#a girl who worked to get what she wanted
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hal-o-ween · 6 months ago
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Sweet Dreams <3
#my art#pokemon#galarian ponyta#digital art#hiiii everyone hello please look at my darling angel Amalthea. shes my partner pokemon in pokednd <3#most of our pokemon went missing so Mia (my character) took our remaining pokemon to get their pictures taken in case they go missing#i did in fact draw all three of them. am going to work on doing digital versions of the other two#its all of our partner pokemons :3 ponyta. impidimp. and mankey <3#the sketches i did for the other two are so fun i cant wait to draw them#impidimp's made my cousins all laugh so hard they almost cried#this session was so fun and we also talked afterwards about pokemon we may want on our teams in the future#and honestly my potential line up for Mia feels so good#her next pokemon she gets is very possibly going to be a bewear. absolutely out of left field choice but it works so beautifully#im also thinking good options for her would be breloom. grumpig. wyrdeer. maybe mimikyu.#grumpig and breloom are honestly the top of the list. they suit her so beautifully#wyrdeer is also really good. mimikyu would be up to roleplay#mimikyu and bewear would both play into her animal handling skill#mimikyu would also end up disguised as a sylveon#probably play that as mimikyu wanting to fit in with Mia's team since she's really nice to it and it wants her to be its trainer#bewear on the other hand would 1. work well aesthetically for her and 2. would be fantastic roleplay material what with it being a giant#aggro bear and mia is just this gentle giant who is so fucking good with pokemon so its like well.#the nice girl wants me to be nice so i wont kill you because i like her. she gives me snacks and pets me and treats me well
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undead-moth · 4 months ago
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I know I've been on about this for a while now and I'm being a hater but you're telling me SydCarmy was "always meant to be platonic" even though there are two seasons of writing making use of tried-and-true explicitly romantic tropes, themes and writing signals, and SydLuca is going to be romantic because...he was nice to her on screen for a few minutes?
I don't even care if people ship SydLuca, or if they just prefer it, but you can't honestly tell me that you believe Carmy was always meant to be a friend but Luca is an obvious love interest.
Just because Syd and Carmy haven't kissed or confessed their love to each other doesn't mean that isn't very obviously the direction this show is going. The Bear has already shown you who is endgame. It has shown you every episode of the show so far.
Honestly I really don't think The Bear fanbase understands this show or cares about these characters or the story being told here, which is unfortunate because this show is shockingly well-written in comparison to most shows right now, and we should be so grateful for it but all we're doing is complaining that the writers led us on by not making a ship canon fast enough. It's just. Sad.
#The Bear#SydCarmy#I was like a casual fan of this show two days ago#and now seeing how little respect this show gets from it's fanbase I'm losing my mind#I mean I shipped SydCarmy before anyway but now it means so much to me#it means so much to see such a realistic and purposefully well paced romance take place#so many shows portray romantic relationships and their beginnings in ways that just don't really happen in real life#and this show very purposefully said no. These are characters who are strangers. who are working together. Who are in a tense environment#and each of them has problems - one of them the type of problems that makes developing new relationships pretty difficult#these two would not get together right away. It would take a long time. And there would be ups and downs.#And even when that's the case. Even if when it takes a long time and doesn't go smoothly and is hard -#it can still be beautiful. It can still be romantic. It can still happen and here's how#and I'm just so inspired genuinely. It is so difficult to write romance without being cliche and so difficult to write it in a way that#could actually happen in real life and I really do hope I can write something half as good some day#and then to know so many people have no appreciation for it at all#because they prefer the shows that have characters make eye contact a few times and then confess their love for each other like#it's just fucking sad. So sad that so few people have any appreciation for good writing especially the difficult of romance writing#like I really just don't even know what to tell you. In real life these two would not have confessed to each other yet. They would not have#kissed yet. They would not have even realized they have feelings for each other yet because those feelings would still be developing#and I also want to point out that given the disparity in power between Syd and Carmy in season 1 it wouldn't have been healthy for them to#get together much sooner. He was her boss. He was also her idol. Before they can even get together that needs to be balanced out.#And then on top of that don't you see the value in Carmy realizing the dream girl he's romanticized in his head - Claire - isn't actually#what he wants? Don't you see the beauty in him being disillusioned from that? And realizing that Syd is what he wants?#Don't you see the beauty in Syd having an idealized vision of what Carmy The Great Chef is like realizing she was wrong and that he's human#and flawed and then realizing - she loves him anyway? She loves him more for not being on a pedestal and for having his flaws?#Are you telling me that even thinking about this doesn't move you? Doesn't make your heart ache a little?#And again - ship and let ship - but what is Luca? What is Luca if not just what she was hoping Carmy would be when she wen to The Beef?#What is he if not just another man who she has not seen under pressure yet? Not seen reliving trauma yet? Not been her boss yet?#It's easy to look at him and think he's better than Carmy - and that's the point. That's the point The Bear is making.#It is easy to want someone you don't know. It's hard to want to someone you do know. But that's what love requires and that's the point
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greenerteacups · 3 months ago
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oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT
oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.
SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)
so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!
so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.
the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!
now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.
here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.
but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.
so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.
anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.
#using the tags as a footnote system here but in order:#1. quentin MAY not be dead according to some theories but in the text he is a charred corpse#2. arianne is great and i love her but to be honest. my girl is kinda dumb. just 2 b real.#3. faegon is totally a blackfyre i think it's so obvious it may well be text at this point#it's almost r+l = j level man like it's kind of just reading comprehension at this point#4. relatedly there are some characters i think GRRM has endings picked out for and some i think he specifically does NOT#i think stannis melisandre jon and daenerys all will end up the same. jon and dany war crimes => murder/banishment arc is just classic GRRM#but i think jon's reasoning will be different and it'll be better-written.#im sorry but babygirl shireen IS getting flambeed. in response stannis will commit epic battle suicide killing all boltons i hope#brienne will live but in some tragic 'stay awhile horatio' capacity. likely she will try to die defending her liege and fail#faegon will die there's zero chance blackfyres win ever#now jaime/cersei I do NOT think he knows. my brothers in christ i don't think this motherfucker knows who the valonqar is!!#same with tyrion i think that the author in GRRM wants to do a nasty corruption arc + kill him off but the person in him loves him too much#sansa i have no goddamn idea what's going to happen. we just don't know enough about the northern conspiracy to tell#w/ arya i think he has... ideas. i don't think she's going to sail off to Explore i am almost certain that the show doing that was a cover#because the actual idea he gave them was unsavory or nonviable for some reason. bc like.#why would arya leave bran and jon and sansa? the family she's just spent her whole life fighting to come back to and avenge?#this is suspicious this does not feel like arya this does not feel right#bran will not be king or if he is it'll be in a VERY different way not the dumbfuck 'let's vote' bullshit#i personally think bran is going to go full corruption arc and become possessed by the 3 eyed raven. but that could be a pipe dream#the thing is he's way too OP in the show so the books have to nerf him and i think GRRM is still trying to work out#a way to actually do that.#i don't think he told them what happened with littlefinger or sansa. i think sansa's story is vaguely similar#(stark restoration through the female line etc)#but the queen in the north shit is way too contrived frankly. and selfishly i hope she gets something different#being a monarch in ASOIAF is not a happy ending. we know this from the moment we meet robert baratheon in AGOT#and we learn exactly what GRRM thinks of the people who 'win' these endless wars of succession#and they are not heroes#they are not celebrated#and they are neither safe nor happy
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sukibenders · 2 months ago
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Looking back at the early seasons of Bridgerton, Anthony gave his family a lot of grace because the amount of stress they put him under....chile, I would've blown my fuse way earlier than he did. Especially with Violet!
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carsonjonesfiance · 8 months ago
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And I love how gay unemployed 20 somethings on think that a vast interconnected network involving the US government, independent media, Verizon, etc, conspired to delete a couple dozen blogs on a dying blogging platform is somehow more likely than a gay unemployed twenty something disillusioned with American politics unknowingly following a sockpuppet account or two back in 2016.
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dykedvonte · 6 days ago
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I keep seeing fanarts of ppl's OC's being on the ship, so do you think that if there was 6st crewmember (specifically, another woman) Anya would've been more safe? Like, someone to actually call Jimmy's begaviour out, someone Anya might wanna trust? Is there a possibility something might have changed (even if a little) or it would not have mattered at all?
