the day, the only thing that differentiates a total drama 'antagonist' from any other competitor is their ability to generate conflict and have others eliminated. Caleb's already shown a penchant for conflict generation through his poor communication skills (Priyaleb miscommunication plot, pretty much every interaction he has in s2e11) and tendency to prioritise his place in the competition (the deal he makes with Julia in s2e10), so it wouldn't be too hard for him to turn the tables on someone and have them eliminated.

I'm thinking something along the lines of him sparking a rivalry between himself and someone like Julia, then having them wager their votes/safety on a challenge or bet, which ultimately leads to the other being voted out without Caleb having to do anything dishonest or underhanded. Sticking by his deep-rooted morality whilst also tilting the game in his favour.

Because I think an antagonist who's threatening just by value of being good at the game is a lot scarier than someone who succeeds through trickery and subterfuge. He's playing by the rules, he's just playing better.

[iamumbra195]

Don't you love it when you get back into your childhood hyper-fixation that you remember very fondly as an adult and realize how fucking depressing the actual story is now that you have the capacity to understand it beyond cool fighting and characters, humor, and awesome friendships?

[corset]

Bro my therapist knows I'm a Sephiroth introject now by the way. So that's cool