#aspen stfu challenge level impossible

[brainrotlesbian]

I think one of my favorite parts about the Lunar Chronicles is how Carswell Thorne was minding his own damn business and then suddenly he’s part of this rebellion against the fucking moon. He didn’t really have a reason to be part of it, not like the others did.

For comparison, Cinder is the missing Lunar princess Selene, so duh she’d be involved, it’s up to her to stop her crazy aunt. Kai is a whole emperor of a country and is the one being very pressured by Levana into marrying her. Scarlet was also kinda minding her business but then the police didn’t do their job so she got swept up in the wolf army and that’s pretty reason enough (also her grandma died at the hands of the wolf army). Ze’ev is a rogue wolf soldier who wanted to make his own decisions and a life for himself. Cress was Levana’s best hacker and a witness/victim to the systemic mistreatment of shells like herself. Winter, being the Queen’s stepdaughter and one of the first and closest victims to Levana’s cruelty, had every reason to turn on her stepmother but she would never turn her back on her people, especially the servants and other lower-class citizens who saw her and her refusal to bow to Levana’s demands/use her Lunar gift at all as an act of rebellion itself. And Jacin had been silently rebelling against Levana since he was 15; he is Winter’s closest (and only, it seems) friend on Luna, so he too was witness to many of Levana’s atrocities, along with the atrocities of the thaumaturges he assisted.

But Thorne? He’s a petty criminal. He organized a prison riot over fucking soap. He has no personal connection to a rebellion. He joined cause he wanted to cause chaos. And I respect that.

[brainrotlesbian]

I was thinking about Heartless yesterday, and about the “get Cath to Chess so she can lead the white queendom to victory” plot line that’s later in the book. Obviously this never happened and the sister’s prophecy of the monarch, the martyr, the murderer, and the mad came to pass. However I was wondering what would’ve happened if they had been successful in getting to Chess.

The audience knows that the land of Chess is locked in an eternal game of chess (or at least, they should, after consideration), but the citizens don’t. They don’t understand why after any sort of checkmate, the game resets, cause they don’t understand that they’re just pieces on a chess board. Jest himself even says that he and Raven are rooks—chess pieces.

Now, knowing that, why would bringing Cath into this change anything? Even if she were able to achieve the rank of queen, there’s no guarantee that the game wouldn’t reset upon a checkmate. Even her being from Hearts doesn’t save her from that fate; we know Hatta was originally from Hearts and he became a pawn (literally) in the White Queendom.

It seems like Cath was doomed no matter which kingdom she stayed in. Staying in Hearts leads to the sisters’ prophecy, and going to Chess means a never-ending fight until they die.

[brainrotlesbian]

Ok back to the Lunar Chronicles cause I had a random thought. Princess Selene was born with her lunar gift while Cress was not and was considered a shell. Imagine a story where their roles were reversed, where Selene was the shell and Cress was born with her lunar gift. How would Channary react to her child being born a shell? Would Selene be sent to be with the other shells? Would Channary try to protect her daughter, because we know that she truly did love her daughter for the brief time she was alive with her? If Selene was allowed to remain the Princess of Luna, how would the people react? Imagine the rumors in Artemisia about the embarrassment of a Princess, or even that perhaps the queen was cursed.

[brainrotlesbian]

This will probably not be very coherent as it was a thought I had (amongst many) while at work but I think by far the DT17 fandom is largely disappointed with the inconsistencies in the finale of the show, but I think I found a way to remedy that.

The major themes of the series is “family is who you make it”, so shoehorning Webby as Scrooge’s daughter just so she could find the Papyrus of Binding really undermines that. However I think there could be a way that it could work in canon. Bradford is a very black-and-white thinker, so he probably took Scrooge’s promise that no one but the heir to Scrooge McDuck would be able to find the papyrus as his direct descendant. Meaning he didn’t believe Della/Donald/the triplets would be able to find it, so he had to create Scrooge’s daughter.

However that’s also not how that works. Bradford failed to understand that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. I wouldn’t doubt that he’d tried to use little baby Webby to find the papyrus but failed. Because she wasn’t Scrooge’s heir. But, in Beakley taking her (was this not a kidnapping?) directly to Scrooge, and them connecting, she became Scrooge’s heir. Not because she was his clone, but because they bonded and connected with each other. They understood each other.