-💀
I feel like the game would make it part of the commentary on where she would believe and help Anya but still be sort of dismissive? Like the whole “don’t waste time crying and being scared keep going and move on, don’t let him win”. It’s supposed to be positive and reinforcing but sometimes it does more damage in those times of mourning and grief, it feels patronizing, like you don’t understand what you’re going through but they do. Even if they did call out his behavior it’s still on Curly to act and while another voice would help, it’s still 4 against 2 on guys that don’t get it until they have to vs women who always have to.
I don’t mind mouthwashing OCs but I do get a bit bored as they tend to be borderline saviors or like Jimmy aligned. They are either more complicit than Curly or just Jimmy haters for no reason, outside of what the creators know about what he did to Anya. I am never irked by OCs but in a story like mouthwashing you really need to think about what your character adds to the commentary, especially if they are there during the crash. It’s nice to have like characters on Anya’s side more whole heartedly and interesting to see characters who placate Jimmy but sometimes it’s one note.
I can’t and don’t want to police peoples OCs it’s never my intention when I comment on trends I notice, but I do feel like the way people make their OCs interact with these two characters and especially Curly, really show a grave misunderstanding of the narrative and these characters as people vs roles in the story. Still, I know people just make up characters for fun and that’s fine. Great even, but I guys I’m focusing more on OCs that are supposed to have those serious dynamics. My favs tend to be pretty-Tulpar or post-Tulpar au OCs.
The inevitably of the crash is on Jimmy. He did that not because he wasn’t stopped but because all his means to kill Anya were taken. The gun, the axe. Even if Curly did strip him of his co-pilot privileges and try to keep him contained there’s only so many people. An extra body helps but they have jobs they have to do, he’s the only one steering the whole ship and Jimmy would likely have an out: food, bathroom, etc. He’s not new and if he couldn’t crash the ship directly, who’s to say he wouldn’t sabotage something else? A clunker like the Tulpar wouldn’t take much. An extra person helps but it’s just another thing that prolongs what a person like Jimmy is willing to do to shirk responsibility.
It’s more than just needing someone to stand up to him and think that’s what is missing when it comes to inserting a character into the mouthwashing setting.
#like again most people treat Jimmy like a misanthrope and he’s not and the way he’s just evil/rude to everyone all the time just isn’t real#like he’s snarky and rude but it can’t be 100% of the time like hes not going out his way to instigate#he’s the type to say shit and hope it stirs the pot like Daisuke likes him at first#thinks he’s a bit of a jerk but he likes him like unless you specifically make a character he’s dislike he’s not just gonna be#readily antagonistic to strangers or at the get go#not to mention it’s not just about Anya needing a friend but someone with the power to do something#a point in why she confides in Curly is he’s the captain she’s not just gonna tell the only other woman just because it’s still personal#not every girl tells their friend or another woman especially if they are new and they don’t know how they react not all girls are#girls girls some can be just as toxic as the men they are being confided in about#the nuance of the situation is not solved by having more people who actively hate jimmmy if anything it would make him escalate further as#clearly has issues with how people perceive him and being liked like another woman who hates him that’s gonna do something crazy in his mind#I think it’s interesting when OCs explore another side of the pre established dynamics as Jimmy uses each remaining crew member to fill a#something Curly provided for him and represent his dynamic with Anya and being an abuser I just feel like a lot is being missed out on#and it’s mainly cause people don’t want to make OCs that aren’t great people like it’s okay to have a grey mediocre OCs in situations like#this its realistic and helps you write more grounded characters like idk i like the ocs but eh im not like a super fan#I really should make an analysis on Jimmy cause people hate discussing him and his character is being really misunderstood#like not saying she’s innocent or an excuse but just not getting how he is supposed to work like he’s no dick fucking dasteredly#he’s a shitty guy who gets shittier like he ain’t start out an avengers level threat#mouthwashing#💀 anon#mouthwashing game#ask#anya mouthwashing#curly mouthwashing#jimmy mouthwashing#mouthwashing oc#now I gotta make an oc just to prove myself but I can’t draw#so maybe not cuz what’s the point if I can’t explain the fly drip
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softstuffs · 5 months ago
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Au where Moonpaw is in fact Bayshine and Thriftear's kit but the entire clan is convinced its a Squirrelflight and Crowfeather situation where Bayshine and Thriftear adopted Moonpaw from Nightheart and Sunbeam and is a nightsun kit because of her pelt and name, and everyone's jumping to conclusions about it. Moonpaw is a sweet but cunning and devious little devil child who is all too happy to cozy up to her "parents" for extra attention as well as get them in trouble and just generally be a little shit.
