#and I'd like to make it not suck

[catgirl-catboy]

God I wish there was more on the internet on how to have better relationships with people with certain disorders that didn't demonize the disorder. That isn't helpful, thanks!

[liquidstar]

Yes, Greece still exists, we didn't all die 2000 years ago. Yes, people speak Greek. You people are so fucking stupid for real. So many of you claim to love ancient shit but can't even acknowledge the actual living culture of the people whose mythology and classics you romanticize. You keep leaving annoying comments about how you just forget Greek people still exist, thinking you're being quirky because you love ancient stuff soooo much that you forgot about the people it came from. You think about it so little you don't even realize that an actual Greek person has to read this shit, making it clear how little you actually care about the culture beyond the romanticized (and westernized) mythology. Don't claim you love Greece, don't use our mythology anymore if you can't acknowledge that we're still around without making it about how little you think about us. It's mind boggling that you'd think a Greek person would read this and think you're anything but obnoxious. Explode.

[lazylittledragon]

do any other artists feel like. yeah you're a 'good artist' because you draw things that look nice, but like. TECHNICALLY? you're really not great

i really hate that i can recognise that yes, my art is good, but is it VARIED? is it dynamic?? is my anatomy good? is it full of texture and colour theory? do i know how to do This? can i do That? no, not really. and that's quite painful actually

[baejax-the-great]

If I were a writer at a big game company working on a sequel to a beloved series and the higher ups kept telling me to make the game shittier and kept sending my work back to me to be dumbed down even further somehow, and then once most of the writing was done they laid me and my coworkers off illegally without severance, I'd probably gleefully watch as people trashed the shitty game that shipped.

[bleaksqueak]

Partial hand bank for Elias from my files. Some flats and some finished/lit ones, so good stuff with light differences!

[didderd]

so. so.. Corrupted Rebirth is pretty cool. :3

(if u tag as ship, ur days are numbered, make sure to say goodbye to ur family before ur ass is dust.)

[deoidesign]

important distinction.

Testing a few different things with this one

[harbingersecho]

HEAD LIKE A HOLE, BLACK AS YOUR SOUL I'D RATHER DIE THAN GIVE YOU CONTROL

[autistickaitovocaloid]

collection of tiny guys

[titfairy]

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the reason that MTMTE remains the most defining, influential, and loved series in the IDW1 run is fundamentally because, despite its many flaws, MTMTE has the power to make you think and wonder about the world beyond what's shown on the page. The character relationships are so strongly developed that it's easy to care about the characters and easy to imagine further adventures they could go on. While the myriad dropped plotlines, underwritten/underutilized characters, and worldbuilding with weird implications are all fucking maddening at times... even if it makes you mad, MTMTE makes you mad because you care and it makes you want to immerse yourself into a world that feels like it's real beyond what's explicitly shown to you on the page. It's a sandbox of a story where there's so much fertile ground for pretty much anyone with any preferred character archetype, storyline, etc to dig in.

It's just... immersive. That's the best way I can put it. It feels like it could be real and it makes you want to spend more time in it than the constraints JRO had. It makes you want to know more about it and come up with theories on how/why things function or happen the way they do. That's why it's loved and that's why it's the best series in IDW1.

[elpeadro]

Part 1: The Good Ending

Part 2: The Bad, Tragic Ending

If the writers wanted CaitVi to be their canon OTP so bad, they had two ways of going about it…sike there was a secret third ending all along!

THE DISJUMBLED, TONAL MESS OF AN ENDING WE GOT:

Despite the pacing and dialogue issues of the first three episodes, I have nothing bad to say about Act 1’s ending. Caitlyn’s corruption arc, while extremely rushed in getting to this point given where her characterization was at in season 1, reaches its climax as we see just how far she has fallen: being willing to shoot a child, lashing out and hitting Vi, saying some incredibly bigoted things toward Vi, and, the pièce de résistance and one of my favorite scenes in the entire show, becoming the dictator of Piltover as the enforcers and Noxians beat their chests in salute to her. When Ambessa drapes that cloak over her shoulders and Caitlyn thumps her fist against her chest, it feels like the birth of a monster - and I mean that in the best way possible.

