#and I am aware of her trauma

[art-of-a-ghostie]

The more I read about this post written by @vulturevanity the more I realize that Gio is, in a way, a foil to Lorelai.

Gio lives in a fantasy, but only on appearance, because that's actually his everyday life. Lori lives in a fantasy, but only of appearance, to escape from her everyday life.

Gio has a lot of friends and yet he never sees romance in any of them. Lori secretly longs for friendship but she is so sheltered in her fantasy that prefers looking for romance, crushing on Giovanni at first sight and making up many false boyfriends.

Gio is probably one of the most honest and emotionally open characters in the story. Lori keeps so much turmoil and doubts inside.

Gio has a fire motif because he loves fire and he finds it a symbol of his evilness (his steams can be described as smoke, has a fire-themed blanket in his bed, describes himself as "a Phenix reborn from the fire" in his Vincent Murder outfit…). Lori has a fire motif because she hates it and finds it a symbol of her evilness (she "slices" a dragon who "burned her village", her "evil witch outfit" is described as a "Marshmallow roasted in the fire for too long"…)

Gio's food symbol is Soup, something that is not every first choice but is healthy and can be enjoyed easily (Even his boys at first made fun of him and didn't take him seriously), also soup can only be introduced in one way, like how he has a high opinion of himself so he doesn't put on any facade (not even when he is Vincent Murder's costume he shies away and acts differently), Lori's food symbol is Candies, something unhealthy who at big doses can be unhealthy (In her childhood Molly loved playing on her side but as she grew up they fell apart) and can be made look prettier, as she has a low opinion of herself and put on a facade (She has multiple identities in her stories and put on a fake smile sometimes, especially around Giovanni).

Giovanni has an epithet he loves to train and wants to become more powerful, Lorelai has an epithet she wouldn't like to have and wishes she could be weaker (or not have one at all)

Giovanni is impulsive and doesn't make plans, Lorelai is a perfectionist who plans every detail ahead in her fantasies.

[greatdisaster]

mama

[realbeefman]

stacy is sooo interesting because she's in love with house but knows that they will never ever be able to have a healthy, stable, sane relationship because they're too similar so. she finds house-lite instead and marries him and. essentially moves on with her life! and is successful in this because she's a moderately well-adjusted person!

wilson, in contrast, never manages to escape the inevitable, in spite of his best efforts to find a house-lite of his very own, because he's an absolute fucking freak and ends up glued to house to the bitter. bitter end

[vaguely-concerned]

It's really interesting that Wynne actually has quite a measured, bordering on downright sympathetic response to hearing what Jowan did in the prologue -- if the mage Warden says "I still can't believe Jowan was that stupid", her answer is something like a thoughtful "Stupid, or desperate, or merely curious?". She seems to think of Jowan as a kid who got in over his head, rather than any less charitable interpretation. I do believe she genuinely is as against blood magic as she publicly expresses and as the Circle party line demands, but as a private person she clearly has a more nuanced and potentially kinder understanding of the reasons why someone might resort to it, at the very least.

(related: when she says that part about Irving telling her what happened, there's no dialogue option in the first stage of the conversation (except choosing the 'leaving the conversation' one) that doesn't net you +2 approval! no matter how the warden feels about it, she is ready to recieve it. I think that says something sweet about how Wynne conceptualizes younger mages and the honest real affection she has for them. if you didn't snitch on jowan and say you stand by that decision, though? +3 approval, apparently! what Wynne says and what Wynne thinks is not always the same thing indeed, her idea of where personal loyalty and integrity stands vis-a-vis a mage's responsibility to the circle may be more flexible than she'd have people believe, you'll be surprised to learn lol)

I have always liked wynne and found her interesting, in all her hypocrisies and her earnest care, but with slightly older eyes she's extra fascinating to me in the same ways that Iron Bull is -- seeing someone whose mind has had hollows carved out in it by the need for double-think and compartmentalization imposed by the oppressive systems and ideologies they live under, and the quiet fight of the self to still preserve vital parts of itself that the system deems unacceptable in the hidden backstage areas of the soul, as it were. (and for both of them part of that self is love and protectiveness of specific other people, beyond what their 'role' dictates is acceptable for them.) I think Wynne has managed to sneak more of her internal self through the meatgrinder relatively intact than Bull overall, but it's the same logic underlying it, for me, and it makes me feel such intense affection and compassion for them both to see how hard they try

