#and incomprehensible rambling

[volvolts]

the fuck is crocodile's deal???

thinking about how its next to impossible to construct a proper backstory for crocodile because of how little we know of him and how little he makes sense as a person

like we know nothing of mihawk but his personality is much like zoro. he wants to be the strongest so his ascetic lifestyle makes sense. hes a wildcard too but only because his moral compass follows strictly to himself (he keeps zoro alive and trains him because he wants a challenge, he became a warlord because he wants to be left alone, he joins cross guild for that same reason. the only times he went out of his way to do anything for others was when he shows shanks luffy's first bounty and maybe take care of perona)

but crocodile? we got NOTHING. we don't even know his last name. and i know some of them don't have last names but crocodile was a major villain. plus important characters without a last name kinda have a reason (sabo denounced his family name, buggy and shanks are implied to have been with the roger pirates since they were born)

like something happened to him to lose all his trust in other people and discard them like paper. he spent over a decade searching for pluton only to give up when luffy beat him? he willingly goes to impel down and planned to stay there until he heard whitebeard is gonna show up. he does fuck all to whitebeard. then he gives up on whitebeard, you know the reason why he's left impel down in the first place, then he saves ace, then he saves jinbe and luffy. he disappears for 10 real life years and he's back and we still got nothing on him

he doesn't trust people and yet pulled two bad bitches with swords. people praise how strong he is but he hasn't had a real fight with a real character who mattered since alabasta. and he's clearly strong cuz he got punched in the face with full blown haki and was still standing and he parried mihawk and doflamingo's attacks without any damage. speaking of doflamingo what the fuck was his deal with doflamingo? doffy clearly respected him enough to not believe he was beaten by smoker and he wanted a team up but then its never brought up again?? like was that just banter??

and the theories of his backstory are all still contradictory? whitebeard's birth son? well whitebeard didn't care that much about him and crocodile clearly doesn't either nor do any of the whitebeard pirates seem familiar with him. an ex-revolutionary? other than ivankov's comment of knowing crocodile "when he was a rookie" there's not much else. the backstory of the revolutionary army hasn't mentioned anything about him so we can toss that one out too. rocks d xebec's son? he was a warlord for over 20 years! youre telling me they never had a background check on the guy? you know they would want him dead if he was xebecs son given how far they went for roger's son. he doesn't have a grandpa who's besties with the fleet admiral to cover it up either

and then theres the theories that end up being too similar to other characters. ex-son of whitebeard? already debunked shown above and also thats just blackbeard. from a family of wealth and lost it, or was simply born evil? doflamingo did that already. cabin boy/child of an infamous pirate crew that was disbanded after the death of the captain? buggy and shanks are right there.

the man has so much going on and yet absolutely nothing at the same time. i NEED to know more about this guy at least tell me if he can even do haki PLEASE

[turtlespancake]

i love seeing out of context posts about long-running stories with deep lore because it's always shit like "MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!! i can't believe that the metallic athenaeum's envoy actually used never-ending dance of the 57th universe on rionne as if she's not LITERALLY the incarnate of august?!?!" it's like buddy boy thank you for the spoiler tag but all of those words are incomprehensible without at least 5 years of foreshadowed knowledge, 7 different fan theories, and 21 wiki entries

[aroaceleovaldez]

I was reading a post about CoTG and I realized: Rick has seemingly started to write every character pairing with the exact same dynamic, and he's not good at writing that dynamic and it doesn't make sense for 90% of the characters he writes it for.

It's that very specific dynamic of one half of the pair who is almost aggressive to the other party - "teasing" them constantly/insulting them, affectionately punching/judo flipping/maiming/etc, seemingly almost always exasperated with the other - and said other party usually just accepts this treatment or blanketly views it fondly, and may generally be framed as more incompetent than their partner and a little bit of a doormat (particularly relating to being insulted/teased/etc by their partner).

We start seeing this dynamic in HoO with Percy and Annabeth, as a sort of semi-inconsistent twist on their rivals-to-friends-to-lovers dynamic from the first series. Then the dynamic pattern develops further with Leo and Calypso. Then Magnus and Alex. Then Nico and Will, particularly in TSATS. And now in CoTG, it's Percy and Annabeth again but even more in this direction.

