#TLDR: it's complicated

[violent-viscera]

just more and more confident of my wistful and lamenting sentiments towards arcane s2. months out and i still look at s1 so fondly (with some constructive criticism it could've been paced better) but still a masterpiece while s2 is just visually orgasmic with unfulfilling and shaky plotlines. but most of all, the leftover feeling of "what could've been."

[soft--dogs]

Ever wanted to be a marketable 90s fad that was doomed to fail? Well now your dreams can come true! For just $30 a character I will draw your fursona or character as a floppy beanie plushie :3 DM me if you're interested in grabbing a slot! I'll send you a quick form to fill out ^w^ Commission rules: - This is for art only! NO physical beanies are being made. - This is not a YCH! Poses may be similar but each one will be unique. - Character designs will be simplified!! - I’ll make it as accurate to your character as I can, but keep in mind these are supposed to be a little silly and wonky. - MUST have ref sheet or image I can work from. - No clothing, naked beanies only. - Accessories (glasses, piercings, etc) CAN be added but please specify! Otherwise they will be NUDE. - Small items/ props can be added for an additional charge! - If there is a certain style of beanie not listed here you want me to draw, feel free to ask if I can do it! I only drew a few examples, but there’s more out there. -  A lot of this is customizable, so if you want different tag color, no tag at all, whiskers/no whiskers, a different species on a certain beanie style, etc, I’m open to ideas!  - Payments through Paypal invoice only. - Turnaround time for these will vary. I’ll be working on them in between my regular commissions. Feel free to edit your commission and use as memes, icons, stickers or whatever! As long as you’re not selling it, you’re good x) Update: I had increase the price on these, they're taking me a lot longer to finish than I expected! I'm averaging about 4-5 hours to complete each beanie. Also I've had a pretty big demand for these, so my queue has gotten pretty long! Expect completion times for new slots to be about 2 months.

[starry-bi-sky]

"Stillborn? No, still born" Danyal au -- VLAD MASTERS THE BITCH HIMSELF

*Points at Vlad* THIS MFER GOT SOME TEEFS TO HIM. !! Okay okay, Vlad Masters in the stillborn au is different compared to most of my other aus in the fact that I am far more heavily leaning into his original ambitions of wanting a family and being desperately lonely. Because you know what wanting a family implies? Wanting to be a parent.

Fucked up father figure that could've been Vlad. Complicated love-hate relationship between the only two halfas in existence.

Danny hates Vlad, but he hates even more that he's genuinely considered his offers of mentorship. Vlad is the only halfa around, and they both have fire cores. Danny has these powers he doesn't understand, can barely comprehend some days, and can't control. But Vlad does. Vlad can. And Vlad wants to help him. He's the only other person who can get close whenever Danny runs too hot. Whenever his igneous hair cracks, splits, and spits back out into magma and his friends can't get close, Vlad can.

His hair is made of magma, which runs so hot that people need specialized suits in order to get near it. He physically cannot get close to the living as a ghost unless he's calm enough for his hair to cool into igneous rock. Which isn't as often as he would like. And sometimes he's too hot for other ghosts to get near unless they have fire cores -- which Vlad has.

There have been many times when Danny's having a meltdown (literally) and gone somewhere to be alone, to let his anger and hurt and loneliness overflow and spill out, that when he's come back to, Vlad's right there with him as an anchor. It's desperately frustrating, it's the only time they can get along. They don't say anything, Danny just turns and clings onto the only person he can touch as a ghost.

Its not fair. Vlad wants to kill his foster dad, and Danny can't let him do that. But he wants to be trained by the man, he wants his help and wants what he can offer. But Vlad can't step away from his revenge long enough to let him. It's just not fair. He thinks for a moment that maybe it could work, and then Vlad does something to remind him that no, it can't.

Vlad Masters sees too much of himself in Daniel Brown -- from the way he holds himself, to the defenses he puts up, his quiet anger that builds and builds and builds until it explodes. That simmers beneath his skin. All the way down to the fact that they have matching cores. This boy is cut from the same cloth as him, and by god does he want to help him. He's always wanted to be a father, and Daniel Brown is too much like him for him to ignore. He genuinely, truly cares about Danny and his wellbeing.

