#and her cool sister lol

[pocketgalaxies]

JUST MAKE IT DIE, OR YOU WILL TURN IT ALL TO ASHES AND BLOOD

[mohntilyet]

veilguard spoilers regarding a josie romance. but can we talk about the letter josie sends to a romanced inquisitor because. i’m sorry. fucking losing my mind at the fact that the inquisitor and josephine are close enough friends with the guy the inquisitor duels in her romance to be invited to meet his third child. implying they’ve been invited to the other two. at a baby shower and getting introduced as the one who dueled the baby’s father because he was trying to steal your girl. antivan romances insane.

NO LITERALLLYYYYY. AND HE’S AN IN LAW. ITS TOO FUNNY. i cannot imagine how they met and how yvette probably was like “teehee…. the man that my sister spurned…. has fallen in love with ME!” and the best/worst part is that ortranto really has. i like to think of them running around with each other and secretly meeting as though their families actually hate each other (they really don’t lol) . the ortrantos would probably be delighted to have their son actually marry a montilyet like they wanted, even better that they’re actually in love and it’s not arranged!

i have this image of josie going like “you can’t marry him. is this a joke, because it’s not funny. i almost embarrassed him! the only reason the ortrantos do not hate us is because he is a very kind man who saw that i was in love with the inquisitor! ….yes i suppose a very kind man like that could love you…….. yes of course i want you to be happy…… yvette gabrielle montilyet, i fear you are not hearing what i’m saying— DON’T SAY YOU ARE ALREADY AN ORTRANTO. DID YOU ELOPE? ah okay. don’t do that. i said don’t do that. yvette come back and listen to me” etc etc

of course i must believe that there was a big scene caused (once again) by a montilyet and ortranto that ends with lord ortranto making a speech where the publicly declares his love for yvette in front of all of antiva city to see and hear. so there’s no backing out from this one. in my mind there’s a rehash of the big “BECAUSE I LOVE HER!” (ortranto, desperate but genuine), “you do?” (completely aghast josie who has somehow missed the fact her sister has been giggling even more than usual), plus an “OF COURSE HE DOES!” (a thrilled yvette) that reminds josie so fondly of her own love story that she's immediately relaxed (and suddenly accepting) about this whole thing <3

[notcryingtoday]

The Marauders wished they were Blue and her raven boys

[smile-files]

nickel and balloon stuff from spring on the breakfast!!! i'm keeping in mind that in the previous episode, both of them were under the impression that their friendship wasn't real...

in a way, ii3 balloon is a lot like late ii3 cabby. of course, balloon did something indisputably immoral (manipulate and exploit others), and cabby only did something thought to be immoral (keep and use files about her fellow contestants) -- but both did something wrong and had to subsequently undergo a disproportionate amount of abuse and malignment for it, ending up with them being apologetic and submissive to avoid any chance of being framed as bad again. the biggest difference is that cabby has internalized the guilt others have attributed to her, while balloon largely hasn't -- he understands the concept of rolling with the punches for the sake of keeping good connections, but he doesn't believe he deserves it.

nickel brushes off ii2 a LOT this episode. to rid himself of his guilt regarding that time, he necessarily has to delegitimize the hatred he felt towards balloon then, thus also ridding balloon of his guilt. he expresses this all vaguely, choosing to remember ii2 fondly and saying off-hand that its baggage should be laughed off -- implying that balloon has been forgiven. reasonably, balloon is happy that nickel seems to actually believe he's changed for the better, so initially this makes him happy.

of course, though, it becomes clear that nickel just wants to shove his own actions under the rug, and balloon reasonably gets pissed off. nickel treated balloon and suitcase like complete garbage in ii2, and balloon clearly hasn't forgotten that.

"it keeps things easy." it keeps things easy to roll with the punches, to endure nickel's abuse and accept his sudden friendship. note, also, that nickel is still placing the blame on balloon: he's saying that balloon didn't want to "make things better", as if nickel and balloon ever having a rift was entirely balloon's fault, and his problem to fix.

and as we can see, nickel still hasn't fully forgiven balloon for ii1. as i've discussed before, nickel seems to secretly feel incredible guilt about how he treated balloon in ii2 (which is why he goes to such lengths to repress the whole memory of it) -- but that guilt is about the way in which he expressed his disdain and distrust of balloon, not those opinions themselves, nor the motivations for them. this is all very interesting, then -- if he still believes balloon can't change from his old, bad self, why did nickel start being friends with him at all?

i think a large part of it is his projection onto balloon. nickel sees himself in balloon: someone who screwed up big-time and isn't able to become a better person after that (according to nickel). we tend to gravitate to people similar to us, after all. i wouldn't be surprised if nickel was also trying to overcompensate for his hostility towards balloon in ii2 by being very friendly with him in ii3, thereby helping him forget that he was ever hostile to him at all.