And she is a monster…except her actions are mostly confined to two music montages in episodes 3 and 4 and then shuffled off to the side for Warwick in Act 2 and the Machine Herald War in Act 3.

Just as it is a major problem when she goes from naive and priviledged, but good-hearted S1 Caitlyn to “let’s commit war crimes against a civilian population” S2 Caitlyn in the span of the Heavy is the Crown + Hellfire montages, it is even more a problem when the near-entirety of her dictator era is confined to the Paint the Town Blue montage. Because while I would begrudgingly accept the former being rushed to set up the latter’s payoff, the writers don’t pay it off.

At the end of episode 3, Caitlyn ascends to dictatorship. At the beginning of episode 4, she is questioning Ambessa, the justifications for martial law, and Maddie even suggests she could reinstate the council and remove herself as dictator. Can you say ‘jarring’?

That’s not how this works! You don’t write a good character having a fall from grace into a villain arc, then fast forward through the lowest and worst points of said arc. It’s like they made her a dictator just for the flavor it would give her character combined with the angst of her and Vi breaking up. Which, that’s bad writing process to begin with, but it’s especially bad when the writing has her BECOME A FASCIST DICTATOR.

You absolutely cannot evoke the political imagery of fascism only to not follow through on it. It is a conscious, deliberate choice to write and animate the end of episode 3 and the opening montage of episode 4 as they are presented.

In the Paint the Town Blue montage, we see: 

banners with the Kiramman crest being hung up all over the city

security checkpoints for Zaunites with armed enforcers standing watch

a prison with watchtowers and tall, barbed wire fences

enforcers acting as riot police (complete with riot shields)

Zaunites throwing Molotovs at said riot police

unarmed Zaunites running from armed enforcers

a Zaunite prisoner being photographed standing against a wall with a bag over their head (I really want to point this one out)

an enforcer stepping on the head of a Zaunite who is already laying on the ground and being handcuffed by another enforcer

Zaunite rebels hiding in a boarded up shop from armed enforcers

Zaunite prisoners being marched forward with their hands behind their heads

an enforcer beating someone

a line of Zaunites kneeling with their hands cuffed behind their backs as an enforcer beats another prisoner

Caitlyn being framed in shadow with a brooding, sullen look

graffiti of Jinx as a revolutionary figure waving a blue flag

In short, a dictator’s regime putting up propaganda posters and symbols, political repression by the state, mass imprisonment, police brutality, civilian resistance against an authoritarian state, and people rallying around a revolutionary symbol. And don’t forget the opening of episode 3 where we hear the recording of Cassandra Kiramman say “the people of the Undercity deserve to breathe” only for Caitlyn to immediately go “umm actually no they don’t; time to weaponize toxic, carcinogenic smog against them and revoke the most basic of human rights.”

(Side note: “Paint the Town Blue” as the song for this montage doesn’t feel right, tonally. A bit too energetic and idk, peppy? This is a montage showing an oppressed group of people being brutalized by a fascist state. Maybe go for something somber and/or horrifying? Or something that makes viewers sick from how angry they are at the sight? Just a thought.)

If the writers were going to do something with all of this, then they did a good job - song choice notwithstanding. 

The problem is they don’t. Not a single character confronts Caitlyn over the atrocities she committed.

When Vi sees her - the woman who broke her heart, who betrayed her, who became a dictator and stepped on the necks of Vi’s people for a year - she’s more annoyed and mad at Caitlyn for attacking her on accident than she is for, I don’t know, THE WHOLE DICTATOR THING? Season 1 Vi would’ve let Caitlyn absolutely have it, if not outright fought her for what she did to Vi’s city.

In what is one of the most stunning bits of character assassination I’ve seen, Jinx APOLOGIZES to Caitlyn for killing her mom.

Ekko got written out of the story to where he never interacted with Caitlyn this season, because if he was giving her shit in season 1, then he would’ve let her absolutely have it, even harder than Vi did.

Sevika got written out of the story entirely after episode 4.

Jayce never comments on it once he gets back.

Mel never comments on it once she gets back.