He wants to help him, child just let him help you. Let him kill your foster dad so he can adopt you himself and help with these powers that terrify and intrigue you -- he knows what that's like to have something that you can't control, to have a heat that you can't cool down from. "We're in the same boat you and I, let him help you please."

But his methods are all wrong, and Danny is too much like him -- stubbornness and all -- for him to agree when they oppose each other so greatly. But again, Danny is much like him -- which means that Vlad is equally stubborn, and in every single one of their fights he's parental. He's annoyingly parental. He drops his interest in Maddie to focus his efforts in trying to coax Danny onto his side. It's like trying to get a traumatized cat to trust you, and on some levels it works. It's like he makes some progress, and then moves too quickly and the cat immediately runs off and you have to start back from square one.

TL:DR; Vlad and Danny both want to find family in each other but they're too different to get along and ultimately they are doomed by the narrative to be at constant odds with one another unless one of them is changes, and it doesn't matter who.

[dear-ao3]

Heyy totally weird question and having never experienced a long term relationship before this is really coming just from a place of curiosity, I'm deeply sorry if I'm stepping over a line. Did your ex boyfriend change as a person as time went by, because I remember loving your posts about him, and everything seemed wonderful and adorable about your dynamic, thinking that even if these complete strangers to me break up one day it will be full of mutual respect and understanding. Can a person really change up like that? Like were there ever any signs that he is a douchebag capable of breaking things of over a text and anything else that he's done or was he never actually like that and a "change" happend over night?

I am not at all probing into your life, please don't think that, nor am I asking for some kind of explanation no, just curious about someone turn up to be a complete douchebag at the end

i mean yea there were signs, generally when youre dating someone in the beginning things seem fine and dandy and then it all falls apart later. most of the problems stemmed from the fact that he broke a lot of bad habits and then gained them back. we were also pretty young and in that weird limbo stage of life where youre figuring out what the fuck you want to do and when youre in that area of life (college) things can change very quickly and you can very quickly realize that you are not as perfect for someone as you once thought.

actually though we were decently mature towards the end of it and knew it was falling apart and were like okay when the time comes we will be respectful and this will be mutual and likely we will remain friends (cause we did get along pretty well, there were just a lot of logistics that were not working) and then he decided to dump me over text (which he didnt really realize he was doing? he thought it was a break he was proposing but he worded it so badly that i was like um no this is a breakup. goodbye. then he tried to be like oh no no no we are still good for eachother! so even though he definitely started it i finished it) and all respect was lost

tho despite all that crap i dont regret it, there was a lot of fun, learned a lot about myself and most importantly learned what it does feel like to be in love. its not my fault it didnt work out, there was a lot of stuff that i was aware of at the beginning that would make it challenging and i knew it wasnt going to last forever, but while it was good it was definitely good.

[rustedleopard]

What astounds me about the whole "you need a pure human SOUL to perfect the serum" thing is that so many people take Chujin's conclusion at face value. Chujin Ketsukane? Chujin "Winner of the 'You Tried In Engineering' Award" Ketsukane? Chujin "Fumbled Inventing Robots So Hard He Earned The Ire Of The Usually Pretty Chill King" Ketsukane? Chujin "I Accidentally Killed A Human Child By Overshooting The Parameters On My Guard Robot" Ketsukane? That Chujin Ketsukane?

[bixels]

So i have a small nicpic i wanted to share with you about your interpretation of spike in the au and i want to make two things clear before i talk

1) i havent watch the series for a little while as of now so i might be misnterpreting a aspect of this chatacter that might have never been there and only apeared in fan content and personal interpretation (since that whats been keeping me on the fandom)

2) this is not a big problem about the au i matured enough to not get angry at a interpretation of a fictional charater

Now here i go

I feel spike being the same race as the rest of his familie makes him lose a part of his character that might have not been central but was still something interesting about him and is the idea of not mayhering how diferent he looked from his adoptive family (and his cominty as a whole) he was he was still seen as part of it

Again this isnt a big problem with the au as a whole its just a small nicpic that i have about the au and its not going to make me hate the au

This was just my opinion that i wanted to share and im interested to know your opinion about what i said

I understand this criticism and agree that having Simon/Spike be a different race than Thea could speak to their relationship in the original show.

