#Pathos Story

[veryfasy]

Bestfriend: hey, what will Yomiel do if he finds Wilhelm (his boyfriend) wearing a skirt?

Me: hold my pencil.

Ok so, Yomiel is my character, singer, leader of a band and human. Wil is my BF character, musician, composer, half mage half “angel”

They’re in love your honor

[ruby-red-inky-blue]

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

A con of being friends with the White House Press Secretary, Jyn finds, is that the good-natured hazing in front of the rest of the press room goes on for far too long. Another is that Leia will absolutely not take no for an answer on the “mandatory tour”, even though she clearly doesn’t have time for it, going by the four aides that immediately besiege her as soon as they step out of the press room.

Jyn is sure there will be pros as well, but she hasn’t found any so far.

“Leia, Draven wants you in his office in half an hour about the HUD thing,” says the last of the aides, jogging to keep up with them.

“Thank you, Kate,” Leia says without stopping, her arm still firmly linked with Jyn’s. “I’m just going to finish the tour for Miss Erso here. She’s my latest charge, she took over for Hal.”

“Oh!” The aide smiles brightly and shakes her hand. “Congratulations, ma’am,” she says and disappears down a corridor.

“Four people have called me ma’am today.”

“Get used to it. This is the White House, it’s like a reflex.”  Leia stops to delegate some more important press secretary business in the next office over – Jyn gathers it’s the Communications Office – then returns to scoop her up again and drag her down another hallway.

“You haven’t shown me a thing, Leia.”

“Well, that was Kleya Marki’s office, and down there’s the mess, that’s always important –“

Jyn has a sudden realization followed by a horrible, sinking feeling. “Leia, please tell me we’re not –“

Too late. Leia has spotted her prey at the end of the corridor, and pulls her towards him, smiling brightly and heels unmistakably loud on the polished floor.

“Cassian!”

Oh God. “Leia, come on, he’s busy. It’s my first day, he can –“

“Nonsense, he just looks busy. He always looks busy.” She grabs Jyn by the sleeve and drags her further down the hall. “Cassian, meet the new Post correspondent!”

Jyn stumbles along, feeling like an absolute fool for falling for Leia’s whole spiel and letting herself be dazzled by the West Wing of it all – and for knowing the guy she was stupidly, wildly in love with in college and then left without a word now worked in this building, and still putting off preparing what the fuck she would do when she actually met him again until, well… right now.

The man who has stopped at the end of the hall is in a fairly rumpled suit, carrying a stack of files and looks achingly familiar even from afar. For half a breath, she’s standing in some Yale hallway and is about to run to catch up with him and probably do something silly like try and tackle the papers out of his hands – and then she’s back in the West Wing and they’re all ten years older and successful, serious people again. And she’s back to wondering if he still knows her name. Or if he hates her. And which would be worse.

After a beat, he turns around and walks towards them, with a spooked look on his face like he, too, briefly tripped over ten years of baggage – or, of course, like he’s trying to place someone who looks vaguely familiar. Then something, probably the lawyer in him, takes over, and he fixes an easy, warm smile on his face. She always liked his smile. He looks older, and even more tired than he used to – naturally, he’s Deputy Chief of Staff to the president – but still, he looks good. His hair looks as soft as she remembers, which is a deeply unhelpful thought.

“Jyn.”

She feels stupidly relieved. “You do remember me.”

An offended frown pulls at his eyes. She always did like those, too. They’re such a nice brown, it doesn’t translate on pictures.

“Of course I remember you.”

(To be fair, it probably is insulting to assume he’d forget a girlfriend he had for seven months, but still. He’s busy, and at least it would mean he couldn't hate her for disappearing overnight and never picking up the phone again.) Jyn opens her mouth, closes it again, feels herself blush.

“He keeps your Baba O’Reily piece on his bookshelf, you know,” Leia says with a grin, still holding on to Jyn’s jacket like she’s scared she’ll try and make a run for it. The thought has occurred to her.

“Very funny, Leia,” Cassian says curtly and makes a vague gesture down the hallway. “I… I’d love to – I have the Secretary of Labor waiting, so –“

“It’s fine, I know you’re –”

“We should catch up, though,” he says absent-mindedly, sorting through his stack of files before adding, with a quick look up at her: “Off the record.”

