#and tbh i really really needed to see her growth and change EXPLICITLY. like her mum being better to her -> that having an effect

[goldenkid]

ok now that wild blue yonder was actually good i can be honest and say i didn't like the star beast

[10hourshift]

Ok so I just remembered I wanted to make this (and also don't want it to be too long) but bear with me

Something something, I think that for a story that sure loves using eyes and the face as narrative devices it's kinda weird that meg ALWAYS keeps her bang covering her eye.

What I mean is that for a big number of characters these things (the eyes and the face) are used as a way to show different faces of the same character. Some examples from the top of my head are loon and his growth shown as him uncovering his eyes (and even if it's not becoming a new person or whatever, it's like him finally gaining courage to face the world or smth) and Cami, who always has her eyes covered, and added to that she gives a mysterious vibe to both the other characters and the audience. Who later, when we get to know her in her song, we can finally see her "true" self, and with that, her eyes. And when her "shadow eyes" appear, we can figure out that she has some struggles too (idk it's been a while since my last rewatch). (There are other minor examples, like the introduction of Fred and owynn, or when Bonnie decides to take his glasses off, but I don't want to drag this too long :p)

Because of this I wonder why it is that the series is too strict about meg's eye. The one time her eye shows up (not counting that one image of her as a kid and the bleeding eye) is in a music video (important bc only the audience sees this). This was kinda funny to me (I think ever since I saw it from the first time but ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯) bc in "no más" the song that is really about her overcoming her inner conflicts and whatnot her eye is never visible, (only at the start her bang is lifted but her eyes are closed so it doesn't count). And even after that, she doesn't have any changes in her looks. She keeps the same old hairstyle and keeps covering her eye. Even in zer0, she still has her bang, though the hairdo change is pretty cute imo, but I keep my point, WHY IS THE EYE ALWAYS COVERED???

The reason is never explicitly said, though, it's safe to assume that it has to do with her Big Past Trauma, either in a literal way (eye damaged or draws too much attention, so it's better to keep covered) or a narrative way (something related to shadows??, maybe???). So, this and the already mentioned obsession of the series to keep her eye hidden* is kinda strange to me bc it makes me wonder why it is so damn important to keep her face hidden? And also, what would need to happen for her to show her face??

*the reason I'm so persistent that is "the series" who keeps her eye hidden is bc meg is not often seen actively trying to hide her eye. But her default characteristic is her bang over like half of her face.

Tbh I don't have anything convincing enough to conclude this. As is mostly a ramble about some silly detail that bothers me a little too much. So feel free to add your thoughts if you want to, I just wanted to ramble a bit about this xd

Have an image of genderbent meg I found on the wiki for the trouble

[dragon-communion]

I need to hear more about Godwyn's dragon age (DA2 if you will lmao) because while I know he TECHNICALLY gets an age, I've always found it very dissatisfying since Fia's thing isn't *really* about restoring death tbh and TWLID simply looks to be a horrific state of existence. Making that be a normalized state does not look to be helping the world in the slightest.

Honestly agreed. I would actually argue that Duskborn isn't Godwyn's ending at all- it's specifically Fia's.

Fia doesn't really have a plan for structural and systemic change. She knows who she is and how she's been affected by the current order- as Tarnished, she identifies pretty closely with the undead, and I can see why. What's the difference between our grace-given resurrection and the way skeletons respawn? We were dead, and will eternally die- likewise deathroot came for the dead, who will eternally die unless "weeded".

On top of that, Fia is functionally a surrogate mother for dead people. It's easy to take that concept and make it bigger. Plus, she was 100% part of a cult and never really unpacked that worldview. The Duskborn ending isn't about Godwyn, it's about Fia's decision to be a mother to the dead on a massive scale. She didn't choose Godwyn because she liked who he was when he was alive, she chose him because he's the first of the dead. If you'll forgive my sense of humor, she 100% objectified that man. And, like many mothers, I think she's potentially blind to the idea that her children suffer by existing.

Duskborn is only about Godwyn inasmuch as it enables his body's primal urge to feed, grow, and flourish unceasing like an eldritch cancer. So. If we're going to construct some kind of actually Godwyn-centric ending, it'd have to take his personhood and desires into account.

The captain of the Ressurecting Godwyn squad is Miquella, but as far as I can tell he's given up despite rigorous effort. Maybe true resurrection or even rebirth aren't really possible. Since souls and runes seem to be entwined, I actually think that the reason Miquella couldn't find him is because the Cursemark of Death snatched his soul and incorporated it or something. There's no soul to call because it's already bound to something physical. Could just be obliterated, of course, but let me dream.

Option 1: we use the Cursemark of Death to restore Godwyn's soul, allying specifically with him instead of Fia. He's still infected with deathroot, but there's also a literal dragon in his head doing its best to fight that, so he could theoretically sustain a state of perpetual chronic blight the way Malenia does. He would also probably hate it as much as she does. Still, he seemed to be a compassionate guy who liked allies better than enemies, so I could see him actively making an effort to figure out if the undead like existence, and then based on that information figuring out a proper response. Highly superior undead rights ending for all my fellow goths out there.

Also, he probably actually knows how to be a king and manage resources/politics/humanitarian work post-Shattering, which the other ending options distinctly lack.

Option 2: we ally with Fortissax and weed Godwyn's deathroot. It would be very hard and suck very much and probably involve body horror worm vines or something. I don't think deathroot itself is conscious- I think it's just mindless growth, the instinct of an empty body, combined with the seed that needs growing: the fragment of Death itself propagating in his flesh. It fits pretty nicely with the themes of grafting and such in the game- even the Elden Ring is supported by a trellis. Regardless, we exorcise Godwyn- maybe it needs Destined Death, the true blackflame rune that the Cursemark spawned from, to properly do the job.

Here's where I get crazy. I think the other way to get Godwyn's soul back would be to burn the Cursemark, and/or his body. When you look at Death in Elden Ring, the faction pretty explicitly called just Death used to process bodies and souls via cremation. It'd be cool if we could bring the Twinbird into this, as a purer and more correct form of Death than the blight. Free him with fire, let him be reborn. Depending on how long that takes, Fortissax can step in as regent since it actually knew him and what he'd want better than anyone else.

Most of the dragons have been hunted to the ends of the earth, but with the warring Shardbearers out of the way and the kingdoms of men and dragons broken across the landscape, the most logical move is to try rebuilding. Fortissax is probably significantly more biased than Godwyn and I could see it setting up dragon lords all over the major centers of civilization. People need leaders, okay, and dragons are naturally leaders, obviously this is the correct idea. We can only hope Godwyn gets himself together fast enough to counterbalance Fortissax's idea of a functional and just empire.

Also Crucible influence comes back into fashion and the Omens are treated like proper citizens, because Godwyn likely had Crucible Knights directly in his service and I can't see why he'd have a problem with them. In a way, Godwyn's age would be a slight reversion to Placidusax's age, just with a lot more tiny squishy people.

Is it a perfect fix? No. Is it better than the other endings? Depends on your opinion of "better", really. It's a step backwards in some ways, a step forward in others. But it's still an ending I could realistically see Godwyn at the head of (with a heavy dose of Fortissax).

[swanpyart]

The thing is, I still disagree with the idea that Shifty is being manipulative though, for a few reasons:

1. I feel like people get the impression that Shifty’s development into her true form is the action of a conscious being fully aware of what she’s doing for selfish reasons, but she isn’t. Before LQ gives her the Vessels, she’s a disconnected network that doesn’t realize she’s a god yet. To her, collecting the Vessels is not “unwillingly assimilating innocent parties who have nothing to do with her” but rather “separate pieces of an entire identity are being returned to me”. The Vessels ARE her, only facets of her entire being that represent different philosophies on the truth of change and death. She’s not using them unwillingly, they are a part of her, and the Vessels were blind to wind up as part of her on purpose. She’s not doing this to gain power, she’s trying to do what LQ is: rediscover what she truly is.

2. Personally, I feel like Shifty’s philosophy doesn’t gel with some people because she’s looking at the Vessels from a symbolic standpoint, whereas LQ, the Narrator and the audience are looking at them from a humanistic one. We see the Vessels as individuals who are being stripped of individuality, but Shifty sees them as different stages of her development, because they ARE her. This is why it feels like she’s dismissing them, because she treats them as stages of her own personal growth rather than individuals seperate from her. That doesn’t make her wrong or manipulative.

3. This I personally disagree with, as I don’t think she’s being hypocritical at all. I don’t think she’s trying to use our past feelings to justify herself, but the SYMBOLISM of what it means for the LQ and her to create that relationship for why they need to escape into godhood. If anything, much of what she says pulls away from the personal feelings of the experience and focus on what each Princess represents. When she describes the Damsel, she doesn’t say “look at how in love we were!” Because she’s aware that it wasn’t a sincere relationship, but she instead points out that LQ and Damsel were able to escape because they worked together. She’s not drawing on the impulsive desire for romance like the Smitten, she’s referring to it like it was a demonstration of their relationship with death and change. Does this make her detached from humanistic perspectives, and is the main reason she isn’t very convinced by OUR arguments? Yes. Is she being manipulative? Honestly, also yes, but unintentionally, because her very nature means the conversation is always going to be dismissive of the humanistic perspective, because it is one she chiefly lacks. Her and LQ are opposites, so while she has all these different ideas, he has the one she explicitly does not.

4. Also, I can understand the point here, but I also disagree. Something that was true at age eight CAN be true at age twenty; plenty of ideas persist for years, and lessons can last forever. Shifty doesn’t really ever say, “if you loved me at this point in time, you should love me now,”: heck, the more I think about it, I don’t even think Shifty ever really brings up the idea of “love” explicitly unless you do first. She’s not trying to guilt trip you because she doesn’t think you should feel guilty about ANYTHING you’ve done, and she’s using actual philosophical examples from past experiences to argue her points. Plenty of the Vessels have awful relationships with us, and Shifty still uses those to point out the strengths of both her and the LQ. That’s not her trying to sugarcoat past troubles, it’s her pointing out that their worst moments do not have to define them.

(I also feel like saying that she’s trying to use our feelings for her to convince us of her perspective kind of glosses over the fact that, if she loses the argument, she dies. I’d probably yap someone’s ear off if it bought me more time, tbh.)

Honestly, I feel like neither Shifty or LQ are wrong for how they feel, because one is a being of death and change insistent on the idea that these things are necessary for the universe to continue marching forward, while the other is a being of stagnation convinced it was Some Guy and forced to live through a mortal perspective. This is why the game doesn’t shame you for disagreeing with Shifty, or killing the Princess, or running away with her.

Of course, you don’t gotta like Shifty or even agree with her, but as a certified Shifty stan I had to say something lol

(about your thing with relating to shifty)

im more upset that she uses the vessels against LQ while also dismissing them as important viewpoints and perspectives. in my eyes she is just cherrypicking the parts of those lives that she finds meaningful while ignoring how they were real people that had fears and lives.

and yeah a little bit of taking them from their happy endings to be combined into something they never asked for.. she says they are gifts from lq but its not like he ever chose to give them to her.

(i know you said youre okay to debate but im honestly Terrible at it and i just wanted to share my view because i do have my reasons for preferring the princess(es) over shifty)

Ok. Sorry it took me a day to respond. I’ve been putting my thoughts together on this before i write back

a) not gonna argue there. shifty is manipulative and uses the experiences that she's had with us to try to convince, guiltrip, strong-arm, or really use any form of persuasion to get us to leave with her.

HOWEVER. I do not think that she as a whole ignores that they were real people that had fears and lives. Vessels, hearts, eulogies- shifty speaks to us of the identity of each and every princess as she cradles them in her embrace. She is not ignoring 'their' experiences because they are hers as well, because each and every one of those princesses is her, even if they functioned independently for a time. She does ask the Long Quiet to ignore these, but I don't view this as casting aside the aspects of herself less interesting or useful to her, but trying to convince the Long Quiet to look away from these contradictions, and to stay focused on the more compelling cases for escaping together.

So yes. she's a bit of a sophist. but she doesn't ignore the princesses, just ask the long quiet to

b) i mean… i have a lot of thoughts on this. They were always a part of her, they always were her, they just didn’t know it yet. I think all of them were searching for her, they just didn’t know that’s what it was they were searching for. The most aware of this is the spectre- she senses the longing within her, and realizes that she can’t quite explain what it is or why, just that she needs to be somewhere, rather than try to label it as something else, like the other princesses do. At their core, though, all of the princesses know that they need something, and that the slayer is the gateway to it.

Also…happy ending??? I know the game implies that they might have almost gotten this before being taken away, but let’s think about this for a second. There is no way out of that construct. There are only a hundred feet or so of woods and the cabin. What happy ending awaited them? The player and the princess don’t realize it at the time, but they’re not actually in the real world. They can’t reach the real world. They are trapped there until either a reset happens or they starve or kill each other or something along those lines. None of the princesses can actually escape without reuniting with shifty and rejoining the world. They’re just as trapped in the woods as they are in the cabin. If anything, shifty was actually rescuing them.

[m0ssxz0mbie]

my thoughts on stranger things season 4, volumes 1 & 2

(there will be spoilers)

so, lets start of with my thoughts in basic form:

i hate this show yet love it at the same time.

lets first start with the positives.