My reasoning for designing them both to be African American is this. I believe Simon's adoption is enough to explore the feelings of separation and exclusion he may have with Thea and her family. The original show doesn't bring up Twilight and Spike's racial differences much because they originally didn't consider Spike to be a part of Twilight's family. As far as I know, there's no moment where someone says, "Wow! You're telling me you're related to Twilight Sparkle? But you look nothing alike!" because Spike was more so Twilights... familiar than anything.

Later episodes that explore their familial dynamic poses the conflict through Spike's adoption. There's one episode where Spike's "biological father" returns, and Spike accuses Twilight of not being his real family, which breaks her heart. There's another that delves deep into Spike's feelings of exclusion from Twilight and Shining Armor's siblinghood. Basically, in discussions of family dynamics, the show places more emphasis on Spike's identity as an adopted sibling rather than a dragon.

I really do believe a multiracial family would be good representation, but the racial dynamics would not be something I'd be interested in getting into. That's not to say I find real multiracial families problematic or uninteresting or unappealing or unimportant. I just wouldn't be interested in having to explain in-text that Simon (non-black) and Thea (black) are related over and over; it would grow tedious. It adds an extra level of writing complication and opens up racial discourse (discourse that I feel is unrelated to their relationship in the original show) that I don't want to concern myself with, especially because I have no experience in navigating such discourse.

[nemaliwrites]

have a snippet from the lil kwami swap thing i'm working on!

High above the streets of Paris, Mister Bug and Lady Noire talk about love.

It's a dangerous topic, to be sure; one that has to be tiptoed around with utmost care. A balancing act for Mister Bug. For Lady Noire too, perhaps, but she never seems like it affects her quite as much. Maybe that's why she's the one who brings it up.

"Are you in love, Mister Bug?"

His feet, from where they'd been kicking back and forth rhythmically, come to a stop. "Huh?"

"I'm just curious," says Lady Noire. On the rooftop they sit, there's more than a few centimeters of space between them. A gap that they're both waiting for Mister Bug to bridge. He only wishes he could. "Are you?"

Mister Bug tries to catch her eye. "Are you sure you want to talk about this? We... we don't have to--"

She waves a clawed hand in the air dismissively. "It's fine," she says, even though he knows it's not. He wonders what it is that's fine: talking about love, or talking about love when they both know he won't -- he can't -- reciprocate her feelings? "I wanna know. Is there anyone you love?"

There is. 

[sammygender]

i just feel like looking at precanon dynamics going ‘oh the main reason sam and john clash is because they’re sooooo similar’ is ignoring actual canon and implication in favour of taking a specific comment about a specific arc of sam’s that dean makes and running with it.

for one it’s missing all the context which is. this isn’t two random people who clash for unknown reasons, this is a father and the son he’s actively abusing and neglecting. sam has a right to be angry!! it’d be more concerning if he Wasnt angry (a la dean)!!

also just what we do see in canon is like. totally the opposite. john’s always hated the fact that sam’s different from him… that sam wants different things, doesn’t want to hunt, a different life…. DEAN’S the one who tries to be identical to his father. whether he succeeds is another story (i don’t think he’s innately very like john but i do think he leans into the same coping mechanisms and behavioural patterns, wholly for the worse!) but john seems to mostly believe him. even going by the journal which like. i know people don’t take as canon but i like it <3. john thinks dean’s practically a mini him (ofc he Isn’t but) and that sam reminds him of mary. 🤷‍♂️ ofc you can still see sam and john as being similar in some ways. i can certainly see it and i’m sure i’ve written it. kids r often like their parents. but 1 that’s not, like, the Secret Reason they’ve always fought so badly and 2 sam is like john sometimes but he’s also like mary who’s like dean who’s also still like john. and sam and dean are often like each other. i already went on about this in my last post so i’m repeating myself but. reject the false binary inside your head where a sibling like. picks a parent and grows up to identically be them.

[nintendont2502]

btw i will forever recommend just. refusing to engage in discourse. its free its easy and you literally arent missing anything LMAO - 99% of discourse on here is just on the most pointless petty shit that literally doesnt mean a single thing to anyone in real life (i am looking directly at you "pRo/AnTi" shippers), and the other 1% is genuinely important shit... that isnt going to be solved in any productive way by insulting '''the other side''' online. arguing with strangers online never changes anyones mind all youre doing is making yourself *and* your cause look annoying as hell :thumbsup: maybe chill out. find a hobby.