“Right.”

“Maybe just come by my office before you leave, if you’re free,” he says, fiddling with the files that are starting to slip. “I’ll be here, and uh, marginally less busy.”

“Okay, yeah. Sure.”

“Great. Um - congratulations, Jyn, on the – I have to go.”

“Yeah.”

Leia watches him dart off, smirking. “So, you two are really over that whole thing, huh?”

[keep reading on Ao3!]

[synchodai]

Idk where all these takes thinking that Helaena was indifferent to Jaehaerys's death come from. She literally said she was sad about it. Her rationalizing that she shouldn't be is very realistic grief processing for a neurodivergent person. I've worked with children on the spectrum who will tell me that they're angry or sad and are trying not to be because they know it'll make others even more upset or because a scraped knee heals eventually and all these other rationalizations.

But they are upset. And like what Alicent did with Helaena, you have to tell them having emotions by itself isn't a bad thing. Most of the time, it's simply something you can't control or reason away. Alicent was doing well to tell her daughter that she had a right to her grief — that she shouldn't use "other people have it worse" as a way to push it down.

Alicent has her own wonky processing by believing it was her fault that Jaehaerys died ('the gods are punishing me for my sins. an unrelated accident happened because i, personally, have done awful things' aka classic catholic guilt). So she was seeking absolution from her father who refused to give it to her.

But Helaena does. Helaena forgives her. In a way, I interpreted this scene as both of them comforting each other in the ways they needed. When Alicent shrugs off her own grief and begins talking about how she's more worried about Helaena, her daughter tells her what she wanted to hear by giving her that absolution.

Could the scene have made it clearer that this mother and daughter are helping each other with their radically different ways of processing grief? Could I have misinterpreted the scene? Of course. But as it was, it was pretty clear that Helaena was sad about Jaehaerys.

[actually-factually-anonymous]

The unnecessary lack of personal stakes of Marinette Dupain-Cheng in the Agreste Arc

Inspired by a recent post by @starguardianniom, with half pinched again from my own reblog:

Marinette has zero personal stakes in the main conflict of her show, except that she happened to be the first girl who helped Fu across the road, and was thus chosen to wear the earrings. She doesn't even really seem to have any reason to be Ladybug aside from the basic "I can't sit back and do nothing" she stated in Origins. So a sense of responsibility conferred by being the bearer of the earrings, and an ostensible general desire to do good.

This would be fine, except that Adrien very much did have a reason to continue being Chat Noir. Plagg's Miraculous is the source of his freedom, and a new identity of his own making separate from the carefully curated child of Gabriel Agreste. Most importantly he had so much personal connection to the core plot that his narrative potential dwarfed Marinette's beyond compare.

His mere existence is the very axis of the plot, putting it in motion by the apparent desire for a designer child seeming being the very reason Gabriel and Emile sought the Miraculous all those years ago, and the consequences of his creation being the very reason that Gabriel devolves into magical terrorism. Hawkmoth being his father whom Adrien clearly cares for and whose goal of restoring his much mourned mother setup a truly impressive case for split loyalties for when Adrien (seemingly) inevitably learnt of his father's identity and true goal:

I made a comparison before between Avatar and Miraculous where Avatar won without question. Allow me to balance the scales here: the setup for Adrien potentially turning on Ladybug, or having to sacrifice his familial bonds for the sake of justice outweighed Zuko's own setup for choosing his ''honour"/loyalty to his family over his burgeoning sense of justice.

In potential at least. Rest assured that Zuko's character arc still far eclipses anything Adrien was ever allowed.

But the point I'm trying to make here is that in the very story that bears her name, Ladybug's only reason to be involved comes from the fact that she happens to have Tikki's Miraculous. She has no personal investment in the fate of Hawkmoth than other citizen of Paris, she certainly has no conflicting loyalties.

She doesn't even have a personal reason to continue being Ladybug. You can draw a parallel if you like with one of her ostensible inspirations Peter Parker, who learnt the price of personal inaction in a harsh and unforgiving manner that selflessly drives him to protect others. You can say that the Stoneheart incident fulfills a similar role.