The writers try to trick us with Vi and Caitlyn’s argument in episode 8, and then Caitlyn’s one-sided venting to Jinx in the jail cell about how they can never repay their crimes, but those are both so weak and half-assed.

We never see Caitlyn realize the weight of her crimes. She needed to have a scene where she “wakes up” and is horrified at how far she’s fallen and all the terrible things she’s done. We don’t get that. She’s already woken up and questioning things when we see her for the first time in episode 4. Nor does she suffer from the guilt of said crimes. Again, I’m going to complain about the blatant Macbeth reference in her part of the intro credits, because how do you deliberately evoke fucking MACBETH for a character who undergoes a villain arc and commits these horrible actions only to not have her crumble under the weight of her sins…you know…like what happens in Macbeth.

So Caitlyn isn’t held accountable either externally or internally. This wouldn’t be a problem if handled properly. A villain doesn’t have to be held accountable nor realize they’re a bad person to be an effective, satisfying character.

The problem is the tone of everything that comes after the opening of episode 4.

It’s almost like the writers are actively trying to have Caitlyn commit as few on-screen, bad actions as possible during her dictator era. Really all she does is threaten Singed with the prison cells she has deemed too inhumane to use. (Oh yay! She hasn’t been as awful as she could have been). After that, she immediately flips back to Vi’s side to help save Warwick, has a very surface level argument so people can say “but Vi did call her out”, “wins” Vi’s affections over Jinx and has sex in a jail cell with Vi going down on her (that sex scene could be its own post god I hate it), gets to be one of the good guys in the war without any pushback, and gets her happy ending with Vi.

The framing of all of this, both textually and by word of God via the authors, is simply incompatible with the weight of her crimes. 

The jail cell scene is presented as Vi and Caitlyn reconnecting and finally coming together, complete with a happy pop song - ignoring Vi’s sister being clearly suicidal and Vi certainly having trauma from spending 7 years in prison where the warden beat her enough times that he didn’t bother keeping count, to say nothing of Caitlyn not having earned Vi’s trust and intimacy. (Also, Vi couldn’t have gotten any pleasure or attention? They couldn’t have taken it to an actual bed?)

The way Vi talks about herself going behind Caitlyn’s back is unhealthy and toxic. (“I went behind your back (for my sister, who has committed far less heinous crimes than you, who just watched the kid she sorta adopted die right in front of her and is now a mental wreck, after you locked her up using your unilateral power as dictator of Piltover.)”)

Vi being very, very emotionally fragile and in no way composed enough to have sex is ignored. (It shouldn’t have to be said, but if someone is this close to having a breakdown and has already punched the wall until their knuckles are bruised, you absolutely should not have sex with them when they’re in such a vulnerable state.)

The “I’m the dirt beneath your nails” line is framed as cutesy and romantic, when that’s actually a horrible, demeaning thing for someone who is a member of the oppressed class to say about herself when her partner is a member of the oppressor class and quite literally was a dictator that violated the human rights of people like Vi, called them animals, and said their blood made them this way.

And most importantly, Caitlyn never has to confront the fact that she became a dictator and did all of these terrible things while in power.

Which, I truly cannot believe I am having to say this, but if you aren’t going to touch on the fact that a protagonist went down a dark path and became a fascist dictator, DON’T WRITE HER BECOMING A FASCIST DICTATOR.

(Or you embrace the tragic, toxic nature of leaving that stuff unaddressed, as discussed in part two.)

TL;DR: the ending CaitVi got is framed as a happy ending, except Caitlyn didn’t put in any of the work for it to be anywhere near a happy, healthy relationship, so it comes across as hollow, forced, and tonally off.

[thelilylav]

"Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway."

Darabella they could never make me hate you <3

[queerofthedagger]

One thing I think about a lot is that when Nargothrond falls, it is heavily implied that as good as everyone perished or, if not, got captured. Like, unlike with the Fall of Doriath, there is no mention at all of any refugees removing to the Mouth of Sirion - and yet, I assume that is very likely where Celebrimbor, at least, went? I definitely think he would have fought, but clearly he survived and neither Doriath nor Gondolin really were an option for him, and I doubt even more that he would have gone back to his family.