aka au where moonpaw takes advantage of the nightsun assumptions to cause problems on purpose
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junebugtwin · 1 year ago
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even while it was happening, you knew it wasn't going to last
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safety-pin-punk · 4 months ago
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yall Im so fucking tired. This month has been exhausting. I promise Im alive, just barely functional atm.
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blueskittlesart · 1 year ago
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any thoughts on how once again zelda was robbed of her agency because her "father figure" didn't listen to her? even if rauru was kinder to her than her father. and that she had sonia who was patient and loving for a little while before she died (just like her mother). i know rauru apologizes for his hubris but still, i wish we saw zelda be upset about it. and even if zelda was such a big part of the quest she still literally sacrificed her humanity once again because of someone else's mistake- because rauru literally didn't listen to the girl from the future that warned you that shit was going to go down. o know nintendo just loves putting zelda inside crystals and stones but i wish we got something better. even if it was her decision to become a dragon... did she have any other choice? it really just feels like they robbed her of agency again just like botw and the games before
i've been trying to figure out how to answer this one. because there are two ways i could analyze this plot point, either from a writer's perspective or an in-story perspective, but neither of those lead to me fully agreeing with your interpretation? I think there's definitely something to be said about zelda consistently being pushed aside in these games, but. well. ok let's get into it ig
from a writer's perspective, I do honestly have quite a bit of sympathy for the zelda devs as they attempt to navigate the modern political landscape with these games. The cyclical lore, though canonized relatively recently, holds them to a standard of consistency in their games in terms of certain key elements. one of those key elements is that there has to be a princess, and that princess must somehow be the main macguffin of the game. The player must chase her, and the end goal of the game must be to reunite the player and the princess. In 1986 this was an incredibly easy sell. women didn't need to be characters. players were content with saving a 2-dimensional princess whose only purpose was to tell them "good job!" at the end. but as society advances, that princess becomes a much more difficult character to write while adhering to the established overarching canon. (as a side note: i don't necessarily believe that the writers SHOULD be held to the standards of that canon. I think deviating from it in certain areas would be a good change of pace. but i also recognize that deviations from the formula are widely hated by the loz playerbase and that they're trying to make money off these games, so we're working under the established rule that the formula must be at least loosely adhered to.) Modern fans want a princess who is a person, who has agency and makes decisions and struggles in the same way the hero does. but modern fans ALSO want a game that follows the established rules of the canon. so we need a princess who is a real character but who can ALSO serve as a macguffin within the narrative, something that is inherently somewhat objectifying.
the two games that i think do the best job writing a princess with agency are skyward sword and botw (based on your ask, our opinions differ there lol. hear me out) in both games, we have a framing event which seperates zelda and link, but in both games, that separation was ZELDA'S CHOICE. skyward sword zelda runs away from link out of fear of hurting him. botw zelda chooses to return to the castle alone to allow link the time he needs to heal. sksw kinda fumbled later on by having ghirahim kidnap her anyway, but. i said BEST not PERFECT. botw zelda I think is the better example because, with the context of the memories, she's arguably MORE of a character than link is. we see her struggles, her breakdowns, her imperfection, specifically we see her struggle with her lack of agency within the context of the game itself. when she steps in front of link in the final memory, and when she chooses to return to the castle, those are some of the first choices we see her make almost completely free of outside influence; a RECLAMATION of her agency (within the narrative) after years of having it stripped from her. from an objective viewer's standpoint, this writing decision still means she is absent from 90% of the game and that she has little control over her actions for the duration of the player's journey. however I think this is just about the best they could have done to create a princess with agency and a real character arc while still keeping the macguffin formula intact--you're not really SAVING zelda in botw. SHE is the one that is saving YOU; when you wake up on the plateau with no memories, too weak to fight bokoblins, let alone calamity ganon. the reason you are allowed to train and heal in early-game botw is because SHE is in the castle holding ganon back, protecting YOU. When you enter the final fight, you're not rescuing zelda, you're relieving her of her duty. taking over the work she's been doing for the past hundred years. in the final hour, you both work in tandem to defeat ganon. while this isn't a PERFECT example of a female character with agency and narrative weight, i think it's a pretty good one, especially in the context of save-the-princess games like loz.