Eddie; what more needs to be said? we love him. iconic. he was the best thing to happen in that season. Dad Eddie, Mom Steve, Son Dustin.

Steve: we always love Steve. he IS the mom. his growth, character development over the seasons. he’s our boi.

Max and Lucas; they are cute, they are my comfort heteros. i like how soft Lucas is for Max. they were cute.

Argyle; he is no thoughts only vibes. he is so valid. we needed him for how much angst there was.

Murray; weird uncle, but we love him. iconic as always.

now, the negatives.

the angst; what more needs to be said?

the queer representation? lacking. i was hoping it would be confirmed, like explicitly said that Will is gay, but that never happened. it was made to seem like him having a crush was a big deal, but if homophobic people cant tell its gay… you know that’s not representation. It would’ve been nice if he came out to Jonathan, which would be the rekindling of what once was their close relationship, but nO.

Then there was Robin. i feel like giving Vicky a boyfriend wasn’t needed cause in the end they were kinda fine? cause it made no sense in the middle of everything to add that extra angst for Robin, it was really out of place. and its also like,, why isn’t Vicky gay? it would’ve been so nice to see them get together and explore their relationship, the struggles and hardships, especially when Robin most likely wouldn’t tell her about the upside down, and having to keep that a secret. And also, if Robin gets a gf at the end of the serious that’s not real representation and just lazy writing.

Eddie’s death; WTF. bro he would’ve been such a cool character to the crew and i’m OFFENDED that the other potentially gay character was killed off. also he was just a good character. period.

Steve and Nancy’s relationship. Now, this isn’t just cause i want Steve to date Eddie- idk it just didn’t make sense to me. like sure he’s a changed person, and Nancy hasn’t seen Jonathan for a while,, but as soon as you have like,, the second issue in your relationship you think of leaving him??? for your ex??? and then when Jonathan asks if they good, SHE LIES. LIKE BITCH BE UPFRONT. now, yes Jonathan lied about his collage letter, and he should’ve also told her the truth, but lying about not getting accepted into a college i think isn’t as worse as telling your partner you still love them… when you clearly don’t. i feel like the tear in their relationship was just unnecessary angst again, i feel like Nancy and Jonathan are smarter than that to lie about those things.

Jason and his cunts; I HATE THEM. white men always gotta be ruining everything. i hate Jason so much. i still don’t know if that’s his actual name still, cause i wasn’t bothered to remember it.

tbh there is probably more, but this, along with other things thats happened yesterday have fucked me mentally.

am i still hoping for byler? yes. because its the LEAST they can do for their QUEERBAITING SHIT SHOW OF CHARACTERS AND REPRESENTATIONS.

i am a mess. fuck stranger things. fuck it.

[dog-teeth]

is there anything you wish you had known before starting T? are there any effects that you dislike? sorry if this is too personal, i'm just trying to make sure i'm making a good decision. i'm agender but i want to present more masc but i'm scared that i'll end up hating the effects of T even though there are some things that i really really want from it. also, i love your art!

no worries im honestly fine with talking about almost all transition/gender related stuff! im gonna talk (p non-explicitly) about sex and body stuff so i’ll put this under the cut

there aren’t any effects i dislike. when i started there were things that i was very nervous for because i thought i would hate them but ended up loving them. i prefer almost everything i experience on hrt, or i don’t care about it, so for example i LOVE my voice now & i love the way T makes me feel emotionally (both physiologically and psychologically), but i don’t care about having facial hair because i always shave it but it’s not that much of a hassle and sometimes stubble is cute. i don’t care for the body hair either bc i was already basically as hairy as a cis man pre-T, i even liked my old leg hair better because the texture was less coarse. the only thing i like better not on T is sexual sensations, but honestly i dont have sex so it doesn’t matter lol. i was v scared for bottom growth and was certain i would hate it but it actually rules i love it (i don’t love that i need like three times as much lube now tho cuz ur ability to naturally lubricate goes way down) also this was one of the most uncomfortable changes at first cuz it makes the clit very tender and sensitive and it will rub against your underwear and be really uncomfy with friction, so make sure u have soft underwear and loose pants. sorry for talking about my genitalia but tbh there is nowhere near enough information about trans bodies and its one of the least discussed aspects of hrt.

however, i was not always this content with taking T! it was a rocky start! there’s nothing that bothers me now, but when i was first starting, a lot bothered me. i was SO sweaty for NO reason, my voice HONKED like a third of the time i opened my mouth, i was VERY ANGRY very quickly, and i was so so hungry!!! snacking forever!! all of these things mellowed out over the first few months, i’m back to not sweating very much and being able to speak like a human person and my anger is actually significantly more manageable than it was pre-T because it comes and goes easily which means i no longer fester deep frustration and anger all the time. i think my appetite leveled out but it’s still higher than before, i gained a couple pounds but it wasn’t a lot.

i don’t want to pressure or sway anyones decision to take hrt, but i would say that your body and mind are so very capable of adapting to new things & even if you end up not liking some parts of hrt you will be able to deal with them and move on, and most of the things that are nerve-wracking end up being fine. its super super scary to try taking hrt since so much is permanent changes to your body. but you can always take a low dose to make the changes happen slower, and like i said you get used to things way easier than you think you will.

i was really really really scared and uncertain when i started T, but i’m so glad i made the jump to do it! i could never have imagined how much it would improve my life! there were so many things i was terrified of - doing irreparable “damage” to my body, regretting it, being read as male, certain specific physical effects, etc. i also didn’t know anybody irl who took T, just my beautiful lovely trans woman friend who started E years ago while we were friends, so seeing her go through the process inspired me a lot. we r both so sexy now like we were sexy before but honestly hrt has made us unstoppable & i love it for us. i definitely couldn’t have done it without her support. i’m getting off track, my point was that i didn’t know anybody on T so i couldn’t see firsthand what it was like, i was basically my own experiment, and it was so scary. but eventually i reached the mindset of “i’m so fucking miserable and something needs to change and i’m not 100% certain it’s this but i need to try because i can’t spend the rest of my life wondering about it and if i do end up hating it i’ll just fucking deal with it from there” i would def recommend being more certain than i was but i do think theres a lot about hrt you just wont know how youll react to until it happens. above all my fears, i just wanted it, and all my fears were very surface-level (what if i hate my body [i already hate my body] what if i hate how people percieve me [i already hate how people percieve me] what if it makes me miserable [i’m already miserable] what if i regret taking it [what if i regret not taking it or i miss out on an opportunity to be happy] )

i cant tell you if T is the right choice for you, but i can tell you that i also had fears and uncertainties before starting, and that if you do end up hating it you’ll be able to adapt.

[roguestarsailor]

You know what since we’re still in quarantine and i have nothing else better to do, i need to obsess over ACOTAR. I don't like a court of frost and starlight. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why I didn't like it. I aggressively read the book in maybe a day and I closed it feeling frustrated and annoyed. My version had A Court of Silver Flames preview so that definitely contributed to my annoyance greatly.

It's because it felt too perfect. Everything that had happened -- after the entire war was fought and won, they just go back to their normal lives? Yes there were hiccups and yes there were still aspects that made every IC character feel like their problems aren’t solved yet...but it didnt feel right. yes i enjoyed the snowball fight between the bat boys, feyre + rhys sexy time, and those little comfort moments too, the slice of life type things and seeing feyre accomplishing her goals and how hopeful the future seems BUT its too fast. the good parts of the book did not offset the bad parts of it.

Feyre literally accomplished pretty much every single goal she made back in ACOMAF just like that?? within a span of what a few months? a year?? She really came back from an entire war -- probably the first war of many since she's immortal and just like that, after her 21st birthday: she gets a whole entire estate, wants to start poppin babies, opens her art studio and starts teaching kids and then acting like she can rule an entire court?? the timeline is sooo short esp since its been brought up over and over again how everyone is literally 500 years old and have a super “messy” history and their changes seems to come super dupe slowly. but feyre, who has only lived 0.000000002% of her fae life, is out here thriving just fine???

the war devastated thousands of illyrian soldiers where its changing the politics of the illyrains and the faes, all of whom feyre has responsibilities over too as high lady. the mortal queens are still at large who left the humans on prythian to die which is why feyre was willing to go to war in the first place! what about the rest of hybern and their land and residents?? they wanted to enslave humans for social and economical reasons! then what about integrating humans w deep hatred and fear with deeply prejudice fae??? there’s also spring and summer court who are literally in ruins. thats literally so much. so idk how feyre is just chillin???? she gonna let rhys do all the hard work???

like feyre sit down. u should not be having a baby. esp since it took u literally a 700 pages to heal from those 3 months UTM. ur telling me shes gonna whole heartedly bring in a newborn in a war devastated world, with civil unrest (illyrains, other courts), with the messiness of human and fae integration, with trauma u and rhys will have to continue to overcome esp after THIS war??? even helping ur sisters w their traumas??

this is a personal opinion on this subject (and maybe my thoughts will change on this later on; opened to other thoughts) but when i read the part about how that weaver/seamstress artist who made that dark quilt that feyre loved talked about how her mate of 300 years didn’t come back from the war and her biggest regret was that she didnt have a kid to remember him by i just thought ur kid isn’t some sort of memorabilia. don’t have a kid to keep the memory of ur mate alive; have a kid cuz u want a kid purely for the sake of having a kid. ur memories and photos and shit will keep their memory alive but its not having a kid. some primitive need to keep the genes alive maybe?? but the way it was phrased and then in turn how feyre was like oh i need  a baby pronto cuz rhys might die in the next war and regret not having a kid with him didn’t sit right with me. also the other couple were together for +300 years and have a rich life together, while shes been with rhys for literally two years THATS NOTHING IN FAE YEARS. thats still the honeymoon phase and also ur problems arent even close to being over!!!

everyone was shitty to nesta. in ACOMAF, we saw how much the IC went through and still did all they could to help feyre. what made them not think nesta deserve the same welcome? nesta is mean as a defense but did no one try to figure out what would help (amren got close but shes so under developed)??? feyre knows nesta feels too much and yet she continued to be shitty. continued to flaunt her wealth, her status, her familiarity/borderline know-it-all attitude about fae/night court, her ~estate~. forcing nest to the solstice party when nesta was literally like i dont belong, im looking at everyone through a window type of thing; the fire cracking triggering her, etc. what kind of power play was that when she made nesta come to her estate, where nesta could SEE how ~homey~ and how suscessful feyre is and fully see all the lovely paintings of everyone feyre loves that explicitly exclude her to tell her to fuck off to a war camp?? bro???? cas was a dick too and elaine was rude. i think a lot of his actions were meant to make her angry since anger keeps u fighting (as was the method of rhys for feyre in ACOMAF) but what he said was stupidly shitty and i demand that he apologize properly. elaine could have done more to help her sister but whatever. mor was definitely an ass too (and im upset for how little her character growth is). 

Lucein. that man can’t catch a break tbh. im happy that hes w the band of exiles cuz he is whole heartedly accepted there. feyre was definitely an asshole to him even tho he helped as much as he could throughout the books. he tries so hard w elaine as well and it did hit my heart a bit when she was like gloves to work in my garden?? no ?? i use my bare hands see oNly aZiReL sEeS mE fOr WhO i Am. and at the same feyre is like flaunting her mate status to lucein which is mean as shit. its like this man can’t find love in prythain. then tamlin sending him his box of his things??? thats for sure brutral. tam was literally his partner through it all; savior of sorts even. no love from IC, no love from elaine, no love from feyre, no love from tamlin, no love from autumn court rejected everywhere! also HIS TRUE FATHER?? HEllo??? 

then on tamlin. i pity the guy! was i suppose to feel that way??? it felt like he is allowed to get a redemption arc and maybe i’ll even root for a redemption arc??? i was absolutely excited for freysand in ACOMAF but after ACOFAS, im like tamlin is....not completely bad??? his relationship w feyre was bad and the controlling parts were very much a no-no. i dont truly understand the dynamics of an abusive relationship but i can understand that it can be insidious and its the little things that hurt the victim. and i felt  feyre through ACOMAF and rooted for her to escape her abuser! but then it felt like i dont think he was doing any of those things out of malice. ill say tamlin is a bad leader and doesn’t know how to run a court outside of what he sees his father do. his understanding on everything is based on the traditions of the past which i think fueled most of the things he did i.e. not telling feyre she was in danger since maybe his mom didn’t do those war planning things. ACOTAR showed how he truly cared/loved and took good care of feyre and her family. he even talked about how he didn’t believe in the enslavement of humans! i think that tam wanted to preserve what he thought was the good (aka feyre + her love of painting) and get back a sense of control that he and his entire court lost while chained to amarantha. but at the same time, i think he truly thought feyre wasn’t safe. he knows rhys can crush minds and knows feyre can’t read/write so when he got that letter telling him shes safe of course hes gonna flip shit and made a deal w the devil (although those temper outbursts were DEFINITIVELY not ok!!!). he also didn’t listen and has sense of he knows best when feyre was not the type of person. but feyre destroyed his entire court. he lost all his sentries who literally went out to die for him during amarantha’s reign. he lost lucien too; his trusted right hand man. his people were cursed for 50 years and then continued to suffer UTM and was in the process of rebuilding too!  but just seeing spring court, WHO BORDERS THE HUMANS, be in ruins where his subjects left him, his people left him and hes all alone in the manson?? that was sooo sad. so im like why does what feyre did not feel satisfactory????? im mad that it didn’t feel right??? maybe there wasn’t a point where feyre talked to tamlin -- like really talked to him esp w her new found voice and power, etc. anyways, i dont hate tamlin and was like oh shit i think feyre fucked up a bit there.