the most fascinating thing to me about balloon and nickel's relationship is how impersonal it is for balloon. he seems to value what nickel's affection represents rather than nickel himself -- and it represents that he's been forgiven. anyone who saw balloon and nickel's conflict in ii2, which was a product of balloon's nastiness in ii1 and nickel's subsequent inability to forgive that nastiness, would likely come to accept balloon and forgive him themselves if they then saw nickel being friendly with him -- because nickel is the epitome of the ii contestants' anger at him, and nickel of all people (seemingly) forgiving him would imply that he's really changed. the relationship is almost entirely a symbol in that regard. i don't think balloon has much residual guilt about is actions in ii1 -- he feels like he's adequately addressed them and changed -- but nickel having a positive relationship would be helpful in affirming that stance and proving to himself that he really has changed.

i wouldn't say it's cruel of balloon to keep this relationship going on under that pretense, but it is backhanded, and it helps explain why he was ever willing to accept nickel's friendliness unchallenged. he wanted his crimes to finally be laid to rest once and for all, and keeping nickel on good terms with him would let that happen. people would finally shut up about it. up until now, nickel wasn't explicitly denying his past cruelty towards balloon anyway, so balloon would be able to ignore that he neglected to ever bring it up; now, though, nickel is denying not only what he did to balloon but also to suitcase, which balloon is not able to tolerate. now that he's confronted nickel about that though, nickel snaps back with his condemnation of what balloon did in ii1, thereby uprooting the social stasis balloon had been able to maintain precisely because nickel refused to bring anything up before. in a way, then, balloon is purposefully shoving the past under the rug, just like nickel is.

we can't forget, though, that nickel has his own complex about fearing that he's incapable of change and incapable of forming positive, genuine relationships with people. balloon is essentially revealing that, in a way, he wasn't really friends with nickel -- at least not in the way nickel wished and fooled himself into thinking they were. if balloon truly were friends with nickel like that, then that would mean that balloon had forgiven him for his cruelty in ii2, and perhaps that he really has changed... but no. balloon hasn't forgiven him. why should he? nickel never apologized -- and given how he never apologized, it's impossible that he could've changed anyway: nickel doesn't want to apologize because that means addressing his guilt and allowing himself to feel it. he wants the forgiveness to be handed to him on a silver platter, without him having to do all of the painful work, and he's incredibly upset when it isn't. he wants to not be a bad person, but in order to do that, he has to feel like one, and he really doesn't want to. he hates who he was and doesn't want to associate with it at all.

(note how it's the suitcase robot who says "you can say sorry" when nickel says that nothing can be done about making things better...)

there's clearly an immeasurable amount of resentment these two have been harboring for each other throughout this season, which they'd only been hiding for the sake of fooling themselves into thinking they've changed (nickel) or thinking that others think they've changed (balloon). and now that they've let themselves explode with anger, partly related to the lies they'd been telling themselves falling apart, they yell at each other and balloon drops nickel down a hole!

ah, balloon and nickel's relationship... it's bizarre, it's toxic, it's convoluted, it's shady, and it's incredibly sad. i'm glad i'm revisiting ii3, especially this episode -- i used to be utterly baffled by nickel's writing, particularly in spring on the breakfast, but now it makes complete sense to me. also, i used to think balloon was entirely the victim in this relationship, while now i know that he has his own faults and own baggage in that regard. it's weird -- they hate each other, but at the same time they're dying to be liked by one another. god i love these freaks...

[sideblogdotjpeg]

also also also. i dont know if this is ever gonna get really explicitly explored in the show. but.

like. theyve talked pretty minimally i think? about jovyres motivations as an antagonist. and while the main explanation they have gg on right now is the general "power corrupts universally" i also think. with how prominent this theme of sibling conflict has been ....

jovyre is cirillas younger sister. because of this, while cirilla gets to be the queen of the summer court, jovyre is relegated to being the princess of the "lesser" autumn court. an arbitrarily lower status. she had to use magic & trickery in lieu of cirillas' power and armies. her sister got to be a fairytale princess while she was the pragmatic ruler, with a chip on her shoulder. she has to get her hands dirty, "not all of us can be perfect can we". in spite of this, she was the one who stayed in command while her sister had fallen into her own despair. she negotiated her way into the unseelie crown. why should she have to be the one bending the knee to her sister. "i dont believe any of us should be limited by how we were born.... i only want to be her equal".

so its like. even though we havent met her yet. jovyres rise to power was explicitly via the death of the previous unseelie queen. of course she would be paranoid and defensive of her title. and while jovyre is plotting and planning and carefully amassing the army that she had to build herself to defend the crown she had to earn herself. her sister is in the columns of milfred murmurs and partying, all with the crown that she would have lost if not for her. "well some of us value beauty more than others". jovyres second offer to the band of boobs, "the more pragmatic approach", was to kill queen cirilla and bind her followers to someone else (someone more worthy, someone more fit to rule). at the time, jovyre admits that she would rather not take that option, "i dont wish for any harm to come to her". in the intervening 200 years. how many times did she wonder if she had made the right decision then. shes certainly changed her mind now