as for totk, you put a lot of emphasis on rauru not believing zelda and taking action immediately, which, again, from an objective standpoint, i understand. but even when we're writing characters with social implications in mind, those character's actions still need to... make sense. Rauru was a king ruling over what he believed to be a perfectly peaceful kingdom. zelda literally fell out of the sky, landed in front of him, claimed to be his long-lost granddaughter, and then told him that some random ruler of a fringe faction in the desert was going to murder him and he had to get the jump on it by killing him first. the ruler which this girl is trying to convince rauru to wage an unprompted war on has the power to disguise himself as other people. no one in their right mind would immediately take the girl at her word. war is not something any leader should jump into without proper research and consideration, and to rauru's credit, he DIDN'T ever outright dismiss zelda. he believed her when she said she was from the future, he allowed her to work with him and he took her warnings as seriously as he could without any further proof. but he could not wage an unprompted war on ganondorf. that's just genuinely not practical, especially for a king who values peace among his people as much as rauru seems to. as soon as ganondorf DID attack, giving rauru confirmation that zelda's accounts of the future were real, he began making preparations to confront him. remember that zelda didn't KNOW that rauru and sonia were going to be casualties of the war--she didn't make the connection between rauru's arm in the future and rauru the king until AFTER sonia's death, when rauru made the decision to attack ganondorf directly. I think the imprisoning war and the casualties of it were less an issue of zelda being denied agency and more an issue of no one, including zelda, having full context for the events as they were unfolding. if zelda had KNOWN that sonia and rauru were going to die from the beginning and was still unable to prevent it that would be a different issue, but she didn't. none of them did.
I think another thing worth pointing out with rauru and his death irt zelda is that rauru is clearly written specifically as a foil to rhoam. this is evident in how he treats both zelda and link, with a constant kindness and understanding which is clearly opposite to rhoam's dismissiveness and disappointment. consider rhoam's death and the circumstances surrounding it. He died because, in zelda's eyes, she was unable to do her duty; the one thing he constantly berated her for. Rhoam's death solidified zelda's belief that she was a failure, a belief which she KNEW rhoam held as well. his death was doubly traumatic to her because she knew he died believing it was her fault. Now contrast that to the circumstances surrounding rauru's death. Rauru CHOSE to die despite zelda's warnings, because he wanted zelda and his kingdom to live. rauru's death was not agency-stripping for zelda; in fact, it functioned almost as an admission that he believed her capable of continuing to live in his place. With him gone, the fate of the kingdom fell to her and the sages. he KNEW that he would die and still went into that battle confidently, trusting zelda to make the right decisions once he was gone. where rhoam believed zelda incapable of doing ANYTHING without link, rauru trusted zelda COMPLETELY with the fate of his kingdom. several details in totk confirm that when rauru died there was no plan for zelda to draconify, that all happened after rauru was gone. it was HER plan, the plan which rauru trusted her to come up with once he was gone. and I think it's also worth noting that zelda's sacrifice with the draconification parallels rauru's!! Rauru gives up his life trusting the sages and his people to be able to continue his work in his place. Zelda gives up her physical form trusting link and the sages in the future to be able to figure out what to do and find her. these games in general have this recurring theme but totk specifically is all about love and trust and reliance on others. zelda relies on link, link relies on zelda, they both rely on the champions and the sages and rauru and sonia and they all rely each other. reliance on others isn't lack of agency, it's a constant choice they make, and that choice is the thing which allows them to triumph.