[paldogangsaan]

the most frustrating part abt the scene with alicent and rhaenyra (other than it being ridiculous) is the attempt at portraying alicent as a passive victim with zero agency (TO BE CLEAR she's a victim of both otto and viserys, that's not a question, she had no choice there. she did, however, have a choice in other moments and those are what i'm talking abt in this post). the writers essentially made her go "oh i thought he was talking about MY aegon. well, it's too late. i am a tragic figure who never wanted war. oh no" like ?? some of us have eyes and can see that alicent has been actively trying to gain power, undermine rhaenyra, and divide the family even before the time skip. she shows up to rhaenyra's wedding late and wearing green, she sows discord between their kids, spreads rumors of rhaenyra's children being bastards despite knowing it could get them killed (+ in the book the only ppl yapping abt them being bastards were alicent and criston cole bc the point of spreading rumors was to undermine and hurt both them and rhaenyra, if it was true or not was irrelevant), and she literally hits aegon and insists that rhaenyra will kill him to cement her claim to the throne even when there's been no indication that she would. alicent did not have to do any of those things, she actively chose to

and rhaenyra was willing to leave all that in the past by marrying helaena and jace thus ending the (then metaphorical) war between their sides of the family, but alicent refused bc she wanted power and for rhaenyra to not have any, so she made active choices to ensure that, and didn't care for the consequences. now her son is the king, she never prepared him for it so he's shit at it, she can't control him, she has no power, and the only person surprised is her (and otto). but again, these are choices SHE made or helped make. making an enemy of rhaenyra, and everything that came bc of that, was a choice. she would've helped put aegon on the throne whether viserys quoted the prophecy to her or not, be it usurpation (which it was) or not. that was a choice alicent made. stop portraying her as a passive victim of the dance when that role belongs to helaena

[nguyenfinity]

[slams this on the table] HAPPY MOTHERS’ DAY

Extra:

[asterbats]

i think for the shitty scorpion family, their entire dynamic is definitely toxic (heh) but also neither dusk nor bruno is an inherently terrible person? its just that they’re a) horrible together longterm as they are and b) people who should not have had kids.

[teethpaste]

I never should’ve let mustached love bomber back in , he is so toxic and unstable and bad for me and it is ADDICTING

Like I eat it up. I feel myself feeling crazy! I know it’s gonna crash and burn by August so I’m like ? Just lean into it? Enjoy it for what it is and know he’s gonna leave and that’s okay. Life is short like I may just have 1 month of fun, right? Right?

[anakinh]

all of my other posts on rebirth have some complaints or just pure complaint, which does not reflect my feelings on the game, so i'm going to now post a thing i like with each complaint. my current complaint is 'none of the words "queen's blood tournament on the shinra-8" is in the original game.' (and that includes shinra-8, shut up). here is a list of compliments about the game:

Starting as Zack generated SO MUCH hype. i was screaming

the music around the midgar wastelands is 'hollow'! I love it so much

playing as sephiroth was so fun. he's amazingly designed and his VA acted the hell out of nibelheim. very well done

i like the additional tension between cloud and tifa, with both of them suspecting the other of being an imposter

baby chocobo cute

the combat is very fun. yeeting tifa is great

it's so pretty! i have so many photos! of so many things!

FROG QUEST BEST QUEST

weed canon in ff7-verse

despite my imminent complaint, queen's blood is pretty good

in fact, most of the mini-games weren't terrible

also, the queen's blood weird subplot is very intriguing, as is the sucked into queen's blood subplot (until the timing made me want to kms). i do like it when i get to yell 'WHAT THE FUCK' at the screen. sometimes you have to remember that ff7 is a very silly game.

