#best character ever tbh

[oh-hush-its-perfect]

oh alex..... you are my favorite..

[wildtornado-o]

They both needed hugs so bad in this scene. Im drawing that.

[egophiliac]

2025 is the year of the DRAGON SLIPPERS

[mongeese]

she's middle aged. she's a serial killer. she insults a god to its face. she's a failed sacrifice. she's aromantic. she's a poor little meow meow. she's unkillable. she's so tired. she's god's favorite and she desperately wishes she wasn't. she's mean. she cares about people more than anything but doesn't want to be around them. she loves pancakes. i didn't say a name but she popped into your head didn't she?

[a-most-beloved-fool]

Kira has a nightmare, one night when she's staying at the O'Brien's. Miles and Keiko, sleeping in the other room, don't hear her get up - but Molly does.

And Molly, being clever and kind, knows exactly what to do when someone has a nightmare. (Or, at least, she knows what her parents always do for her.) So she sits Kira down and brings her a glass of warm milk, and sits by her side as she drinks it.

Then, she takes Kira by the hand and leads her - to her parents bedroom. "I always sleep with mommy and daddy after a nightmare," she explains, when Kira stops outside the door. "It helps! Mommy chases the scary things away. And Daddy is warm."

"Molly," Kira says quietly, a little embarrassed, "I don't think your parents want me in their bed. Even if I did have a nightmare."

"No, they won't mind!" Molly assures.

Then, of course, Miles wakes up.

"Molly?" he asks, voice rough with sleep. "Did you have a nightmare?"

"No, but Miss Kira did!"

And now Keiko's awake, too, sitting up and saying, "Nerys? Are you alright?"

Mortified, Kira says, "Yes, I'm fine, I was just - on my way back to bed. Molly brought me here. I'm - sorry for waking you. I'll just be-"

"You can stay, if you want," Miles offers.

Kira doesn't quite think she heard him right. "What?"

"You can sleep here, if you think it might help," Keiko says.

"Or even if you don't!" Miles adds.

Kira opens her mouth, then closes it again. "I, uh-"

Keiko gets up, and takes Kira, gently, by the hand. Her palm is soft, Kira can't help but notice.

"Brr, it's freezing out here!" Keiko says, tugging Kira along. "You'd better get in before you catch your death of cold. Miles is practically a furnace, so you'll be nice and warm with us."

"And, Molly, you'd best go back to bed, too. You've got school in the morning," Miles says, as Keiko bundles Kira into the bed between them.

As Molly makes her way out, Keiko swings a lazy arm over Kira's back. "Sleep," she hums. "We'll be here in the morning."

Kira, feeling warm and cared for and more than a little overwhelmed, does.

[iambecomeahamburger]

Like Jean Valjean, Javert asks himself 'Who am I?' And his answer is, 'I am the Law.' I find this so interesting as a parallel because the way that Javert sees himself is purposefully dehumanising. He uses the dehumanisation of himself to engage in the systematic dehumanisation of others, specifically wrongdoers, especially Valjean. By disregarding Javert the human, he enables himself to act inhumanely, and gives himself permission to do whatever he feels is for the 'highest good.'

In contrast, Valjean post-conversion (conversion as a metaphor for turning his life around and thinking of others before himself) purposefully humanises himself and others. His 'Who am I?' does not place himself as a larger entity, but takes accountability by placing himself as a human among humans. His position of power is a position of responsibility. This is illustrated through his interactions with Fantine, the man Javert mistakes for him, and others.

And so this is why, when Valjean forces Javert to confront his own flawed worldview and see him as a fellow human, not as an escaped convict, he must kill himself. He has nothing else now to live for, because his whole career, ideology, and life have been bound up in this systematic dehumanisation of both himself and others. He is so fascinating to me.

[atlasofoverthinking]

rody making it into the first top 20 of the worldwide best hero poll is so funny to me

all we have is a non-canon (?) movie and some scraps here and there but this fandom loves him so much to let him be forgotten

(he’s 17th in the japan top 20 so i guess the japaneses are the one voting for him. than you guys. he deserves it)

[eeveekitti]

do we fw fantasy cats. cuz i wanna do so much more with this guy

[myimaginationplain]

do you ever think about how Ohkubo extremely casually dropped the fact that Spirit & Kami were teen parents & then proceeded to never expound upon that fact or bring it up ever again despite it explaining a whole lot about them & Maka

[m0thlegs]

Struggled so hard trying to get her features and pose right I feared I had drawn too much of that Viktor fellow that I had forgotten how to draw beautiful women again💔

[shoot-i-messed-up]

the one het ship I genuinely really enjoy in EAH is Cerise/Daring. Like I’m sorry, I know Cerise gives off queer vibes, but the cool jock girl x loser pathetic boy got me….

