#THE WRITERS ARE MAKING IT MORE OBVIOUS NOW

[jedi-enthusiasm-blog]

I mean they still coerce/steal children into joining them. And they left Anakin's mom to die a slave death. Like sure they aren't awful as an organization but they aren't always right?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm too harsh on Jedi antis. Then something like this happens and it hits me that no, if anything I'm being too soft.

Let's begin with the obvious, out-of-universe part. It's very rude to come to people's clearly tagged posts and say something like this. I love the Jedi I see in the PT and TCW, and I should be able to make, at least, vaguely positive posts about them without having to see this in the comments.

Now, onto your argument:

"They coerce/steal children into joining them."

You'd have a hard time arguing this, even using only Legends, the continuity that's most critical of the Jedi.

Baby Ludi doesn't offer us much information beyond "the baby's family was reasonably but incorrectly pressumed dead". Even then, these type of stories are used to show what the public opinion of the Jedi was, not what the Jedi were actually doing.

Children of the Force (the comic) is another of these stories. The Shatterpoint novel, on its own, contradicts every single instance of the Jedi being baby-snatchers or not being allowed to know their birth families/culture. Shatterpoint was written by Matthew Stover, who spoke with George Lucas personally and knew George Lucas' vision for Star Wars, and had that aside from his own personal interpretations that may or may not align with Lucas', unlike many other EU writers. This puts Shatterpoint very high in Legends canonity tier.

Jedi Path is stupid even when reading it in good faith. Movies, shows and later books with more canonity contradict it, so not good for argument.

Anything written by Karen Traviss is bullshit because 1. she disagrees with the good vs evil narrative of a franchise intended for kids, and 2. she only watched the PT halfway through, as a child. That's not getting into how she tries to paint both sides of the Empire vs Rebellion war as bad. Let me repeat, she's presenting the original heroes as bad. She's not engaging with the narrative presented to her, so what she writes is something else with the names of the Star Wars universe slapped into it.

In TCW this is trope of baby-snatchers is invoked and defied. A planet believes the Jedi steal children (manipulated by a Dark Side cult, so the people's worries were born out of propaganda), the Jedi stop going there, and the arc ends with them making up and solving the misunderstanding. To add to that, Children of the Force (the episode) is about Force-sensitive children being kidnaped by Cad Bane, and ends with the Jedi giving the children back to their parents; one of them was in the middle of an adjustment period to the Order and the other's parents had refused to give their child up, and there is zero indication that either child becomes a Jedi in the future.

In the PT the only introduction into the Order is Anakin, and the Jedi refuse. Until they can't refuse because Anakin is in danger of being discovered and brainwashed/stolen by a Sith, the Jedi say no. This is not how you portray characters to want to paint as kidnapers. Also, Palpatine (y'know, the Sith who's grooming and trying to turn Anakin against the Jedi) doesn't bring up anything related to child-stealing. If the main villain doesn't make that point, not even to be subverted later on, it's simply not true.

Coertion is an interesting argument because… it's never brought up. Yeah, you read that right. Never. Not even in arguments against the Jedi done by villains.

Jedi are not kidnapers in any continuity. Fandom made that up. Can that make for some interesting story about shady situations? Sure, if you're into that, but it's not canon. If you're critizing canon Jedi, bringing this shit up immediately makes you lose the argument.

"They left Anakin's mom to die a slave death"

No, they didn't. This post talks about her death, but something important I want to add is that she'd been free for years at the time of her death. Also, who's to say they didn't try? Who's to say they even knew she was a slave? Qui-Gon brought Anakin to the Order and then he died.

In Legends they actually had a hand in her winning her freedom, too.

You proved my point. You can critize the Order (I'm the first person to say they aren't perfect and some of their choices should be critized), but creating a narrative about the Jedi stealing children that has no basis in either Lucas', Legends or Disney canon to dunk on them is not being critical, it's just slander.

Friendly reminder that if you're gonna critize the Jedi, they have to be wrong.

"They told Anakin he wasn't fit to be a Jedi" Yeah, was he? He was unhappy the whole time, broke all their rules and eventually slaughtered them.

"They massacred the Sith Order" Yeah. Those "I'm better than everyone and everything and they all should kneel to me or die" people? I see no issue here.

"They fought in the Clone Wars as peacekeepers." Yeah. What was the alternative? Standing by as the clones, civilians and the Republic itself (the best government out those in the galaxy, although admittedly that's rather a low bar) were massacred by the Separatists? Yeah no. And peacekeepers ≠ pacifists.