But here's the thing: Peter Parker is Spiderman thanks to his radioactive blood. Ladybug is whoever wears Tikki's Miraculous. If Peter retires, he takes his powers away from the protection of New York. If Marinette gives up her Miraculous, a new Ladybug will arise in her place within a day. There's no need for her to be Ladybug, to take on that responsibility, and until the season three finale there's no personal stake for her to be the girl under the mask any more than any other Parisian citizen.

And that means that Marinette isn't the heart of her own story. In Avatar, it's Aang's quest to defeat the Fire Lord because it has to be him that restores balance. In Star Wars, it's Luke whose connection with Vader that has to restore Anakin's better nature. In just about any series there is a pressing need and personal stakes for the protagonist to be that The Protagonist of that story, that make that story their story.

But the setup here has all the pathos and personal stakes placed upon Adrien. Marinette is the centerpiece of the show, but Adrien's handed all of the narrative potential even as the writers let it go to waste.

It's like preparing a finely seasoned meal, then leaving it to rot as you serve plain vegetables. There's just no reason to have the vegetables when the fine meal is ready for consumption: and if that's a problem? If the plain vegetables were always meant to be the centrepiece? Then you should have seasoned the vegetables and made something delectable with them.

Because the saddest apart about Marinette having or actual ties or pathos to the Agreste Arc is that once upon a time that was not the case.

In previous Miraculous proposals, before the PV, Marinette Cheng was at least as part of the main story as Felix/Adrien was. There were various versions of how the story would go, with one echoing Cardcaptor's plot, and the later proposals looking more like what we got in the final product.

But all had Marinette having a personal stake in the story. In the Cardcaptor-esque plot, Marinette was Fu's granddaughter (or granddaughter figure), and Fu was the caretaker of the The Orb. A crystal that contained all the "fairies" (beings that served both the roles Kwamis and Akumas would later take). The story kicked off because Marinette brought her crush Felix into her Grandfather's store and accidentally broke The Orb, shattering it and allowing the Fairies to escape across Paris and empower countless people- heroes and villains both.

It was her mission to retrieve the Fairies, because she was the one who had released them. She was Fu's granddaughter and it was her responsibility to clean up her mess. It was her story, and Felix/Adrien was the one with less direct connection.

Later proposals ditched The Orb as the Kwamis were developed, but up until the most recent and final versions of the story Marinette retained Fu as either her blood Grandfather outright or at least a mentor so close from her childhood that she thought of him as a Grandfather. She also was usually being trained to be a Guardian or something like it herself from childhood.

She wasn't just a girl Fu found on the side of the road. She had as much connection to the Guardians and their world as Felix/Adrien did to Papillion. It even added a certain Montague-Capulet tragic element to the romance, since if Felix/Adrien and Marinette ever got together it would mean one having to choose between their partner and their family.

But for some reason, in the final product Marinette was stripped of all pre-series personal connections to the Miraculous.

The question is why? Was there really so great a need for Martinette to be "a girl like any other" that all of the plot relevance needed to be stripped out of her and added to Adrien, only to then completely ignore all that potential pathos by sidelining Adrien at every turn?

Because if you weren't going to do anything with Adrien, then all you've done is needlessly undermine Marinette's potential as a character.

Seriously, if you had given me the backstory of these two characters and asked which one was the main character: there would have been no chance I would have selected Marinette. Because all the writers have given her backstory is side-character material, whereas Adrien's very existence, as well as his relationship to his family and the Miraculous is at the heart of the story.

And I doubt there would be many others who would think otherwise.

[tarisilmarwen]

"Thrawn only joined the Empire to help the Chiss!"

Okay sure but have any of you bothered to self-examine why Thrawn chose to join the Empire instead of, say, the Republic, when that was still around? Or why he didn't chose to throw in with the Rebellion, put his tactical mind to use helping them overthrow the Empire quicker?

Could it be... perhaps... that maybe he values the Empire's military strength... more than he cares about the authoritarian tyranny with which it oppresses its own people?

Is it possible that he thinks the Empire's main problem is that it isn't effective enough, too much politicking getting in the way of sound strategy, but if he's around (and in charge) he can guide things so that those annoying little wrinkles (AKA the pockets of discontent and rebellion and fully justified anger at their rights and freedoms being trampled on) are all smoothed out and the overall Imperial machine is better, more in control of its assets, a stronger more unified bulwark against the outergalactic threat of the Grysk or the Vong or whatever.