rhys is a dick to nesta. which made me think, if feyre wasn’t his mate would he extend the same love and care to her???  i loved how he tried so hard to make sure feyre was ok. made sure she wasn’t breaking! all of it! but for nesta, he had the audacity to use his high lord voice and be an ass overall. even tho he can see how cas is fucken in love??? even just how he talks to cass feels off too. 

i’ll even go as far as to say because of how terrible ACOFAS was, it created this intense divide within the fandom. i remember reading the first three books and was absolutely 1) rooting for freysand  2) curious about the sister relationship and how it will be mended 3) i definitely didn’t hate nesta nor did i hate elaine either -- but i was adament about them talking it out with feyre for those tough times 4) saw a more realistic and charming healing arc 5) was rooting for feyre to be a stronger voice and grow into herself 6) love the dynamic of the inner circle + feyre

but after ACOFAS, I have this intense need to defend nesta and was super mad at how she was treated after the war and in turn a deep dislike for elaine for both her lack of agency, lack of grit that made all the other characters interesting, and lack of care for her sisters (who showed how much they would risk for her). i dont hate rhys but i was extremely not happy with him and his attitude and behavior. feyre became more arrogant and was acting like how asshole rhysand would act. like her life is perfect now and i was not rooting for her anymore. freysand didn’t feel like they have complimenting qualities that made them interesting in the first place but rather they are merging to become the same person but in a bad way. that mind reading thing was cute in the beginning but it became insufferable since all thoughts were shared so seamlessly it made reading feel weird. 

anyways those are my thoughts on ACOFAS. it was a 1/5 stars for me and im mad those events transpired. reading the other books made me excited to know what was gonna happen and i was truly ready to accept the characters as flawed and nuanced as they are. im not mad about character not liking each other but i am mad that everything felt off. ACOFAS just felt regressive in some parts and forced in other parts. i know not everything ends in a nice tied up bow but this book single handily ruined what i thought about these characters in the worse way possible. this book wasn’t suppose to wrap up all the problems that exists in the other books but it didn’t feel hopeful like i thought it would. it didn’t feel wrapped up and didn’t feel like i should be excited about the next books. theres so many missing pieces i feel that i think need explaining and at the same time, i think it introduced too many problems at once which made it feel like its jumping around everywhere. although im still excited for ACOSF because i love nesta, and nesta deserves so much better and i want to have hope that this bad ending will either make sense later on or it was just a blimp.

[metatexualart]

Digimon Adventure 02 as Queer Allegory

((I usually reserve this blog for occult analysis but I’ll probably be writing about Digimon on here later anyways))

Digimon is really gay, like i don’t know a single straight fan tbh. But I was rewatching season 2 and wow it’s been a while but this season is exceptionally queer. Here were a few notes that stood out to me.

The kids regularly travel between the real and digital world just as (closeted) queer kids feel the tear between their external world and their inner truth. You can also read it as them logging into a safe space, such as an lgbtq chat room or forum, which were peaking in popularity at the time this show aired. But they need to be careful because there might be predators in that chat. (Arukenimon, mummymon, oikawa, and ken)

The 3 new kids manifest really weird fashion when they enter the Digimon world but the original cast doesn’t because they’re already self actualized. This change of clothes almost literally homages the idea of “coming out of the closet”

Normal digivolution doesn’t work, so the kids must discover new ways to digivolve. Digivolution isn’t a major analoge for sex, but it does represent the spiritual and emotional growth of the children, and this new way of being paraelles the lgbtq+ civil rights movement. They do things differently

Not to mention, this new way of digivolution is called Armor digivolution, and most of the cast gets at least 2 armor digivolutions. Because if the nature of armor digivolution, it appears that the Digimon are literally wearing a costume rather than simply transforming their being. There are many queer paraelles to this, including searching for your true identity, code switching, and even drag.

Armor digivolution comes from the armored digi eggs, at least that’s what they’re called in the dub. Eggs being a symbol of the divine feminine, they’re getting in touch with their feminine qualities. (Not to mention the first egg seen has a big bladed phallus protruding from it)

Yolie is a lesbian. That’s not even a stretch, the way she interacts with Mimi the first time they meet is very very gay. The dub has her saying stuff like “I wish Mimi was my big sister” while showing images that imply much more than sibling hood. She’s also the first digidestined to have an opposite gender Digimon partner. For a middle schooler, she’s very butch coded. Especially relative to Sora who was the original tomboy who struggled with traditional gender roles. silphymon is also the only mixed gendered dna digivolution, which sounds heterosexual at first, but it makes silphymon explicitly an androgenous Digimon (Digimon are canonically biologically not sexual but they are inarguably gender coded)

The Digimon emperor (ken) erects a bunch of black towers that prevents digivolution and invokes mind control on the Digimon who have been collared by his black rings. He built a bunch of phallic structures that cock blocks everyone’s good time and to repeat: LITERALLY COLLARS EVERYONE. Most of these paraelles are pretty allegorical and can be interpreted many different ways but this part is almost explicit in its meaning. It screams of BDSM and, even though digivolution isn’t a direct paraelle to sex, chastity play. He’s also the one most overtly living a double life style.

The kids later discover that there are other digidestined kids poping up all over the world. They’re discovering there are more people like them. If you’re queer then you know exactly what I mean.

Blackwargreymon has an entire arc dedicated to his identity crisis, which is pretty one note considering this season is full of identity crisis themes. You could parallel it to the problems of racial discrimination within the lgbtq community, but I probably wouldn’t lol (need to rewatch that arc before I really analysis it)

In conclusion, I always remembered season 2 as the worst season, but rewatching has made me appreciate it more. I totally understand why it’s a fan favorite, especially among bi and trans fans specifically. I also see why furries are really into season 2 too. Every season has anthromorphs out the ass but season 2’s armor digivolutions as fursuits unfortunately, can’t be unseen (especially since it leaves the main cast with both a humanoid form and a much more animalistic form)

Bonus:

Arukenimon and Mummymon are gay icons the same way Jesse and James from Pokémon are fucking fight me over this

[ks-caster]

The 100 Season 7 Episode 4 - Post-Liveblog Recap

Okay, so I liveblogged an episode for the first time - and it turned out to be a nice way to stay focused through the commercial breaks. Might continue to do that for the rest of the season.

But TBH I started doing it just so I could bitch about the CLEAR AND BLATANT LACK OF A SCENE WHERE SANCTUM!KRU REALIZE THAT BELLAMY AND ANOMOLY!KRU ARE MISSING. That was an important scene that the whole fandom, more or less, has been waiting for the entire time for various reasons. 

How do the characters react? Who figures out that something’s wrong first? Does Clarke sense Bellamy’s absence because they have a bond? Does Emori go looking for her space sister to comfort her other space sister only to find her missing? 

(Actually, she does. That’s my headcanon and I’m sticking to it. Might fic later. Accounts for Emori’s complete absence while her bestie Raven is falling apart.)

Edit: here's the fic!

Anyway, back to the episode - whoever was in charge of editing really really dropped the ball. Missing realization scene, poorly ordered Raven and Clarke scenes. The music during the Dev-and-Hope montage was a nice touch but just too loud enough that I really had trouble telling what they were saying - and the pacing would have felt better with just one show of teenage!Hope before we got 20-year-old her. The cut from Orlando agreeing to train Anomaly!Kru to 5 years later was WAY too abrupt for me to get a feel for the character and relationship development that they were trying to shoehorn in in order to create conflict at the end. I got where they were going with everything, but in a I’m-reading-a-newbie-writer’s-fanfic-because-I-love-the-story-concept-and-want-to-support-them kind of way and not in a I’m-watching-a-show-made-by-experienced-professionals-and-paying-for-the-privilege-in-ad-revenue kind of way. Disappointing.

Jumping around here for a bit: I gotta say I’m loving the makeovers this season! Hair and makeup did a great job on bringing back the old Raven without losing the maturity they gave her, giving Murphy and Emori their Gucci Royalty Vibes without losing the feel of their individual styles, and making Hope look like she can’t find quite the balance between feral forest girl and innocent shut-in who can’t bear to take a life (which is accurate to her character, of course). 

And Echo! So I really, really didn’t like her makeovers in seasons 5 and especially 6, because it felt like they were trying too hard to make her look pretty in a 21st Century kind of way. She looked softer, more vulnerable, which really contradicted her character traits - but I thought that might’ve been on purpose, to show a change in her (that she did indeed allow herself to become softer and more vulnerable for her family). And her post-time-skip (not that one. Or that one. The other one. There’s a lot of those. Bah.) look feels like a return to herself; she’s beautiful but in a no-nonsense, don’t-forget-I-can-cut-your-throat kind of way. (Is this because I just really love the butch look on woman and am myself a butch woman? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.)

Side note: Where the hell did they get clippers on Penance? Those haircuts were entirely too even to have been done with scissors. I’ll buy that Gabriel and Orlando shaved their heads and their perfect round cuts were growout, but Hope and Echo? Electric clippers. Like I said I like the looks, but guys, there’s no way.

I liked that I got a better feel for Hope’s character this episode - she’s trying so hard to be like her mom and Aunty O and all the heroes they told her about when she was a child, but the truth is she’s been in one real battle, she froze, and her best and only friend died. And since her only role models were these incredibly strong people who didn’t give up, back down, hesitate, that wouldn’t be an easy thing for her to get over. (Given that Diyoza was pregnant with her for two entire seasons, I’d really like to have more time developing Hope’s character - or even the same amount of screen time but go easier on the timeskips, lol. She keeps having growth/maturity/life experience spurts so it’s hard to keep up with the development that we’re shown.

So, 5 (7? Wasn’t she 22? There’s still 2 years we missed right?) years after watching her friend die, and 5 (7?) years of blaming herself for freezing, she’s put into the same position, and she stabs some lady in the neck. Kid didn’t steal her coping mechanisms! All joking aside thought, the kid basically relived her trauma in real life - honestly her reaction was 100% valid.

I’m sure I’m supposed to be upset by Echo’s choice to kill the remaining gold-head people. But I think the only reason that’s supposed to bother me is that she promised (ish - she was real explicitly clear that she’d do what was necessary to rescue Bellamy and them were the breaks) Orlando that she wouldn’t. I think I’m supposed to care about the fractured relationship between AnomalyKru and Orlando.

I don’t. I don’t know if it’s the super-fast timeskip (it was weird enough to see the changed dynamics in SpaceKru when I deeply knew all of the characters AND we got time to see the changes play out) or the fact that I didn’t really get to know Orlando in a way that made me super sympathetic to him (I’ll get to that in a minute) or if it’s just that he was smart enough to know he was being played from the start (see Navy SEAL mom didn’t teach you how to swim and Echo again being 100% clear that killing people might still happen) and walked right in anyway. Either way, his betrayal wasn’t enough of a motivator for me as an audience member to be bothered about how things ended between him and AnomalyKru. I kind of shrugged and moved on.

More on Orlando... So The 100 has had several plotlines that center around people doing dangerous, terrible and downright ridiculous things because of their religions; see the kidnapping and conclave of freaking children killing each other to become commander, Gaia’s whole character arc + starting a new religion around Octavia/WonKru betraying that religion to go back to their old one centering on Madi, WHO IS GODDAMN TWELVE, all of Sanctum and season 6, the Sanctum conflict here in season 7, and now this goddamn Bardo Disciple shite.

Now I’m not dishing on real life religion or religious people - I happen to have one of those myself - but the plot of some-people-take-their-religion-way-too-far-drink-the-koolaid-and-hurt-people-around-them has been done and done and done on this show. And now here we have Orlando, who was a high-ranking member of his religion, drank the koolaid, cast out, still a true believer and therefore dangerous because his perspective is fundamentally skewed. I don’t know anything about this religion but that it’s militarized (they can arrest people) and think that sentencing people to 10 years of madness-inducing Geneva Convention violations and then bringing them back to their families two days later is okay. I don’t really want to know anything else, because I’m worried that the show is going to work hard on making this religion scarier than the Sanctum one (needing to one-up themselves with the big bad, of course) which just keeps making the commander religion look humane in comparison. 

Which it wasn’t. But I digress.

So Orlando was kinda’ cool, but getting in too deep with a fundamentalist who was complicit in his own abuse by said religion (and so who knows what he thought was okay to do to other people) and then it ended badly.

Cue shocked Pikachu.

Moving on. Clarke. Baby. After the harrowing experience of the radiation destroying the radio so you couldn’t say goodbye to your mom when you were supposed to go to space, then missing your time window and getting left behind on Earth, and the radio broke them too so you couldn’t even be sure your friends would leave in time until they blasted off, and then calling Bellamy every day when you knew he couldn’t hear you, and ALL OF THE FREAKING LAST SEASON WHERE YOU WERE POSSESSED AND WOULD HAVE GIVEN ANYTHING TO LET YOUR FRIENDS AND DAUGHTER KNOW BOTH THAT THAT WASN’T YOU AND THEN LATER THAT YOU WERE ALIVE and THEN your MOTHER getting possessed and you had to check to see if it was really her and it WASN’T. Clarke. 