The draconification itself is something i view similarly to zelda's sacrifice in botw--a choice she makes which, symbolically & within the confines of the narrative, is a demonstration of her reclaimed agency and places her at the center of the narrative, but which ALSO removes her from much of the player's experience and robs her of any overt presence or decisionmaking within the gameplay. again, I think this is a solution to the macguffin-with-agency dilemma, and it's probably one of the better solutions they could have come up with. Would I have liked to see a game where zelda is more present within the actual gameplay? yes, but I also understand that at this point the writers aren't quite willing to deviate that much from their formula. the alternative within the confines of this story would be to let zelda DIE in the past, removing her from gameplay ENTIRELY, which is an infinitely worse option in my opinion. draconification allowed her to be present, centered the narrative around her, and allowed the writers to reiterate the game's theme of trust and teamwork when she assists the player in the final battle, which i think was a REALLY great choice, narratively speaking.
In any case, I don't think it's right to say that zelda was completely robbed of her agency in botw and totk. Agency doesn't always mean that she's unburdened and constantly present, it means she's given the freedom to make her own choices and that her choices are realistically written with HER in mind, not just the male characters around her, and I think botw/totk do a pretty good job of writing her and her choices realistically and with nuance.
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hampterguts · 6 months ago
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forever amazed and confused at how often transformers franchise just straight up depicts suicide attempts. like not even considering the superhero trope of "i have to save everyone!!! by choosing to die!!!!!" thing. like. non-allow-yourself-to-die-to-stop-a-thing-from-killing-everyone-immediately type situations. which tbh i wish more ppl talked about but not the point here
like. sure mtmte, a comic abt mentall illness and war, i expected it to be aware of the concept. but its not handled well and mostly used for shock value or "im better now i swear! i have a husband and everything" BUT ITS IN THE KIDS SHOWS TOO??? MY BESTIE G1 RODIMUS?? BEAST WARS DINOBOT???
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writer-room · 11 months ago
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Honestly Rayla is equally 100% ride or die for Callum too.
That's so true I almost mentioned it in that post. They're so ridiculously feral for each other it's hilarious to watch. Callum's the legitimate "we ride AND die together" whereas Rayla is the "I will ride and die FOR you" sort of deal yknow?
Could be literally any situation, no matter how dangerous, and she's already decided she will die here. Does it ensure Callum lives? Then batter-up buckeroo we're going in swords blazing! Everyone cheer and clap for her human or she'll blow this whole place up. Kinda person who says "even if you hate me I'd still lose everything if it meant you were okay". She thinks they're in a tragic love story where she's always at risk of losing him but that's okay as long as it keeps him safe and happy like y'know Viren parallels, she'd risk losing her very self for him over and over. Except Callum would wait until the end of the world itself, and even beyond, and she wouldn't even have to ask.
The difference between them, really, is that Rayla will die for Callum on any given day. Callum will kill for Rayla on any given day. Something something matching sets
#tdp#the dragon prince#asks#rayllum#tdp callum#tdp rayla#talk#someone in the tags of that post said 'raylas self loathing works hard but callums devotion works even harder' and they own that post now#its theirs. they summed it up beautifully. they own it#'yes hes cringe but hes MY cringefail loserboy!!!!! get your OWN'#everyone else would say the 'hes a 10 but--' except for rayla. shes just 'hes a 10. hes just a 10 striaght-up'#he is not. he is so not a 10 i love him but hes not a 10 shes just so ill for him#so insane that the girl who has issues abt not being or being wanted by anyone or not good enough for ppl to stay/want her#proceeds to find maybe the 1 guy in the entire world who will choose her no matter WHAT#and even when SHE was the one who left & he was pissed he was still 100% sticking by her. hes staying#oops she showed him affection. now hes stuck forever! shame. welp guess thats how it goes!#and its partially bc of that she'd die for him. she needs him to b okay even if shes not there. mix of that loathing like#'he could still b happy without me so i need to ensure he lives so he can STAY happy at my own detriment. he means more than me'#girl if you died he would literally crumple into dust. fold in like cardboard in the rain. lay face-down in the sand & just die there#same w callum hes like 'i can hurt myself over & over for her if shes alive. if the danger is dead then she can live longer. i will live bu#tear myself apart so long she is safe'#bestie. if you reach the point of no return she will sacrifice herself to get the old you back WHAT THEN
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yunogf · 2 years ago
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JAEHYUN as CHA MINHO - Ep. 6
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teeth-draws · 1 year ago
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“What do you mean he’s scary!! Look at him!”
