#and love his motivation for doing the fight

[essektheylyss]

I love that Caleb does not ever seem to take opportunities to take any kind of "this might be the last moment I have" actions. No matter what, when everyone else is going around and making their desperate moves, Caleb doesn't. Even after he recommends otherwise to others, it is notable that he among the group doesn't do so, and this is consistent with his previous behavior.

I like to think that stems from the moment he opted against trying to work with Trent—which I think, at its core, was an attempt at such an action. If Caleb had died fighting the Somnovem, he had every reason to believe that Trent would continue in his actions. Though Astrid and Eadwulf were willing to subtly undermine him, they had made it clear that they were not willing to challenge him outright. Caleb tells the Nein, when they are discussing their last wishes at the Blooming Grove before returning to Eiselcross, that he would appreciate Trent being eliminated in the event of his death. I have to believe that there was a fear or regret that his dearest motivations would not come to fruition which spurred his interest in using an alliance with him in Aeor to trap and kill him.

I've mentioned elsewhere that I believe Essek's willingness to disagree with him was one of the factors in Caleb being able to trust him and his judgment, but I would also argue it was a wake-up call for Caleb—about letting himself be distracted; about not focusing in on the mission at hand; about, potentially, expecting failure in this goal, especially after he has watched his friends say their goodbyes as if they too expect to die. "Stay on task, Widogast," is a mantra he uses in Vergessen, but he does get caught up, to an extent, in enacting as much damage as he can to the place in the process, and regardless of whether this ruthless assault slowed or sped their discovery, Trent did catch up to them, and very nearly caught Veth and Jester as well as himself. Given Caleb's fears throughout the campaign that he will draw the danger that dogs him onto his newfound friends, and his later apology to Essek in the same conversation for drawing Trent's attention to him, it is not a stretch to argue that this is yet another guilt he shoulders.

It isn't lost on me that Caleb almost died before the Nein even met, he was perpetually aware of his fragility among the group, and he was the last member of the Nein to go down and need to be revived. So I just think it's very fun if he, who so often seemed to be on the verge of death, who in fact planned to step back in history and in the process erase the person he had become, found himself at some point determined to live, and firmly confident in his ability to do so.

He does not wrap up his affairs, he does not say goodbyes, and while he may acknowledge the stakes for the group, he does not entertain the idea that he personally will not make it out alive—because, as Dorian notes, he has a lot to live for. He has to get back home to his partner and his well-maintained garden; he has to make sure the Cerberus Assembly's nefarious schemes do not continue in Ludinus's absence, perhaps even in the absence of the Assembly itself, depending on what its members do in its wake; he probably has to go egg on his godson's shenanigans as payback for Veth threatening to shoot him out of the sky.

Caleb Widogast is an absolute cockroach of a wizard, and, in true Mighty Nein form, he is at all times thriving on unfinished business.

[keferon]

*thwack*

Get his ass!

*insert about the cruel indifference of the universe vs the indomitable human spirit, idk*

————————

Prowl watched Jazz wrap his discolored torso with some sort of cloth type bandage, fascinated by the way the injury seemed to mimic the injury that Jazz’s… mech… had taken during the battle just breems before. The first time that Prowl had gotten to watch Jazz patch himself up, he had hovered worriedly and awkwardly. At the time, he had only just learned a few cycles before that his closest friend was an organic who piloted a mech-like body as a weapon, and not the mech itself.

Jazz had babbled on and on about how his mech could take serious damage and he would be fine, but sometimes the “DRIFT” connection between organic and machine meant that some wounds transferred over to the organic body. If Jazz took a blow to the helm and lost it, he wouldn’t have to worry about dying, but he would have a helm-splitting headache afterwards. Apparently, it had something to do with the cerebral connection that was needed to pilot such a large piece of machinery like it was an extension of your person. Some kind of unethical science that definitely would have had some bots going to jail if Jazz were Cybertronian. It reminded Prowl too much of Shockwave.

When the Praxian had expressed his discomfort at the slight connection he had made, Jazz had given him a small sad smile. The words that Jazz spoke in reply would probably haunt him for deca-cycles.

“When we were invaded, what was and wasn’t ethical kinda got thrown out the window. We were losin’ cities everyday, our population was dwindin’, either due to the Quints or due to civil unrest. Humans… we ‘ave short lives compared to you guys. But we love’em. Threw all our cards into one basket, and prayed. Monsters to fight Monsters was the propaganda they spread when I was growing up.”

Prowl’s optics dimmed lightly as he watched Jazz stretch upwards, pulling at the bandages and heavy bruises. The human made a slight groaning noise as bones popped from the stress. He turned to look up at Prowl, spinning a-top Prowl’s desk to give him a wide and mischievous grin. Prowl snorted faintly, watching his friend with a fondness in his EM field that he knew Jazz couldn’t feel.

“They never said anything about wha’ the Hunter Program does to the pilot. Only that when ya signed up, ya got a mech matching your specific specs and the opportunity to go slay monsters. Sometimes the mech was prebuilt, from a pilot who died and left their mech still intact, and sometimes you got your own personalized one. The mech itself though… they were never the unethical part of the program. It was all the serums and shit that they stuffed into me to ensure I’d survive the DRIFT process. I… I remember being tied down to a med-bunk and… and just flashes of horrific pain.”

Jazz walked up to Prowl, still grinning, preening almost like a turbo kitten. The Praxian laid out his servo so Jazz could crawl aboard, being mindful of his organic friend. He lifted Jazz up to his shoulder, relaxing as Jazz tucked himself in close, humming softly as he settled in the take a nap on Prowl’s shoulder. Prowl’s doorwings fluttered a bit.