I know people have talked about Nico and Will's relationship over the series rapidly being shoehorned into Percabeth Two™, and it's extremely apparent in TSATS that Rick's doing it on purpose (including directly quoting Percabeth scenes but minorly tweaking them to be Solangelo). But recognizing it as an overarching trend in Rick's later books honestly reminds me a lot of how Rick started trying to apply the "Percy Formula" so-to-speak to nearly every protagonist in HoO (and then try to replicate similar character archetypes with Magnus and Apollo's narrations - moreso Magnus in being jaded and sarcastic, very much trying to be first series Percy. He only sounds unique because Rick failed at making him Percy 2. Apollo is more akin to later-series Percy characterization of being goofy and incompetent. Apollo [and Zeus] even got retconned to give Apollo a more similar backstory to Percy's). Rick seems to have decided that he thinks the audience wants this specific dynamic but 10 times over, except he's not good at writing it the first time because it's a bastardization of the time he did a different thing okay.

And Rick also seems aware of that too! Because he retconned Calypso and Leo at the end of TOA, probably because he realized how absolutely awful it was reading when they were written with that dynamic of Calypso just functionally hating Leo and constantly being aggressive towards him! The only time Rick's actually made the dynamic even semi-successful was with Magnus and Alex, because it actually fits within their characters, their dynamics with each other, and their environment. Alex beheading Magnus on the regular works out fine because there are no repercussions to that in Valhalla, Magnus will be fine, so it does genuinely come off as humorous. And Alex has been effectively established to be abrasive at times but have her genuine feelings shine through regularly, and that meshes well with Magnus' jaded-and-aloof-but-quietly-very-empathetic character. And Magnus has been established to, yes, not be great at combat, particularly compared to Alex. They are the only time that flavor of dynamic in that form was effective and cohesive.

Percabeth is no longer rivals-to-friends-to-lovers badasses on equal levels with shaky pasts who finally found some form of permanence with one another. Now it's super smart doting and affectionately aggressive girlfriend and her silly goofy 50%-of-the-time incompetent boyfriend who she judo flips/pushes off cliffs/etc - but affectionately~! Solangelo is trying to riff off of the early series "Poseidon & Athena are enemies" dynamic that Percabeth had but with Apollo & Hades being "opposites" but learning to accept each other, except it ends up with Will just coming off as a huge asshole and Nico being retconned to a complete doormat about it - when prior to that those characterizations would be completely contrary to their established characters (even just from TOA!). Calypso in HoO gets retconned from her PJO characterization to being snooty and aggressive, and Leo's false persona gets merged into his just normal personality except he just also becomes a doormat but more goofy than Nico with occasional haha-dark/depression-humor! Which Nico also got. Which was also a bastardized Percy trait that got redistributed.

It's exhausting. Rick write more than one relationship dynamic you can do it I promise

[otome-dissection]

Idk man I just think that mizu/ena5 and its progression was really beautiful actually. I just think that the release of the ena5 song was also really beautiful and kind of the nail in the coffin for me and I haven't been able to get the event(s) out of my head all week and that I kind of want to talk about it, actually.

It's about being hurt so deeply and continuously that any kindness that could be offered to you manages to feel like a sin, that it makes you crumble and shatter but for all the wrong reasons, not because of the newfound safety, not out of relief, but something worse and more deeply ingrained in you than kindness ever was. It's about carefully measuring the distance at which you keep others away from yourself, to ensure that it never happens again ("To save yourself the trouble", if that makes it easier).

It's about realizing that the people you've been spending all this time with are drifting closer, that they just might bump up against the unsightly parts of yourself that you've tried to keep locked away, it's about turning around and sprinting at full speed and slamming the door shut and holding onto the handle behind you to stop it from turning, because you're as frightened of the possibility of another wound being inflicted on you as you are of the possibility that kinder, gentler hands will reach out and smooth over the exposed scar. It's about hating eyes that judge and silently condemn you as much as you hate eyes that simply see you and take all of you in without scrutiny, because no matter what they're looking and they're looking at you and they know that your hand's on that door handle and they know that you're hiding something because, as much as you try to keep it shut, they've seen through the crack that you foolishly left open.

(The prominence of eyes in Bake no Hana, specifically eyes looking and searching, and finally landing on you, the viewer, Mizuki, is so fucking. Visceral in my opinion. Every character in the MV stares at the viewer in a deadpan, almost judging way. Even though Mizuki knows deep down that niigo won't really hate them, won't judge them, she just can't stand their kindness either; any gaze directed at her is a loss, another prick in their skin. It screams "don't look at me" while making sure that you know, with horrific certainty, that they're looking for you, that you're being watched. You can't go outside, can't leave your room, because they're searching for you, and while that should be reassuring, to you it's anything but).