[somewhereincairparavel]

omfg I just watched "Zuko alone" (season 2 ep7) for the first time and it's so fucking good holy I'm getting goosebumps rn. The flashbacks, Zuko saying "I'm the son of Ursa and fire lord ozai" right after he got a flashback of his mom, the boy Zuko helped saying "I hate you!" After Zuko tried giving him the knife he got when he was younger, UGHH the angst, the feels I'm sobbing 😭💔

I also like how they showed azula being cunning even as a kid, not mourning her grandfather's death, wanting iroh to die so ozai can be king, not caring about lu tens death, etc. Also, how much her dad favoured her over Zuko, and how Zuko inherited his mom's gentleness. Zuko shows empathy so many times throughout this season. The most prominent one being refusing to steal food as soon as he found out it belonged to a pregnant woman. These little stuff show that his empathy, a character trait he always had, was slowly coming back to him and had never left him even after all the abuse he went through.

it also shows how much Azula has been influenced as a child by her own dad's cruelty and becoming just like him, to please him. The firenation is genuinely the best written segment of atla imo, and I'm saying this as a first time watcher.

The earthkingdom family being so quick to turn on Zuko after they found out he's the prince is so realistic but sad at the same time :( it shows how much a hundred year long war affects people. I'd say this is the episode Zuko truly realized the damage his nation, and his father had done to the world.

[cluescorner]

Tim Drake has a weird fucking function

The thing about Tim that I find unique is that his life became SO MUCH WORSE after joining the heroing thing. Everybody else had a mid-to-shit life before becoming a hero/living with Bruce and mostly everybody (except Jason who LITERALLY DIED) had their life improved by being a hero/being Bruce's kid (or at least it is typically portrayed as such.

Tim had the exact opposite trajectory. His life wasn't perfect before he became Robin, but like...multi-millionaire/billionaire (canon is unclear, but he's within Gotham's upper-strata) kid with both natural intelligence + charisma and a bright future ahead of him and parents who were emotionally neglectful but nothing really beyond that (which is also a form of trauma, but all of the info we have indicates that the Drakes were no Arthur Brown or David Cain) and he still had other people he could rely on outside of them. He went to boarding school, which could be something horrible OR something amazing depending on your own thoughts/experiences. I grew up having a commute where we'd drive past a really pretty and rich af boarding school that literally everybody in our area DREAMED of going to, so to me the idea of going to boarding school sounds incredible but mileage may vary. Tim seems like the type of kid who would thrive in that though. Based on what we know in canon atm, his pre-robin life was fucking amazing.

And then he starts being the sidekick and working towards becoming Robin. His parents immediately get kidnapped and poison themselves through drinking tainted water; his mom dies and his dad is in a coma. This is not the fault of Robin, but Tim himself muses about the idea that Robin and dead parents are linked: to become Robin completely, you must lose your parents. And with how fate/destiny/canon events can operate in comics universes, maybe he isn't that far off. Once his dad wakes up, their relationship becomes strained as the man grieves the loss of his wife and realizes that his son has been doing vigilantism as a hobby. It is unclear exactly how good of a parent Jack was before the incident, but the results of Tim's involvement with the Robin mantle has definitely made things worse between father and son. Jack will also die within quick succession of 2 of Tim's best friends, his girlfriend, and his other father. He will also effectively lose like 1/2 his loved ones in the fallout of all of that mess including: his older brother, his other friends (both civilian and superhero), and the stepmother with whom he shared what I would argue is his best parent-child relationship (Dana also may have died, but it's left unclear). He has stopped pursuing higher education (the moment he even applied for college he 'died', and it seems he hasn't made another attempt since) and if he wasn’t a major focus of the media before he sure is now. He tries to quit briefly (in fact he initially was planning on quitting once someone more suited came along) and cannot bring himself to do so. Even when he does manage to get away for a while, his superhero life impacts the pre-robin life he is trying to go back to. Leaving is an impossibility, this is all there is for him now. He also isn’t allowed to make mistakes anymore, not when lives hang in the balance. The one who enforces that impossible standard the most (besides Bruce depending on who's writing) is himself. He’s got TRAUMA now and people want to hurt him constantly. He is constantly questioning his own sanity and morality and place in the world. He almost dies like every month. Tim grows colder and less grounded, he is becoming both a better and a worse version of himself at the same time. He’s saving lives in the same few issues as he’s setting up a Saw movie plot for the man who killed his father. He is haunted by the ghosts of his past and the looming figure of his future. His life becomes SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE after he becomes Robin. Some of it is the fault of others, some is the fault of circumstance, and some of it is due to his own actions. But basically all of Tim's worst traumas and life-changing moments are either tied to or caused by Robin. Dick's parents would still be dead, Jason would still be living on the streets, Stephanie would still have Arthur Brown for a father and a lot of other things that deserve their own posts/IDK if they've been retconned, and Damian would still have been raised in the eco-cult where death is a constant. Those are life circumstances that occur without the involvement of Robin, the only one who even needs Bruce involved at all in their series of events is Damian. But Tim? All of what is considered his 'worst' moments occur after he assumes the role.