“Yer not wrong. That what we did to survive was unethical, probably inhumane. But… humans… we hate losing. We do unspeakable things when given the right motivation. For some it’s love, loyalty, family, country, pride, greed. I’ve seen pilots pull themselves from their mech’s corpse, waving a gun at the jaws of a monster, whilst missing an arm and half their face. I’ve seen doctors tie down rookie pilots and pump them full of drugs and serums, watch them scream and plead for mercy, watch them die when it’s too much for their body to handle, so that pilots don’t die the minute they try to DRIFT. Yer not wrong. Humans can be vile and cruel and outright terrible, but we can also strive for peace and love and kindness. It’s that, that makes us survivors.”

Jazz’s humming fell quiet as he fell asleep against Prowl’s neck, causing the Praxian to relax slowly back into his office chair. He looked up at the data pad that Knockout had given him, containing Jazz’s full medical checkup. The list of everything in near critical condition for his species was… alarming. Jazz had said he felt fine during the checkup. Knockout’s reading said differently. Knockout’s readings said Jazz was dying. That Jazz had been dying for years.

Jazz knew he was dying and wasn’t moving to fix it. Because pilots have their life for their planet, and pilots had a set expiration date.

Jazz had accepted this date.

Prowl had never been so angry.

“An expiration date” made me silently stare into space for a while. Hoooly shit….

[copperhawks]

She IS his squire at the time and so theoretically that could be why he goes, but I feel like it's pretty clear that that's not why he does it. He does it because he's in love with her, because she personally means something to him, rather than simply because he has a duty to protect her. He probably explains it away as her being his squire and so he has a duty to her, and that might be a small percentage of it, but it's not the REAL reason behind his choice. Would he have done it still if he didn't know she was a girl? Maybe, they were obviously close friends before this, but then that still makes it more about Jon's personal feelings for his friend than it is about his feelings of duty towards his squire.

Whereas with Kel, when you hear the other characters discussing why she did what she did, it's always about "You gave her a job and she took it dead serious because that's who she is and then you asked her to ABANDON that job and thought she'd go along with that." She obviously DOES personally care about these people, but the explanation generally given for why she's so willing to give up everything to save them is because her duty as a leader means more to her than anything else.

It's also just... something that's in character for both of them.

Jon is someone who IS driven a lot by his personal feelings towards people he cares about. We see this a LOT in his relationship with Alanna in particular. Jon also has this sense of divine justice, a pre-ordained path, that guides him a lot. He believes he and Alanna are connected by the gods (and he's not, you know, entirely wrong about that) and that's a MAJOR reason why he even begins that relationship at all. He goes to the Black City because he believes he's MEANT to go there and defeat the Ysandir (and, again, he's even entirely wrong about this). His sense of duty is something that comes LATER and is more obvious in his characterization in Kel's series than it is in Alanna's. So when he goes to save Alanna, he does it because he loves her, and he does it because he believes they have a destiny together.

Whereas Kel is often someone driven by a sense of duty from the very beginning. She goes around beating up bullies because she believes it's a knight's job to do so, not because she personally cares for the people being bullied. She goes up to the Needle to save Lalasa (and possibly giving up her chance to be a squire) because she's been told that a good noble takes care of their servants rather than asking someone else to do it for her. She joins all of the jousts for the same reason she got into fights with bullies during her page years. So when she gets to the fort and is put in charge of these people and then they all go missing, it is fully within her character to go after them primarily because she believes it is her duty as the commander of the fort to make sure they're safe again. This is something about Kel that the narrative has built up over the last several books.

So while Alanna IS Jon's squire at the time that he goes to save her, I don't think the narrative supports that his actual motivation for going to save her is BECAUSE she's his squire as much as because she's his friend, because he loves her, and because he believes in their destiny together.

The funniest thing to me about Kel, and maybe one of the most interesting because of how understated it is, is that Kel becomes a good commander in the end, not by emulating Wyldon who was cold and implacable and insensitive, or by emulating Raoul who mostly only disobeys orders out of principle or because he has an issue with what the order says about his personal relationship with Jon, but by emulating JON.

Kel doesn't even LIKE Jon, she BARELY respects him as a person. He's a good enough ruler that she's willing to fight for him and swear loyalty to him and to at least mostly believe that he wouldn't work with Blayce to make his own killing monsters, but that's as far as it goes for Kel. If he's kind to her, she finds it uncomfortable and almost untrustworthy because she assumes he doesn't care about her and so his kindness and respect towards her must be fake.

But from the outside, as readers, we know just how much Jon fought for Kel. We know how much he does respect her right to be a knight. Jon is the sole reason that Kel DID get the opportunity to prove herself, if he'd capitulated to Wyldon completely, she just wouldn't have ever been allowed to join. Kel doesn't KNOW THAT, obviously, but we do. We know that Jon did everything he could to find a way to convince Wyldon to let Kel become a page. While Wyldon claims later that the reason he chose to let her stay at the end of the probation year was because his better judgment convinced him she'd earned it, I'd be willing to bet that part of that better judgment also included knowing if he couldn't prove to JON that she needed to go, then he'd be in trouble. Kel was training and working in front of plenty of other trainers and teachers who could easily contradict Wyldon's lies if he'd tried it, many of whom are closer to Jon than they are to Wyldon.