And there are a lot of implications to all that, but maybe the one that keeps me up most is that this means he would have likely been there when the refugees of Doriath arrived, when they told of what his family did. That his father is dead. What would he have been thinking? What would the survivors of Doriath been thinking? Like, I know there were technically several different camps to some extent, but I doubt they would have been wholly separate, especially upon arrival. What kind of horror to find someone who looks just like one of those guys who just slaughtered your friends and family. What kind of horror to look like someone who just committed such horrors.

He also would have been there when the third kinslaying occurred, or at least very close to it. What an experience, to end up on the other side of it. To see exactly what might have become of him had he not foresworn his father years ago, and also to see yet again what became of his family. Like yeah, everything before/during the Nargothrond Disaster would have already been formative for him and his future choices, but I do feel even being in the vicinity of all of that would have been such a dire reinforcement of all those convictions and reasons that made him disavow them in the first place. And especially in terms of the third kinslaying, it's also why I personally really doubt that there is a chance at any kind of reconciliation with any of the brothers, whether it's his father or I don't know, Maedhros or Maglor. Like, I just don't think there is any coming back fromt hat, really, if there ever was.

[revvethasmythh]

So I went and watched all the possible endings, and it confirmed something I had been thinking, which is that the redemption ending choice is, perhaps, the most immediately regretful one--but that they all come with some form of regret. In the redemption ending, Rook has to knowingly deny themselves the catharsis of retribution (should they desire it, which, at least for me it felt difficult not to) in order to offer Solas one last, painful chance to do the right thing. That willful denial of your own catharsis feels like an immediate regret. Giving Solas the opportunity to pursue atonement might very well be the best choice all around, but it is also incredibly painful to offer that to someone who has done so many terrible things (not a small amount to you personally). Why does he deserve another chance? Especially when so many dead (including a beloved mentor) lie in his wake? Which, I suppose, is the point: he doesn't. But you offer it anyway and it SUCKS ASS, because how could it not?

I don't know how this plays with other story choices (a sacrificed Davrin or a Harding who embraced her anger, for example), but within the context of my own choices, I can imagine an immediate satisfaction to either tricking or fighting him--especially the trick ending, where you can actively name drop Varric--but it feels like the sort of thing that would feel worse as more time passes. Once you've calmed down and are able to ask yourself if that's what the people you've lost really wanted. Varric, in Regret Superhell, didn't want vengeance. He just wanted his friend to walk a better path. And Harding always believed there was another chance for anyone, so long as you kept reaching a hand out for them--even when it sucked ass. So the redemption ending feels like a sort of indignance, an instant regret for not doing worse, for not getting comeuppance, for being forced to eschew satisfaction (related: I wonder if the Inquisitor feels those things as well coming out of this ending, considering how long they've lived under the shadow of Solas' actions). Conversely, the other two endings feel like an immediate satisfaction, because you got to trick the trickster with all the wits Varric taught you, or because you finally got to punch him in the face and it felt really good. But I feel like those endings would come with a creeping regret, something that sneaks up on you later, especially when remembering the fallen and what they would have wanted you to do. Ultimately, because of that, it feels like no ending is devoid of regret. Which I suppose, is rather thematic.

[manasurge]

Just a bit of lore relevant vent art (with terrible proportions bc apparently I mess that up horribly when I'm tired ugh. Watch me regret posting this tomorrow. The head size is already driving me mad bc it's too big, and I can feel myself wanting to abort this mission already) of Mourynn just, lying down on top of one of those large elevated Pale Tree roots far above the Grove (and far away from everyone else), and during the time between the early years and before the Personal story. Caithe is gone (Destiny's Edge), Wynne is gone (bc well, y'know...), even Faolain is gone (bc of Caithe in DE), and she's just feeling miserable, lost, and alone. (Her hair is in between her sapling hair and the Zhaitan hair, so it's grown out a bit bc she's depressed, and she's meant to be in the new outfit she designed, but I'm in the process of redesigning it a bit, so I've made a few tentative changes for now. Her collar is now just an extension of her clavicle leaves which can be put up like a collar, or can be draped down over her shoulders or back)