— taking artistic liberties to scrunkle the face of @shepherds-of-haven’s Blade Bronwyn - a man with 0.6% body fat lol
#shepherds of haven#if games#blade bronwyn#this is mc privelage at work#hc mcs but especially the ladies are like no he’s fine!! look he’s a lamb!! but if someone else tried this they’d get their wrists broken#being an artist (like being a writer) makes your proclivities rly obvious because in this instance you can tell that I love#babying men who could kickflip me into the sun#picking fights with famed assassins like… wow blade ur so confident for your height! and leave#blade likes girls with good hearts and Halle is not quite that but she IS an efficient worker so she always comes back with the win…#and a bunch of rescued orphans and mages and stuff it’s… not a reflection of her personality but rather her work ethic which even then#is reluctant and put-upon#she didn’t want to be a captain let alone commander she was meant to be using this gang of do-gooders to fulfil her fate and then bounce#but they’re all so wholesome and now she loves them despite her better judgement#and he’s so cute!! with his poetry and plants and the googly-eyed clam he keeps on his desk and talks to about his feelings!!#what’s a girl to do?#there’s only so strong you can be in the face of a man who tells you straight-faced he’d mcfucking die for you#talking the talk and walking the walk even to the most wary of wilderness orphans#as always blade you are a nightmare to draw I lost sleep over your skin tone#my foe of four years aka blade’s left elbow is cunningly hidden#their child would be a serious force of nature and also really tall#fanart#shoh#can you imagine the name? between austere ket names and whack mage names…#these are my parents: blade and halwendi. my name is steele mechanicus and I DONT want to talk about it#just realised that if his brother saw this shit he’d get blade stoned for being a public hussy gosh sorry better make an honest man of him#new blade hairstyle is a shaggy wolfcut bc I think it’s cute on him lmao#this is a really autistic couple honestly#not quite sure where to put his hands#like when you flip a shark upside down
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dykedvonte · 12 days ago
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Can you talk about trans!Curly a little bit more? I'm curios if you have any headcanons and the like
-💀
It's just such a thing in my mind because it adds a truthful sadness and differing aspect to mouthwashing.
If Curly was trans it adds the horror of the horribly selfish thought he could have easily been in Anya's situation. It could've been him but it wasn't and he so conflicted on the pit it put in his stomach that brings and the shameful relief it wasn't. In this scenario he is friends with Jimmy for a long time still. Jimmy likely knew him pretransition. Maybe he gave Curly weird looks then, maybe they never stopped after, maybe they seemed meaner. They are guys now, bros, both of them are. He doesn't really have to worry what those looks mean anymore, Jimmy just has that face with him sometimes. It's recontextualizing a lot of things for him that he was in denial about or too ashamed to admit. How naive he was being and how he let that get another person hurt.
Specifically with Anya, it's he knows the dread and fear she's feeling. He can understand it because he had to live with it for a good portion of his life, he knows it cause he still does, just in a slightly different way. It makes him think of all the times he's been alone with Jimmy, all the times he's been way more drunk off his ass and not remember the night, Jimmy was always with him the next day. Makes him think of the comments he would laugh off both because that's what guys do but because that part of being a girl says to laugh so Jimmy doesn't do something. It's the selfish realization that he was never safe and he's uncertain now too. Mad at himself for forgeting that feeling, espcially since for a long time he would've been considered the only woman on a crew (with all that implies) for a long time.
He should've taken those blinders off, step back into that position for just a moment and it's so much more painful that Anya likely came to him because he should've gotten it. Those thoughts don't leave his mind after the crash when he's in an even more vulnerable position than she was...