Kel's experiences and feelings about that experience are entirely valid, and she doesn't have the knowledge we do about how hard Jon fought for her, so it's not shocking that she's upset with him for a good portion of her series. She never even discovers this truth by the end of her series, even though she does get a lesson from Jon and Thayet (and Raoul to some degree) about how politics and compromises work in order to make changes happen. So her opinion of him by the end is boiled down to the quote from Squire: "good kings weren't always good men." It makes sense for her to think this, but because Kel's knowledge base is so limited (and her worldview so black and white for much of her series), it makes her an EXTREMELY unreliable narrator about this particular issue.

Kel believes that while Jon generally does his duty and keeps the peace, he doesn't actually care all that much about his people as individuals. But in their only meaningful conversation in Squire, Jon is able to point out that he (and Thayet, who is actually equal to Jon in power, something Kel either doesn't know which would be a failure in her education or just tends to ignore so she can focus her ire on Jon) has to make a LOT of compromises in order to get ANYTHING useful done at all. Sometimes, often, it means making deals with people he doesn't like or people he just fundamentally disagrees with, because it's the first step in a multi-step plan to help more people in the long run. He also points out that just throwing his weight and authority around in order to be able to change everything he wants to change immediately regardless of what anyone else thinks about it is a great way to get himself and his family killed. Because even if he had good intentions, that would be tyranny. It does make Kel think a little, but she doesn't tend to like him much still afterwards, her resentment from her page years will always color her opinion of him a little.

However, then she gets to Haven and she's suddenly tossed into a position of leadership over a lot of other people, many of whom disagree with each other or disagree with her or both. And all of the sudden, Kel has to make compromises. She doesn't LIKE the way the sergeants often treat their men, especially the sergeants whose men are convicts, but there's very very little she can do about it without really pissing off those same sergeants and that's not something she can afford to do. There's a moment when Neal starts getting frustrated about the treatment of the convicts and she takes him out to vent to her so he doesn't vent to the sergeants, something that the sergeants would then take out on their men. Kel's reasoning as she does this is that she "preferred to avoid battles with them now so she would have authority with them later if she needed to use it." Later, Kel is talking to Daine and she says "That's all this job is... Trying to please everyone and pleasing no one. And it will only get worse, not better."

Both of these moments showcase Kel choosing to make compromises. She may not like the way the sergeants treat the convicts, but she needs to stay on the sergeants' good sides because she doesn't have enough resources to butt heads with them nor enough authority to just force the issue, and even if she DID, it could cause the sergeants to become troublesome or take out their frustration with her on the men in ways she can't see as well. But staying on the sergeants' good sides might mean letting some of their maltreatment slide if it's not physically harming the convicts. And even setting that aside, she's dealing with nearly 500 refugees eventually, all of which are from different towns in the area and have different needs, not all of which she can accommodate. This requires compromise. Sometimes she can please some of them and not others, but mostly she probably just ends up not pleasing anybody because that's often how compromises WORK.

She never makes the active connection to Jon and his lesson on leadership from Squire while she's in Haven, but that quote up there about how this job (aka being a commander) is all about trying to please everyone and pleasing no one? It sounds a HECK of a lot like "good kings weren't always good men." You can try your best to help others, but often doing the right thing can involve making everyone unhappy. You can't be everybody's friend if you're going to get anything done.

Some of this she might've learned from Raoul's style of command, but Raoul commands a fairly small amount of people (at least in comparison to a King), and so we see him able to be pretty friendly to the people he commands in a way that Jon is perhaps unable to do. And she might believe that she learned some of this from Wyldon, but Wyldon had a tendency to be very unfair and biased due to his raging bigotry and conservative values, as well as the fact that he doesn't actually even LIKE being a training master and that likely impacted the way he treated the pages (he's almost never that kind to the pages, whereas we see him capable of being quite kind with the refugees later, which is where Kel comes to the conclusion that he hadn't enjoyed being a training master).

But Jon makes an entire speech about how he (and Thayet) have been working THEIR ENTIRE REIGN to change laws that help people. He explains how they have to consider the needs of merchants, nobles, farmers, street people, priests/priestesses, and mages. They have to consider not only what these people might need or want, but also what they could do when they feel sufficiently offended and how that could impact not just the royal family or the nobility but the realm as a whole. Jon points out that they HAVE made changes, for the better, and that just because they don't always succeed at everything or because they have to compromise sometimes, doesn't mean they aren't working at making changes or that they don't care about helping people. Not everyone you have power over is going to be your friend, they might not even be someone you like. But if you're going to take on the job of leadership, that's something you have to be willing to accept and work with, which often means making compromises with people whose needs and values are contradictory to your own.

Jon probably knows when he makes the compromise with Wyldon that it will likely impact a lot of people's good opinion of him. Alanna is right there and clearly angry, and we know Thayet doesn't like the decision, either. And it's entirely possible that Jon knows in the moment that Kel herself will put the blame on him because he's the King. But he also knows that if he insists on Kel being allowed to be a page without trying to compromise with Wyldon, Wyldon will quit over it and he'll end up with ten DIFFERENT problems that could cause a lot bigger issues to far more people than just one girl. So he makes the compromise. He sacrifices Alanna and Thayet and even Kel's good opinion of him in order to ensure that Kel gets the opportunity to become a Knight without turning all of his nobles against him which could ultimately lead to a civil war. Is it fair? No, and he knows it. But it's the best option he has in order to get the outcome they all actually want which is just for Kel to have the chance to prove herself.

