#and it’s not just one asshole. it’s mULTIPLE.

[iridescentmirrorsgenshin]

Thank you so much for all the love you give these two! You really understand them and that makes me so happy. I think Alhaitham's kindness is such an overlooked trait because he seems aloof and only rational, but in reality this man just wants people to do what makes them happy, took in Kaveh and cares about the education of children especially (the way he enrolled Paimon? This guy would honestly be such a great father). It makes me sad when players dismiss him as an asshole or a redflag. While of course he has his kinda manipulative side to get what he wants, it never harms anyone who's not deserving of it and he has a big heart in the end. So thank you for seeing that!!

Hiya! Thank you so much for your ask! I’m really glad you enjoy my blog! These two have taken over my mind entirely so I’m really happy to have such a welcoming place to share my thoughts <3

Alhaitham’s kindness is something that is so special to me, you raise really crucial points!! I think that Alhaitham’s philosophy of egoism could be one of the reasons he often gets misconstrued, since the ‘self’ is prioritised above others, but this isn’t because he holds himself on a pedestal, as his story quest specifically highlights, rather it’s because he sees there’s a clear limit to how much a person can do when compromising themselves for others (or placing the opinions of others over oneself)

I think another reason why Alhaitham’s kindness can be overshadowed is because of Kaveh’s evident concern of others, and since the two fell out because of their vastly different ways when dealing with people, it can be construed that Alhaitham simply doesn’t care about others when comparing him with Kaveh, who so explicitly does. Viewing alhaitham as strictly rational in comparison to kaveh’s abundant empathy is misunderstanding Alhaitham’s character -  as kaveh states that any impression of alhaitham being strictly logical is incorrect

Just because their approaches differ, it doesn’t mean that Alhaitham doesn’t care about people. As you say, Alhaitham actually wants people to be free to choose their own paths, really he wants people to live how they want, which is laid out multiple times in his character stories, and explicitly mentioned in his teapot companion dialogue

I really like this detail in his past birthday letters of Alhaitham’s interest in the education of others, like with Isak and now more extensively with Paimon, I think it encapsulates Alhaitham’s care for others

Alhaitham’s manipulation tactics when it comes to social interaction can be a joy to witness at times, especially with kaveh when he deflects the topic from himself ahahah but this is also an aspect of his personal philosophy, where rules can be subverted by challenging the language that set them, and yet it’s clear that he enjoys interacting with kaveh, as he goes out of his way to secure these interactions :’)

Alhaitham’s role in the archon quest as a strategist has definitely raised people’s wariness of him (such as in candace’s voicelines), but as alhaitham has no interest in power, and saw only harm in the upheaval of Sumeru’s rules, he sought to overturn the plan of the sages and to free nahida. Whilst he claims his personal reason for doing so was to protect his own way of life, the happiness elicited from others is also something he appreciates <3

he's just such a well written character, i'm glad people love this guy <3333

[consumeroflemoans]

Do you know this animatic?

https://youtu.be/SmQOS4gf2Sc?si=O-he0oin76tPKxRe

I don't know anything about SVSSS, but it's just such a banger that I regulary return to it

(If you want you could tell me what's going on in it please)

OH MY GOD LIUSHEN ANIMATIC

That was so cUTE

Ok ok ok explaining it a little

So the premise of Scum Villain Self Saving System is pretty much that one guy, Shen Yuan, read a harem porn novel for the plot and got so pissed at the poor writing decisions he choked on a bun, died, and got transmigrated into the novel and the body of Shen Qingqiu- the book’s arguable main villain

The original SQQ (aka Shen Jiu) was a complete asshole (he has a traumatic backstory so it’s explained but still an asshole). In the original novel he had a very antagonistic relationship with Liu Qingge. They openly fought, argued, and just generally hated each other and both were too proud to communicate feelings properly.

LQG ended up suffering from a qi deviation (kind of like a magical instability). It’s later revealed that Shen Jiu accidentally killed LQG while trying to save him from this deviation.