(and a minor thing ... because i admittedly might have misremembered. while talking to the band of boobs, she tells them that she wants to unite the seelie & unseelie courts. wouldnt it be nice for unseelie to get to experience spring and summer too? if im not wrong ...... the unseelie courts still only experience dusk and night? i might have totally misremembred this BUT if its true . then queen cirilla was also not as easy to negotiate with as jovyre expected)

anyway! all that to say is. given how this campaign has explored sibling relationships that are based around feelings of inadequacy & insecurity against a perfect older sibling. the way that leads to competition and jealousy, the desperate urge to prove that actually i AM better than my sister and im soo going to rub this into her face! well! maybe the story of jovyre and cirilla is not just entirely "power corrupts" and more also about the. "200 years of growing resentment and jealousy that has clouded all my love and protectiveness towards you into hatred, and envy, and havoc". on parallel planes, callie and cyra forgive each other, while jovyre plots her own sisters assassination.

[vabam-fr]

Sophrosyne; the Silent Shroud

[cat-mermaid]

how many more continuities can Tenchi Muyo get? Just checked in on it and we up to +5 different AU for this franchise

honest to god thot it was just the OVA, Universe, Tenchi in Toyko and that dogshit awful continuation of the 1995 OVA from 2003™ but it just kept goin

i didn't stick around this long, i watched the 3rd season of Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki and was like ok i'm out. But it was only this year that i learned that dogshit awful continuation of the 1995 OVA from 2003™ has had 4 more seasons. it just kept going

u gotta understand, that first 2003 third season is like watching someone’s bad tenchi fanfic animated, and with a budget of like $200. but whats insane is that the last episode of the original 1995 OVA actually fucking sets up for the events of the 2003 one:

here he, "z", is from season 2…

and here he is season 3

what u gotta understand about this classic Cat-Merm™ pissing and moaning is that like back in 2014, i find out that one of the best ever anime’s best ever continuity had more episodes and i was hype beyond hype. I mean holy cow ANOTHER SEASON of a thing I love?!?! And its been there for years without me knowing?!?! Why hasn't anyone talked about this?!?! Wow wow wow wow wo-

 the lavish animation? gone. the expressive character designs? gone, replaced with an extremely generic and boring style that made it look forgettable as fuck

hell the first ep of season 3 did me a favor, i was sitting there going does it look... worse? and then they started doing flash backs to the first season and the jump between the 2 animation qualities gave me fucking emotional whiplash:

oh OH AND because of the lack of budget, no fucking fight scenes at all, everything cool happens off-screen. OOOO and lets not forget all the god awful early cheap ass cgi that plagued anime around that time for all the space ships

Real quick here i'm gonna past some points from this reddit post that articulate what i'm trying to say better then i can right now:

so having gotten all that outta the way, what really really bothered me was when they started throwing in a boatload of characters that were just… there? the whole time? and were super fucking important but were just standing off to the side the whole time for all of Tenchi’s life? Tenchi’s dead mom isn’t the one from Tenchi Muyo in Love who died because she used up all her power-

but instead this asshole:

oh no NO NO NO NO

OH GOD OH GOD *gagging noises*

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK OH MY GOD THEY’RE ALL RELATED, EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. ONE.

(if you don't know anything about tenchi and'r just readin for fun, Yosho is Tenchi's mom's dad😬)

ok WHAT. SO HE’S NOT SOME NORMAL GUY ARE YOU FOR REAL I’M LOSING MY MIND why is this anime's lore like this ok u gotta understand (times 3), i’m comin from a place of having watched the original ova, tenchi universe then that crappy tenchi in tokyo monster of the week show back in the late 90s/early 2000s

wat really fucks with me is that i can’t hand wave all this away as “new shit invented for the 2003 show” because that goddesses and z stuff was set up in the original 1995 ova. fucking Kajishima had this all locked and loaded and we'd have probably gotten everything that happens season 3 verbatim if he’d been able to have his way and keep going right after the second season back in 1995

i still fucking love Tenchi Muyo despite it all, but

just

I have a real love hate thing going on with this anime, because on the one hand if you actually ☠️dare☠️ to delve into the canon lore for the original first continuity (LORE WHICH BY THE WAY IS MOSTLY IN BOOKS YOU HAVE TO SEEK OUT AND BUY AND READ COS IT AIN'T IN THE ANIME AT ALL), its just a seemingly endless series of WTF punches to the face that seem bespoke to erode all interest in the characters and the side characters by the sheer amount of coincidences that result in every single character somehow being related to each other and i am not exaggerating when i say every. character.

on the other hand, the fucking world building and costume design?