Kel has to make similar choices once she's finally in a position of leadership of her own. And whether she realizes it or not, without ever even spending more than a few minutes with Jon, she ends up emulating his leadership style more than anybody else's because it WORKS and it works WELL. She'll probably never admit it, she might never even realize it herself, but she's so much more like Jon than any of the other men she sees as role models. And I love that. I love the dramatic irony of that, that the one person Kel only barely respects because of a compromise he made on her behalf that she'll never even know about, is the person Kel ends up most resembling. Jon is the reason she has the opportunity to become the Protector of the Small in the first place, Jon is the person who created that environment that allowed her to nurture those values, and she'll probably never even really be able to acknowledge that, because sometimes that's what being a good leader means.

[scribescrawls]

Thinking about Transformers One Liege Maximo and how he never went bad in TFOne. In the wiki in other versions I saw he had the moniker of “The Prime of Lies” and I like to think he still was in TFOne, but instead of using those skills for evil he used them to protect his fellow Primes and Cybertron. Liege Maximo using his skills in manipulation, scheming, and lying to create strategies that help them get the upper hand in the war with the Quintessons that might be underhanded but ultimately saves more lives. But also sometimes lying to motivate others or cheer them up as well in terms of keeping up morale (for example imagine him lying to someone that he asked Primus himself to give a person luck to succeed in a task that they are too scared to do that helps them succeed in doing it even though he never asked Primus anything. But he does it because he knows the person had the ability to do the task already just that their fears and self doubt were holding them back so he lies to give them the confidence they need. Liege Maximo going ‘I told them Primus has given them for this specific task his blessing of luck’ and his fellow Primes side eye him like ‘Bro you know that’s not how that works’ and he responds ‘I know that, but it worked look how much more confident the bot is!’). And yes sometimes these plans he makes toe the line of what is morally right, but that’s what he has his fellow Primes for. I imagine he and Prima sometimes get into arguments about what is going too far or if certain strategies cross a line ethically, but I like to think that in this version instead of it tearing them apart it makes the team stronger as they find compromises that combine both their ideals until they find a plan that they both agree to with everyone.

I’m also so fascinated by the different possibilities of the High Guard personally knowing the Thirteen Primes. I like the idea of TFOne Liege Maximo being a mentor figure for Starscream in the past before Sentinel’s betrayal and kind of took Starscream on as his personal student in a way because he saw himself in the other. Liege Maximo going “oh he just like me for real” seeing a younger Starscream who is not yet leader of the High Guard lie to an enemy to get them to lower their guard and when they hesitate to kill him he stabs the enemy in the back. Him observing Starscream use cunning in battle to win his fights that keeps himself and those under his command alive and thinks this one reminds me of me and he has potential to be great. Liege Maximo becoming his mentor and over the years they also become good friends. I like to headcanon that Liege Maximo loves to cause problems on purpose for his own amusement and likes to pull pranks on his fellow Primes with Amalgamous who is also a known prankster. I imagine the other Primes are exasperatedly fond of their antics. I like to think once Liege Maximo takes Starscream as his protégé he ropes him into helping them pull pranks with them.

I’m fascinated by the potential of TFOne Starscream before Sentinel’s betrayal still being a manipulator, liar, and schemer but at the same time someone who was loyal to the Thirteen Primes and believed in the cause they were fighting for of defending Cybertron. Like I still think he’s someone who would put himself first in terms of saving his own life, but I think he also does care for those under him and does his best to keep them alive too. I think he’s always been strong on self preservation, but I also think he lives by a certain honor code and has certain principles he stubbornly abides by even if most people would at first glance think he’d sell you out for one corn chip. I think this is most telling if we look at how not once did Starscream try to join Sentinel or the Quintessons by pledging his loyalty to them to save his own skin even if it might of been easier and instead chooses to live 50 cycles in hiding/on the run being hunted down on the dangerous surface with a planet whose flow of energon has stopped and still tries to sabotage Sentinel from the shadows and hates his guts for the betrayal. He did fail in attacking/killing Sentinel, but I think it’s important to note that he successfully kept everyone alive at the same time too.

After Sentinal’s betrayal and watching the Primes be killed in front of him in addition to being hunted down on the surface together with the rest of the High Guard for 50 cycles I think he slowly becomes disillusioned with the world and more cruel and ruthless as he does whatever is needed for their survival.

I headcanon that Megatronus Prime was usually the one commanding the High Guard and directing them in battle and that Starscream did really look up to him too and admired his strength. But I headcanon that Megatronus Prime was so strong that his approach to battle is very charge head on and brutally beat your opponent into the ground as a way to protect everyone else. A warrior who charges straight at the enemy and gets things done brutally and efficiently, very similar to D-16/Megatron’s fighting style. However, I think Megatronus was also way more experienced and was also able to direct the High Guard in a way that worked with multiple differing fighting styles that meshed different approaches to maximize the strength of their fighting force. (Which is partially why I think Starscream followed Megatron in the end, one he did manage to rip Sentinel in half, but also he might have thought D-16/Megatron had the potential to be a leader worth following and associated any similarities with a sense of hope that Megatron might become someone like his past leader Megatronus). Meanwhile, I think Starscream is more of an ‘analyze your opponent and then strike using your wits to best take them down’ kind of fighter especially if you can’t beat them in straightforward combat. I like to think Liege Maximo also fights like that and might have been the one to give Starscream extra fighting lessons when he notes the similarities of how Starscream likes to fight. And if you ever saw them fight side by side you could probably see Liege Maximo’s fighting style reflected in the way Starscream moves.

I also think with this headcanon it potentially adds a bit of tragic irony that this version of Megatronus and Liege Maximo never turned bad becoming “The Fallen” etc, but those who greatly admired them and tried to embody their legacy sort of become the fallen ones down the line.