But once Shen Yuan transmigrates, this plot point changes. He originally thought Shen Jiu killed LQG maliciously, just acting as another death to paint Shen Qingqiu into a worse villain. He doesn’t want to end up as a villain so he saves LQG to hopefully gain an ally. They become sort of friends after that

Hopefully you’re keeping up there’s a lot of backstory lol

In the world of SVSSS there’s this mountain that is the home to Cang Qiong Sect, the most powerful cultivation sect in the world (sort of like a group of magic users that fight ghosts and demons). There’s 12 peaks on this mountain with each peak having a different specialty. Shen Qingqiu is the head of the peak that specializes in strategy and scholarly arts. Liu Qingge is the head of the peak that specializes in martial arts. He’s known as a war god, being very hot blooded and violent. He spends a lot of his time on monster fighting missions

Now I’m not sure if this is canon or a very popular headcanon (I forgor) but SQQ is really interested in the magical beings of this world. A common thing I see in liushen content as a result is LQG hunting monsters and bringing them back as courting presents to SQQ. It’s so cute

Also I just realized with this scene. It is canon that LQG brings back SQQ’s fan whenever he loses it to the point of SQQ just wondering if he should gift it to him

Also I feel like I should explain this since they show up multiple times. The kids are LQG’s disciples

OH MY GOD THEM GETTING MARRIED

I just need to save this scene it doesn’t need much explanation

Anyway insanely cute animatic I’m kicking my feet giggling

[entropyvoid]

I really do love my medieval literature and culture class, but taking said course with a room full of southern bible belt xtians might be one of the most severe tests of my patience I have ever undergone

[caramelldansenu]

bonus

[rubydubydoo122]

I think the funniest thing about how the Fandom perceives Tim (especially obnoxious Tim fans) is that he is was deeply hurt by the actions Jason, Damian, and Dick have done to him, but lowkey that’s just the fandom projecting

Tim lowkey did not give a fuck. Maybe a little at first, but he definitely does not hold a grudge against any of them.

[milfygerard]

what is this about gerard being at least friendly with multiple dropout cast members?

[thursdaysyme]

there is nothing i love more than how fast rottmnt leo is down to bat for his siblings, especially raph. like man constantly is like bro *I* can be a massive bitch to him but you can not and i Will beat ur ass over it.

like what a sibling he is always seen annoying the ever loving shit out of his brothers (purposefully too) and as soon as someone else even hints something mean he is one track minded on revenge

[hana-bobo-finch]

a strange trend in my favorite characters I realize is that I tend to heavily gravitate toward somewhat obscure, antagonistic forces

[v0mitbeetle]

If you make your discord server a dictatorship with rules and have people dogpile on others for stupid things like ship discourse you are a very shitty person and should not have a server and should go fucking touch grass

[pearlcaddy]

Starting to get really really annoyed with the number of gif reposters in the L&Co fandom. Tumblr has a way to give credit if you want to use existing gifs in a post. And if you want to see a collection of moments or a particular type of set that doesn't exist, you can request them from gifmakers, who will often be happy to make sets for you. Don't steal people's gifs!!

[roostertuftart]

Can we stop W the “if you have a different opinion on sp you clearly haven’t watched the show” bit. it’s. Very annoying

[msue0027]

Martha Jones - Jesus Christ parallels (never thought i'd write a sentence like this)

there's the other one who has sent me

For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say. (John 12:49-50)

Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. (John 5:24)

I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. (John 5:30b)

I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world. They did not understand that he was telling them about his Father. So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him. (John 8:26-29)

[...] for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. (John 8:42b)

etc., and so on...

[goldenhallas]

I couldn't have picked a worse time to become obsessed with a new book series lol but I just read the Atlas Six and boy was it delicious. I'm starting the Atlas Paradox right away bc I simply MUST know what happens next

[lauronk]

the absolute lack of awareness and consideration some people have continues to astound me. (personal life rant under the cut)

i live in an apartment complex with a neighbor across the breezeway who regularly plays music so loud i can make out THE WORDS in my own living room

and a downstairs neighbor with a sound system up against the wall so when they watch a movie it vibrates our floors despite us repeatedly going down to ask them to do something about it, be it adjust the bass or move the sound system or just simply turn it down a little (and every time they’re snippy with us about it)

and people who like to gather at the pool right across from our building and play loud music until past midnight ON WEEKNIGHTS

i’m all for people having fun in their homes and enjoying life and music and parties and whatever. but also it takes just a minute to consider that there are other people existing around you and be considerate of them

[goldentigerfestival]

I love the vocal nuance in this exchange, but also posting this for my differences posts because this is one of the changes that infuriates me the most. Yuri didn't threaten Ioder, did not threaten him with a weapon, and just said he'd punch him in a lazy, half joking voice (half joking as in, he really doesn't want to hear that - that's just his way of saying so; but that's not the voice of someone who is super angry and threatening).