It's about not wanting to be dissected, whether it's with hands that want to pull your organs apart or stitch them back together because no matter what they're there, and they're getting frighteningly close to your heart. It's about blinding yourself and covering your eyes to it all because seeing means exposure and exposure means they're taking something from you and you can't do anything about it, much less take it all back, much less have a say in the matter. Everyone's just taking and taking and taking and you wish you could just be alone. You wish everyone would just disappear and you could live in a world all to yourself, for only yourself (but is that really what you want?).

It's about the way that, near the beginning of the Yoka ni Mitoreta MV, Mizuki and her loneliness is represented as a dark, splotchy stain in the shadows. No colors, no patterns, no way to clean it or wash it all away, just raw ugliness marring a blank canvas. It's about the way that Ena reaches out to it anyway, the way she startles when the glass shatters just when she finally starts reaching forward, the way that the rest of the MV/song represents her searching for and reaching only further out to Mizuki, even if the broken shards of glass will only cut her fingers, potentially leaving scars.

It's about how, in every way, subtly, directly, consciously, and subconsciously, Ena shows that she fucking cares.

It's about the way that Ena lets Mizuki have autonomy, despite the situation being so horribly out of their control. And it's such a delicate thing: If she really wants to, Mizuki can take the opportunity to just run away, keep running forever, repeat the cycle over and over, and maybe she'll just destroy herself with it again, but it can't be denied that it's something important to them, something she can't quite live without just yet, their means of survival. Mizuki's autonomy is their identity, it's her tailoring her own clothes and choosing her own ribbons and styling her own hair the way she does. Ena letting them have that is as much about trust as it is about understanding that Mizuki of all people should have this right, when control was something stripped from her throughout so much of her life. She couldn't control how she was born, how people look at her or why, can't control what they think of her; lacking control has only left Mizuki vulnerable to the cruelties of others, has only caused them to suffer, which is why it's so important that it's given to them now.

She had the control to make the choice to see niigo's welcoming love and run away instead of staying, and she has the control to make the choice now whether she wants to keep things the way they are or take a step forward to be at their side again. She has every right to have it, and I think the fact that Ena realizes and respects that, even if it's subconsciously, is really beautiful (there is an entire fucking Verse about this in the new song and just. God Look at this. It's so caring, unconditional, and for fucking What. I think there is something to be said about how much Ena is willing to put aside for Mizuki, and maybe deep down it isn't healthy, but for now I'm just kind of in awe)

It's about how insanely patient Ena has been this whole time. Mizuki says that she basically lied to Ena's face about telling her their secret, even after Ena said with such conviction that she would wait for Mizuki as long as it takes, and Ena is just kept waiting and waiting and worrying like this seemingly indefinitely. It's about how Mizuki danced around it, avoided it, kept the distance, straight up ran when she was finally pushed, but Ena still chased anyway when she saw that she couldn't wait anymore, kept chasing just enough to intervene and get a straight answer out of Mizuki when she really needed to, but still leaving her enough space to leave if that was truly what she wanted. It's about how relieved Ena is the moment that Mizuki finally says outright how much they want to be with her and niigo, how much she wants to try, how much more light Ena's voice sounds when she grabs her hand, relieved, the way that the relief she feels can be felt through the music, throughout the entirety of Yoka ni Mitoreta, the way that warm colors always follow her when she chases after Mizuki, just to hold onto her and stop her from running away completely.

It's about how that careful combination of Ena's directness, Ena's persistence, Ena's warmth, her patience, her bluntness about her feelings, the way she chases and holds on but not too tight and her regard for how unsafe and exposed Mizuki feels actually works and breaks it all down. It's about how she really did reach through to Mizuki, despite the thorns and broken glass shards and nearly-unfulfilled promises, the way that Mizuki did finally let her turn the door handle and step through to see what she'd been hiding all this time, the way that Mizuki's hand, limp, when Ena first grabs onto it, shifts to hold hers back as they cry in the face of Ena's gentleness.