After all that terrifying inability to communicate.

You leave Gaia behind to warn everyone of the danger. INSTEAD OF CALLING THEM ON A PIECE OF HANDY TECHNOLOGY OR TAKING A QUICK TRIP BACK YOURSELF. TO TELL YOUR DAUGHTER WHERE YOU WERE GOING. YOU DON’T THINK THAT MAYBE MAKING EXTRA SURE THAT EVERYTHING GETS COMMUNICATED CLEARLY AND IMMEDIATELY MIGHT BE A PRIORITY.

And then Gaia gets kidnapped. Honestly, cool! Not ‘cause I’m rooting for Gaia to be hurt (I don’t care all that much about her tbh) but I LOVE Indra and I want her to have more screen time and development this season - and or the chance to cut people up with her sword - and kidnapping her daughter seems like a great way to facilitate that.

*Looks at list* Oh, right, Jordan. I forgot you were here. Honestly I can’t figure out what the fuck is going on with you, and since I’ve had a whole season of not connecting with you because the story was too busy focusing on external plot... I don’t see that changing any time soon buddy. Sorry.

Oh and that FrEaKiNg PrOmO! 

My garbage boy! My chaos gremlin! My excellent-at-impersonating-a-deity-even-if-it-goes-against-his-programming! What are they doing?! 

I’m torn between NO DON’T HURT HIM and YES HURT HIM BECAUSE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND BRAVERY BWAHAHAHA. At least I know there’ll be Murphy and hopefully Memori content in the next episode. That’s the good shit. It’s the only thing left about this show that still feels “pure,” not that I didn’t know what sort of darkness I was signing up for when I started but just because he and Emori are sort of the last light in the darkness, and it’s nice to get a break periodically.

[necer0s]

So I’m catching up on Miraculous Ladybug at long last (I finished season one when it was out and never got around to watching later episodes when they came out) and I thought I’d just put all my reactions in one post so as not to go overboard.  

So first off, I really like that they opened the season with the Gabriel=Hawkmoth reveal?  Obviously it wasn’t much of a reveal at that point, but it’s good that they didn’t waste any time.  And they immediately set us up for future speculation by revealing that Nathalie knows about Hawkmoth at the same time-- also good!  Plus, I like how GabeMoth deceived our heroes about his identity.  The conclusion they reached about “he was akumatized so he can’t be Hawkmoth” seems a little shaky to me (how do they know that’s not just another application of his power-granting powers?) but the deception was well-crafted and well-acted, and I can absolutely see how it would fool two children who desperately want to believe the best of him.  

Despair Bear:  I like seeing Chloe’s softer side (one-dimensional bullies bore me) but I love seeing Hawkmoth literally go “ah yes, people in close proximity to Chloe Bourgeois, the perfect opportunity to akumatize someone.”  

Riposte:  God, Ladrien is my favorite dynamic in the love square.  They’re both with the person they like… but they don’t want to act like they’re interested in that person in their current form… how terrible!  

I also like the “akuma alert” that shows up in this episode.  Paris has gotten really used to this, huh?  (I guess it’s not surprising, since there’s literally never any lasting damage.)  

I have to say, I really prefer these episodes that spend most of their time on fighting the villain rather than on the high school drama.  

Also… there are people who ship Ladybug/Kagami, right?  Because Kagami staring at Ladybug when she tells her everything is alright is just… *chef kiss* perfection.  That’s the kind of wonder-filled stare that crushes are built around.  (Of course, as a big fan of poly resolutions to love triangles, I’m hoping that Luka will have a similar moment with Adrien so I can build a proper shipping tesseract.)

Befana:  I haven’t actually started watching the episode yet as I write this, but seeing the blurb say that Marinette’s grandma gets akumatized is giving me Thoughts about Paris’s culture and society in the wake of the whole akumatization thing.  Like, insulting someone or being overly cruel to them is just actively dumb, obviously-- you might not suffer permanent harm, but the next couple hours probably won’t be pleasant for you if Hawkmoth is paying attention.  In a non-kid’s-show universe, anyone with common sense would be unusually concerned about hurting people’s feelings at all times.  There’s a lot of “utopia-looking dystopia” potential in something like that....  (Of course, as I watch the episode and it transpires that Grandma is deeply out of touch with current Paris, this seems oddly prophetic.  Kagami was from out of town as well… hmmm….)

  Also: Marinette’s parents fistbumping is Super Cute and I love it.  

Random thought while watching:  Do you think one of the reasons people always run away from Akumas is to give Ladybug and Cat Noir plausible deniability?  

Another aside:  It’s always kind of weird when the dub is Really Obvious about having changed something.  They really think we can’t recognize that the “fairies” here are supposed to be angels?  

My new favorite part of this episode:  Befana making Hawkmoth say “please”.  God, I love her.

Tangent:  I wish they would do more with the purified butterflies.  If they can’t follow them back to Hawkmoth, is it at least possible that they could destroy them?  Hawkmoth seems to have a limited number of them.  Maybe normal damage wouldn’t do anything, but if Cataclysm happens to have not been used yet in the fight, surely that would be enough to destroy the butterfly?  If that became a thing, it would add two interesting new elements to every fight:  a slow countdown to Hawkmoth eventually becoming powerless, and a struggle for Cat Noir to not have to use his power.  

Robostus:  ...The technology level in this is kind of weird.  Not super weird, given how recently this was made, but at least a little weird.  

I really like this akuma?  He’s asking questions of Hawkmoth, unlike most people.  And his tech-control may be the most powerful akuma we’ve ever seen. 

And he’s the first akuma to betray Hawkmoth!  Damn, I love this little guy.  I wonder if this is why Hawkmoth usually hands out relatively weak powers?

Glaciator:  I hate episodes where Marinette is the cause for someone’s akumatization.  I mean, it’s good to have flawed heroes and all, but it’s just so awkward to watch.  Though I do like that she immediately recognized that she was cruel and felt bad about it, instead of needing a hamfisted moral.

I know I said before that Ladrien was my favorite dynamic, but Marichat is pretty great too.  Removing the pressure of the crush from both sides gives us a great chance to see how they work as friends.

Sapotis:  Random thought:  What does Hawkmoth do with his cane when he’s using both hands to infuse a butterfly?  Does it just stand on its own?

Here’s another akuma that I really like.  Multiplying powers are perfect for overwhelming the heroes and for protecting the core object.  “When they eat” is a decent limitation to make it possible for them to eventually be defeated, too.

I like that handing out the Fox Miraculous wasn’t an easy choice.  It’s kind of a big deal!  I do think that it’s kind of a weird choice, though-- why should Marinette particularly think that illusions will be helpful in dealing with this?  (For that matter, what makes Fox Illusions important enough to be one of the five central Miraculouses?  The Butterfly makes sense-- handing powers out to other people is a huge power-- but illusions just don’t seem to measure up against stuff like the Rabbit’s time travel.  I have to think that the Fox has more powers to unlock, just like the Ladybug and the Cat.)

Huh, Alya detransformed faster than Marinette even though she had spent less time transformed and used her power later.  That seems to suggest that practice extends how long they can use their powers…  Which makes sense, given Hawkmoth’s ability relative to theirs.  That’s probably why his powers (and Fluff’s, later in the series) are so much stronger, as well… it’s just that it’s hard to judge the strength of most of the powers we’ve seen so far.

Gorizilla:  Hey, Gabriel Agreste?  Do me a favor and DIE HORRIBLY.

Captain Hardrock:  ...So, is Luka being written as autistic-coded?  It seems like he can communicate more easily through music, which (while I’m not entirely sure if that’s a real way autism can manifest) is definitely a way it gets written in some stories.  

Alya: “Some of us are still chained up here, could you stop flirting for one second?”  (I love her so much)

Okay, I’m not a musician, but can Adrien and Gabriel just… play a solo piece as a duet?  Don’t you need a song written for that purpose?

Everyone already knows that Adrien and Luka had just as much a meet-cute as Luka and Marinette did, right?  Good, good.  The Ship Tesseract is a go.

Frightningale:  Marinette is very cute when she gets excited about her idols.

Tikki explicitly and casually saying that she’s proud of Marinette is A+, very excellent.

Plagg: “That costume is what you really wanted deep down, isn’t it?”  What.  WHAT???  So… Miraculous costumes are shaped by the desires of their holders?  I love it.  I love it!  That opens such a delightful future opportunity for showcasing character growth, it’s perfect.

Adrien shows up dressed as Cat Noir:  Marinette.exe has stopped working.

...I really wish they would take this episode as a chance to explicitly say that Miraculous Magic helps protect their identities.  That really needs to be canonized if people are going to stop looking like morons.

Syren:  Wow, we’re jumping right into this akuma.  Very promising for my enjoyment of the episode!  And a delightfully interesting akuma, too-- I’m a big fan of terrain control as a power.

New transformation sequence!  New powers!  I love this whole episode.

And Adrien getting to meet Master Fu is also Very Good.  He deserves it.

Zombizou: Another excellent episode.  I love this Akuma’s power… all the cute of a romance with all the horror of zombies.  A delightfully unusual combination that could only occur in Miraculous Ladybug.

And some delightful character growth for Chloe, which I love. 

 Frozer:  Okay, Cat Noir grabbing a rose to give to Ladybug is cute and all, but… roses are expensive, you know?  It’s like he just swiped a few dollars out of this guys hand.

Kagami, who ships Marinette/Adrien as much as anyone else in the school:  Change targets, Adrien.  Adrien:  *hands her a rose*  Kagami:  Wrong target!

...Yeah, Adrien does not have a lot of good options for love advice around him.  But wow, going to Marinette is hands-down the cruelest and dumbest thing he could do.  

God, I love Marinette’s friends.  They have their own personal fandom going on here, don’t they?

Aaaww, Gorilla Bodyguard is nice.  It’s a shame that he never talks, honestly.

You know, I’m really trying to ship this poly quartet, but it just isn’t doing much for me tbh.

I do like the different forms (and the different transformation sequences) but I have to wonder what the rest of them do.  Surely they can’t all be for dealing with different kinds of environments? There just aren’t that many environments that need magical assistance to deal with.  Underwater, on ice… I can imagine flight, fire resistance, and maybe digging, but that only gets us to five out of seven potions.  It’s hard to think of two more environment adaptations that wouldn’t be covered by the first five.  There must be at least one that has a different kind of power.

Remember how I really enjoy episodes that spend a lot of time with the akuma?  That goes in reverse for episodes that spend a lot of time on stalling relationship drama.  If anyone was actually making any kind of progress, that would be one thing, but as it is…

Style Queen:  Tikki playing Marinette’s crush on Adrien against her crippling insecurity is just hilarious to me.  I don’t know why.

...I really hope this interview isn’t going out live.  Poor Chloe.  She doesn’t deserve that.

Tikki:  *encourages Marinette in every possible way when she’s anxious*  Plagg:  You feel awkward?  It’s because you look dumb.  

How the heck did all of Marinette’s classmates and family get seats in this highly prestigious fashion show?  Front-row seats, no less?  (I could understand a couple tickets for close family and friends, but this is a little excessive.)

Wow, Nathalie is really good at this “accidental” infuriation thing.  

(Side note:  I really like the touch of having Chloe so thoroughly imitate her mother as to even walk like her.  It serves a delightful dual narrative purpose of both explaining much of Chloe’s cruelty and of making Audrey’s cruelty to her daughter even more heartbreaking.)

Okay, again:  How did Nino get the gig of doing music for this highly prestigious fashion show?  Like, did Adrien cash in every favor he had with his father?  And why are all the other rows of the audience still empty?  I normally don’t notice or care about animation shortcuts, but this is all very glaring.

...God, Chloe wants to please her mother so much she’ll even help her akumatized self.  That’s just depressing.

Plaggaclysm is an absolute goddamn delight.  (And, you know, utterly terrifying.)  It makes me wonder what Tikki’s unrestrained power looks like.

Okay, as someone who’s been spoilered a lot, I always wondered how Marinette managed to lose a Miraculous so badly that it ended up in Chloe’s hands, but this is actually a really good explanation-- she thought that the magic clean-up of Miraculous Ladybug would have sent it back.  Which makes sense!  That’s the kind of put-things-back-where-they-were that we might often see from a Miraculous Ladybug.  It’s not great that she just assumed that without checking, but it’s not unreasonable either.

Troublemaker:  ...So, is this out of order or something?  Or is there a deliberate gap between the two Queen episodes?

You know, it’s hard not to wonder sometimes why Hawkmoth keeps trying all these useless-seeming akumas all the time, but Troublemaker does a pretty good job stating their case-- sometimes you just get exactly the right circumstances for victory, even with a power that wouldn’t do much good anywhere else.  Intangibility wouldn’t be impressive outdoors or even in the Agreste mansion... but in a cramped Parisian apartment, she’s one of the most successful akumas ever created.

