#and having to fight that shit FROM CHILDHOOD

[chaifootsteps]

I’ve heard this a lot from the fandom after apology tour

“Blitzø and stolas were both so protective of each other at the party even though they were fighting, shows how in love they really are”

I thought so many people said it so it must be true. I rewatched the episode and—Did I miss something? Gen question. Stolas was horrible to him. He smirked at the idea of blitzø getting “fucking murdered”shoved a sheet in his face, into a corner, yelled at him openly and told him to go home, then slobbered all over someone else. And blitzø said he’s never seen stolas so drunk, realising he’s an alcoholic. Blitzø self deprecates heavily to build stolas up so he stops crying. Then Stolas finds some other object to flatter him. Some fans even said “Notice how they both drink heavily and throw themselves at other men when they fight, they were made for each other!”

Are we….romanticising being an alcoholic now? They trigger each others alcoholism so…they should be together?

Remember in Bojack, when he and Diane were alone in each others houses, after Cordovia and post fracking incident, all they did was isolate, drink, skip work, bemoan how pointless life is and encourage each other to wallow and be more depressed. That’s how I see these guys future relationship. It also says a lot to me that when they were on that “””date””” stolas’ first suggestion was to get extremely drunk on wine red and white, and champagne. After they become “canon” Octavia leaves and stolas moves in (under duress) he’s just going to drink the whole time. And poor Loona will have to take care of both of them when drink.

It sort of looks from leaks that the message was “be careful what you wish for” and that running off with his childhood fantasy means losing Via. Theres a shot where Octavia disappears behind ice, leaving stolas reflection, then he collapses and we see Blitzs face. As if asking Stolas "was it worth it?" That could be brilliant if the message was "dont betray the people who already love you to chase after someone else's love"

I sent a similar anon a while back with the suggestion of replacing the anti depressants Via shoves in his hand with the imp doll in his portrait symbolising Blitzo. A lifeless smiling bed companion in a silly bowtie. That makes Octavias line "have a great fucking life with him, dad." more impactful. As if saying "if youd rather stay being a child playing with your little toys than be my dad with me as the child, fine. Go do that."

Sometimes it genuinely does seem like these people are watching a completely different show, or maybe blacking out and making up a different show.

If I shipped Stolitz -- and I used too -- I would have been horrified at Apology Tour, and a lot of people were. Here are two characters you want to see in a loving relationship that improves both their lives, are promised it's coming, and all they do is scream, shit-talk one another, drink heavily, throw themselves at other people, and talk about how miserable they make each other.

I think even comparing them to BoJack and Diane's relationship is giving them too much credit, because BoJack and Diane had fun and cared about each other's well-being somewhat. I see together Stolas and Blitzo as this, but not funny.

[honourablejester]

Randomly, I just want to talk about one of my favourite characters of all time, and a character that had a huge influence on me as a kid. And that character is Slanter from The Wishsong of Shannara, the third book in the original Shannara trilogy by Terry Brooks.

Wishsong is easily my favourite of the Shannara books, and it was probably the fantasy book I read most often as a kid, over and over again, until the paperback book just wore out. The copy I have today is still held together with sellotape. You know when you have that one book, as a kid? Regardless of its actual quality, although I do actually think Wishsong holds up, but even if it didn’t, it wouldn’t matter? This book is your childhood. One of your formative influences? Wishsong was so much that for me.

And within Wishsong, Slanter was the formative favourite character for me. He’s had … a lot of influence. So, just for a minute, I want to talk about him.

Slanter is a gnome tracker who starts the book working (not entirely willingly) for the villains, the horrifying creatures known as Mord Wraiths. Gnomes in Shannara are sort of like goblins in classic D&D, they’re a brutish, insular people usually found on the wrong side of heroic conflicts. And Slanter does start the book by capturing Jair, one of our two heroes, for the villains. But he almost immediately distinguishes himself by treating Jair well as a captive, because it’s quickly clear that Slanter is literally just doing this as a job, and because the Mord Wraiths scare the absolute shit out of him. Sensibly enough. Slanter, as a person, is a pragmatic, efficient, well-travelled person who’s worked with and for a lot of people of all kinds in his career, and he quickly takes a shine to Jair, does his best to look out for him, despite knowingly taking him to be the captive of horrifying creatures of dark magic. A dissonance that Jair does his best to hammer at, because he realises quickly that Slanter does have a conscience, and Slanter doesn’t actually want to be doing this, but Slanter is too petrified of the Wraiths to defy them easily.