Despite how harsh Mizu/Ena5, and even Ena herself as a character can be (or at least was in the very beginning of pjsk), everything is somehow gentle and warm in the end, blindingly so. And you know what, I think that's beautiful. And what's even more beautiful than that is how Mizuki allows themself to crumble and shatter under that kindness, that warm light, but this time, finally, out of relief.

On a final note, I just want to say that I also appreciate how all that didn't have to solve everything. The scars haven't disappeared, haven't gone away, and Mizuki knows that their desire to run hasn't gone away forever, and maybe it never truly will. But for now they've calmed it, at least a little. She's learning to allow herself to be seen, learning that when someone's fingertips brush over their scars the way Ena's did that it's only out of care, and that maybe taking in that care and allowing herself to feel kindness and safety is okay. They're safe, for now, somehow. They're learning. They're trying. And I think that's cool :)

[anna-scribbles]

adrien should be at the pink pony club

[azulsejos]

s2 + golbetty centric episode prayer circle 🍎💝

[eyes-of-nine]

tfw when minibosses take you an average of like 8 attempts minimum but then you somehow manage to defeat your fav boss in the entire game on your first try :v

[lixel-5]

THE PINK ROOM IS STANARRATOR

I HAVE ACTUAL EVIDENCE PLEASE JUST STAY WITH ME

i saw this reddit post

like four days ago and it’s been rotating in my mind so much i’m going insane and i need to talk about it

“why do i think the pink room is hinting at stanarrator” you may be asking

let’s talk about it

1) pink.

color is deeply engrained into TSP. i’m not going to go deep into it now, there was a few posts circulating about it and few months ago tho, but you just need to know that color can often hint at meanings in TSP

PINK IS NO WHERE ELSE IN THE GAME.

the closest we get in the game is red (and a lot of it). there’s not even pink in the light show in the zen room!!!

something happened in this room that happens no where else in the game.

also: pink is a lovey dovey color. at there’s a LOT of it. the only non-pink color in the room is the Stanlurine. which i’ll also talk about a bit in point 3.

2) apples.

i never thought much of the apple. until now.

apples represent defiance and forbidden knowledge. also fertility? think of Adam and Eve.

the narrator learned something in this room. he learned something he wasn’t supposed to know, and the memory may have gotten erased.

but the memory is still there, just not explicitly. (the narrator actually demonstrates a LOT of implicit memories, showing that the knowledge isn’t truly erased, just hidden.)

3) figurines.

stanley and the narrator aren’t really supposed to be on the same page. they’re made to rival each other, and the fun of the game is when you (stanley) disobey the narrator

one of the VERY few times the two are working together is the figurines. and the narrator enjoys watching stanley collect them SO MUCH.

the narrator seems to correlate the Stanley-Figs with whatever this pink room represents.

maybe it’s having fun with stanley, or it’s working WITH stanley rather than against him. but all we know is that this room is something good, something the narrator enjoys.

remember what i said in point 1? the Stiggley Wiggleys being the only non-pink thing is the room? yeah. gay.

those pinky feelings are surrounding stanley rather than being stanley. does that make sense?

now, i don’t think the Pink Room is where the event took place, but rather a representation of what happened. the narrator can’t remember details, so his brain filled in the holes. which there’s a lot of.

i do think that the memory that’s manifesting in that room is some type of confession. the narrator is learning that his feelings are reciprocated, that he and stanley are on the same page for ONCE.

and the way the lighting hits the apple so vibrantly makes me think that the whole point of this room is that knowledge, that experience the narrator has forgotten. the pink lovey feelings are just surrounding it.

even when the narrator forgets what he memory means, it’s still so pink. it’s so full of love that it’s literally glowing.

apparently the apple might be a reference to superliminal. fuck you i like that the stanarrator theory more

THE PINK ROOM IS THE STANARRATOR ROOM

thank you for coming to my tedtalk

[edwinisms]

you ever think about how edwin got like. no warning, no time time to process, nothing, when he reappeared on earth faced with the fact that virtually everyone he knew in life is dead. his parents? probably died in the 1950s or so (at best) almost forty years prior to edwin’s return. if any of his classmates were still around, they’d have been elderly, possibly senile, and in a few years they’d all be gone– except, of course, edwin. nothing looks the same, cars look like spaceships, there actually are spaceships, he can no longer see the stars, and everyone he knew is dead.