[adragonsfriend]

SW Prequels: 1 Politic Please, for the Naive Child

(A complicating narrative…but probably not for you, reader of this post)

The prequels, according to quotes from GL, have two main goals:

“How did Anakin become Darth Vader?” (How does good person become a bad one)

“How did the Republic turn in to the Empire?” (How does a democracy become a dictatorship)

The first goal, though perhaps not perfectly executed, is largely achieved. We see Anakin go from a child who wants to help others, to an adult willing so sacrifice children for his own selfish desires—and we the viewers understand that (if not always agree which) decisions he and others made caused him to follow that character arc.

What the Prequels do Not do

The second goal falls far short.

The prequels offer some broad factors in the Republic becoming a dictatorship (as well as why the Separatists were no better)—corporations in government, greed of the already wealthy, war, fear-mongering manifesting policy changes, etc—but does not examine them in detail. It doesn’t take particular care with the timing of when the main characters acknowledge Republic’s values as having been lost, or the construction of “democracy” in-universe, or to what degree planets like Alderaan must be stealing from the Mid and Outer Rim, or even how Padmé and Palpatine both being from Naboo potentially alters any political commentary to be about Naboo rather than on the Republic as a whole, and carries around a whole bunch of other careless world-building problems that muddy the waters of plot elements which should be fairytale-clear (look I was gonna link a bunch more individual posts, but I got tired. Go read @saga-ordsmed’s star wars tag—she writes more elegantly, scathingly, and competently about Star Wars’ political & narrative failings then I ever will).

The prequels are a story about Anakin and about values of personal responsibility, and any political commentary suffers for that.

We know that the Senate willingly votes Palpatine into absolute power, but we do not know what alliances led to that vote passing, what Palpatine has been doing inside the Senate rather than outside it (his Sith & separatist activities), what battles and press releases cause the tide of the Senate to turn. We are shown a few bad apples but largely left unsure what turned the whole Senate, other than “time” “decay” and “greed.” These are vague comments on human nature, not on systematic conflicts.

If we saw something like this deleted scene, where Padme gives a speech to the senate, or this deleted scene, where some Senators talk about the Delegation of 2000 confronting Palpatine, I might have a reason to believe Padmé has fresh insight into the current political instability when she says the Republic is crumbling (if we actually got some of the pointed comments from the Delegation of 2000 scene, I would never have been able to make this post). Frankly, all of Padmé’s opinions are already under narrative suspicion because of her choice to help cover up Anakin’s massacre; without taking time to establish her expertise in politics as separate from her decisions about Anakin, her words about the Republic mean little. But these scenes are deleted, and whatever the reason, it causes the prequels to fail at their second goal, even more than they do structurally by not paying it much attention.

The most convincing comments about the political state of the Republic and the Chancellor instead come from members of Jedi Council, who have deliberately held themselves at a remove from the political process—for philosophical and practical reasons—and so lack detailed insight into the Senate’s functioning (why have so many benevolent Senator characters if you’re not going to use them as such? Just put one in the room with the Jedi council for a minute, seriously).

The most interesting scene we get about politics is the scene when Anakin and Padmé chat in the field and Anakin basically says he thinks the right dictatorship would solve the Republic’s problems, and Padmé largely laughs it off. It has the potential to be commenting on how people become radicalized when governments do not serve them, but the scene is so short and Anakin is in such a unique position as a Jedi and someone being personally groomed by the Chancellor, that it falls flat in terms of telling us anything either fresh and interesting about GL’s perspective on radicalisation, or anything applicable to a wider group of people.

Instead, the scene is again almost solely about the characters. It tells us about Anakin, Palpatine’s influence over Anakin, a little about Padmé, and a lot about Anakin and Padmé’s relationship. This would be fine—stories are allowed to use politics merely as a backdrop to character-level conflicts—if the creator didn’t claim to be telling us how a democracy can become a dictatorship.

So the prequels fail as a detailed or even followable portrayal of how a democracy becomes a dictatorship. They set up a few dominoes, but largely do not connect them to one another—for that we must fill in elaborate headcanons, read a million and one comics that probably don’t help the matter, or refuse to pay the question any detailed attention at all.