"They forbid marriage." They are a religious organization, monks. Fobidding its members from marrying is pretty standard in monasteries. They also aren't celibate, friendship isn't discouraged at all and it's all but stated by Obi-Wan in TCW S6 that romantic feelings are perfectly allowed. Several of the Order's members practice their home planets' culture and religion and language (Barriss has a Mirilian Idol in her room, she Luminara Quinlan etc have cultural tattoos, many characters have accents which implies Basic isn't their first language and others don't speak Basic at all,etc). They have no dress code, they are allowed to drink, smoke, etc., even become part of other religions organizations (see Plo Koon)! Marriage being forbidden is nothing, literally meaningless next to the freedom Jedi have.

If you're gonna critize the Jedi, they have to be wrong.

No, they shouldn't change their whole way of life just because you don't like it.

[beqitos]

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ♥︎ ͜͡⠀ㅤ ㅤ̤ㅤ⠀𝗐𝖺𝗂𝗍. 𝗐𝗁𝖺𝗍?

𖥔 𝐈𝐍 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐂𝐇━━━𝗐𝗂𝗉𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗁𝗒𝗎𝗇𝗀𝗅𝗂𝗇𝖾 𝖾𝗇𝗁𝖺'𝗌 𝗄𝗂𝗌𝗌𝖾𝗌 𝖺𝗐𝖺𝗒

엔하이픈 형선 ─────⠀ㅤ 699 (in total) ♡ ◞ 𝗴𝗻!𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿 >< 𝗵𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲!𝗲𝗻𝗵𝗮 , 𝗳𝗹𝘂𝗳𝗳, 𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀, 𝗸𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴, & 𝗲𝘀𝘁. 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽⠀⟡​ ⠀ℒ𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐆𝐄

재즈 : not proofread !! i have massive writers block ㅎㅎ

𝗟𝗘𝗘 𝗛𝗘𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗨𝗡𝗚 needless to say, he would be very shocked. you'd never have done that, nonetheless thought about it, so of course he'd look at you weird, glaring at you. "baby, give me a kiss." he'd pout, turning your head with his hand. once he did and you'd wiped it off, he'll most definitely tell you something about it. "did I do something? are you mad at me?” he'd say, being extra clingy, wrapping his whole body over you, peppering kisses all over your face, neck, just anywhere he could. when you wiped all of them off, that was his last straw, “yn. baby. what did I do to make you mad? are you mad?” he got up, pouted and thought back throughout the day. you tried to hold back your laughter, finally bursting out laughing once you saw his pouty face. “I'm sorry, it was just a prank.” you pulled him in a hug and gave the biggest smooch on his lips

𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗝𝗢𝗡𝗚𝗦𝗘𝗢𝗡𝗚 he wouldn't notice it at first, unless you made it very obvious that you were wiping his kisses away. he'd had just come home, seeing you all comfy on the couch, slouching. “hey, baby, whatcha doing,” he said, flopping down next to you, giving you a soft kiss on the lips. “nothing, how about you?,” you wiped off his kiss. of course, since you did it immediately after he kissed you, he looked at you with his eyebrows furrowed. you avoided eye contact, trying not to laugh, pressing your lips in a fine line. he pecked your cheek to make sure it wasn't some mistake. you wiped it off, and jay pouted now, knowing you were doing it on purpose. “can you stop wiping my kisses away.” you kept avoiding eye contact until he grabbed your chin and made you look at him. “is this one of your pranks again? or are you mad at me?” he pouted even more. you ended up bursting out laughing and apologized to him with kisses.

𝗦𝗜𝗠 𝗝𝗔𝗘𝗬𝗨𝗡 oh, he'd notice so fast that it'd give him whiplash. you'll just be sitting on his bed, scrolling mindlessly on your phone, until jake came in, and walked over to you. “hey, baby,” he pressed a kiss on your lips as you turned your head to face him. “I'm going to go wash up, I'll be right back.” you nodded, and not even a second after he turned around, you wiped your lips with the back of your hand, and jake noticed immediately. “what did you just do?” you furrowed your eyebrows to play along and shaked your head. “hmm.. okay.” he muttered and pressed a kiss on your lips before turning right back around. not until you wiped it off again, and jake definitely noticed this time. “why did you wipe off my kiss? don't you love my kisses?” he pouted, his eyes like puppies wanting something. you tried to keep your composure still, but making eye contact with him made you laugh out loud. “im sorry, baby, it was a joke” “well I don't like your jokes.”

𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗦𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗛𝗢𝗢𝗡 at first, he wouldn't care, but if you kept doing it and doing it, he'll definitely say something. the first time you did was in the morning, when he was getting ready to leave and gave a soft kiss on your lips. you were half asleep so he didn't really mind it, but throughout the day, he noticed you kept doing it and decided to confront you about it once you both got home and you did it again, he glared at you. you were chilling on the seat of your vanity, retouching your makeup, and sunghoon getting ready to play on his pc. he gave you one last kiss since he was going to play for hours, and you wiped it off this time. sunghoon spoke up about it. “yn. why do you keep wiping off my kisses? I didn't do anything wrong that I'm aware of.” he muttered, waiting for your response. “no? why? and no, I'm not.” he pouted and went to give you a kiss again, and you shamelessly wiped it off. “YN STOP IT,” you laughed and apologized, giving him a million kisses.

© beqitos 2025. do not copy, steal, or translate my work.

[creature-wizard]

Is it true that Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is 100% accurate and historically well-documented, just like the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses?

While many Christians claim that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses, there is no reliable evidence of this. In fact, the writer of Luke outright says that their information came from others. (Luke 1:1-4.) Meanwhile, whoever wrote the other three gospels didn't identify themselves or cite their sources at all. They also describe numerous events that none of Jesus's followers would have been around to see. (None of them would have been hanging out with Herod when his daughter asked for John's head on a silver platter!)

We can very easily rule out the writer of Matthew as an eyewitness to... like, anything. How? The writer of Matthew clearly borrows a lot of material from Mark while embellishing on it in ways that just don't make sense.

You know how Mark 11 describes Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a borrowed colt? In a very clumsy attempt to make this story sound more like a fulfillment of prophecy, the writer of Matthew has Jesus riding in on not only the colt, but also on its mother! It's actually downright hilarious because the writer of Matthew very clearly misunderstood the poetic language of the quoted passage (Zechariah 9:9) and failed to realize that the passage is only referring to one equine!

(Also, if you read all of Zechariah 9, it's pretty obvious that the writer of Matthew was just skimming through prophetic texts for stuff that sounded like things Jesus did - or supposedly did - because all that stuff about riding in on a donkey was very clearly taken out of context.)

The writer of Matthew also includes a story about darkness falling and the temple veil tearing and a bunch of dead bodies coming to life - a story which is not only found in no other gospel, but isn't recorded by anyone else period.

So we can rule out the writer of Matthew as an eyewitness, much less any kind of trustworthy source. The writer was blatantly twisting information they'd received to sound more like what they thought prophetic texts said, and inserting events that nobody else knew anything about.

It's also highly unlikely that the writer of Mark was an eyewitness, given that the text was written by a fluent Greek speaker, where Jesus's original followers would have been native Aramaic speakers.

Now, whoever wrote the Gospel of John claims to have gotten their information from "the disciple whom Jesus loved," who supposedly wrote all of this stuff down. Like Mark, the earliest texts we have are in Greek, though some people argue it was originally written in Aramaic. But also, the Gospel of John is just... odd. Like, the more you really pay attention to the text and compare it with the other Gospels, the weirder it gets.

You know how Luke places the miraculous catch of fish early in Jesus's ministry? John places it after the resurrection. You know how Matthew, Mark, and Luke have Jesus attack the temple market shortly before Passover - you know, right before he's crucified? John places this at the beginning of his ministry. A lot of stuff is shuffled around relative to the other Gospels. It also includes the story of Jesus turning water into wine, which is not only absent from the other gospels, but may also be an oral tradition influenced by the Dionysian mysteries. Also, the text goes hard to present Jesus as this kind of otherworldly being in a way that none of the other canonical Gospels do. And the whole narrative has this kind of dreamlike, surreal quality.

Regardless of what the author claims about getting all of this information from Jesus's own very beloved disciple, it just doesn't make a lot of sense that this would be an eyewitness account, either. It reads like the other gospels: a collection of stories that probably began as oral tradition, assembled into a cohesive narrative intended to illustrate how the author perceived Jesus.

Like the story of Jesus turning water into wine, the story of Lazarus's resurrection is also only found in the text of John. And we already know from Matthew's thing with the two donkeys, and the weird story about three hours of darkness and the resurrection of the holy dead, just because a gospels says something happened, doesn't mean it actually happened.