[okiankeno]

I need her to end me

[missionel]

a small glimpse into my 𝓼𝓲𝓬𝓴 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝔀𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓭 mind

[thepromisedbride]

i genuinely can’t stop thinking about this scene. fxmq still standing near xie lian even though they could have stepped away from him even before everyone was dismissed. and once they were told to leave they didn’t go immediately, they hesitated. and then mu qing leaves first, followed by feng xin, both of them looking disappointed to go but what other choice do they have and all three together again but they can’t fix the past and this is no doubt a harsh reminder of everything that had happened. god.

[void-soup]

sorry busy thinking abt a Liam O'Brien PC being saved from death by his potential love interest that tells him "I/we need you", while fighting the body of someone they love, now in possession of someone else

[novembermorgon]

TELL US ABPUT YPUR BLACKFYRE ERA OC PLS PLS PLS

alarra ... i realize i posted her on twitter but never on here !!!

she's kind of a product of mine and oomfs au that deviates a bit from canon but that's kind of a given for ocs . she's the third child of daemon blackfyre and rohanne, about a year younger than aemon and aegon (so she's born in 186 ac). she's betrothed to aegon when they're both young, him and aemon like to pick on her lol but they're just kids so everyone's kind of just like well its fine they'll grow out of it.

when the first blackfyre rebellion happens, daemon once again loses and aemon/aegon die but daemon survives and gets imprisoned etc. by daeron and bloodraven. this definitely isn't really in line with what would realistically happen lol but he's stripped of whatever influence and power he has and gets put through the wringer a bit lol - he's tortured a bit in a way that leaves him physically disabled to keep him from that kind of physical prime that sets him apart from daemon and then gets a really tiny, meaningless bit of land and a keep somewhere near king's landing and gets dragged to court to be paraded around once in a while in his not so impressive state . essentially an extensive humiliation ritual for him lol

in the same vein as the end of the dance, alarra is married off to daeron's brother (the baby that died in labor with naerys - except this time he does live and is named aenar . oomf's oc ...) to sort of solidify that peace between the targs and the blackfyres.

given the whole blackfyre situation her and aenar really don't like each other at all . he connects her too hard to her father, and she tries but gets nothing in return - he isn't really outright cruel to her but he ignores her a lot and kind of wants her to know that he doesn't want to be there . they have a really awkward marriage for a long time, and when they get a little older they're kind of put through the weird uncomfortable process of needing to consummate and have babies that are supposed to tie the realm together again .

their first baby is a girl named rhaenys :-) alarra suffers from really really intense postpartum depression and struggles really hard to bond with this baby, and in an attempt to sort of make it better her and aenar travel to tyrosh for a while which helps mend their marriage a bit and he tries to make more of an effort (put extremely simply . theres a lot of aspects that go into it but id be here all day ...) . he becomes a bit of a girldad and she continues to struggle with parenthood

otherwise they sort of slowly fall into a normalcy when more time passes . they have another daughter named naerys and a son named viserys. alarra is really frail though and struggles a lot physically - they end up having one last fourth child but he dies after a week or so and alarra never really recovers . they move to dorne for a while to live with daenerys and maron where she dies from just her general ailing health .

ermmm.. thats about it :-) here she is as a little baby right before shes married off ARRGHGHGHHHHH 💔💔💔💔

[sillyturtleenjoyer]

nems from anemoia!tale by @bloobluee!! such a silly lad, bro radiates pure chill. not sure i quite got that here but he does look very dapper (and mildly scraped)

[snaplight-anxiety]

i’m late to the party it is wildly out of fashion has anyone mentioned that Isaac’s meeting with Scott in s2e11 parallels Scott’s meeting with Allison in the pilot

like Allison meets Scott for the first time one on one emotionally connects over an injured dog at the vet Scott shows her how to pet it (to TRUST) Allison’s like I can’t believe I’m crying rn after this emotionally traumatizing event (get my girl out of the 2010s not like the other girls box PLEASE) Scott’s like no dw I would cry too (he said toxic masculinity who I’m rizzing up a girl rn everyone say thank you Scott McCall) and then in s2 Isaac comes to the vet to talk to Scott (dare I say first time they directly emotionally connect dare I say first one on one intentional for a reason moment) and they’re talking over/about an injured dog and Isaac gets shown how to pet it and to help it and he starts crying a little Scott says I cried too (RIZZ⁉️ hello this was crazy wdym you have one way to flirt) and he says because I trust you. can anyone hear me