Like my god the fucking clothing, thats the clothing that tainted the art styles of a million weebs. The fashion design in that series is so fucking specific its like its own genre and i wish i could dress like that for fancy occasions in nice heavy high quality fabric, not the cheap cosplay stuff thats out there (these are not the best examples but i couldn't google the good stuff and don't wanna hunt through episodes to screencap some)

 and how do you beat that fucking one of a kind Jurai Wood Art Sci-fi aesthetic? That shit blew my mind in the late 1990s/early 2000s, the most fresh and inventive look for a fucking human adjacent alien civilization:

SO i mean i could go on and on about what a slap in the face season 3 is storywise, but plenty before me have written the same and much more gooder-rer...

just

christ Mr. Kajishima you sure love your weird alien incest don’t u

like a lot

[zeravmeta]

actually since im remembering dragalia stuff the ending really was super fucked up towards euden. for all that he did it to literally give everyone else a disney movie ending he also got hella screwed over

that said if i did have his family i would also reset the universe and wipe everyone's memories of myself to not deal with them anymore

[sesamenom]

Pre-corruption Gothmog & Thuringwethil (plus a balrog-gothmog with his original color scheme), based on these designs

[mono-red-menace]

my favourite thing is terfs who have the same understanding of human biology as a 5 year old.

it's just. incredibly funny when you're having a debate with them and then as the debate continues you realise they have a lesser understanding of human biology than your 7 year old niece.

[saltynsassy31]

Guess who's back

Barely, tbh I'm probably gonna still be inactive, but I don't want to ghost either, I got plenty of art to share

[r0semultiverse]

So time loops huh? Also that waterlogged ghost lady still freaks me out every time.

[birdricks]

been thinking about this dialogue again.

[mer-se]

explored two new places thursday.

[lemonyinks]

Can you share any headcanons about the Foccart family (LOSH) please? 🥺👉👈

Oh boy, I sure can! This will be about the Post Zero-Hour Foccart family since I have not gotten around to properly reading the older stuff. I do fully consider Lyle part of their family btw so he's in some of these.

Mrs. Foccart is a well known chemist who used to work for the government but now she mostly focuses on personal projects and lives off of her hefty retirement payout.

She taught Lyle pretty much everything he knows. She was the one to introduce him to chemistry and the first person to support his love for the craft. They used to spend long days experimenting together.

Danielle also had an interest in chemistry from a young age and got a formal education in it.

Danielle is the only one of her siblings who has a college degree.

Mr. Foccart owns a film store that rents and sells old, vintage movies and TV shows. It is not very popular and it doesn't make much money, but he has a few diehard customers who keep his business open.

Jacques and Lyle used to go to work with him and he'd let them pick out a movie every time before heading home. They always chose old spy movies; this was what got them interested in espionage.

Lyle kept his distance from the Foccarts' after Jacques "death" because he blamed himself for it and thinks they should also blame him, but the family tried to keep in contact with him regardless.

Danielle regularly sent messages and life updates to Lyle's old contact info.

They moved houses when Jacques "died" and it was a painful decision, but it was more painful living in a house that had so many reminders of him.

When Jacques is eventually freed from Earthgov, the family is over the moon. They insist that he call them at least once a week and visits whenever he can, and he complies.

They have big family calls every Saturday, or whenever time allows them to. They eventually get Lyle (and by extension Querl sometimes) involved in these calls. It's always full of equal parts chaos and love.

Mr. and Mrs. Foccart met in college (he was majoring in history and film, she was majoring in chemistry) and got married shortly after graduating.

They met the Norgs at an event/gala back when Mrs. Foccart was still working for the government.

Mrs. Foccart wears her wedding ring around her neck on a chain. This is a habit she picked up because she would constantly be pulling it off to work and it was just easier to wear it that way.

When it comes to holidays, they go big or go home. They're the best at throwing parties.

Cooking is a family activity. They cook together and eat together as often as they can. They all know how to cook as a result, whether they can do it well varies from person to person. (Best to worst; Mrs. Foccart -> Jacques -> Lyle -> Mr. Foccart -> Danielle)

They like to go camping, but haven't done it more than once or twice since the kids were young.

They totally all pull pranks on each other. April fools day is an absolute nightmare in that house.

Similar to her dad's job, Danielle collects vintage media, but she's more into old music.

They can all play at least one instrument: Danielle can play the guitar. Jacques can play piano. Mrs. Foccart can play the piano as well as the violin. Mr. Foccart can play the clarinet. Lyle can play violin, but he's not the best at it.

[aquamaggot]

tbh not usually a big fan of aus n whatever where characters just die. but ive been thinking abt what if the illness kaorus mom had was genetic...hmm been on my mind...hmmmmm