I want you to consider this: I could easily go around saying that Jesus just did whatever. I could say, "yeah, there were these guys who were grievously injured in a fight, then Jesus came along and healed them. I saw it myself. In fact, hundreds of reliable people saw it themselves." Ancient people living back then could do the exact same thing. Now, I'm not saying that each and every tradition about Jesus is just made up from whole cloth, but we have to also remember that people can and do just make things up sometimes. And in fact, there is quite a lot of reason to think that quite a bit was made up about Jesus.

Buckle in, because I'm about to go for the jugular.

You know how each gospel claims that Jesus was bodily resurrected, and people saw his physical form, even touched it? It's like, the big thing in Christianity, right?

There is evidence in the New Testament itself that this never happened, that this was in fact a tradition that developed a number of years after Jesus's crucifixion.

Enter Paul of Tarsus. Originally antagonistic toward the budding Christian movement, Paul did a 180 after having a visionary experience while heading to Damascus. He tells us about this in his own writing in (1 Corinthians 15). I want you to go and read 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 and pay very, very careful attention to what Paul says and to what he does not say.

In this passage, Paul compares his own visions to whatever the original Apostles experienced after Jesus's crucifixion. It's almost as if the original apostles themselves only saw Jesus in visions or dreams after the Crucifixion. And you might think, "yeah, but Paul also argues for a physical resurrection." And so he does, but that doesn't actually preclude the visionary experience for the other apostles, because Paul himself here clearly thinks that a visionary experience is perfectly sufficient evidence that the man he saw in said vision was physically raised.

This is why I keep recommending Bart D. Ehrman's How Jesus Became God, because this book is all about exploring how the mythology of Jesus emerged and developed over Christianity's early years. Seriously, go read it. It's a good book, and once you're done you'll never be able to look at Christianity and its mythology the same way again.

[afinestoutlove]

things i love about heartstopper 44/?

The pacing. The inclusion of little moments like Charlie being sad in bed after Nick runs away from the ballroom. It isn't strictly necessary to get the point because we already saw him crying, but it makes the emotion so much more clear and real. The visual of him nearly hidden by his duvet with his little old soft toy is so poignant and not strictly necessary but absolutely necessary.

And it's not just extra scenes, it's the scenes that hold just a beat or three longer, that force you to sit with them and really feel them. Some are big scenes, the real major plot beats, some are smaller, building the world. In all of them, I just love these little extra moments that set the scene, that make the people and the world feel real.

This might sound obvious, especially to anyone who's a writer, but I think a lot about how much story pacing has changed over the last 20 years. We used to open a movie with 10 full minutes of establishing shots and music before we met any of the characters, and now we're told that you have to grab the audience in the first 0.0006 seconds or you're a failure. And books used to be slower too - think LoTR, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens (all great btw). And we tend to blame audiences for "shorter attention spans" (and social media or whatever), but I think it started with corporate media prioritising cOmPeTiTiOn over quality stories and then audiences learnt that stories were "supposed" to happen that fast - even those of us who are writers and who should know better.

When I first watched Heartstopper and then when I first read the comic there were a couple of bits where I was like “why am I watching/reading this?” (because I'm not immune to the corrupting effects of shitty corporate media) and then I’d get to the next part and even though I didn’t actually need to see the earlier bit to understand the plot, I needed it to feel the story, and I was so glad it was there. None of it is gratuitous either, it's not bloated or pointless or self-indulgent, there's a very clear reason for every part of the story existing. Alice Oseman is a really good storyteller, what else can I say?

[msmargaretmurry]

I’m rotating Matthew Tkachuck in my head right now and trying to figure out what’s an interesting direction to take him in, in general, in a post SCF win world. Real Matthew is obviously living his best life right now but I feel like there’s interesting things to explore with fanon Matthew. What angst avenues remain after he’s reached the dream of every hockey player in the show, fulfilled the expectations put on him by putting the tkachuk name on the cup? I’ve always liked stories that explore characters after they reached their ultimate goal and the ‘now what?’ question that they have to answer, I’m having trouble figuring what that ‘now what?’ is for Matthew beyond play more hockey and win more cups. As the foremost Matthew Knower I know, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

(Also needless to say i’d love hearing the extra mattdrai take on this too, either already established pre-SCF, broke up before SCF, or never even got together yet)

OK HI ANON i am so sorry for taking so long to answer this! and thank you for sending such a fun and interesting question!! as usual this got long so i'll put it under the read more.

so first of all i've definitely seen people say that matthew is less interesting to them fannishly now that his narrative is "over" — he won the cup, he's getting married, he's got his ideal happy ending, etc — and i do understand that, both theoretically and having seen it happen before in fandom (after the caps finally won the cup fannish hockey interest in them seemed to drop off SO abruptly at the time, lol). which is fine! if the thing someone was most invested in was the narrative and the narrative concludes, if the tension they were interested in is no longer there, it's natural to move on to new victims players of interest.