okay, now that i've paid my dues I just wanna say that there are so many minigames all at once. Literally most of chapter 4 were mini-games and then we jump into chapter 5 and it's another mini-game tourney?? jenova is RIGHT THERE in the boat. please just let me jenova boss fight. I'm forgetting what the plot is. (and this is also a general problem with open world games. even in BG3 I was spending time shopping in the Lower City instead of helping my friend who got kidnapped by murder cultists. sigh)

anyway they turned this game into 100 hours by filling it with padding. again. (imagine cloud narrating 'and then I got the vacuum to clean the air of mako so i could use the elevator... and then the cord WAS STUCK.' he remembers that but not killing sephiroth?)

also I don't like the way they're treating Shinra right now, especially Rufus. If I trusted Square Enix I wouldn't be blinking at it, since there are so many times where people talked about how horrible Shinra was... but I definitely don't trust Square Enix, and especially not how they write Rufus. Shouldn't he be talking about ruling with fear now? stop trying to sanitize the evil capitalist. I hope Barret is right when he said joining was a bad idea. I shouldn't have to hope. It should be obvious. It would be if I trusted Square Enix.

lastly, seriously, wtf is up with glenn T_T why is he here. why do i dislike a person from a mobile game showing up here when people from prequels showing up is fine? i mean definitely part of that is because crisis core is not a gatcha game.

... and that was like 4 complaints. it's just easier to say things when you're complaining instead of praising. I gotta work on that.

[youcouldbeit]

Also, her drawing blood from someone kind of Fucked Her Up, because that went against a lot of what she was about. Even if it was an Angel and such.

But it was also mildly freeing and that's the part that really gets to her. It wasn't unenjoyable, and she's also a bit prone to having a temper. Even if she's curbed that a bit.

All of this to say that she has a lot of mental barriers up keeping her from actually reaching her demonic potential and I do not think actually getting in a real life-or-death fight is good for that.

[bo0bydrake]

only thing that wouldve made the bear more accurate is at least 6 hours of b-roll of the kitchen staff yelling at the wait staff for no reason

[dreampearls]

okay ill sleep now n answer asks tmr ^_^

[bronsinseele]

see yeah hc-ing non-human (albedo, scara) characters as trans is a bit of a stereotype but they’re also soooo trans

[egg2k16]

This may be the depression speaking + the earliest trauma I've ever gone thru (completely accidental as well), but I think it's kinda pointless to give me gifts. I have clothes that still fit me and are in excellent condition. I have shoes. I have a sizeable movie collection (that tbf I can always add to), and all the books I'd want. I don't paint anymore so it's useless giving me art supplies. And unfortunately even giving me money is hilariously pointless bcus I'm not even gonna spend it on anything, I'm just gonna put it into my savings account and keep living day by day as I do: doing nothing...interesting

[spideycals]

Being from Gaza, Palestine is so different.

I tell people I'm from Gaza and I get pity, I get the "oh... do you have family there?" and I have to act tough, I am tough, it runs in my veins. Being from Gaza is expecting that reaction, the sorrow, it's dealing with dumbass people everyday, it's getting the "can you go there?" question. (No i cant btw).

I am from Gaza, I feel emotions just like everyone else, I feel anger and hurt and longing for a place I cant visit, I feel love and comfort and right now I feel alone and like im yelling at the world to pay attention and NO ONE CARES.

I am from Gaza, my thoughts belong to Gaza, my heart, my skin color, the way I speak, the way I say words a bit differently than the rest of the Palestinians, the way I wish I was a filmmaker to share my culture with the world.

I am from Gaza, i am aware of how different my people are, i am aware that i grew up differently, I am aware I grew up looking at the news from my grandparents television with my aunt waiting for news about her family, I am aware that I have trauma in my veins, I am aware that my culture is taken over and that I can't really speak about it, I am aware that not everyone experiences your aunt screaming that her brother died and yelling "He's apart of my soul, my soul died"

I am from Gaza, I hurt, I feel, I love, I care and my heart, soul and mind all belong to my beautiful land and its people.

[spiltcandycoatedpunkblood]

miss "people are so nice here" has aggressively refused to clean up after herself or anyone for years, doesn't say thank you at being helped whatsoever and has sworn at my parents at the slightest instance, appears to have the worst victim complex known to man and claimed she is being constantly guilt tripped to do anything; sis, it's supposed to be a goddamn fucking two way street here