It’s nice that they’re actually showing us some emotional aftermath of an akumatization for once.  You can just feel that shame radiating off of Penny-- that sense of “how could I do that?  What will they think of me?”  It’s a nice thing to address.

You know what I just realized I desperately want?  I want post-reveal shenanigans where Tikki hangs out with Marinette’s other female friends.  They have such a great girl group, and Tikki would be so much fun hanging out with them.

Queen Wasp:  It’s interesting that Gabriel mentions a “promise” between him and Emilie.  That certainly seems to imply more than just him wanting to resurrect her.  I’m starting to see where the “maybe Emilie was evil too” headcanons come from.

Yay, Marinette’s getting what she deserves!  Boo, Chloe doesn’t deserve to have this happen in front of her!  Very mixed feelings.

...But wow, Chloe did not choose a great way to react to that.  I can’t blame her at all, but still…

I wish they’d given more time to the Queen Wasp fight.  I mean, I get that obviously they couldn’t do much since a single strike on her part would defeat them, but such a powerful akuma deserves more attention.

Chloe saying sorry is just… That’s Growth!

Reverser:  I’m enjoying this episode, but the number of people who seem honestly confused about the fact that Marc is an akuma is baffling.  It feels like this really ought to be a Season 1 episode.

This really seems like an episode where they should be handing out other Miraculouses to get some help?  I mean, Alix said it pretty explicitly.  I can imagine a lot of ways that Rena Rouge could help out here, for instance.  

Random thought:  How come Ladybug can capture and purify the akumas anyway?  It doesn’t really seem to fit Tikki’s theme of Creation.  Is it because she’s one of the top two Miraculouses, and therefore has some amount of power over the lesser Miraculous?  That would make sense, I suppose.  And I... guess it sort of counterbalances Plagg’s ability to destroy the Miraculouses.

Anansi:  Adrien excusing his father’s behavior as being “overprotective” is physically painful to me.  

Honestly, Nora has a point.  How are the people of Paris supposed to tell the difference between akumatized people and people in costumes?  (Well, presumably it’s easier to tell the difference in a non-animated world…)

Marinette being a Chaotic Good trickster is my everything.  Almost as much as Alya being all dramatic as she walks out is.

The irony of this ordinary, non-magical fighter saying that Alya, Marinette, Adrien, and Nino are clueless about the dangers of akumas is smothering.  

Is it just me, or does Marinette look unusually worried in this transformation sequence?  I thought they just reused the same thing multiple times, but this definitely isn’t her usual cheery transformation.

I’ve been waiting a long time for Cat Noir to use Cataclysm as a way to protect his Miraculous.  It’s a fairly obvious application of the power, and it’s nice to see that finally happen.

Ladybug:  This Cat empty, YEET!

God, Nino is a terrible liar.  Which puts him in good company in this show…

Malediktator:  Obviously we can’t have Chloe maintaining her positive character development.  Clearly, we need to backtrack that immediately!  /sigh…  I suppose it makes some sense in that she’s spending more time with her mother and learning from her.

I feel bad for the Mayor.  Audrey is too cruel to deal with, and Chloe follows her example.

I saw the “everyone celebrates Chloe leaving” bit coming a mile away, and I still laughed for a solid minute.  Of course, then Adrien has to come along and spoil it with her being his “childhood friend” and “the only person his age he knew for years”, but whatever.

God, I can’t believe the Lucky Charm in this episode.  Can we have more of that, please?  Massive laser gun weapons for the win.

The one thing I can’t stop thinking about is how Cat Noir’s Miraculous is clearly only saved by narrative convenience.  It’s frankly very jarring.

Sandboy:  Some interesting worldbuilding going on here.  Too bad it comes at the cost of Nooroo having to deal with Gabriel “Evil Bitch” Agreste.

Anyway, worldbuilding.  Miraculous holders can apparently control their kwamis!  That’s… awful.

And, as I’ve wondered for a while, it appears that the Miracle Box is in fact magical in and of itself, and not just a spiffy container for the Miraculouses-- it apparently has a kwami pocket dimension.  

Kwamis can’t say their owners’ names, which makes sense.

Nightmare!Adrien is horrifying.  

I’m a little disappointed with the singing kwamis.  That could have been a lot more mystical.

Adrien’s nightmare is… incredibly depressing and disturbing.  Yeesh.

Hawkmoth reverse-tracking the kwamis is hugely dangerous.  I hope Fu moves to a different apartment after this.  (And speaking of Fu, I’m a little disappointed by his nightmare.  I hoped for something a little more revealing.)

Have I told Gabriel Agreste to die in a fire recently?  Just in case… die in a fire, Gabriel Agreste.

Catalyst:  I’ve been looking forward to this one, yes I have…

God, there’s a statue of Adrien’s dead mom right outside his room?  Was his life not awful enough somehow?

Yeesh, Lila.  I probably should have rewatched Volpina at some point so I had a better sense of what’s going on with her, but there’s only so much Lila nonsense I want to deal with.  And apparently she’s lying to both her parents and to the school?  Honestly, why?

Ugh, Marinette lying.  Honestly, I just straight-up skipped past this.  Among my many personal problems with this, I also feel that having everyone say in front of the entire class what they’re doing for Heroes Day is… really weird?  I mean, that would be an unfair way to force children to compare themselves to each other even in a world without akumatizations-- and in this world, it’s an actively dumb thing to do.

Volpina(/Lila) is such an interesting character because she so entirely embraces the power Hawkmoth grants her, and is so willing to help him even when she loses that power.

Catalyst is a fascinating akuma choice.  I don’t think it would work for anyone but Nathalie, and for her it fits perfectly.  And from the very instant she appears, it’s obvious that she may well be the most valuable akuma ever created.

Watching people stare down the akumas is awesome, I have to say.  

I love these Miraculous handing-outs.  Alya once again proves herself the queen of everything.

Mayura:  Ohhhh yes. I’ve really been waiting for this one.

Dark Cupid + Scarlet Moth is a particularly inspired combination.  Honestly, at this end of the episode I can’t possibly imagine what would lead to Hawkmoth never doing this again.

Plagg sharing his cheese may be the most heartwarming moment this series has ever seen.

The Peacock Miraculous is fascinating in oh-so-many ways.  It creates (or maybe summons) creatures from strong emotions with a material focus, just like the Butterfly Miraculous.  What makes those two so different from seemingly every other Miraculous?  Is it something about the way they’re used?  And how was it damaged?  My initial guess is that some of the feathers were destroyed by a Cataclysm for some reason.

...It just occurred to me that Adrien probably thinks that Marinette is stammering and clumsy around lots of people.  (I feel like that’s been addressed in a previous episode, though…)

Having reached the end of the episode, I’m still not sure why they wouldn’t repeat the Catalyst -> Scarlet Moth -> Dark Cupid combo in the future.  As far as I can tell, there’s no downsides to this-- it seems to cost them no more than normal, and even if they can’t get Dark Cupid, the rest of the combo still works.  Why would Gabriel and Nathalie bring back Mayura and not Catalyst?  

Chameleon:  Ugh, Lila.  I honestly just skipped the first third of this episode and read a summary.  Her lying is painful in almost every way.

Fortunately, what she lacks in believability, she makes up in pure willing evil.  Grabbing an akuma and demanding to be akumatized?  That’s how you make a petty villain look dangerous.

(Also, “Oops!  I lied” is a fantastic line.  Slightly funny, dangerously unrepentant… delightful.)

Chameleon’s powers are an interesting twist on Lila’s usual Volpina powers.  They’re clearly weaker, but also more personal, and they allow the possibility of an actual attack with her kiss-- a capability that Volpina lacked.  On the whole, I find myself less impressed with these powers than with Volpina’s (not least thanks to Lila’s less-subtle actions this time around), but it at least opens up some future possibilities.  Still, I think for Lila to be a real threat in the future, she’s going to need to steal the Fox Miraculous.

Sigh… another disobedient akuma making things harder for Hawkmoth.  At this point, it’s less relieving than it is predictable.

Honestly, I really like the idea of Lila?  Marinette and Ladybug having the same dedicated enemy is something that the show otherwise lacks, and her use of lies morally opposes her to Marinette in an interesting way that could be used to explore the moral complications of the secret identity.  It just sucks that she’s so very poorly implemented.

(Side note:  I’m reading the Miraculous wiki of this episode, and it points out that Hawkmoth has tried to akumatize Marinette and gotten someone else twice now, and both times the new person has had kiss-based powers.  I wonder if that might be foreshadowing for what an eventual akumatized Marinette’s powers might look like?)

Backwarder:  Again, I’m skipping the first part and reading a summary.  I’m just… so tired of love square shenanigans.  There’s a reason I shouldn’t binge watch this show…

Hawkmoth in a train bathroom should be funny to me, but I just can’t comprehend that negative emotions are really so rare in Paris that he absolutely can’t miss this opportunity.

Hawkmoth is getting a dangerous amount of information about Fu from Backwarder here.  I’m increasingly starting to think that the first eventual Big Plot Development will be Hawkmoth finding Fu and either controlling him or taking some of the Miraculous or power-up potions from him.  

Really, Gabriel?  You couldn’t even skip your monologue on a public train?

I love that literally everyone who likes Marinette ships her and Adrien.  It’s adorable.

Weredad:  Listen.  Gigantitan was a cute gimmick once, when it was an accident.  And when Scarlet Moth showed up, there wasn’t any particular reason why he shouldn’t be re-akumatized.  But what could possibly possess Gabriel Agreste to repeat the event?  Gigantitan is almost completely incapable of stealing the Miraculous.

Anyway, skipping past the love square stalling nonsense…

Finally, an akuma who can grab the Miraculous when ordered.  

Eh.  I know it’s because I’m just so tired of the love square right now, but this episode did nothing for me.

Skipping Animaestro altogether.  I’ve heard nothing good and the summary looks to back that up.

Bakerix:  This really feels like it was supposed to come before Backwarder.  Is the train they’re unveiling somehow not the one the Agrestes rode in that episode?

You know, normally any plot that involves the words “get them back together again” worries me, but I find I have unusually high hopes for this one.  (Although the lying is not a great start…)

Marinette, you live in a bakery and you don’t tote bags of flour daily?  Pfft.  (Though with how huge her dad is…)

Granpda Dupain is seriously traditional.  They’re really playing that up.  Probably to distract from the otherwise-blatant racism metaphor of him disliking rice flour in the family bread.

Very cute ending!  And see, we can have a nice emotional episode without using the love square!

Silencer:  I debated whether or not to actually watch this, because Lukanette really doesn’t do much for me, but what the hell.

Wow, Bob Roth and XY are the scum of the earth.  

I love the Kitty Section visuals.  Armored death kitties is a flawless concept, without a doubt.

God, I love that Marinette sees this problem and her solution is just to go right to the top.  I feel like being Ladybug has altered her sense of scale.

It’s astonishing that Bob Roth can look at his son’s costume and unironically call Kitty Section an inferior garage band.

I am not thrilled with the way that Luka gets more coherent and talks less about music when he gets angry.  I don’t know why, but I don’t like it.

Huh.  I didn’t think Silencer could be an effective villain with his powers, but cancelling her active powers isn’t a bad move.

Cat Noir’s reaction to Ladybug’s loss of speech is priceless.  But boy, is he bad at charades.

...Shit, they really did make Silencer a scary villain.  Nicely done.

Aww, Lukanette is cute.  It’s too bad it’ll probably never get a fair shake.

Oblivio:  Another one I’ve heard a lot about.  Hell of a way to start the episode, that’s for sure.  

Adrien and Marinette “introducing” themselves is goddamn adorable.  Now this is my kind of love square content.

Ooooh, I love Oblivio’s design.  Super blank and creepy.  

Okay, question:  Is the highlight sight thing magical or not?  (Upon looking it up, it is apparently not.  I think we can all be forgiven for the mistake, given how it always shows up.)

“SuPeR PeNgUiNo”

Worldbuilding-wise, I think the most interesting part of this episode is the fact that two people can be akumatized into one villain.  There’s room for a particularly terrifying villain to be created in the future by combining Hawkmoth and Mayure...

Stormy Weather 2:  I’ve heard a lot of shit about this episode, but I like the start so far?  Let’s see where it goes.

Oh wait shit, is this a clip show?  Yuck.

Did Stormy Weather just summon a God Damn Volcano?  Holy shit.

This is frankly disappointing.  It’s not the worst clip show episode I’ve ever seen, but I wish they’d chosen a different villain to make a reappearance.

Locker Stalker Adrien will never not be funny to me.

Oni-Chan:  UGH, LILA.  Alright, let’s do this.  (Me, two minutes later:  UGH, LILA.)

Is the skylight above Emilie Agreste’s coffin new?  I don’t remember that being there.  It’s weird that they have two separate underground lairs with skylights.  How does no one notice that?

Adrien:  “I don’t have any girlfriend.  Plagg, claws out!”  Plagg:  Noooo there were so many things I wanted to say in response to that!

Huh.  Oni-chan’s powers are a little underwhelming, but very interesting.  And a reasonably interesting solution to fighting her, as well.

This is easily the cutest Adrigami has ever been.  If they were always like this, I would ship them a lot more.