however, anon, i like you am for better or worse still invested 😂 and despite writing almost nothing this past year (i cannot express enough how burnt out grad school had me, but i have WAY better plans for stress management this year, hooray for having writing time again) i have been rotating our beloved rat boy CONSTANTLY on the gas station hotdog roller in my mind. he is one those players who obviously i enjoy him as a real person and a hockey player but for fanfiction purposes i find him so interesting for his potential as a character, and that character is only very loosely tied to his real life circurmstances and is a separate, totally fictional entity from the real guy. so while the real matthew is living the dream, and i am so happy for and proud of him, i still have fictional matthew in my head like, well i can do whatever i want with you, lol.

so i think what maybe makes it more difficult for people to stay invested fannishly in situations like this is the (understandable) tendency to set "canon" fic (fics that aren't full AUs) in the here-and-now, and matthew's here-and-now, like we said, just doesn't have that much obvious tension and conflict, and the tension and conflict are what make for great stories! so i take a few different approaches here, and hopefully you will find one or some of them interesting or useful.

firstly i totally agree that "what now" stories are great. you've achieved everything you ever dreamed of — what now? well, as a writer, you figure out why that wasn't enough and then you send your character on a journey to figure that out, too. and honestly a lot of the time this is just about making shit up! like, in haw matthew is such an anxious character — obviously matthew in real life is not anxious like his haw counterpart, but haw!matthew has something real matthew doesn't have: his big gay secret that is constantly weighing on him and stressing him out, so the anxiousness (hopefully) makes sense, character-wise. with matthew as a character i am almost always ignoring his real-life love life (i have just never been a person to include real wags in my fic in any major way) so my immediate thought is: if he has the cup, but not the engagement, how does that make things different? is he lonely? does he need to admit to himself that he's lonely, or is he already aware and making a choice to stay that way? or, maybe he uses the cup press as a way to come out, and he's dealing with all of that? maybe he gets caught putting his tongue in some guy's mouth during the drunken cup celebrations and he's dealing with that. (insert matthew pairing of choice into any of this, obviously.)

or maybe we want a fic that lets him have the whole happy ending, cup and wedding and everything. fast-forward five, ten, fifteen years, and how has that happiness lasted? like, he's pretty young, he has a lot of career ahead of him! will he be content as his career winds down if in all those years he hasn't had another sniff at the cup? does his (fictional) marriage last (obviously not, if we're going to have him sucking dick in a supply closet or w/e, but ykwim)? does he get to end his career on his own terms? there are whole worlds of futurefic out there for exploring what happens when all your dreams come true so young and so you spend the rest of your life chasing that high.

and then there is like, we can write fic set in the past! we're allowed to do that! if we still want to write about calgary matthew or pre-cup matthew and explore the conflicts and tensions in those parts of his life, we can do that! i think that his first two years in florida are SO ripe especially for like, matthew/sasha or matthew/benny or other fic with his teammates culminating in that cup run. like with good romance novels, knowing it has the best possible ending doesn't make the journey less interesting. we love that real matthew has his real happy ending; it could be really fun to recreate that journey for him with bonus matthew/[insert hockey man of choice here] content. (obviously i love matthew/leon, but i really will read anything 😂 so this is me encouraging all pairings.)

and then for ME there is a particularly delicious option, one of my favorite types of of hrpf fic in general, with the canon divergence au. we have seen matthew live his dream; what happens if something in his life happened that derailed his path to it? how does he reach that level of joy and contentness and peace with himself if his perfect cup/engagement summer is taken out of his reach? i'm talking your classic career-ending injury aus, something else happens to derail his career aus, etc. maybe not for everyone and maybe not quiet what you're thinking about with a "what next" type of fic, but i love this shit so much, so i have to include it here.

finally, OBVIOUSLY, the matthew and leon of it all!!!!! like, man, WHAT a wrench to throw into our beautiful wonderful made-up mattdrainiverse. i think there are such fun possibilities in every version of the scenario like you mentioned — established relationship, broken up, not together yet, a fourth secret thing, etc. for established relationship, the question of, does this break them up (and then you the writer has to get them back together) (if you're feeling nice)? if not, how do they get past it? if they're exes, does it weirdly ignite something between them again, and how does that go? and honestly my favorite might be the "not together yet" option, just because the journey for leon getting over that resentment and growing feelings could be soooooooo good.