In vain. Slanter, at least at the start of the book, is far too pragmatic and survival-oriented to risk his life to free some stranger, even if he is both fond of the kid and fascinated by his magic. Slanter will not make the decision on his own to defy his own people and their horrifying masters in order to free Jair. But. The second someone else steps in and gives him an excuse …

The party of gnome hunters that Slanter brought Jair to are moving north to meet with a Mord Wraith, when they stumble across a man all in black drinking at a pool. They’re towing Jair along on a rope, it’s fairly obvious what’s happening here. Jair hopes for rescue, but the man seems to move on without challenging them. Jair, in despair, is moving towards the pool in hopes of a drink, when Slanter stops him. Slanter guides him back and moves in front of him with a knife, knowing what’s about to happen.

Which is that, in about two seconds, the strange man slaughters the rest of the gnome party.

This is Garet Jax, the weapons master, the most badass character in the book short of Allanon himself, and quite a lot of people’s favourite character. Slanter recognised him. So Slanter knew that this gnome hunting party was about to stop existing very shortly.

One of the last two survivors, about to run, sees Jair and tries to swing at him as he flees. And Slanter gets in the way, knife first. He betrays his people to defend Jair.

Now. Maybe he did that to differentiate himself to Jax, knowing he couldn’t take the man in a fight. Slanter is a pragmatic son of a bitch. His own survival comes first. Or he does his level best, throughout the whole book, to act like it does. But right from the moment we meet him, he’s been fond of Jair. He’s treated him well, within the limits of his job, and has done his best to make sure the kid isn’t mistreated. And he …

A theme of this book, of Jair’s half of this book, is that Slanter always comes back. Slanter always looks out for Jair. Jair acquires an entire party later on, a group of people to help him on the quest he’ll shortly be assigned by a powerful mystical being, and for all that, the one person who stays with him the whole way, all the way to the end, is Slanter. Even into the heart of what is, for a gnome, enemy territory. Not always happily, not always gracefully, but Slanter …

Slanter is, in the end, Jair’s truest companion, all the way to the end.

I just. I love him so much. He made such an impact on me. He’s sneaky, he’s pragmatic, he’s the voice of callous survivalism across the book, but he always comes back. He protects Jair at every step, at every turn. He defies his people, and goes among enemies, and risks his life, and abandons his life, his old life, to help and protect Jair. He travels with people who view him with suspicion and derision because Jair asked it of him. When Jair falters, almost every time, it��s Slanter who gives him the kick up the arse (or the literal punch in the face) that gets him going again. Jair would, quite simply, not have survived this book without him.

(Or, to be fair, without the rest of his party either. The six of them, Jair and Slanter and Garet Jax, the elf prince Edain Elessedil, the dwarf Elb Foraker, and the borderman Helt, were such a fantastic party, and the dwindling party as they fight to get Jair to Heaven’s Well is absolutely heart-wrenching and gutted me as a kid (Helt, particularly, Helt broke my heart). And Jax, whatever else you say about him, went out like a fucking boss. There is a reason he’s a lot of people’s favourite).

So many people talk about characters like Garet Jax, like Rone Leah, like Brin Ohmsford, like Kimber Boh. And they are awesome. But it was always Slanter for me. He has the best arc. He’s sly and he’s pragmatic and he’s focused on his own survival, but he has a conscience, and he has care, and as it turns out he will risk everything for pretty much zero reward on the strength of that conscience and that care, he just needed the smallest nudge to do so. Jair was that nudge. And it carried them all the way to Heaven’s Well. Past siege armies. Past Krakens. Past Mord Wraiths. Past demons.

Every time I reread this book, I read Brin’s half for Allanon, and I read Jair’s half for Slanter.

The original Shannara trilogy is, in a lot of ways, very paint-by-numbers fantasy. It’s very D&D fantasy. There are large chunks of Wishsong, particularly Jair’s half of Wishsong, that genuinely read like someone’s campaign. But, for all that. It’s still my favourite. It was the fantasy novel of my childhood. And for all it’s pretty standard, so many moments do still make my heart sing. Slanter stepping in front of Jair that first time by the pool. Allanon at the Hadeshorn. Allanon vs the Jachyra. Garet Jax vs the … That might be spoilers. Helt’s last stand. Whisper’s last stand.

I honestly can’t tell if it’s a good book or not, it’s too intrinsic to my childhood to judge. But I love it, with all my heart.

And within it, the character that I love the most … is Slanter. Is the grumpy, pragmatic, doing-his-best-to-be-selfish gnome tracker that in the end proved to be one of the most loyal and courageous people in this book. Without ever losing a smidge of the pragmatism along the way.

If anyone ever wondered why I tend to like sneaky, pragmatic survivalists with varyingly-well-hidden streaks of loyalty? This is the character you can blame. Heh.

Maybe do give this book a shot, if you haven’t? Again, I cannot speak to its quality. But I love it.