Lila and Gabriel teaming up is honestly fascinating.  Each one of them thinks that they’re using the other, but Gabriel currently has the clear upper hand because he’s the only one who knows about Hawkmoth, which means he can play Lila from two different positions.  But Lila has an advantage of her own in that she doesn’t care whether Gabriel or Hawkmoth is manipulating her, because she’s already getting what she wants out of the bargain-- power and influence.  

Honestly, if it weren’t for the scenes where people inexplicably believe Lila’s more ridiculous lies, I would love her as a villain.

Miraculer:  Yet another episode I’ve been looking forward to!  I do love Chloe development.

Wooow.  That’s a dark scheming side of Nathalie we haven’t seen before.  I like it, but as always happens with Nathalie, I’m left wondering where her commitment to this plan comes from.  

Ah, Marinette.  So savage.  So delightful.

Remember me talking in the last ep about people believing the most ridiculous things from Lila?  Here we go again.

Mayura is using her power surprisingly freely all of a sudden.  I thought the Miraculous was broken and it damaged Nathalie to use it?  Hmm….

Okay, I hate to blame the victim, but for a professional lackey, Sabrina is terrible at figuring out what Chloe would want her to do, and worse at not saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Chloe fighting off Hawkmoth is super badass, I love it.  Only she could have the absolute HBIC confidence needed for something like that.

...Wow, I’m actually kind of starting to ship Sabrina/Chloe.  Or possibly wanting Sabrina to get out of the relationship she’s in with Chloe…

Hawkmoth being the one to tell an akuma not to take a hero’s Miraculous?  That’s new.

Dang, Miraculer is powerful.  It’s almost hard to imagine a stronger akuma.

And Mayura vs. Queen Bee is everything it’s been chalked up to be, of course.  I love it.

Damn, the sheer confidence in “I will always be Queen Bee”.  Magnificent, utterly magnificent.

Timetagger:  Poor Mr. Pigeon.  Constantly transformed by Hawkmoth and equally often getting the stuffing beat out of him by Ladybug and Cat Noir.

Aaaw yeah Bunnix!  Honestly I’ve already seen this episode, but there’s nothing about it I don’t want to watch again.

I really thought that “what if today’s the day we grow up” was going to be a lead-in to Ladybug using her powers twice in one transformation as a sign of growth.  On a second watch, it’s really very disappointing to know that’s not the case.  This episode would have been the perfect opportunity to showcase Ladybug and Cat Noir’s growth and give a visible, power-related symbol of that growth.  Maybe it will serve as foreshadowing for their ability to do that by the end of the season…?  We can only hope.

[ginnyzero]

Getting Your Message Across

In today’s social media driven knowledge and talent economy everyone (supposedly) has a brand and a message that they’re trying to get out there to say “look at me, hire me, buy my things, I’m you!” (Some people are a lot better at it than others.) It didn’t used to be this way or at least it wasn’t as important. For writers, this trying to convey a message through words is something that we have been doing for hundreds of years whether we mean to or not.

And sometimes our messages in our books and stories gets through. And sometimes, the messages that are found in our stories aren’t the messages we thought we put in and that’s okay. Sometimes, we don’t think we have a message because we have a story we want to tell and that’s okay too. The story can be the message, something about that story is important to you even if you can’t verbalize what it is.

It can be okay to not be able to verbalize something. You might not know what you needed to get out of that story until it’s done and you’re finished and you can step back and evaluate and go “yeah, that’s it, that’s what I wanted to say.”

Writers most often come across this conundrum in the parallel problem of expressing emotions. Because emotions are things you feel rather than something you can touch, taste, see, smell or hear. Emotions are bound up in thought and many people don’t know what they are or how to express them properly. They’re ephemeral. And your message can be just as ephemeral.

Messages and emotions have to be worked around and expressed explicitly at times to convey them and have them hit home. Because your message serves absolutely no purpose if no one understands it or even gets that it’s there.

Other people are not in your brain.

Unlike the science fiction and fantasy worlds that I write in and that I love to read, people in our reality tend not to be telepaths or empaths or psychic or mind readers. Especially when it comes to the written word. They don’t know your thought process or that you spent hours of time agonizing over five variations of the same dialogue or how to convey character movement without making the characters appear like they’re fidgeting. (Unless the character is a chronic fidgeter.)

So, you, the writer, are going to have to convey your message in different ways. You’re going to have show it and tell it. (Throw that "show, don’t tell" advice out the window on this one. It’s show and tell time, ladies and gents. Just like back in kindergarten when you brought in that cool action figure.)

Comics are a great medium to study to learn about this. They are a very constrained medium. Many comics use four panels per day or week to get their point across. And there are a lot of different types of comics. There are funny comics. There are dramatic story comics. There are comics that are political and comics that are about life.

A really good comic that I love to read (because it fits my “brand”) is Manly Guys Do Manly Things at thepunchlineismachismo.com by Coelasquid aka Kelly Turnbull (a storyboard artist for Ben10 and all around amazing person tbh. I wish I had her health, seriously.) Those are the first two messages right there, the name of the comic and the website URL. I know instantly that this webcomic is about to revolve around beefy action hero types doing action hero like things.

The main original character is named Commander Rock Lobster Badass for goodness sake. You’ve got Canada Guy running around randomly killing moose. And everyone from Ganondorf to Duke Nukem popping their heads in and making commentary. (Riddick runs the occasional DnD session.) And then you’ve got Jared. And Jared is the everyman with limp noodle arms and a magikarp in this insane world to give a reason for the Commander to translate all this craziness for us to understand.

There are one off funny comics, there are story arcs, and there is the occasional political lampoon commentary, lots of bits about Overwatch, and then there are bits where the Commander explains the philosophy of Marlon Brando and his own version of actually very healthy masculinity. (Round pegs don’t go in square holes and square pegs don’t go in round holes. Do what works for you.) And there are other places where he shows healthy masculinity in being an all around awesome dad and mentor. (Seriously, don’t be Goku standing around screaming for hours.) I love the fact that Commander Badass is in a relationship with Jonesy that he refuses to pin down with labels. Because not all romantic relationships need labels!

And she does this once a week despite holding down a demanding job and breaking her limbs in motorcycle accidents and going off to Wasteland every year and keeping pigeons. (That inspired some adorable velociraptors.) Even her pictures reflect her brand!

And if that’s the type of content you might enjoy, I encourage you to check out Commander Badass. Or go read and analyze your favorite comic(s.) (I also recommend Girls With Slingshots.)

As a writer and a storyteller, you have to show your message and you have to outright tell people your message in your stories and through your stories. And some characters might not be quite as literal as Commander Badass there.

Say your story is based on the message of “Girl, you need that man like a fish needs a bicycle.” (See entertaining Sinfest Comic strip.) So, you’re story is probably going to open up with your female character thinking she needs the male in her life. Her friends and family don’t think so and tell her so and probably try to encourage her to be more independent. “You don’t need him!” “You’re better than that!” But she’s stuck in that thought pattern that she needs a man.

And she’s not going to change until she comes to the realization on her own quite possibly at her lowest point when he’s betrayed her in whatever way is the most important to her. (Or she’s done something that even shocks herself that she’d thought she’d never do.) Then she’s going to believe “Oh, I don’t need that man. “And no doubt, she’s going to think it and she might get angry about it. Now she wants to get free and be independent and she wants it badly. She’s hurt. She’s lashing out. And she may or may not lash out constructively! (Conflict! Angst! Girl Power! Boo Yah!)

Then you have to show you quite possibly kicking this man out of her life. And then doing whatever it is that needs to be done to be more independent and take care of herself. Then, the character is going to have to figure out why emotionally and psychologically she thought she needed that man. (Therapy is good people.) Or else, she’s just going to fall back into the same pattern and not learn anything or grow as a character. (Character growth is the best.) So that when she finds a new man, that man is nice and all and she likes having him around, but she doesn’t need him to fill whatever emotional or psychological need that the previous man was filling.

Give it a fancy title that reflects your message of freedom or breaking chains or independence and call it a day! (Simplistic example is simplistic.)

It’s the age old problem of show versus telling. But in this case you have to show and tell to get the point across. The point being that somewhere in your story that your main character or a character around your main characters in a not preachy way manages to say your message clearly and succinctly.

Because brevity, brevity, brevity.

People don’t come to a story for the message. They come to be entertained and yeah, the message or the theme may resonate with them. They want to see the message in action more than they wanted to be talked at about the message for a good hour or 300 pages. (Look, if I want a moral lecture I’ll go back to church.) If your brand is about romance, the story should focus more on the romance and answering the question of “why can’t they be together right now” than the message of “You don’t need that man, honey.” (Okay, contradictory to an extent, but um, not at the same time. Healthy romances, HEALTHY folks.) If your stories are like mine and are about adventure and explosions with a side of finding your place in the world, then the story should focus on action, explosions and finding your place in that world.

Your message needs to be clear and consistent and even though you as a person might not agree with something that a character is doing, it doesn’t mean that you endorse what that character is doing. You can always show that the character is wrong, that their methods are bad by giving them consequences.

And remember, just because your story has a message, it doesn’t have to be about the message. You can still save the universe and convey that being gay is okay or that racism is wrong or true love can strike twice. Stories are allowed layers.

The key being that if no one at all gets the message you wanted or the opposite message or no message at all when you’ve tried to put one in then you’ve failed as a writer. And that’s not okay.

[stageonmay]

so let’s talk about this wallace cup thing a repost, purely for organization’s sake.

subject of discourse: who should have won: may or dawn?

disclaimer: now i’m gonna go ahead and acknowledge that we as RPers obviously have our biases for our characters. but what i CAN say is that i didn’t warm up to may until WELL after i watched DP and tbh i’ve held this opinion for some time. believe me or not--i’m going to go through this step-by-step.

what i want to do, to make this as simple as possible, is address the most common arguments (and also maybe some off the dash lol) i see for Dawn’s victory and tell you why they’re bologna.

everything under the cut cause it is LONG.

Exhibit A: Their Parents.

it is REALLY easy to say “well dawn’s mom was a coordinator” and bam. we’re done. but i want to challenge you to not... do that. let’s look at may first.

may is the daughter of a gym leader and a ???? housewife i guess. one would assume that she naturally loves training and is damn good at it. but, not only was she not allowed to watch gym battles (which is why she and max were so excited to watch ash’s battle), but she turned out to be literally afraid of pokemon and only left the house to get away from them. she then ends up falling in love with coordinating because she sees that pokemon can be beautiful, graceful, and fun.

now dawn. dawn is the daughter of a top coordinator, and we know nothing about her dad. she looks up to her mother to the extent that she worried a lot about living up to her legacy, but not so much that it overly crippled her. it’s heavily implied that dawn didn’t actually spend much time training with her mom. johanna really emphasizes dawn’s need to learn on her own--we in fact hardly see her give advice even as she’s on her journey. dawn doesn’t break away from the “family tradition” per se, but over the course of her journey she worries less about living up to “mom” and more about being the best “her” she can be.

the important takeaway here is that these stories have a core theme in common: that your parents do not define YOU. and as such, this argument doesn’t really work. it in fact defeats the purpose of their entire arcs, and, even on a technical level it’s pretty flimsy for reasons i pointed out above.

Exhibit B: Glaceon was a brand new evolution.

honestly there’s not much to say here um. charizard beating aerodactyl. ursula with her flareon & vaporeon appeal. Kkngler in the pokemon league. Swellow to win that tournament. Pignite to beat Shamus.

not only is winning via recent evolution a common pokemon trope, but the very concept is that if you understand your pokémon well, you can easily adapt to this change and succeed.

if you need further proof, just consider when the opposite was the case. ash was so used to winning after evolutions that when turtwig evolved, he got overconfident and misused him because he didn’t consider how his body had changed. So in that case a lack of understanding hurt him.

but given that may explicitly wanted a glaceon, i highly doubt she lacked that understanding of what she was getting into. this is just a really flimsy excuse at best.

Exhibit C: Literally any nitpicking about the battle itself.

you guys. the characters aren’t real. the writers decide how the battle goes. the writers make these choices. and if you felt at all upset when ash lost the kalos league? then you understand.

Exhibit D: Dawn needed a win.

ah, yes. my personal favorite. (which is to say I hate hearing this and from this point forward will demand 10 USD from everyone who says it to me.) first, a reminder: may was participating in the wallace cup because she needed a win herself. this was a high-stakes battle for BOTH of them so honestly I’d LOVE to end the counterargument here but I have more.

the thing is, guys, yes. dawn needed a win. but there’s no reason, at all, plot-wise, that that win needed to be against may.

a better thing to do would have been to give her an opportunity to conquer someone like zoey; someone in her realm of rivals, who is a challenge for her, but who could easily bounce back from a loss.

“But ky, what about the wallace cup??? how would you change it?? wouldn’t may still lose?????”

actually, no. we can do one of two things with the wallace cup:

a) push it earlier. maybe even allow more cameos. this could possibly even be the start of dawn’s temporary downfall rather than the end, which would be interesting because she would write off that loss at first. well it WAS may. no big deal. can’t be mad about losing to someone so nice and experienced. and to paraphrase geoff, it would give sort of a parallel. this is what dawn could become. woulda been nice.

b) push it later. let dawn have her win, and put the wallace cup closer to the grand festival. it could be a BIG DEAL around the world because the wallace cup is considered like a “warm up” for all the festivals and one of the LAST opportunities to get a ribbon. competition is FIERCE. only the best make it through. dawn’s loss is far enough away from her past ones that rather than take it hard, she becomes DETERMINED to train up for the grand festival. woulda been nice.