[letters-to-rosie]

okay time to collect some thoughts

spoilers for season 2

as soon as they said there were other regions going to be explored, I knew Noxus was going to be the big thing, and that the battle between the cities and the class conflict angles of the story were going to be set aside. if you know me, you know I would hate this, but because I anticipated it, it wasn't too bad. I had already killed the version of the show I wanted in my head and was ready to take things as they came. and it wasn't all bad. Ambessa makes for a great villain, and all the twists and turns with her and Mel were pretty enjoyable

that being said, the second season in general did away with most of the things I liked about the first: subtlety, nuance, environmental storytelling (and all that sweet sweet class conflict)---I mean the cities just faded into the background as we watched everything play out. even a lot of the great character work we got in the first season was just left as it was. most the characters didn't really get to move much from where they were in the first season. even the ones I enjoyed (like Ambessa) were essentially the same as they were before. there were a lot of things that were cool. a lot of things that were interesting. most of them don't work when put together

Jayce? liked him this season, actually. had fun when he was suffering lol and fighting Viktor. Jayce disappearing out of the blue when the basement of the hexgates wasn't set up at all? boooooo

Jinx? gets to realize she isn't just a jinx. gets to help people. is this realized in a satisfying way? nope. we get one scene of people touching her and then Isha dies and she's back where she was at the start of the season, almost. plus her relationship with Sevika just drops off, and I was having fun with that

Cait? love her evil era. I also like that the plot didn't let her entirely off the hook. love less how she engaged in fucking chemical warfare like what even and that was never addressed

Ekko? has my whole heart. did before, but whatever. saved everyone's asses by being the best boy. love how he's motivated by helping the people who need him. love MUCH less that we never get to see him doing that work. like what did he think of Jinx becoming inspiring to people? how would that combine with his experience in the alternate timeline?

I could go on. I might be better prepared to deal with this than some because I didn't think it would be good in the first place lol I had like no hope. it was such a grand show in the first place and they made it so much grander. there's a lot to like, but the first season REALLY carries it. it feels like two separate shows. I don't begrudge anyone really liking the second season, but I will maintain that the fanbase deserved (and still deserves) better

[khazzman]

I am a conflicted man because I both loved Season 2 of Arcane and was let down by it, and it really is all down to the fact that they were limited to just one more season, a real blunder in my opinion.

If they had another season they could have concentrated more on Caitlyn's sins AND then next season have her suffer because of them and work toward atonement (also maybe let Vi and her have sex in a comfy bed rather than a prison cell).

They could have had Jinx come around on becoming a revolutionary figure once she realizes it will give Isha a better life, as well as her bonds with Sevika. Imagine Sevika at Jinx's side like she was with Silco, except Jinx's desire for Zaun is almost more genuine and in line with Sevika's own dream of it.

And Mel! Such revelations we got with her in too short an amount of time! We could have had her doing more of her investigations if we had an extra season, have her deduce and discover her mother's intentions using her own cunning rather than having the Black Rose just tell her. It could give not just Mel but the audience unfamiliar with LoL lore more insight into what the Black Rose really is and why her mother is so motivated.

We could have spent more time with Ekko and the Firelights before him, Jayce, and Heimerdinger get zapped off to other times and worlds, see how they respond to Caitlyn's authoritarian rule.

And finally we could see more of rock-bottom Vi. Explore her relationship with Loris more, given that his similar appearance to Vander really has an effect on her. Watch them lean on each other at first but lose it as Vi sticks her head deeper and deeper into her sorrow, unable to get out till Jinx comes to get her to save their father (after maybe having had a revelation of her own that Vi still loves her and is owed another chance with their father).

And even more finally (I'm bad at ordering things) give a better depiction of the Piltover/Zaun conflict. Like I appreciate it that most of Zaun didn't come to fight when Jayce asked and only showed up when Jinx and Ekko, true Zaunites, asked it of them. But there needed to be more. I'm not saying it should have been a perfect ending where Zaun gets full equal standing to Piltover or its independence and we all hold hands and sing. But we needed specifically Caitlyn to make amends, if she is going to be with Vi (even if the other nobles don't) and show that Zaun isn't ready to give up the fight yet. Show that Ekko is leading the Firelights and Jinxers to better defend and build up their community.

That's my main pitch for what could have been. I'm happy we still got something but there will always be room for improvement.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Reasons Stephanie Brown is black

Grew up alienated from other kids despite always being kind and openly friendly for no other reason they thought she was 'weird' even though she was never malicious

Unconventional,strong,bold yet soft femininity that gets mistaken for masculinity

Ex-kid genius with street cred beyond her years who was constantly talked down to by adults and treated as stupid

Hates authority and loves the people

Became a vigilante out of a very strong sense of community and a thirst to give privileged abusers their downfall so they couldn't get away with it

But genuinely understands the crime system and dosen't fall for dehumanization propaganda and fights for universal rights over moral purity

Punk but actually,a traumatized no filter mouth running post hardcore music jamming chunky boots bully beating energy drinks and bad for you food chugging underground shows/parties sneaking out to diy doing eco-friendly anarchist and not an Avril Lavigne white girl that only hangs around guys and other white girls and is sad and mopping and objectifies and infantalizes herself nonstop and rolls her eyes at intersectionality and politics talk

Usually has straight hair but her hair is huge as Robin(silk press/natural)

Prioritizes kids of color in her big sis adoptions/team mom-ing i.e Nell,Damian,Tiffany and Maps

Mama's girl with motherly trauma but a big grip onto what made her mom that way and they work things out with her mom genuinely improving as soon as she can