and i think maybe that is the key to post-cup fic for them, for me, if the fic is going to end with them happy together? is, whatever their relationship, taking leon's feelings about the cup seriously — his resentment, his pain, his annoyance, what have you — and showing me that journey of processing those feelings and getting to a place where even if he's not happy for matthew, he is happy with him. and on matthew's side, his own feelings — refusing to be sorry for winning, refusing to tamp down his joy, etc — are obviously also important, and i think there could be some really good conflict there as they butt heads and work through all that.

but every fic doesn't have to deal with that whole-ass emotional journey, obvs. not every fic has to be a 60k feelings journey 😂 one-shot encounters, hate-fucking pwps, whatever, they can all be delicious. (unsolicited fic rec, @hopetorun recently wrote me this matthew/leon post-cup fic that packs a punch in 10k.) for me though i think these feelings about the cup need to be centered in the post-cup era, even if they don't get nicely resolved. even if it's set 15 years in the future, those feelings are still going to be there, and whatever happens between them is going to be messy and complicated. and we all know i love mess 🥰

anyway, i'm not actually sure if i answered your question here but i hope it did! regardless, i had fun thinking about all this, and that's the most important thing!

[theroyalmisfitmess]

[Updated as of 07/11/23] Reasons why I think Sid is the father

I don’t think other viewers can call fellow Sid-is-the-father theorists delusional anymore. The show is already building up the final contenders and I know in my gut they’re gonna be Sid, Jesse, and Ian. Hopefully we get S4 because I will update this whenever there’s a season break or a season ends.

Possible hints from the show (not the obvious and usually stated ones + not hints that could also apply to other contenders):

- When Sophie enters Pemberton’s to switch phones back with Sid, the engagement party crowd thought she was Hannah

- Sid remembered how much Tinder dates Sophie went on; he paid attention to her well (more on this later)

- Sophie and Sid both experienced relationship problems then found each other at the same time and same place. Sid later gave Sophie advice about finding the right person (funny enough, the advice parallels the situation because Sophie and Sid found each other at the right time to give each other advice)

- Two of Sophie’s by far most important love interests are connected to Sid—Jesse who is Sid’s best friend, and Drew who is a close friend of Sid’s wife

- Sophie remembers the Electric Slide; this time she is proven to pay attention to him

- Sid tells Sophie that he hopes the man she’ll marry will give her a better reception that what he and Hannah have

- If the father isn’t Jesse and Sophie is still married to the father, only Sid would be the perfect candidate to be understanding on why Jesse’s photo is on Sophie’s wall since he is Sid’s best friend

- The father is hinted to have loved Valentine’s Day even before he and Sophie even got together. Unlike the other guys, Sid’s memory for Valentine’s Day was always consistently good. Additionally, when Hannah walked in Pemberton’s to surprise Sid, only Sophie’s reaction was the focus

- Sophie and Sid both remember random facts they found out about each other offscreen; once again solidifying that they do pay attention to each other

- Sid somehow is the only character who has profound or notable interactions with both of Sophie’s parents

- In the episode where Sophie and her father made a popup, she tells her son it’s a story of how she met her father; in this episode, Sid is the only father option to interact with Sophie and her father

- Since we know that Sophie narrates the story, it’s important to note that she often emphasizes Sid’s stories by giving us in-depth insight despite their minimal interactions in episodes before 02x13. While she also does this for her other friends, it’s only Sid’s stories that we actually see play out long. To add, Sophie always paints Sid in a positive light in her stories

- In the disengagement episode, Sid and Sophie are implied to know a lot about each other (Sid knowing Sophie’s lock screen, Sophie knowing the password to Sid’s iPad); this isn’t really a hint but again, recurring theme that they pay attention to each other

- Both Sid and Sophie have this storyline where they are judged for their jobs/careers (and in the same episode)

- By 2x18 we see Sophie’s parents again and it’s Sid who primarily consoles them when they (along with Valentina) follow Sophie into Sid and Jesse’s apartment

- Sophie slowly bonds with Sid as each episode progresses and have more significant plots with him more than with Jesse

- Hannah assumed that Sid emotionally cheated on her with Sophie, and it was without reason. After this scene, we then cut to Sophie

- EDIT: Season 1 also had another cheating conversation between Sid and Hannah where Sophie’s situation with Jesse and Drew was the trigger

- Sophie’s son says that he thought it was a happy story to which Sophie replies it was, but we immediately get Sid crying over Hannah—setting the mood that it wasn’t really a happy night for everyone