#this is less headcanons and more my thoughts of the intersectional horror this brings to mouthwashing which is also a thing it#already has but more directly in the mix vs just the class gender and positional struggle. like the idea he waited to confront Jimmy becaus#he could conceptualize the crime better because of experience with womanhood and also how it would've destroyed him in terms of being trans#like its weird to word as a comparison but thats kinda how empathy works as in an understanding and ability to project through aspects#like you found out your friend who has always had weird feelings about and relating to you is a rapist and got one of your other friend#pregnant and is now being openly hostile and aggressive towards you. You have only a few days to really think on all of this all the years#with him and how many oppurtunites he had that you blame yourself for giving him both in life and to do to you. You are starting to#realize that he may have done what he did to Anya because it was no longer viable with him or because of weird transphobia/homophobia#from Jimmy and god its so much and he should've know better and what did Jimmy do then - c r a s h#he is at such a small amount of mercy to Jimmy now and he can't protect Anya and it's terrifying because i know and you know that Jimmy is#giving him those weird looks again...#like it adds another layer of horror to things and while I don't think Jimmy would do anything to Curly it's heavily implied he targeted he#because of relatively more important position and getting Curly to have doubts about him as a power play and Curly knows Jimmy well enough#that him immediately exerting his authority and power would set him off after already having been mad about it and even when doing#damage control it still set him off. like its the horror of accidenlty siding with your oppresser and hurting other like you only to then b#stabbed in the back again by the person who took advantage of your nature like its so complext but my actual trans curly headcanons#are just a little bit happier like i imagine he was the first on the boys soccer team and a star player. maybe he and jimmy even picked ou#his first offical “boy” clothes and Jimmy picked most so he looked like the grungiest white boy but she was a boy so it didn't matter cause#it was with his friend who accepted him and I bet on the bed he looks back at all those moments and notices the little details that his#friend wasnt actually so happy but he can't be certain when he started looking so bitter or hes just imagining out of paranoia cause he jus#cant know and even if he could he wouldn't want to ask like god thinking about Anya and probably being a little glad if not heartbroken#that she did get out of it in the end like trans curly and anya destroy me even more its so upsetting like he didn't realize how much he go#you girl and waited to act like it was cowardice but then would she not realize what hes realizing? should that be a grace or more of a#condemnation in her mind like what are her thoughts? espically during the scene Jimmy hits Curly like she had to hear and what did she thin#they are tormented in a similar hells with the same demon and its fascinating#mouthwashing#mouthwashing game#anya mouthwashing#curly mouthwashing#jimmy mouthwashing
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mccleans · 15 days ago
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i've gone to sleep angry and woken up angry every day since last saturday
#the flatmate who moved out was made CRYSTAL clear of her contractual duties to keep paying rent until she's been replaced on the lease#just like the other flatmate who moved out (and flatmate B is a student who works part time and has a deadbeat dad she can't move home to)#flatmate A works full time and will be living at home rent free and only moved out to go on a free holiday to mexico with her sisters#but it's flatmate A who's throwing a tantrum saying she wants her bond back and wants to stop paying rent now#even though no one's moved in to replace her on the lease WHICH WAS THE STIPULATION OF HER BREAKING IT EARLY#she KNEW this and she avoided all attempts at conversation about it before she moved out#but now that we're not face to face she's so brave over text with her lawyer sisters in her ear trying to tell us we're fucking her over#and trying to get us to pay HER RENT on top of our own#it's a fixed term lease you can only break it if you abide by the conditions the landlord sets#and the conditions were that she find someone to replace her on the lease#she's claiming that bc flatmate c (who's staying in the flat) moved into her room out of his couples room (bc him and flatmate b broke up)#that that somehow counts as her being replaced on the lease#no matter how many times we tell her that's not the case because how the fuck could he replace her when he's already on the lease#she refuses to listen. IT'S A ONE IN OUT SYSTEM BABE AND YOU'RE STILL IN#it's just soooooo shitty and sneaky like we've been friends for three years and now she's throwing it all away for WHAT#i hate people pleasers i hate people who hide their selfishness and sneakiness behind smiley faces and kisses#how is it in ANY way fair that the rest of us pay her rent so she can go on holidays. yeah i'd fucking like that too girl#it's stressing me out so bad because she's trying so hard to get between us all and tell one person that the other person said something#and then you ask the other person and they say no i absolutely did not say that#and we have proof evidence and facts on her side but she refuses to believe them#anyways. we've referred this all on to our landlord now so now it's her problem and out of our hands#ugh. it just sucks because we were really close friends and now what are we
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