Cycle breaker

Gamer girl,Hot Girl,Dorkgirl,It Girl

Is more like Kory than she is to any white DC blonde

Tim,certified black woman lover,was in love with her and she had him down horrendous but the feeling was mutual because black women love Tim Drake back

Cass and hers' connection over mutually similar yet fundamentally different in a complimentary way backgrounds they started their best friendship over and turned into butch4femme roommates-girlfriends

Also uses 'Sister' as slang for female friend

Visual pun with coming from a neighbourhood that heavily resembles a hood and wearing an attached hood in all her homemade Spoiler costumes

1/2 of the only Batkids Jason never beefed with,the other being Duke and Stephanie and Duke goof around and take on the man like classic black siblings together and Jason and her exchange motivational and reassuring words to eachother on the anger they feel towards the world for hurting them so hard so young and Duke has the same anger within him Jason that also comforts him over and has his back whenever his place in the Batfam is denied so they're the Black Robins Squad

Her name just sounds like Girl Hobie Brown

I'm a black woman who's exactly like Stephanie Brown

So Stephanie Brown is a black woman.👾👧🏿Confirmed👩🏿‍🦱��

[finnbin]

You guys ever think about Quadron's obsessions with arms? It's his calling card: his entire thing is arms, despite not having any himself.

Then him dwelling in the Evirwinter woods, next to a village of elves who primarily use longbows - a two handed weapon - for everything. Hunting, fighting, defending each other. Sure, Kyborg has a long-sword and shield, but he practically never uses them. That boy is bow-dependent, through and through, probably like the rest of his village.

But Quadron takes arms whenever he can. He fights to kill, and if he can't kill, he maims. He fights these people - who are so dependent on their ability to use both arms - and rips their limbs off. Even if they're already dead, or if he thinks they're going to die in Kyborg's case, he takes them anyway.

Just thinking about this poor, alone child, who's lost his ability to do practically anything he was taught? Thinking his entire culture would die with him? He had no idea he'd find a dying automaton and be able to replace his arm, he had to accommodate to living one handed (he lost his dominant arm as well). He lived out of spite and an absurd amount of luck.

And Quadron shows no canonical remorse for these actions.

He literally does not give a shit. He's so absorbed by himself, and his own jealousy(?) of Kyborg and his family. Maybe reminiscing on his days with Ahem? He could have this internalised abilism of his own lack of arms. Who knows what his motive was, to be honest.

Quadron's such a fascinating villain, for one that probably was created as a joke by Blaine. His character needs a good analysis, probably not by me because I don't fully understand his motives.

Plus, that flashback episode in the dreamery? Fucking brutal man. Probably the goriest the intern's story got. I loved every second of it but damn.

Anyway idk what this was LOL

[bluemorningsoup]

Arcane and JayVik have me fucking apoplectic. (Arcane S2 spoilers below cut.)

At first I was like: oh, so they’re going to parallel Vi + Jinx somewhat, Science Bros instead of Violence Sis, brothers by choice rather than blood. But then there was what I call the Infidelity Sequence, in which Jayce’s love scene with Mel was juxtaposed against a dying Viktor in the most bizarre manner, like Jayce was cheating on Viktor—an absolute fucking choice—and other instances of Mel superimposed against Viktor.

So I thought: SURELY it can’t be a “bros before hoes” storyline in the year of Our Lord Faker 2024??? But then they gave us Sky “Fridged Woman” Young and Jayce said Viktor was like a brother to him, and I was like, WOW, they’re really giving us this storyline in this day and age; this should be illegal.

Then S2 Jayce started going on about how he realised his place was in the lab with Viktor. Which was like. Okay. I’m a scientist. Modern science is, in reality, a very lonely endeavour a lot of the time, even as it demands nearly all of your life. I, too, would kill to have someone who would do experiments alongside me, who would share every project and publication authorship with me. Don’t get me wrong: there are real-life scientists who do it together, but more often than not they can afford to do so because they’re fucking married to each other. So. I get it, but it did feel like Jayce was basically declaring he wanted Viktor as a life partner.

And then Act 3 Jayce and the animation doubled down on it. The shadows in the campfire morphing from Mel into Viktor. Jayce telling Mel that for some time, he had been confused about many things. He had finally decided on what he wanted and apparently it’s to get his “(lab???) partner” back. Man was consumed by it—had discarded all other ambitions and dreams and desires for this singular motivation, even as he blasted a hole in Viktor’s chest and declared his partner “died in this room”, driven by a logic the viewers weren’t initially privy to. Oh yeah, and there’s also the oddly erotic fight scene with an avatar of Viktor.

And then then the narrative tripled, quadrupled, fucking Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles-Neon Genesis Evangelion-Puella Magi Madoka Magica-ed on it. Who had been reading CLAMP in the writers’ room? Come the fuck out; I just want to talk. No, that’s not a shotgun in my hand; don’t worry about it. Transcendant Viktor choosing to stay by Jayce’s body after the end of everything. The storyboard placing the shot of Jayce kneeling face to face with his own corpse with Viktor’s voice line: “…fields of dreamless solitude.” Jayce deciding upon the singular defining desire of his life as wanting his partner back and promising to never let Viktor be alone. Jayce fulfilling that promise. Jayce drawing Viktor in even as his own body shook and trembled. Viktor’s gentle hand on Jayce’s arm. The forehead touch.

You sit there and watch as above ambitions, above desires, above suffering, above every other thing this universe has to offer—across all possibilities, across all timelines, two men choose one another.