Is it perhaps just a bit self-centered of him to only care about the Empire's ability to service his own goals and desires and be apathetic (at best) to the way it makes people suffer daily under its inherent systems? The Twi'leks and Wookies being constantly kidnapped and sold into slavery? The careless industrialization of arboreal worlds? The socialization and absorption of all private industry, forcing everyone to work through and with the Empire if they want to work at all? The systematic persecution of anyone remotely Force Sensitive? Is it not the mark of some kind of soul rot to be aware of all of that and go, "Yeah, but I don't care, they have the bigger guns, which is what I need."?

Maybe... just maybe... Thrawn has some Machiavellian tendencies and opinions and maybe this just might... make him not entirely a good person?

And maybe y'all should think about that before you come back and whine about his portrayal as a villain, as if all he has to do is explain to people that he did everything for a good reason and he gets an automatic narrative pardon for all of the shit he did while Grand Admiral that still needs to be addressed and answered for.

[romanceyourdemons]

something i’ve really admired in erha is the author’s obvious talent for these intense little one-inch punches of nuance and interiority given to the characters, even relatively minor ones. and i’m really interested in the way that, up to this point, shi mei has been (by now) fairly obviously denied any moments in the pov spotlight. in the long term i don’t doubt that lack of interiority is a surprise tool that will hurt us later, but in the more immediate term i think it’s a really elegant way of characterizing his social role, as well as illustrating how mo ran loves the strictly bounded idea of shi mei while carefully cutting that image off from any sullying humanity

[charlotterenaissance]

that "it's not a woman's job to be consumed, invaded, and spat out so that some fucking man can evolve" quote but it's about charlotte watsford

[laundrybiscuits]

(wait for the season to come back to me tag)

It gets less strange, as time goes by. Eddie doesn’t make any kind of noise about him moving out at some point, and neither do Steve and Robin. Turns out they don't need to store any bodily fluids in the fridge, and in fact if Steve didn't know better, he wouldn't be able to tell that Eddie's drinking blood at all. Steve assumes he's getting animal blood from somewhere on a regular basis, but as far as either Steve or Robin can tell, he never takes it inside the apartment.

Anyway, it turns out Eddie can still technically eat human food, but about half of it tends to come back up afterwards. They’re still figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Robin made a little chart with smiley-face and frowny-face stickers, which Eddie has been gleefully filling out. He’s drawn little fangs onto the stickers with a Sharpie.

That’s another thing: to Steve’s mild surprise, Eddie and Robin have been getting along like a house on fire.

“I really wish I’d known him in high school,” says Robin, slicing bell peppers for dinner.  “I think it would’ve made Hawkins a lot more bearable.”

Steve doesn’t really remember Eddie at all from school, which is probably a really good thing.

He can’t imagine the guy he was back then being this obsessed with Eddie. Well, no, that’s not true. He can imagine it, but he’d have been such a jackass about it. Probably would’ve fucked a few girls about it. Maybe would’ve even bullied Eddie about it.

“Did you come out to him yet?” Steve asks Robin.

Robin leans all the way out the kitchen door, practically horizontal. Steve grabs the back of her belt so she doesn’t overbalance. “Hey! Hey, Eddie!” she yells.

“What, Buckley!” he yells back.

“I’m gay!”

“Cool, me too!”

She lets Steve’s grip swing her back in, grinning. “Your turn, dingus.”

Steve’s going to. He is. The longer he waits, the more awkward it gets. He’s got nothing to lose. He—

Robin takes him by the shoulders, spins him around, and pushes him out into the living room.

“Uh,” he says. “I’m—bisexual.”

Eddie actually does, like, a full-body twitch; his eyebrows climb practically to his hairline for a second, and he sets down his book.

“I’m…very proud of you? Thank you for telling me?”

“Why are you being weirder about me than Robin,” says Steve, annoyed.

“Because you’re being weirder about it than Robin was! I don’t know, I don’t have a lot of practice with, uh, this. Also, Robin was a band geek who dressed like Annie Hall, and you were—popular.” He draws out popular like it’s got three key changes in it, waving his hands in the air.