And lastly, (Exhibit E): I want to address the issue of skill/talent.

may simply showed more growth in a shorter period of time than dawn did. that’s a fact. whether dawn had more experience with her mom or not, she still loved pokemon. was around them. had a sense of what she was doing.

but may went from being afraid to even pick her starter to competing in a grand festival on her first try (this included conquering cheating in that season at least twice). she then went on to travel more regions, become more seasoned and no--i don’t want to discredit dawn at ALL. but it says something about your talent and skill to be able to grow so fast, and may should only have kept going up and up. it doesn’t make sense that dawn would have surpassed her having only started her journey.

and like... is it so bad? to let your old character shine? what’s the point of bringing them back if not to celebrate them?

obviously people are still going to disagree with me. but i think it was a HUGE disservice to may’s character for her to lose. like, if they were going to do her wrong, then just. don’t bring her back.

and that wraps up my hopefully-not-too emotional opinion about the wallace cup results, feel free to like, reblog, reply, whatever you like !

[bartsugsy]

This is not a dig but a genuine question. If you now read your meta from late 2016, how much of it would still be ’right’ or valid or something that you would agree on? I mean that so much happened in 2017 and early 2018 that when I now watch scenes from 2016, I see them and the characters and their relationship in different light. I usually agree with your meta, so I am in no way implying that you were wrong but things often look different in hindsight.

i l o v e this, anon - also it forced me to go back through my blog (i literally ended up looking in my ‘long post’ tag lmao)

a lot of my meta from mid - late 2016 was around the fact that aaron and robert were pretty much constantly having issues in their relationship and breaking up. this all sort of boiled down to:- robron are awful at communicating with each other- this needs to come to a head at some point - a lot of this is rooted in the fact that they don’t talk about their past- robert is trying super hard to change but he’s still struggling to understand where he can follow his love of money and power first and how to balance that with his love for aaron

tbh some of this stuff does sort of hold up to how i see them now and their journey - i think robert and aaron’s horrible, horrible communication skills were dealt with in the sense that they acknowledged the need to change that during the reunion and have actively worked to do that since

(well, they were)

although it was never explicitly dealt with nor did the show ever go into as much detail as i would bc my god why would they, i’m a maniac. i still think it’s true and it holds up to what ultimately ended up playing out over 2017 to now

a lot of my meta focused on stuff that had happened in 2015 though, which i barely do now - mostly because of the distance between now and then and the fact rob and aaron have gone through so much other terrible shit (and put each other through so much other terrible shit) and come out on the other side of it, i guess? so when i read that stuff now… it’s not that i don’t agree but it’s a little more difficult for me to relate because 2014/2015 was such a long time ago, i guess? and both aaron and robert have gone through massive periods of growth and change since then.

ALSO i think i spoke a lot about how robert was trying to change but i don’t think i ever believed he really would - certainly not to the extent that he ultimately did. i don’t think i expected that change until 2017 when he turned into a heartbroken demon and went off the deep end lmao - once i realised they were setting him up for another redemption. EVEN THEN i’m constantly in awe of how much better of a person he is now in comparison. it makes life a lot less stressful lmao.

the stuff that doesn’t hold up is every word i ever wrote about rebecca, because i was fascinated by her - and it makes sense that none of this holds up bc rebecca made no sense to me at any point (and that’s why i was always so infuriated and fascinated by her). this is largely because she’s been through roughly 4 personalities so far. all i ever wanted was for her to be written well rip.

but i eventually gave up hope of her ever reaching beyond her plot device destiny and at this point i don’t want her to bc it would just lead me right back to writing meta and feeling tormented about the fact that i can’t bullshit my way into getting her character journey to make any sense at all

it’s like how i stopped caring about joe when he stopped making any sense to me lmao there’s only so much bullshitting and fankwanking a girl can do 💖

but yes every word i ever wrote about rebecca’s character was wrong and every word i ever will write about rebecca’s character will probably also be wrong and i have come to accept it

there’s a lot of robron stuff i stand by though - although i’m almost certain you could dig up stuff that i have vehemently changed my mind on. i’ve said before that back in 2015 i believed that robert was not at any point sincere towards aaron literally until the lodge. watching the affair era with hindsight has given me an entirely different (and way more romantic lmao) perspective. so i bet i’ve said some shit that i now think is dumb as rocks.

[fantroll-purgatory]

Skurvi Meeday

Alternian gal for yis

@ancientvacation

Goooood as usual your trolls end up leaving me paralyzed just bc there’s so goddamn little that I actually want to change! What a good fucking troll!

Name: ’Skurvi’ is from the disease scurvy which ailed sailors due to a lack of vitamin C from citrus. ‘Meeday’ is from Artemiidae which is the taxonomical group for Brine Shrimp. It also evokes Artemis slightly, who was a God that travellers could pray to for good weather. It also sounds a little like ‘mayday’ which is a way to alert to a problem, often on ships and aircraft. All in all, her name is a reference to explorers and sailors as well as dangers they present and face.

Strife Specibus: Spadekind. The reason she uses it is because she thought it was a neat lowblood thing to have, and decided to use it to show off her ‘exotic’ weapon to others. It’s also telling that a seadweller would use a ground-based tool. Furthermore, actual monks often used a kind of spade as a weapon, as it could bludgeon, cut, and dig for remains. It’s a subtle way to tie to her light theme of S.E.Asian spirituality.

So to clarify, this is basically a character based on like, rich white women who have just been getting soooo into ayurveda recently without regard for the racial and cultural history behind those practices.

I love her as a character and if I met her in real life she can catch these Tamilian hands.

Fetch Modus: Namemodus. Skurvi thinks this is some amazing prayercirclemodus that requires you to sit down, meditate and really spiritually focus on the item before it’s summoned, taking great skill to do so. In reality, it’s a lowblood con that just releases the item upon it being named. Jokes on her.

Blood color: #7F007F -Violetblood, fits with the nauticality and exploration kind. Plus the type of people she’s lambasting are generally upper-class so it felt appropriate.

Ehhh I still don’t know if we have variants from the canon 12 colors unless they’re mutantbloods so if you wanna keep that compliant it’s better to bump it to #6a016a to be sure. But yeah she’s def a seadweller.

Symbol and meaning:It’s mainly meant to be a Brine Shrimp-like shape with the Violet language. It also resembles the symbol she uses in her quirk. I’d rather not use an extended zodiac sign.

It looks like, a little closer to indigoblood sign language than it does to violetblood? I’ll see what I can do to keep it with a few tweaks!

Trolltag: freshBodhisattva - ‘fresh’ is just a reference to freshwater, a subtle way of showing how much time she spends inland away from seawater. It’s also a way of saying ‘cool’ or ‘hip’ which is something Skurvi would do. 'Bodhisattva’ is a but more fun of a term. It’s a term for someone who has achieved Nirvana but remains on Earth out of compassion for those suffering. This fits Skurvi extremely well, or at least how she sees herself; someone who’s completely spiritually 'chill’ and 'humbled’ but also goes around visiting those lesser off to 'be with them’ when it’s really just fuelling her own delusion. This isn’t even the first time 'Bodhisattva’ has been used this way; my favourite Steely Dan song of the same name is about a Western business man looking to the East for quick and easy spiritual enlightenment, conflating all of Asia into one big exotic fantasy.

Went on for a bit there, but the tag is about how Skurvi mainly perceives herself, both her spiritual zen and her 'fascination’ with landwellers.

I think if you wanna hammer home the fetishism I’d suggest freshKarma, mainly bc like…Bodhisattva is still a term that means a whole lot to some folks? Whereas like…at this point most Indians I know make a distinction between “kuhrmuh” and “car-ma.” The latter’s a white people concept that’s basically like “if you do something bad today then bad things will come to you tomorrow” whereas the former is a fairly simple concept: if you do not follow your dharma, then you are implicated in the consequences of that choice, even if such consequences only turn up in another life.

I kinda like that tag more because it basically immediately shows her whole ass.

Quirk:She replaces 'tT’ and any 'en’ sounds with ’¥’ the Yen sign. This is mean to be a joke to people who get tattoos of things like Chinese characters without knowing what they mean. Similarly, Skurvi has adopted this 'super cool symbol’ into her speech with the joke being to us is that is’s actually a completely mundane symbol. Symbolism aside, it resembles her symbols and horns somewhat, as well as a little 'v’ for victory sign on top. Really, the symbol and horns could use some editing.

Man yeah I like that enough that I wanna preserve the feel of your symbol to keep the quirk.

Special Abilities (if any):None.

Lusus: Seamomkey - A loving if distant lusus. This is because when Skurvi was still rather young, her lusus went into a state of Cryptobiosis, a real process Brine Shrimp can go through which is how they can be packaged and sold under their more popular name, Sea Monkeys. Because of the lack of a parental figure in her life, Skurvi has been travelling in order to make up for her lack of valuable Life experiences by creating her own. 

Awwwwwwwwww

Personality: Skurvi as she is right now is rather safe for a Violetblood. She doesn’t command authority, at least explicitly, nor does she intimidate others into doing what she wants, at least she doesn’t feel like she is. On outward appearances, Skurvi’s a rather friendly and outgoing troll, if a little privileged and caught up in her own bubble without really thinking about everyone else all that much.

Skurvi sees a value and mystique in the 'quaint’ way landwellers live, especially lowbloods. This outward and overt interest in them has made her somewhat antagonising in whatever school, couldn’t resist the pun, of other seadwellers she hangs out with. They call her an 'air-head’ because of how much time she spends on land. Skurvi doesn’t mind this name and actually embraces it, considering it a nice epithet of her story.

The actual meaning of the label isn’t wrong because as well as antagonising, zen, and amicable, Skurvi’s also kinda dumb. Like, gullible really. She’ll believe a lot of things you tell her if you add the caveat that it’s some 'ancient landweller secret’.

Skurvi’s based off a certain type of people that I’m not sure may be present all around the world? Before you head off to university in my country, a lot of people elect to go on a gap year in order to travel, explore and see the world much like Skurvi does. What this often actually involves is going to South East Asian, stroking a drugged-up tiger, getting a nonsense tattoo, buying harem pants and coming back so 'enlightened’ and 'spiritual’. Drug use is also pretty common.

I think her personality might need some more nitty-gritty to it, but this is what I have so far.

NO I FUCKING GET IT.

There’s a girl that used to be peripheral to my friend group who would jet off to various countries each summer and would like, come back from a fucking ashram and talk about how she truly understood how the other side lives. Nah, this is a well-rounded character because tbh that was her entire personality. Still is, a little bit.

Interests: Skurvi’s chief interest is voyaging, going out to land and finding people or places to meet and greet. She likes experiencing the landweller way of life in eating their food, going to their hives and making herself comfy. She’s often a little insensitive and somewhat patronising with her trips however, either antagonising the mid to highbloods she meets and often intimidating the lower bloods based on her high noble caste. If some noble barged into your house to be entertained, wouldn’t you be panicked?

Other than that, she often documents her trips on her blog. These often focus more on herself, how she experienced things, felt about things, and perceived things, so there’s rarely a name on it other than her own. She’s immensely proud of her blog and sees it as a shrine of sorts, a testament to how much she’s 'grown’.

Speaking of growing, she likes cultivating plants, and often decorates her house to try and replicate the zen and order she feels in landweller hives. Her sense of Feng-shui isn’t exactly refined and the plants she grows aren’t exactly traditional. Her use of them is 'spiritually medicinal’ but she really just gets baked out of her mind and falls asleep with reality TV reruns on.

I think her current interests are very rooted, sorry, in Life and could perhaps use one or two more 'out-there’ ones to not just simply have 'hippie stoner troll’.

I think if you want to add another aspect of hers, maybe she’s like…really into holidays? Like the kind of troll who knows it’s Alternian Pancake Day and of course she has the decorations for it! It also gives her a means to justify her zest for travel; she just loves joy, and loves collecting joyful experiences whenever possible!

Title: Page of Life, actively serves herself Life - After her lusus entered it’s catatonic state, Skurvi has been in a state of arrested development that she was very aware of at the time. She started travelling as a means to remedy this, taking active control of her own valuable growth experiences by going on 'enriching’ trips to better herself. Over time, she thinks that she’s been able to perfectly grow and mature as a person, achieving a zen state of being, hence her chill demeanour. In reality, she’s made little to no progress on escaping this arrested development, as she’s not really 'learning’ anything from her trips. They’re just a way for her to believe she’s gone on an amazin enriching quest where in reality she’s just barged into a random lowblood’s house, inadvertently intimidated them to spend time with her, 'teach’ her things and more often than not eats their food whilst taking a memento back, even if said memento is the lowblood’s only bowl for instance.

Right, I forgot that you and I use difference verbiage for classes! I typically think of Pages as an Exploit class, and given the verbiage you use I think I’d personally classify her as a Thief of Life? Like she’s suspending the growth of everyone around her to benefit her own, and is passively utilizing the rules of Alternian society to facilitate that.