My other huge grievance is that this is a recurring issue between them in the dub. Yuri is pretty much always vocally rude to Ioder. Ioder has done nothing to wrong him or anyone and has only ever done good for the people where he's able to.

Yet despite Ioder being nothing but sincere, honest and polite with Yuri, in fact even happy to see him here and there, dub Yuri is outright tonally rude to him leading right up this scene where he threatens Ioder in this dark voice. Meanwhile he's actually just supposed to be… lazily telling Ioder he'll punch him in his Yuri Lowell way of saying "I don't want to hear that".

The dub really just wanted to turn Yuri into this dark edgelord and I hate that for my goofy, silly boy.

[lord-squiggletits]

Salty Ask List: 1, 5, 14, 22 ?

1.What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

Dr/atc/het 100000%... I just don't understand what their chemistry is supposed to be together. It's partially ruined for me by Drift in MTMTE being an absolute mess of a character who got most of his planned plotlines cut or changed, and partially ruined by the fact Drift spends most of MTMTE straight up absent from the story, and then he and Ratchet meet up in Empire of Stone and come back during Dying of the Light and are just...together romantically now? I don't understand how they have any chemistry at all much less romantic lskdjflkds

I know a big one people talk about is "Ratchet saved Drift's life and then told him he believed in him" but... the way their meeting was written didn't come off as particularly romantic to me? Ratchet saved Drift the same way he's saved countless other addicts in the Dead End and then his parting words to Drift were to tell him to go to the Functionists so they could get him a job. Very "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" kind of advice that clearly didn't work since Drift stayed impoverished, his friend got killed by police brutality, he went into the underworld to be a hitman, etc etc. Like yeah in theory it's very romantic for an OTP's first meeting to be one of them saving the other's life and treating the impoverished person kindly for possibly the first time in their life. It's just that that moment in canon doesn't have romantic vibes to me at all, it's just a doctor-patient encounter in which Ratchet is nice to Drift like he's nice to everyone, except it's also kind of condescending/ignorant bc Ratchet basically tells Drift "oh just get a job and get clean and you'll be fine" as if it's that easy to stop being a homeless/jobless drug addict?? If an ER doctor did that shit to me I'd be more likely to see him as an asshole than to admire or like him at all sdklfjsd.

Then Drift was a Decepticon for millions of years, then he joined the Autobots on Earth and like... he and Ratchet sure existed on the same team together dlkfjldsjlkds there were zero interactions of worth b/t them in phase 1, their ship dynamic came entirely from JRO's writing and even then I feel like it's an informed romance more than an organic and believable one.

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

I actually used to like O/Pli/ta when I first came here, but as I stayed longer it became evident that the overwhelming majority of the fan content of it reeks of "we are very sorry for having a heterosexual ship, let us compensate for it by making the woman a Girlboss Xtreme and the man a weak simp so that you can be sure the woman isn't being Oppressed and Stereotyped by being in a heterosexual romantic relationship" which is one of my most detested types of fan content, so now I have the ship tag blocked sldkfjlsdkdskl. Literally it's just the same "the woman is a TOTALLY COMPETENT AND COOL ACTION HERO and her man is a TOTAL SIMP FOR HER" that's interchangeable with most het ships in other fandoms, where there's no actual personality or chemistry for them and instead it's just the same Fandom Approved Heterosexual Relationship Dynamic.

That and a significant amount of content I see for it is just like blatantly ripped off from Me/go/p dslkfjsdfsjl or like, taking the main MOP dynamic and just swapping OP and Elita's places so now Elita is the cool action hero who's rival to Megatron and OP just Exists as an emotional support husband I guess. Or like Elita is made into a daring action hero while Optimus is reduced to a meek little wallflower who's no one of any real importance and just follows in her wake. It reeks of insecurity and unoriginality, as if the fanbase is cripplingly aware that Elita was made to be the Token Girlfriend and instead of just making her a better character and making the romance she's a part of more equal and compelling for both characters, they have to violently overcompensate by having Elita steal OP's role and everything interesting about him. 😂Like I'm begging people to just be normal about hetero ships. You can ship a man and a woman together without having to diminish the man and girlbossify the woman to prove you're a Real Feminist.