“Yeah, okay,” Steve huffs. “Sorry I wasn’t, like, alternative enough to be a real queer.”

“No, c’mon, Steve, I didn’t mean it like that. I accept you! Buckley, get in here and accept Steve with me.”

“Ste-eve Harrington,” Robin sings out, wandering out of the kitchen to wrap her arms around Steve’s waist. “We accept you and your beautiful bisexual soul.”

“Thanks,” says Steve dryly.

Eddie points at him. “Feel accepted.”

“I feel accepted,” Steve says; daring, he holds out an arm, and Eddie hops up to let Steve pull him into the hug too.

“Good,” says Eddie into Steve’s shoulder. “You should be.”

[occasionaltouhou]

personally i like to think of the "yukari is both merry and renko" interpretation less as steven universe fusion and more like they got smeared across the transdimensional highway at mach 10 and then necromancy-d back to life as the same person because the bodies were indistinguishable

i feel like this is the general idea for a lot of interpretations of renko being part of yukari? either that or her being the eyes/arms in the gaps (which imo still qualified as being part of yukari). they jsut kinda got Smushed together into hifuu slop and now they're yukari

i like the specific mention of necromancy here though because that implies intent. who necromancied these two temporally astray exploded lesbians back together into one far worse lesbian. or did merry jsut like eat renko so they could become one whilst they were both dying in the jomon period. there's some romance to that

[metatemu]

Yu-Gi-Oh! Volume 3 Chapter 19 Yu-Gi-Oh! Season 5 OP: Overlap

[seefasters]

hey what did hbomberguy got wrong in the pathologic video

holy shit this has been in my inbox since forever i'm sorry i only saw this now

anyway i only watched it once before i got into pathologic and i haven't rewatched it since so i have literally no idea

[iamshame]

Chapter Nineteen. In which Astarion faces his master, once and for all.

Cazador’s cold clear voice rang out over the circle, and all Astarion could see were the glowing pinpricks of his eyes in the darkness. “Witness the birth of the Vampire Ascendant!” His voice lifted into a guttural cry of demonic intensity. “Ecce dominus!”

The light drained from Astarion’s eyes, and the life from his body. For a brief eternity of complete darkness, and intense terror, and cold, draining, agony, he hung suspended. Just another spawn to feed his Master, utterly helpless and utterly alone.

Then, a large, warm hand, pulling him out of the spell’s clutches. Kind hazel eyes. Halsin’s right hand, helping him, as the other pressed a sword into Astarion’s hand.

[tls123]

Oh my god HOW DID YOU LIKE SVSSS!!!!!

i liked it more than i thought i would but overall less than i might have given the potential of the story, i think in general i really enjoyed the characters (mxtx never goes wrong with characters, she creates them in a way that makes me feel unhinged) and the world building but the pay off to the set up—which i really liked!—felt a bit........ i mean, just alright.

the dynamics too are pure mxtx, personally the bin/gqiu dynamic specifically really was the least interesting part of the whole story. to me!! but individually i loved both characters. my interest was just elsewhere because """elsewhere""" felt way more fascinating idk how to explain it

was very, very happy about the extra with airplane and the yue qingyuan / shen jiu one because that's exactly what i wanted more of in the story itself as well as just more shen yuan/qingqiu interacting with cang qiong mountain

maybe it's my orv brain but like i told jana a while back i think i would have enjoyed svsss way more if it was more about shen yuan (loner; hater; etc) suddenly finding himself among all of these people (disciples looking up to him; sect siblings relying on him one way or another; common folk admiring him; etc etc) and starting to.... live? again?

Shen Qingqiu hadn't noticed that, unconsciously, he no longer considered the disciples around him (...) to be mob characters the novel had described in a scant number of words.