And then the head writer of Arcane spoke about how they’re “just friends” and how “important” it is to portray platonic male relationship. My brother in Summoner’s Rift, as if any other emotional portrayal of male relationship in media is NOT about platonic male bonding. It’s fucking 2024, Faker won his 5th Worlds, and Jayce and Viktor are brothers who chose one another out of love, contrasting against Vi and Jinx who had to let go of one another out of love. BROS BEFORE HOES.

So I guess all I have to say is: Arcane JayVik are fucking awesome and they’ll leave you breathless like an ambiguous male-male relationship from a 2000 anime, but after all’s said and done, they’re from motherfucking League of motherfucking Legends.

[princeseerow]

oh man, i tried to classpect the animorphs once! never really finished, but from what i remember:

rachel - knight of rage

jake - rogue of blood

tobias - breath

marco - seer of mind or seer of heart

cassie - maid of heart or maid of space

ax - possibly light? i was always least sure of him

david - void

rachel is definitely a knight, probably a knight of rage. knights are said to protect their aspect or protect with their aspect, and rachel's primary motivations throughout the entire series are to protect the people she loves. (the knights we meet in homestuck also tend to struggle with facades and their sense of self which, like, hello?) rage meanwhile, while it can be the aspect of anger, also encompasses fear and skepticism -- sometimes healthy, sometimes not. one of the most important parts of rachel's character to me, besides her protectiveness, is the times we see she's afraid. not really afraid of the yeerks or even of dying, she's afraid of herself and who she's becoming, afraid of losing her friends and family, which is what drives her protectiveness. plus, the berserker getting the rage aspect is so on the nose that it works

jake is blood for sure, but i never settled on a class for him. it feels like a fandom cliche to make the leader a blood player but like. come on. he's absolutely blood! blood concerns itself primarily with interpersonal bonds, connections, and responsibility which is A) jake's main drive for the fight (ie, saving tom) and B) the reason he was chosen as team leader to begin with. the other animorphs primarily know each other through their relationships with jake, and in turn, jake can read his teammates so well that he could near accurately predict how anyone would respond in a given situation. if i had to pick a class for him off the top of my head, he might be a rogue. theyre said to steal their aspect for the benefit of others (whatever that means tbh) but i also just think it would be so funny if the "andalite bandits" were headed by a rogue

tobias is breath easily. its also kind of on the nose when you consider that breath players get air/wind powers, but more importantly, breath is the aspect of freedom and disconnect. thats just... tobias. i dont have to explain myself. thats tobias. and also importantly, breath is the opposite aspect to blood, which for the purposes of this analysis do well to help emphasize how opposite he is to jake.

marco i can see as both a mind and a heart player. theyre opposites, but its pretty common in homestuck for characters to embody traits of their opposite aspects anyway. mind is thinking and rationality, while heart is feeling and emotion, but mind and heart both have a lot to do with identity and self. mind is to obscure the self and heart players is to embrace the self, but then, part of a character's journey is struggling with what their aspect means to them; the comic's most popular heart player has very obvious mind tendencies after all. marco is the Thinking Man of the group but he's not a robot. he's honestly pretty susceptible to letting his emotions get in the way of his decision making, particularly when it comes to his mom. he's either a mind player with very strong heart leanings or vice versa. as for him being a seer of either, seers are the class of knowledge and observation, which make them well suited for being tacticians.

cassie is hard to pin down tbh. she has the feeling empathetic nature of heart for sure, but space being the aspect of creation just feels so fitting for her in a way i can't explain. either way, i'm thinking maid -- maids are said to be particularly close to their aspect which can be both beneficial and detrimental if they don't learn how to strike balance. maids are also commonly headcanon to be a healer class and i just like the idea of cassie being a healer of heart/self or healer of space/creation

oh, aximili. he's the hardest for me to classpect which is why he's last*. my only real argument for ax as light is that light is the aspect of knowledge, among other things, and he's the closest thing the team has to an IT guy and alien expert. no idea about class.

okay yes of course i had to do david. he was an animorph too for a while!

david is void definitely. besides being appropriately edgy-sounding, my reasoning is also kind of mean, and i love being kind of mean to david. so, his actions in the series are honestly pretty light-y. because, besides being the aspect of knowledge, light is also pretty attention-seeking which imo david's role as a traitor who tries to align himself with whoever has the most power in a given situation, only to eventually attempt to weasel his way into power himself... right up until he gets bested by those he underestimated and cast into literal obscurity. light's opposite, void, IS the aspect of insignificance and obscurity. it's the aspect of "nothing." and wouldn't it just piss him off to learn he was destined for nothing?

I know you didn't get into Homestuck but on the offchance your followers have opinions what would the Animorph's classpects be?

I will float this to the followers. People who know Animorphs and Homestuck - thoughts?

[deckof-dragons]

I really, really wish there as a way to save in front of Sisyphus Prime. It took me 40 minutes to get to him because wow, I knew the level had a bunch of enemies but I was not expecting that. And I've been throwing myself at him for an hour straight. I'm tiring and my wrist is starting to hurt a little so this would be where I call for it the day but I feel stuck because I don't want to have to fight my way to him again. But I might have to because it's late and I would like to get some art done today. Ugh!

In other news though, his voice is even sexier than Minos' Prime, which is saying something. Also, I love how small V1 is compared to him. He can step on me any day.