14. Unpopular opinion about your fandom?

Continuity soup is boring and for the most parts creates purely fanon plots/ideas/characterizations that have tenuous relationships to actual canon. It's nice that people have the creativity to make their own AUs, but I also want to read about the actual continuity in question and not someone's mishmash of it.

Like UGH when I read a fic tagged IDW1 I want to see cop Orion not archivist or dockworker Orion. When I read a fic tagged IDW1 I want to read about the Senate led by Proteus and the reigns of Nova/Nominus/Sentinel/Zeta, not about the Council from TFP. When I read a fic tagged IDW1 MegOP I want Orion being a simp for Megatron after reading his stuff/meeting him one (1) time sdkflsdkf not yet another iteration of the tired "one day an archivist and a gladiator became great friends! then they broke up."

It's not hate for other continuities, I'm just tired of the fact that continuity soup is so prevalent that even when I'm specifically filtering for content of the one continuity I want to read about, the fics I find keep having random shit from other continuities interjected into it. I think each continuity has really interesting takes on lore that have potential to be wholly unique for each one, so it's really frustrating when the average fic I can find is just a random mishmash of continuity elements, or more often than not just an IDW knockoff taking place in a separate continuity. Like guys, I'm an IDW stan myself, but wouldn't it be cool if we got more fics that explored ideas that only happen in G1, or only happen in Animated, or Aligned, etc?

Doesn't help that when I AM looking specifically for IDW stuff, most of the content I look at (MOP) does continuity soup for the sake of replacing IDW OP with some sort of aligned/g1 lite OP which makes me salty as hell

22. Popular character you hate?

Drift for sure sdklfsdlk. I mean when I first read about him in the comics (the Drift miniseries) I was like, he's fine I guess he's an action hero whatever. But then literally the more of the comics I read the more his personality and story were just incredibly corny, stereotypical, or boring as hell no matter what writer was controlling him. And he got bounced around between writers a lot, and then even the "main author" people know Drift from (JRO) kept changing his plans for what Drift was supposed to be (and cutting plots related to him) so any hints towards a storyline went nowhere. And then Drift spent basically all of MTMTE gone elsewhere on some exile-adventure, and then during LL he just kind of. Is there, existing.

So like, honestly Drift is a victim of getting bounced back and forth and having his writing changed so often he doesn't reach his full potential, which isn't really "his fault" as a character. It just so happens that I also think the bits of his character that exist are either boring or overhyped or in one case (portrayal of his religion/religious worldbuilding in general) outright offensive. He's basically written like some hippie stereotype with vaguely Asian/Japanese flavoring (the extent of which is basically his name + fighting style) and then he barely like... does anything in the plot? I think he's supposed to be like, ~mysterious and shifty~ but then all of the plotlines that involved him being a secret traitor got cut, so Drift basically just became Weirdly Suspicious For No Reason and his genuine personality/motivations felt indistinguishable from what he was faking and what plots got cut from him. Absolute mess of a character that got almost no payoff for any of the things planned for him, and all that's left is some kooky hippie personality of "hee hoo I believe in auras and mystical vibes and magical colors, also I'm dating an atheist who's openly dismissive of most of my religious beliefs (that I do or don't actually believe in depending on what part of the story I'm in) and this somehow doesn't get in the way of our personal/romantic chemistry

But then the fanbase are basically making him some kind of Gary Stue, obsessed with making headcanons like "Deadlock wrote/edited Megatron's speeches for him too!" and "Drift defected from the Decepticons to try and make a point to Megatron!" and generally trying to make him the Decepticons' Specialest Boy Ever and it's just. Ugh I get that he was under-written in canon, but every bit of fanon I've encountered doesn't make him interesting either. They just kind of make Drift the center of the world where he's actually the coolest, most talented and interesting person ever where other characters owe their accomplishments partially to his influence and I'm just. I don't get it, I don't understand the appeal of fanon and I don't even understand the appeal of canon either. I think part of it is for representation reasons (e.g. Asian, lower class, former drug addict) and it's nice that people can pull something meaningful out of the mess that is canon. It's just for me, canon Drift is so mediocre I don't get why anyone would even WANT him as representation sdlkfjsdlkf. I guess fixing what the writers failed to explore the potential of is an understandable motivation though.