^from volume one, he starts seeing them almost immediately because he's not actually that separate and he genuinely cares. all the time. about everything. even before that we get:

This was only a book, and all the people were constructs, imaginary characters. Logically, Shen Qingqiu was very clear on this fact...but when a character was actually being taunted and bullied right before his eyes, it was just flat-out unrealistic to expect him to be completely unmoved.

like why are you lying, shen yuan (<- svsss tagline if there ever was one)

just the idea of this really lonely detached guy finding a community, i know it's not the story mxtx was trying to tell but again, with the set up i really wanted to see it go in that direction.

there's one line from vol two where liu qingge goes "you fear becoming a burden to cang qiong mountain (...) but cang qiong mountain fears not your burden"

and basically what i'm saying is that i wish the story had been about THAT

(and also ning yingying's lines in that same chapter about shizun always taking on everything himself and why is it always you like that whole moment with the cang qiong mountain almost begging him to see that they care. idek what i'm saying but you know)

(also foaming at the mouth that we only got tiny tiny glimpses of shen yuan's life from before, those handful of times he mentioned his siblings i wanted to take a bite out of my kindle. tell me more!! dear fucking lord tell me more!! keep talking! elaborate!! he really felt very "kim dokja and his fourth wall" at times, sorry once more about the orv brain)

tldr: i guess i wanted a story about shen yuan/qingqiu but mxtx created svsss to be a story about bin/gqiu. and i just have to be okay with that.

[respectthepetty]

@neuroticbookworm hear me out! I had to make this a separate post since I've thought too much about these fictional characters!

Yes, I trust Lomfon with my life. He fascinates me. Lomfon poses some good conflicts because he and Tai are the same. Both are so wary of soulmates and the idea that there is only one person for them, that they question the notion of love. We see that with Tai and his relationship with Phat because he is the main character, but we are also seeing it from the other side of the spectrum with Lomfon.

What do Phat and Tai have in common? They are attracted to each other. They like each other's presence. Yet we haven't seen what they connect over since they are barely figuring this out.

What do Lomfon and Tien have in common? They are slightly attracted to each other. They are in the same field of study. Yet most of their interactions are them arguing.

What do Lomfon and Tai have in common? They like the same interests in books and have the same demeanor. They talk naturally around each other and there is an ease in their conversations that neither has with their other love interest. There is a level of attraction between them. <- They could be soulmates.

When Lomfon says it, he could be right. If rain can jam a radio frequency, why couldn't it allow people with this condition to tune into each other like a human walkie-talkie? Much like puberty, it happens to naturally develop at the age of 20. It doesn't mean they are soulmates; it's just science. Yet people are leaving the person they have a genuine connection with for a person they share a scientific phenomenon with? It's not as romantic or magical if we think about it as a reasonable scientific occurrence.

And maybe that's why the rain soulmates don't work sometimes because it's simply two humans with a shared condition.

I truly believe Phat and Tai belong together, but I also believe Lomfon when he argues the possibility that he and Tai are soulmates. Because being someone's soulmate doesn't necessarily mean a romantic relationship nor that the relationship will work out. No matter the relationship, there has to be something more than love, a connection, COLORS(!), or a shared condition. There has to be communication, understanding, a desire to stay, AND a desire to see the other person happy.

We saw that with the very first couple in the series. The man had hearing loss, but his girlfriend didn't, yet they were communicating fine during the rain. They weren't soulmates by the rainverse definition, but they were making it work and were happy. Why couldn't they be soulmates who found each other despite the hindrances and continued to love each other? Wouldn't that make them more of soulmates than hearing someone only when it's raining?

I trust in what Lomfon is saying. I trust that Lomfon, who is hesitant to the concept of soulmates, wouldn't carelessly throw out that word to describe Tai. I trust that Lomfon's lack of color demonstrates his desire to buck the idea of a predetermined fate. I trust Lomfon because he is trying to be logical regarding matters of the heart.

And that's why I trust him with my life.

If done right, he could have the best arc of the series. This rationale guy is going to realize that when it comes to love, he is going to need more than logic and reasons.

He is going to have to use his heart rather than his brain even if that means his heart gets broken.

*applies more clown makeup*

[twyrineslut]

pathologic 2 ending dichotomy moodboard

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Spike calling Tara sexy was such a weird moment.

I get why he did. It was in-character and Spike WOULD think a stronger, more self-assured Tara was sexy.

That being said, I'm glad he still said she wasn't his type.

And that Tara said that he wasn't hers, either.

And they were both so anti-being in a thruple, even though Dru loved them both. LOL