D/Ancestor: I have a concept in mind for her dancestor, a person who travels to classify and examine Life as opposed to making experiences for her own. The dancestor is definitely more of a scientific explorer than a leisure sailor, like Charles Darwin 'hence the Seamonkey lusus’. As for the ancestor, I’ve got nothing clear honestly.

For the ancestor how about literally just the Darwinan, doing exactly what you just said?

Land:Nothing so far

How about Land of Permafrost and Parthenogenesis (LOPAP)? The permafrost pretty much effectively leaves her landlocked and drives home her lack of development as a person! Which leads to her second word: Parthenogenesis, a method by which brine shrimp reproduce without fertilization. In her case, I think we could actually do something similar to paradox cloning to repopulate the planet’s citizens? i like this because it’s a case of borrowing from an existing duty with a purpose, stripping it of its context, and repurposing it for her own growth and development.

Dream Planet:Also unsure

I think she’d think she’s a Derse, but she’s a Prospit. She’s not leading any mass changes, nor is she even changing herself all that much.

Speaking of not changing all that much….I futzed with the symbol and horns and made some color adjustments but otherwise she’s good to go.

Thanks again for this woman! She’s awful but like. In a really good way.

-TR

[seiishindraws]

hey dudes i’m gonna talk about how ultra sun and moon are actually Good Games

now look. i played sun, and i loved Sun. but i had a few problems with that game that Ultra Sun fixed for me. so i’ll put what i liked about each game and what i didnt like into separated lists, to make the point i’m trying to make clear

What I liked about Sun

- new region - who wouldn’t be excited! 

- really good, humorous writing (it’s great)                                                              - new cute pokemon 

- a different kind of story and plot than we’re used to  

- Lillie’s character arc and her relationship with her mother and the final conflict between the two

- Lots of cool looking characters!..... buuuuuut

What I didn’t like about Sun

- there’s all these new characters.... but like we don’t get much interaction with them.... at all (seriously it was sooooo close to being okay but literally no characters got any development)

- a bit TOO much focus on Lillie. look, i don’t hate Lillie. I quite like her. But I’m not crazy about her, I just think she’s a good character. now, people play pokemon for different reasons, yeah? i play pokemon expecting to be the main character in my own playthrough. but uuhhhhhhh this game makes you the SIDE-CHARACTER to Lillie. i had a lot of trouble getting really connected to the game at all.... because technically my character’s presence wasn’t even needed. if you think about, if Hau were a more competent trainer, he could have filled your shoes easily. as a result, your character ends up feeling like a bad self-insert. i’m sorry Lillie, i love you, and i admire the growth you went through and i relate to you!.... but you also bogged down the experience because you’re the main character in what’s supposed to be my story 

(but i’m aware people play pokemon for different reasons, so you can disagree with me on this point, idc. i just feel like people are SOOOOOO in love with Lillie but like i only just like her and the focus the game had on her stopped me from being fully immersed... ya dig?)

- As a result of the focus on Lillie.... most characters got no development, like Hau. I love Hau. I do. but he hardly did any growing as a character in Sun. like, this isn’t even subjective. OBJECTIVELY, HE GOT ALMOST NO DEVELOPMENT. also Gladion???? i love Gladion but he hardly felt involved with his family at all..... they handled both Hau and Gladion, as well as other characters, a lot better in Ultra Sun (more on that later)

- post game was lack-luster. again, because so much focus was put on Lillie, when she leaves, everything feels.... empty. there’s not much to do and the characters that are left aren’t that interesting now that she’s gone. that’s the problem with putting this much focus on just ONE CHARACTER (and her mother.)

- I love guzma, but his motives were unclear and we were left in confusion about them. Ultra Sun fixes this

- oh hey that Mina gal sure is cool but we get nothing much about her and hey that Molayne guys kinda goofy looking but oh yeah not much substance to him either and oooh all the cool trial captains but gosh there isn’t too much interesting about them after their trials huh? you see my problem????

What I liked about Ultra Sun

- they made the first island a LOT more tolerable (thank god)

- Ultra recon squad was a.... okay addition. they’re not fantastic since they only serve to dump out lore but i still found their presence interesting.

- now while I absolutely agree with everyone that, objectively, the conflict between Lillie and her mother was great and Ultra Sun was a step down..... i kinda still prefer the Necrozma conflict A LOT more. personally. at least my character’s presence was NEEDED this time and Ultra Necrozma’s a fucking beast, I LOVE IT.

- MY BOY HAU GETS A CHARACTER ARC. FUCKING. FINALLY. THIS should have been in Sun. I don’t understand why it wasn’t. smh. and Gladion???? felt a lot more involved in what was going with his fam and wasn’t just leaving it up to Lillie. the reasoning behind Guzma’s motives are WAAAAY clearer???? GOSH i’m sorry Lillie, but yeah my faves actually got good development this time, i’d rather take 3 character growths than 1 byyyeeeeee

- A majority of the story is the same, yes, but personally? i... didn’t mind. i had only played through Sun ONCE and never again so by the time Ultra Sun came around, it had been enough time for me to enjoy going through a similar story, with enough differences to keep me on my toes.

- other character’s are a LOOOOOT more interesting, i actually liked ALL the trial captains and kahunas A LOT more this time around.

- Lillie’s reduced role. look i don’t care how much you like her, i like her too. but if you want to play a game about Lillie’s fight to be free from her over-bearing, manipulative, abusive mother.... just.... go play Sun again. like seriously why are you even complaining about this. you say you wanted a different game and then complain when Lillie’s role is reduced to allow the differences to happen. i’m sorry i just hate everyone that’s so obsessed with Lillie that they can’t take a step back to compare the games objectively.

- post-game is waaaaaaaaaay better

- cool new features and funny interactions

- Team skull’s better too.

What I didn’t like about Ultra Sun

- i would say i actually liked Lusamine’s character more in Sun. yeah. but you know what, that’s another sacrifice i’m fine with, if i wanted the same fucking story, i would just play Sun.

- a lot of the gameplay WAS very similar, and i can understand why people wouldn’t like that. for me, it wasn’t that bad tbh

- like i said before, objectively, the conflict between mother and daughter was more.... emotionally potent and was directly tied to Lillie’s character growth. but also like i’ve said before, i wanted the same fucking ending, i would just quite whining and go play fucking Sun again. which i won’t because that ending isn’t enough to make me interact with all those characters that are significantly more interesting in Ultra Sun

tl;dr

what i’m saying is, i appreciate the changes they made in Sun to change things up but uuuuhhhhh i think Lillie got a bit TOO much focus. so much that so many other things suffered because of it. and i mean that story is GREAT don’t get me wrong, but it won’t have as significant an effect on me when i play it a second time, and knowing that Ultra Sun has a more dense world with more fleshed out characters and more than one character gets some good development..... in the end Ultra Sun is better, for me at least. And I get why people would prefer Sun over Ultra Sun. Maybe they really relate to Lillie (i mean, so do i but i still prefer Ultra Sun... eh). People play pokemon for different reasons, so I understand why you may have been disappointed in the Ultra games. But please I beg of you

JUST BECAUSE YOUR FAVOURITE GIRL WASN’T THE FOCUS OF THE STORY ANYMORE, AND AS A RESULT THE CONFLICT CHANGES, DOESN’T MEAN THE NEW GAMES ARE WORSE. PLEASE TAKE AWAY SOME OF YOUR BIAS AND JUDGE THE GAME FAIRLY AND EVALUATE OTHER FUCKING CHARACTERS, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE. AND I DON’T KNOW WHY SOME PEOPLE WERE EXPECTING SEQUELS WHEN THEY EXPLICITLY SAID ITS JUST AN ALTERNATE STORY, IT WAS YOUR OWN IGNORANCE THAT RESULTED IN YOUR DISAPPOINTMENT.

i’m done ranting now. Ultra sun and moon are good games. like, i understand why you’d prefer sun and moon, but that doesn’t mean ultra sun and moon are terrible just because they’re different.

[sage-nebula]

fandom: pokemon, ship: keitor, character: hiccup!

Putting this under a cut because it’s long.

PokéAni:

Favorite character:

ALAN, as if that’s even a question. He’s the best boy. ♥

Least Favorite character:

Paul. Failing him, Damien.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):

Mmm, let’s see …

Ash/Misty

Jessie/James

May/Drew

Sycamore/Meyer

Either Dawn/Zoey or Grant/Viola

Character I find most attractive:

Cynthia, probably.

Character I would marry:

Cynthia again.

Character I would be best friends with:

ALAN. ♥

A random thought:

If they didn’t want to make movies about Ash as he is in Alola, they literally could have based the movies around characters that aren’t him instead, and yet they chose not to, smh.

An unpopular opinion:

Alan is the best character in the series, fully deserved to win the Kalos League, and Greninja is a waste of a pokémon.

My canon OTP:

There … aren’t really canon ones, generally, haha. But Ash/Misty, Jessie/James, and May/Drew are all arguably so.

Non-canon OTP:

See above.

Most badass character:

ALAN. Threw himself out of an aircraft to save Lizardon in the midst of a primal legendary fight. Also managed to run the mega evolution gauntlet and win, even though his final opponent was a member of the Elite Four. To date he is the only character to defeat a member of the Elite Four on screen (at least in terms of non-E4 / Champion characters). Additionally, he and Lizardon took on 50% Zygarde and won, and he’s the only one who was able to throw a wall up against Ash-Greninja. Badass. 

Pairing I am not a fan of:

There is no pairing in the whole of the PokéAni (outside of bestiality / incest ships) that I hate more than Alan/Manon. That ship is what NOTPs are made of for me.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another):

We don’t talk about Alan’s story after XYZ044 because none of the episodes after that happened. They also robbed Manon of any and all development and growth she coud have has a person and character by refusing to allow her to recognize, own up to, and learn from her mistakes and flaws (e.g. recognizing that she should have never sent Hari-san away in an unfamiliar location would make her a more responsible trainer; admitting that she’s afraid of battling and has been trying to use Alan as a crutch could provide the first step on an independence arc, etc), but you know, what’cha gonna do.

Favourite friendship:

Alan & Lizardon, Ash & Pikachu, and Alan & Ash are all right up there for me.

Keitor:

when or if I started shipping it:

After season four. I don’t remember the exact point, or why it happened; I just remember realizing that Lotor was in need of a co-pilot, and that he had saved Keith’s life, and that there were so many similarities between them, and it just … it was like an avalanche after that, and now I’m buried far, far beneath the snow.

my thoughts:

It’s honestly the best and most interesting ship and it’s a shame more people don’t appreciate or acknowledge that. It’s also incredibly annoying that so many people think they would be at each other’s throats if they met when canon has explicitly proven otherwise (5x04, “Kral Zera”), and incredibly, unbelievably, agonizingly boring that people want them to fight over Allura. If you want Allura reduced to a prize for two boys to fight over, go watch ‘80s Voltron. Keith, Lotor, and Allura as we know them in VLD are way too developed and good for any of that shallow, petty, trivial nonsense.

What makes me happy about them:

How perfect they are for each other. They can connect and understand each other on levels that they just don’t have with anyone else, and since they share many of the same pain points (parental abandonment and neglect, past abuse, part-galra heritage, a lack of undersatnding from their respective teams, and so on), that allows them to connect and help each other on those levels as well. They’re so similar, yet they have enough differences between them to both keep things interesting, as well as complement and balance each other out. They’re perfect.

What makes me sad about them:

THEY HAVEN’T HAD ONE FRIENDLY CONVERSATION IN CANON YET, AND AT THIS POINT I’M AFRAID THEY NEVER WILL.

Things done in fanfic that annoys me:

I don’t read VLD fanfic, generally, because as a general rule I don’t read fic for fandoms I write for. However, I’m still aware of the fact that there are fics out there that turn Lotor into an abusive rapist (why), turn Keith into a submissive victim (why), and otherwise depict the relationship as being full of hatred and abuse (w h y), and I can’t stand any of that nonsense. It’s out of character for both parties and completely disgusting. Give me healthy Keitor or give me death, tbh.

Things I look for in fanfic:

N/A, I don’t read VLD fic. But if I did, again, healthy Keitor or bust.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:

I ship Keith with Allura, but I don’t really ship Lotor with anyone else, tbh. I can see why others would ship Lotor with certain other characters, but I just don’t. I don’t know why, they just don’t click for me.

My happily ever after for them:

They come together and form a revolution, acting as the change they want to see in the universe. They succeed in this, making life better for them and those like them, and end up getting engaged and married at a later date.

Hiccup:

How I feel about this character:

HE’S A GOOD BOY AND I LOVE HIM. He’s one of the characters I relate to most, honestly. I’ve got a lot in common with this snarky boy.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Astrid, and for the most part it’s just her.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

HICCUP & TOOTHLESS, OBVIOUSLY. They are literally, DreamWorks confirmed canonical platonic soulmates.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Uhhh, I don’t know that I have one? Idk what opinions are or are not popular in the fandom nowadays.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

Again, not sure I have an answer for this one. So far I’ve been pretty chill with how Hiccup’s story has gone. This may well change with the release of the third movie, though.

My OTP:

Hiccup/Astrid.

My OT3:

I wouldn’t be opposed to Hiccup/Astrid/Heather, or Hiccup/Astrid/Eret.