This idea is what I find the coolest and most fascinating about Tim as a character. Being a hero is usually portrayed as either an outright awesome thing or a righteous duty that one must fulfill or (maybe in a grimmer and/or more grounded story) a sacrifice to your interpersonal relationships/mental health that is made for the greater good. For Tim, being a superhero actively ruined his life (both because of the general circumstances surrounding being a kid vigilante and the choices he made as part of that role). It's never portrayed that way in canon because we need to come out of issues going 'wow being a superhero is so cool! I'm gonna buy the next issue!', but when you just look at Tim's life literally everything really bad that we know of occurred after he became Robin.

[langfield]

one of my biggest gripes about double exposure is that a lot of the writing goes absolutely nowhere, which is a shame because they crafted such a fantastic cast of characters to tell a story with. we have a group mostly comprised of queer poc stuck at a prestigious art school that is currently run by an arab woman — which, for caledon, is a first. and yet yasmin fails everyone under her care because, in a tale that’s as old as time, she stops fighting and starts submitting to white society the moment she gets power, and thus begins shielding herself over the large minority voices she promised to protect. she even goes out of her way to manipulate them ( vinh ) and sweep the victims of such an oppressive society under the rug ( maya ). that right there is such a good story, and so many of the characters in double exposure have similar struggles : it is always a battle of oneself, a battle of activism versus pacifism, of having your own individual identity or being what you need to be in order to survive what is expected of you as a queer and / or poc. add powers, old trauma, and two dead girls in the midst and things ramp up in intensity! although despite all these building blocks, these relationships and characters and prime setting for conflict, double exposure struggles with what exactly it wants to say.

honestly, i think that i could even forgive the atrocious plot writing if double exposure committed to its themes rather than bowing out of them, or worse : completely underutilizing important arcs that do, in fact, say something in exchange for meandering around. there are many themes this game could have, and yet not a single one of them is the actual focus of the game — at least not intentionally. there are yarns i could spin about maturity and immaturity, about trauma and how you need to confront it to heal, about being a marginalized person in a society that claims to be progressive but it never, ever is, etc etc. but did the game actually orbit around any of these ideas? or did they just happen upon them by complete accident? if they wrote down an actual core for their story, i do believe a lot of their plot writing would’ve been stronger for it, even if only to have a singular underlying thread tying everything together. however, de shoots itself in the foot by repeating story beats without having their own unique take on the matter, and they very obviously cut a lot of their story in half for money milking purposes. you can tell de was likely thought of as one whole game initially, only for poor directions to override writers for a sequel none of them thought was wise.

overall, while i do defend double exposure often and give it far more grace than most, i won’t ever pretend the plot writing was phenomenal. it wasn’t and that’s just facts. i think the biggest shame about de is that the characters were beyond phenomenal and deserved a better game ( as well as a better chance in the fandom ) than what they got. so many of them go nowhere despite having strong beats, obvious flaws and good qualities, sympathetic struggles, and intriguing relationships. they’re easily better than most of the franchises’ previous supporting casts and love interests but were given perhaps the worst story in all the games. which is the real tragedy, in my eyes.

[haeidys]

Made a detour and asked Magnus out instead because he's the one that has been through a lot of ups and downs with my farmer boy

[radioproto]

I had so much fun at AnthroExpo this weekend!!!

Thank you to all these lovely suiters for photos and an unforgettable experience, and a huge shoutout to Wasabi (manokit, @chevvytime), Honey (tortoiseshell cat), Onyx (bnuy), Peaches (doggo), and Alex (fox/wolf [I DONT REMEMBER THE SPECIES IM SORRY]) for spending Saturday with me and creating some awesome memories.