What the Prequels do Achieve

I recall a day, quite a while ago now, when as a kid—9 or so—I was walking to a friend’s house. It was sunny; the lawns were green and the sky was blue but the pools were bluer. I don’t remember the exact trigger for the thought, but I suspect my eye caught on the American flag hung by someone’s door. Whether it was the first time, or only the most memorable time, I remember realising: There is nothing inherently stopping my country (the US) and the whole world from getting worse again.

Now, there was a lot that was limited and outright wrong about that thought: the idea that the world didn’t currently suck for a lot of people, that it couldn’t start sucking for me, that the safety I experienced wasn’t built on other people not being safe, that the world was necessarily headed in a positive direction at the time, and so on. Many children are obliged to realise those things far earlier, if they ever held such beliefs in the first place.

But it was a step on the ongoing path toward a more complex world view, and a necessary one.

What the Prequels do is to present a situation in which the Evil Overlord takes over not by having a bigger army, or by poisoning the Good King, but by asking for and being granted supreme power by the government which is supposed to be checking his power. It is not detailed, or nuanced, or particularly well orchestrated. The how is barely a concern. The Prequels are highly unlikely to tell an adult anything they do not already know—in fact they are more likely to reinforce overly simplistic, individualistic views of highly systematic, large scale issues.

But the prequels do present a naive child with the possibility that a democracy can willingly become a dictatorship, that a government and a world can become worse.

That is only a step—one everyone must eventually move beyond—but for the naive child, it is a necessary step.

[sunnykeysmash]

Charlie: "Hey, uh, Dennis, uh, get to Frank as fast as you can. I have Malcolm and his dad."

[millidew]

maizuru and milsiril are my favorite fucked up dungeon meshi mother figures

[brodorokihousuke]

Im curious given you are an avid SoJ enjoyer; what are your thoughts on Nahyuta and his actions?

My opinion on him is a little complicated, as my perception of him while playing the game (brother pisses me off, his theme starts and I groan, one of the only things i have ever flipped off) is completely different from my opinion of his overall character... but I suppose that just means he's written well haha.

I think he's very similar to Blackquill in that a majority of the game, he's masking his true emotions and/or motivations due to the need to protect someone (Rayfa, Apollo, and, frankly, himself) from harm. I think this makes him fairly complex and nuanced as you can't precisely tell what he's feeling at any given moment- if anything, he's specifically trying to hide such a thing.

As a sidenote, I do enjoy thinking about what his true feelings were throughout The Magical Turnabout, and the other cases pre: Revolution to a smaller extent. He had to be a little fucked up over facing Apollo in court, methinks...

A lot of his actions were, in my mind, influenced by this need to keep up appearances, and so I honestly can't say how many of them were explicitly his own decision or were influenced by Ga'ran. So, even though he pulled a lot of dickish moves throughout the game, I feel like a fair few of them can be forgiven due to his difficult position at the time.

I would be interested to see more of him post-SoJ, to get a better read of his emotions and personality.

[bywandandsword]

Since Hazbin Hotel popped off, I've seen a few times people asserting that there is something racist about Alastor's backstory, given that he is canonically a Creole from New Orleans, but his demon form does not have any overt indicators of his being a person of color

So here's a gentle reminder and clarification, as a Louisiana Creole myself;

"Louisiana Creoles (French: Créoles de la Louisiane, Louisiana Creole: Moun Kréyòl la Lwizyàn, Spanish: Criollos de Luisiana) are a Louisiana French ethnic group descended from the inhabitants of colonial Louisiana before it became a part of the United States during the period of both French and Spanish rule. They share cultural ties such as the traditional use of the French, Spanish, and Creole languages and predominant practice of Catholicism. Some mistakenly think the term is a racial designation, while in fact people of European, of African, and of mixed ancestry have all been termed "Creole" since the 18th century." (x, emphasis mine)

Please pay special attention to the last sentence. While many, probably most, Louisiana Creoles are of mixed-race ancestry, not all are. I'm not saying there aren't valid critiques of Alastor as a character, this just isn't one of them

[shallowseeker]

Angels are shown time and time again to assert their own will, regardless if they spout the party line or not.

[yuesya]

Tsukumo Yuki stated that Satoru's type was someone who could understand him so would Shiki count as one of the few who can? 🤔🤔🤔

Technically yes, although the relationship between Satoru is closer to that of siblings than anything romantic.