[justsimplypanic]

nobody understands jaskier like joey batey does

we are so fucking lucky

[mariyekos]

I like to imagine Dante's able to use some basic magic beyond just typical demonic stuff. In the opening of DMC1, a magic circle appears below Trish when Dante shoots the motorcycle back at her, so I like to think Dante knows some basic spells, wards, and the like. For the most part he uses it for little things like making a special lock for his Devil Arm vault, maybe heating up soup or a drink that's gone cold, and so on, rather than any combat things. Dante's spells are not at all refined and he doesn't have a natural talent for it, per se, but he has a lot of power he can put into things so he often ends up brute forcing whatever it is. It's not necessarily efficient, but it works, and that's all he cares about. He's not really interested in most precise or specific things.

Vergil on the other hand has a lot more control and a much greater interest in magic in general. A post DMC5 Vergil (and pre DMC3) would use magic a lot more often, and without as much prep. He spent a lot of time learning different charms etc. to use in daily life, and he's a lot more elegant about it. Some he learned when on the run and trying to hide from demons, while others he learned when trying to track down Sparda, and others still he learned for purely convenience reasons. Post DMC5 he gets a lot more into it than he did pre DMC3 when it was more a thing of survival, even if it had the convenience aspect back then too. He's the kind of person who would learn spells for the sake of knowing them, and while he prefers using demonic abilities in combat, he might try to learn a magical combat spell or two just to see what it's like. He mostly sticks to practical things though (which sit on the border of practicality, but he considers them practical, uses them often, and makes Dante's magic look like child's play).

On the magical third (regrown!) hand, Nero's absolutely horrible at magic, to the point of not being able to do basically anything. He's got the magical reserves, but unlike Vergil who can cast precise spells with relatively little effort, or Dante who gets through spells by basically overloading them until they work, Nero just can't get magic to work for him at all. Lessons with Vergil end with him stomping out when he gets fed up with Vergil commenting on how easy it should be, while attempts to get Dante to explain how he casts magic end in frustration when Dante's explanations basically start and end at "I dunno, it, it just works." Sure Nero can memorize and draw a warding sigil perfectly, but any and all attempts to get it to actually do anything end in failure.

Kyrie, in a reveal that surprises everyone, most of all herself, is apparently extremely talented at magic, which she does not know until she sees Nero trying and failing to activate a warding sigil Vergil taught him, puts a finger on it so she can trace over it as she reviews Nero's work in case he messed something up, and inadvertently activates it. After that they end up doing some testing and discover Kyrie is a natural when it comes to magic. The only problem is that while casting spells, activating sigils, and the like come easily to her, her magical reserves are rather small, limiting what she's able to do. When she first activates the sigil Nero had drawn, she ends up unable to get up and Nero has to carry her to bed (which she insists he doesn't have to do, because she just needs a minute to catch her breath, but he insists on)

Nico is stoked to hear about this and ends up figuring out a way to essentially fit Kyrie and Nero with a magic converter that allows Kyrie to draw on the magical reserves Nero can't utilize so that she can use them for whatever she wants to. While Kyrie isn't someone who really cares to use magic for things in her daily life like Dante and Vergil, she does use it to make little charms for the kids, and to establish wards around the house to protect them from demon attacks and other small misfortunes. She and Vergil end up bonding a little bit as he teaches her the spells and other bits of magic Nero was never able to pick up on.

(Vergil himself feels a mixture of pride at how quickly she picks up on things with his instruction, and jealousy when he sees how good she is at things first or second try when he knows it took him a good five or ten attempts to get it down when he was first learning. Kyrie notices and tells him that he's still much better than her in the long run since he's able to use magic without needing a separate "battery" to power him, but Nero absolutely digs into Vergil about it when Kyrie isn't there. Dante meanwhile finds it all hilarious. But he and Nero are pretty proud of Kyrie too.)

[puhpandas]

I think the reason beckory works well is that tony has a habit of getting self righteous and in his own head about things but Gregory isnt afraid to tell him off or call him out about things. the point of tony in ggy is that nobody ever told him that how hes treating other people isnt good, so that's why he got so bad. but tony would be close to Gregory and have every rational reason in the world to listen to Gregory so when he would say something like "you're treating ellis badly and that's not what a good friend does, you need to do better" hed actually listen and take it into account and improve himself

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

god but why wouldnt they expect bad to run. why wouldnt he have been rhe first to leave, the first to beeline straight for that boat. he got his son, his baby, his number one priority- of course he would protect dapper above all else. of course he would leave

but they dont know. he went back for the other eggs. he wanted to trust the other parents to take care of them, to get them out, but there’s always one that’s forgotten in the chaos. always somewhere bad can help pick up the slack. he cpuldnt forgive himself if they lost a single egg- so he took dapper with him, just dapper, the way it has always been him and dapper, and went back for the other eggs, because he couldn’t trust the other parents to take care of them, because he thinks he is the only one who cares enough to protect them

And he’s wrong. he’s so wrong. but in a way, too, he was right. right about the straggler, and right about being the only one who could take care of dapper, right about being the only one who cared about all eggs- because they were alone. over and over, bad has been told that he’s not alone. that he wont be. that there are people there for him

but when the nuke went off, and dapper finally listened and ran ahead, he was alone

[triglycercule]

HELP I DONT KNOW WHAT IM DOING HELP!!! HELP!!!!! its not don yet,,,,,, eoaugh. shoutout to like the 20 coloring/rendering tips and tutorial videos i watched you all did NOTHING to help. GOD. how hard is is to get a tutorial and help for something that actually ISNT naturally intuitive to me???

waaa waaa lineart hard 🥺🥺 waaa waaa sketching hard!!! ok man how about you struggle with figuring out basic color palettes (color is my absolute worst element of art ive yet to even improve on. this backfired on me i shouldve done more coloring pages when i was younger)