Of course I also have trouble with the Webby being captured and unable to free herself cause she’s been shown multiple times that she’s able to untie herself pretty easily and escape so why that beat her is beyond me.

[brainrotlesbian]

Bound and gagged whumpee. That’s my shit right there

Whump question

Supposed someone is trying to summon you like the Kool-aid Man (basically, you bust through a wall). What whump trope the person has to talk about for you to break through the wall and go "OH YEAH!"?

[brainrotlesbian]

TOTK spoilers ahead

I finally beat the game (the final boss fight was not as hard as I was expecting but then again my strategy for fights like this is brute force my way through it and blow that bitch up so), and I just have to say

It’s the way that Zelda immediately went to aid Link against Dragondorf (that’s what I’m gonna call him now). She didn’t know who he was, or why he was important but all she knew was that she had to save him and by god did she deliver

Like. Think about it. She was a dragon. She’d lost her mind and sense of self; she was essentially a wild animal that roamed the skies, and she’d been the dragon for thousands of years. And yet even when Link is in trouble she goes to aid him in his fight against Ganondorf.

It’s kinda poetic, I think. In BOTW, Link doesn’t remember much but still goes to aid Zelda and help defeat Calamity Ganon, cause he knows it’s his duty to protect her and save Hyrule. And in TOTK, Zelda doesn’t remember him, or herself, or why she would fight alongside this short little twink (affectionate), but she does anyway. That was an immediate response from her just to charge at a dragon three times her size, that could’ve easily hurt or killed her.

At least with this incarnation of the two, it doesn’t matter what they do or don’t remember, or what form they’ve taken, cause they’re always going to fight beside and protect the other. And I think that’s beautiful.

In short my Zelink shipper heart is exploding

[brainrotlesbian]

I had. A thought

TOTK spoilers ahead

So. Zelda turning into the light dragon and roaming the skies of Hyrule with the master sword embedded in her forehead for thousands of years. Tragic and distressing, obviously, cause she’s lost herself and has been alone for far, far longer than she was alone for BOTW.

I saw that at the end of the game, Zelda is fortunately turned back into herself (which made me relieved cause if Link lost her again I would’ve started eating fiberglass insulation), however, consider an ending where she doesn’t, and can’t, turn back. She’s stuck as a dragon forever. The angst would be immaculate.

Link would know it’s her. He knows that dragon that circles around the geoglyphs is Zelda, but there’s nothing he can do about it. She’s so close and yet so far. He knows it’s her but she doesn’t know it’s her, and she doesn’t know it’s him either. Everything that made her Zelda is gone.

And the last interaction he had with her was when he failed to catch her as she fell into the abyss. He would probably feel a lot of guilt about that, blaming himself for losing her and consequently her losing herself forever. How do you recover from that?

Not even to mention the political disaster that would be the last of the royal family being turned into a dragon and, therefore, unable to rule.

[brainrotlesbian]

Hey wait a minute remember that episode of DuckTales (2017) where BOYD was dealing with repressed memories of Dr. Akita turning into a weapon? Kinda reminds me of a certain Like Father Like Son…

[brainrotlesbian]

I haven’t played either game but you’re so correct my love

I am formulating the most reblogable post for modern gamers hold on...

[brainrotlesbian]

I wanna talk about how both Queen Levana Blackburn (the Lunar Chronicles) and Lady Catherine Pinkerton (Heartless) are both victims of their respective societies and families. But in opposite ways.

The earliest we ever see Levana is in Fairest, when she’s 15, and she’s still a child then. We learn throughout the book that she had been abused and manipulated by her older sister, Channary, who was allowed to get away with whatever she wanted. She was royalty, the crown Princess, and she had a strong lunar gift, so no one cared what she did. Not her parents, not the servants, not the aristocrats. So when Levana was horribly burned at Channary’s hand, she didn’t receive the help she needed. She was a suffering, abused child, and was left behind by her family and society. She grew to fit in with her society—a very self-serving, self-absorbed one—and in doing so, she morphed into the horrible Queen Levana we know from the original series. She was ignored by her society and family.