- By 2x20 we have finally taken Charlie out as a candidate to be the father of Sophie’s child because it’s been confirmed that he ends up with Valentina (Side note: love this revelation. I was on a fifty-fifty with them but they fit well and love each other); Drew can also be taken out of the equation because of how future Sophie talks about him as a mere catalyst, but since there’s not an official confirmation we can just put him down the list for now

- Once again, it needs to be mentioned that the way Sophie talks about Sid in her story is always in a good light. She talks about the father so fondly and only Sid is the male character who is presented with so much emphasis about his personal life, his goodness, and his ability to have someone stir up their fondness for him

Parallels & Connections with HIMYM/Ted and Tracy:

- Alliteration names (Ted Mosby and Tracy McConnell, Sophie and Sid—if Sid’s last name also starts with a letter “T” like Tompkins then that would be interesting)

- Both are romantics. Sophie is a hopeless romantic who can’t find “the one” like Ted, while Sid is a committed romantic who is (and possibly going to be was) in a longterm relationship like Tracy

- Sophie and Sid swap phones, paralleling the yellow umbrella swap

- Sophie and Sid’s banters are very similar to that of Ted and Tracy’s

- Sid has Ted’s old room

- In connection to a point from the previous section, Sophie painting Sid in a picture that’s so positive and feeling untainted is very similar to how Ted paints Tracy in his stories—perfect, an angel, someone who no one could say something bad about, with great fondness

- Not directly related to HIMYM, but in the original HIMYM spin-off (How I Met Your Dad), the lead character Sally met the dad as she was preparing to get divorced. The script of this scrapped spin-off was reworked into HIMYF. I’m not saying it’s a direct answer, but what if the divorce storyline is gonna go to HIMYF’s only married main character father option?

- Sophie and Sid both play detective in 2x19. In HIMYM, Ted and Tracy have this running gag that they loved sleuthing

- Both Sophie and Ted went through all the lengths to get with Jesse and Robin, respectively. When Ted met Tracy he didn’t have to work so much, he just let it happen. Both shows work with a philosophy on how love is hard but loving is supposed to be easy. Both Robin and Jesse have complicated love lines with Ted and Sophie, respectively

Also if it’s any consolation, I previously took a film course for my major. So while I do acknowledge that I could be reading into things too much, I did have backing since I tried to incorporate the concepts to pick these things up.

[lunarin64art]

That feeling when he can't stand to see you that way, no matter what you do, no matter what you say😩😭💔

[kundaquarius]

The fact that Kira was killed so Lane can get Dmitry (in a way like now my man is exclusive for me) . even if he is not your LI, that was so obvious to me. I love Noah and Lester (I'm a sucker for boy friends being idiots) but Kira's death was so so OBVIOUS.

Rip my girl, I'll miss you.

On the other hand I'm not a WLW reader, but it's disgusting how Sasha tried so hard to make Anna homophobic or some shit like that, in a way of she saying to us, see?? Not all the women want you. LIKE WHY WOULD YOU MAKE HER A LI IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!

The lack of empathy, humanity and more shit from Russian writers is annoying as fuck.

crazy how hsr was one of my all time favorites but now i’m considering only playing during dr after these last two updates

i love the story and my main li (cain) but i cannot deal with how sasha handles her female characters, specifically lgbt ones

spoilers below

kira was horribly handled especially compared to noah and lester, who either got more lore and a card or an option to be saved from death, the trope of characters dying right after development starts sucks anyway but i had hope for my girl, i hope she comes back idc how horrible for the plot it is

and anna’s route oh my god. i was right to be wary when it didn’t grab me during season one. the whole confusion about her sexuality doesn’t work with the setting and is handled horribly especially compared with tata who is handled beautifully in my opinion.

[kradogsrats]

realizing two years in that "ha ha, pajama time" aside, Soren has literally removed his armor before talking so earnestly and vulnerably with Claudia in s4 like

[buildarocketboys]

Man nothing like talking to other writers to make you feel like you're not a proper writer

[acacia-shade]

you know, we do technically have a system name- not the one displayed on this blog, that name exists purely for public convenience and because whomever created it had a fondness for acacia trees -we just don't like using it. mostly we like the name, the 'actual' one, well enough, it's certainly an apt descriptor at times, but anyone else knowing it seems entirely undesirable to us, at least if we can't explain it to them.

its not a name, so much as a title for our system. if someone uses it as a name, like we used to have people do when it was public, it always feels wrong. and yet we like the name.