[pufffinn]

nobody understands garmadon like i do. sorry that’s just the truth

[beybuniki]

they should go on a fishing trip pt.1

[dykealloy]

[skrunksthatwunk]

thinking about how the primary way sensui and yusuke are foils to each other is in how they were affected by and conceptualize injustice in the arc about whether or not humanity is worth saving due to the injustice and atrocities done by humanity. how yusuke got to see how people distort and demonize those they don't understand/see as different by being on the receiving end and learning that there's always another side to consider. how sensui never questioned humanity's universal good and demonkind's universal wickedness until he saw something awful and instead of gaining further nuance about the dynamic switched sides. sensui was white stained black (or so itsuki says) and yusuke was always, always gray and on the margin. how sensui had the chance to see what yusuke has known for years and is unable to shake his ideas about the world's basic structure (good guys vs bad guys) that he just swaps which side is which. yusuke who met demons he liked after only a couple of experiences with ones who only wanted to hurt others. yusuke who trusts hiei easily, a kindness hiei doesn't expect. hiei who does not trust humans, but begins to change because of that moment. sensui who only met a demon he saw as worthy of life after years of fending them off, after years of exterminating them without mercy. sensui to whom itsuki was "one of the good ones" vs yusuke who trusted hiei with little reason, who sacrificed himself for kurama moments after hearing him out. yusuke who can't help but let in strays because he's one too. sensui who takes in strays because they can help his genocidal aims. sensui who purges, and yusuke who saves.

[prettyflyshyguy]

............................................. I'm regretfully writing a fanfic.

It's not gonna be big, but dialogue has been running in my head 24/7 and if I don't write it down I'll explode. Writing is a fun break from drawing besides and I genuinely feel like slowly dissecting other characters is helping me revisit my original stories, and dissect my own characters and bring more continuity and subtlety into them.

[areyouwho-ithinkyouare]

haha people who have normal relationships with their fathers where they didn’t grow up being constantly made to feel dumb/unimportant/annoying…. what’s that like babes hahaha

[mars-ipan]

this is gonna sound incredibly virtue signal-y i fear but i have been feeling. so fiercely protective of all the transfems i've ever met lately

[archersgoon]

i know i'm making shit up wholecloth here but the august-abian-perri dynamic is soso real to me like they had that shit going for months & then a&a got married and they all stopped doing the toxic besties thing for 20 years. but you still see the echoes

[caffeinatedopossum]

I just heard someone say that getting married is the hardest thing they've ever done.

I'm sorry but if getting married is the hardest thing you've ever had to do, I don't think I can talk to you. That's fine, that's totally okay if that's hard for you. I just need a long moment of silence for my misjudgment of the average amount of suffering that any given human experiences.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

other day i was like "yeah virtually all my dreams are defined by anxiety / every goal/hope being Thwarted, but at least i never really have nightmares" but it's like well what's the baseline what's the reaction, b/c i also then have to be like "but does it count if yeah i had a fairly typical dream sequence that was like, 'uh oh, i'm on The Horrors Street and the monster is probably after me, which i'm staving off by hand but it's kind of difficult b/c it can dissolve its own corporeal form in a somewhat gory manner as it tries to gnash at My corporeal form' but i was like 'i mean this is some bullshit but typical tuesday' level reaction so it wasn't a big deal?" like i don't even know when In Real Life it's also typical to have stress reactions like, just now going "smh obviously this sucks. i know i'm stressed. i know this is unpleasant bullshit & somewhat alarming. but typical tuesday (on a thursday)" and only due to noting some physical tremors is it like oh right i guess i'm also having an adrenal response. i tend to bring the like "smoke grenade! disassociation!!" response to a dream in that i can kind of Respond to it by withdrawing / distancing myself, sometimes even like [pushing things into being: as though it's a video game. pausing, exiting, etc] & like it's My psyche & it's brief sequences melding into each other anyways so okay, we'll pivot. other times it's just like yeah this is bullshit but shrug guess we're doing this, until it pivots anyways. Outliers are usually like, "just had an unpleasant Worldwide Peril scenario premise :/" or that like yeah once in a blue moon like sometime the past year my dream was so stressful i woke myself up b/c often when Urgently Confronted w/ Alarming Dream enemy i launch into fight mode & that one was just so [!!!] >:((( that it pushed the urgency into "oh shit, wake up maybe??" response levels. get their ass!! but mostly it's like "ugh i'm at this Job & im not sure what i'm doing, didn't get enough training for this. thinking about getting food but can i afford it" like yeah thee horrors but not as urgent. but then sometimes it's urgent or at least threatening & it's still like literally zzz / well this isn't ideal clearly but it doesn't even occur to me like Do i have nightmares i just shrug off? idek man. call that nightmarinating

[shaykai]

Oooooh I forgot how much I hate the end of Warcraft (ignoring the MMOs I don’t fuck with those djdjjd)

[originalcontent]

Night in the Woods and Pathologic 2 are literally the same game, beyond a few superficial contrasts in presentation there isn’t a single difference.

[paleangels13]

...

[la-cocotte-de-paris]

It's crazy how time flies