Catherine, on the other hand, had her society and family breathing down her neck at every turn. She was virtually walking on eggshells with every interaction she had. Her society put such pressure on reputation and doing what was expected of her, while simultaneously not caring at all about her wants or needs. The only people who got to see what Catherine was really like were Jest and Mary Anne. Catherine aspired to run a bakery with Mary Anne, but even she (Mary Anne) didn’t truly believe that would ever happen, and was humoring Cath the entire time. And Jest had ulterior motives to getting to know the true Cath—stealing her heart. And when it comes to her parents, her mother was insane and her father was spineless. She never had anyone to stand up for her—for what she wanted and needed from her family. The expectations placed on her clashed too much with what she wanted, and while Jest’s eventual death was the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back,” it isn’t the only reason she snapped. She buckled under the weight of her parents’ and society’s expectations of her, and combined with the events of the book, she became the infamous Queen of Hearts.

I also find it interesting how they both became like their mothers, but worse versions of them

[brainrotlesbian]

I decided to start a new game for TOTK, and I noticed something about the light dragon. Yes, she is visible from the title screen, but more important, I can see her circling around the great sky island where Link awakens. Which isn’t usual for her flight pattern. She follows the path of the geoglyphs around Hyrule, which aren’t near the great sky island.

So, why is she circling around this island in the beginning? Could Zelda still be partially aware and wanting to be watching over Link as he makes his way to the temple of time and the various shrines on the island? Does she want to make sure he’s ok, that he’s alive?

[brainrotlesbian]

One interaction I'm really sad to see didn't seem to happen: Mineru and Purah meeting. IDK if it does happen or not but so far I'm pretty close to the end of the game with no indication of it happening anytime soon

I hadn’t thought of that, but yeah, as far as I’m aware, they don’t have any interactions, and that kinda makes me sad. I think they’d get along, maybe?

Purah would be very interested to see the changes Mineru made to her Purah pad, not to mention Mineru’s spirit residing within the Purah pad for thousands of years, she’d have questions. And the mech we make for Mineru’s spirit? She would have a field day studying the Zonai technology used to create it

Although Mineru is a more calm and composed person than Purah (though that could be a front she put on so she wouldn’t alarm Zelda? It’s possible?) so obviously they would have their differences, but I don’t really see any reasons they wouldn’t get along

And not to go off topic but also Robbie? He would probably be delighted to meet her and share technology/techniques/theories. Tech genius trio mayhaps?

[brainrotlesbian]

Cannibalism in Tokyo Ghoul

Now. I don’t regularly watch anime but I have seen a few and there’s one (Tokyo Ghoul) that I think about regularly, and it’s not even just that it’s pretty fucking whumpy (cause holy hell it is), but mostly cause of Hide, and the potential he had both as a character and with his relationship with Kaneki. I wanna talk about the cannibalism aspect. Yes, sometimes cannibalism has this romantic undertone, and that is something I think was sorely missed out on.

There are a few moments where cannibalism is an incredibly intimate thing. There’s one guy (forgot his name, I’m terrible with names) who is injured and requires human meat in order to heal, and he has a human girlfriend who offers herself as that meal, and so he takes a bite out of her shoulder and it brings them closer together. Hell, a ghoul wedding involves the two biting each other so deep the marks remain (which is kinky as all hell but besides the point).

But with Hide and Kaneki, things are a bit different cause Kaneki was born human and only became a ghoul after unethical experimentation following an attack by the most vicious ghoul in the city, so there’s the “I can’t let him know I’m a monster now” aspect in the series. A lot of season 1 involves Kaneki both trying to protect Hide from any attackers, now that he’s a prime target, and trying to keep Hide from figuring out he’s a ghoul now. Of course with season 2, the anime is different than the manga and for the life of me I can’t read manga, so all info about what happens then is secondhand (shoutout to my cousin for infodumping about it).

Kaneki goes nuts from cannibalizing other ghouls, transforming into this horrible centipede monster a lá Metamorphosis, and the only way to placate the effects of this transformation is to eat human meat, but Kaneki still has a bunch of angst regarding that (understandable), so while there is a veritable war between ghouls and humans, he’s hiding in the sewers. During that time, he’s approached by Hide, who informs him that he’s known Kaneki was a ghoul almost the whole time, and that he knows what needs to be done to help his friend.