I don't know. I think it is the closest our system will ever come to a system name we can agree on, and even then many of us probably only accept it as much as we do because we've had it for so long, it's been years.

We've tried to replace it, we've just never really succeeded. Every other name we've tried or thought of hasn't stuck. I think that happens because really people are just thinking of names they'd like, but many of us don't like them, and after the last traces of whoever thought up the new name have vanished from the front we dislike it, it doesn't fit. Even upon realising that fact we have never come any closer to finding a 'working' system name.

I do find it important to point out, you don't need a system name. you don't need a collective anything. too, you can create a system name that follows none of the average conventions for one. and we have tried to craft names with all and none of those conventions.

we just,, want a collective name I suppose. Something we can look at and know that it refers to all of us. not even the 'secret' system name that we haven't revealed here fills that role though. a lot of us don't consider ourselves to have a system name at all, instead we just think our ourself as a unnamed system.

there is some comfort in being an unnamed system, an undefined nebulous group, something not so easily simplified into a single phrase or title, we are different from one another after all and there is comfort in that being reflected, but there is also a,, loneliness to it. that there is no written, spoken, or drawn manner by which we can be easily referred to as a collective. we are always referred to by a name that doesn't fit or by a name that only some of us claim as their own.

that feels like a rather abrupt place to cut off but that does seem to be all the thoughts I, and whomever is here with me really have to offer on the topic. I will say as a minor disclaimer, this isn't a complaint, or something meant to garner pity or similar, it is simply a written scattering of my and my companion's thoughts on the topic of collective names as they pertain to us.

uh, thank you for reading, and apologies for my manner of speech, I'm aware that it is likely rife with errors among other things, but it is nice to have the freedom to word things in the way that I naturally would and not have to correct them in some endeavour to sound 'normal'. this is after all, a blog primarily made for us.

[daughter-of-inklings]

An underrated pro of making your protagonist bilingual is that, if you can't remember the English thing-

neither can she;

[alchemiclee]

been looking in tags for a few days now to see if anyone else found the whole high cloud quintet and related story to be a bit.....poorly written, nonsensical, contradictory, full of plot holes and loose ends, etc. apparently i'm not the only one. (and i'm not even talking about shipping stuff, because any time I saw someone mad about bad writing, someone always replies to be homophobic and laugh about failed ships. weirdos.) it could have been so good but was thrown into the garbage for the most part (IF you noticed all the plot holes and contradiction. if not, then it's a fine enough story tbh. I expect most people to see it on surface level and not read all the little hidden lore bits and try to piece it together like my autistic brain did. which is ok! enjoy it if you liked it and ignore me 😆)

[mechanical-aristocrat]

Okay this is silly but am I crazy to think that Screwllum didn't talk like this before? In Silver Wolfs event he just talked like a human but now he says things like "Affirmation:" or "Conclusion:" Does this have like. Lore signifigance? Was it explained? Or did hoyoverse just retcon how he talks?

[OOC:]

Actually, he has talked like this the whole time, it's just that in Silver Wolf's companion mission it wasn't used nearly as frequently as in the new story. (To make sure I was remembering correctly, I skimmed the dialogue section of the wiki and found that the amount it was used was around the same for both missions, but since Screwllum had far more dialogue in Punklorde Mentality, its use was significantly more spread out so it wasn't as noticable)

In my opinion, it was better that way. I feel like this sort of speech mannerism is only charming when it's used sparingly, but for every handful of lines? It's a bit awkward and loses its effectiveness pretty quickly. Before, it seemed to me like something he was doing intentionally, turning typically flat and emotionless robotic speech patterns into something more endearing. Now, though, it reads like it only exists because he's a robot and robot characters have to speak a certain way, right? Never mind the fact that Screwllum is far more in touch with emotions (both his own and others') than most robot characters that exist in fiction, and that he tends to speak in a very elegant and poetic way that wouldn't usually blend very well with that blunt, straight-to-the-point style of speaking (unless, of course, a balance is struck between the two...like it was in Punklorde Mentality, maybe?!).

It's not a retcon, per say, because that word usually only applies to major, plot-important elements (as far as I understand it), but it is an inconsistency.

[icewindandboringhorror]

The evil slow creep of it being like "haha these will just be quick little side quests, not much effort at all!" and then noticing each one is getting progressively longer than the last, thus no longer being minimal effort.. auGh....

[cacw]

i do still stand by this and it's kind of upsetting me they don't hate him but they really obviously dislike him and his place in the story