Hide offers up his body, literally, and almost his life in order to help Kaneki regain his sanity. He comes to his friend, who’s lost his mind, and tells him that he’s always accepted him for who he is and that he doesn’t judge him, and allows Kaneki to take what he must. And the next time we see Hide, or, rather, when we see his face, we see his lips, lower jaw, and neck were consumed. Which is an odd area to be missing. Why would Kaneki go for that area? There certainly wouldn’t be as much meat in that area as there would be in other areas, like the forearm or the calf (not to mention the complications Hide suffered from the loss of his lower jaw and vocal cords), and the lips and neck area are typically a very intimate area to be putting your mouth, especially if it’s just a friend. And then there’s… nothing. It goes no where.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Touka (I’m not gonna be misogynistic about her) but I feel her relationship with Kaneki was better if she was kept as a sisterly figure to him, rather than a lover. Yes, she obviously cares about Kaneki, but their romance felt forced on my opinion (also the smut was a little unnecessary)

I do not have the words to properly express my feelings about this and I believe that the symbolism of cannibalism within Tokyo Ghoul shows some really intimate moments and a deep connection between those involved. There’s no other moments in the show, that I’ve seen, where a character consensually cannibalizes another and it’s a platonic or casual thing (no, I don’t think Kaneki cannibalizing Yamori was supposed to be romantic. That was revenge and to show that he snapped). Why was it romance for the m/f pairings but purely platonic between Hide and Kaneki?

[brainrotlesbian]

It’s that time of year again where they’re playing Christmas movies and I want to start an argument

[brainrotlesbian]

Am I about to word vomit about a series that isn’t super well-known and I haven’t even technically finished since the fourth book was released and I never read it? Yes. Yes I am.

The Ascendance series. Formerly the Ascendance Trilogy but I just discovered there was a fourth book released in 2020 (I think I was told before but I forgot 💀). A bit of a staple series in my adolescence and cemented my love of sarcastic asshole main characters (along with Percy Jackson)

But, more seriously, beyond Jaron’s fuckery on the surface, I kinda wanna dig deeper into his character. Cause, even thinking about his story for more than a minute is rather sad. He was the second-born of his family, the royal family, and an embarrassment to them because of his shenanigans (I’m willing to bet he has ADHD). The black sheep. The screw up. Everything that his brother, the crown prince, wasn’t, and it reflected poorly on him. He was impulsive and passionate, but most of all, he was hardly 11 when he went missing.

11. Eleven years old when he barely missed being attacked and murdered by pirates. Eleven when he escaped to Avenia, a country that was looking to devour his own and slaughter his people and murder his family. Eleven when he was told by his father not to come home, as it was his duty to prevent war between the two countries; one that Jaron’s own, Carthya, would lose. Eleven when he was disowned, essentially, and orphaned and had to survive in a hostile country. The jump from prince to starving street urchin couldn’t have been a pleasant one.

Then he spends the next four years living as this vagrant. I can’t imagine what his thoughts towards his family were; how his father told him not to return, for the good of Carthya. How his mother would never know what happened to him, her cherished son, and simply had to wonder for those four years what had happened, until she was murdered with her husband and son. The revelation that Conner had murdered his family in order to prompt the power struggle to find the missing prince, or rather, create a convincing copy of the prince. And the further revelation that Conner had hired the pirates to attack Jaron’s ship to kill him, but had failed.

Would he not feel as if his family’s deaths were his fault? He never got to say goodbye to them, not properly, and he was hardly 15 when they died. He was still a kid. He already buries his true feelings and emotions under layers of bitterness and sarcasm and defiance. Almost every one around him betrays him or tries to kill him in one way or another. His entire world is deceit and lies and murder, so it’s no wonder he’d grow up salty and bitter at the world around him.

He’s king. 15 and king of a country. And despite everything, he still does everything in his power to protect his people. Cause even if he is salty and bitter at the world and the fucking assholes around him, he’s going to do his duties as king and protect his people to the best of his ability. He’s protective of those he cares about. We see that with Imogen, how from day 1 at Farthenwood he’s sticking up for her and looking out for her. He often goes to ridiculous extremes to protect the ones closest to him. Even to the point where he puts himself in jeopardy.

[brainrotlesbian]

I went to see the FNAF movie today and I feel myself slipping back into my insufferable 2020 self