#but I see why she acts the way she does

[vaguely-concerned]

I still can't believe that bioware has morrigan tell you a whole story about how as a kid she came upon a girl she thought was so beautiful that it rocked her entire world and awakened new and bewildering longings in her (longings which by their very existence angered and perturbed her mother)... and then they have the temerity to ask me to believe she's straight

[butwhatifidothis]

I guess the ultimate thing that kills CF for me - or at least nudges it away from me saying I definitively like it - is just how much Edelgard is clearly written with the player in mind before she's written with her character in mind.

Because on all of the other routes, there's a power to Edelgard's presence. Even on BE, there's a sense that for as lonely as Edelgard might be, she still ultimately will do whatever it takes for her to get what she wants. Be that be killing her citizens (or otherwise letting them be killed), endangering her friends, assisting in kidnapping people, allowing Byleth to support her only when they have the Sword of the Creator, covering for TWS - no bar is too low for her to limbo under if doing so means she's even a step closer to her goals.

She's manipulative! She's deceitful! She doesn't care for the lives of her people! Even her friends are forfeit if they try to stand in her way! And this happens no matter how close you, the player, get to her, in the case of BE - C+ ain't stoppin' Remire, and going to the coronation ain't stopping the Holy Tomb.

And in the war phase, she is dominating the field. She has the Kingdom completely on the ropes, down to a few houses standing against Imperial rule, and the Alliance is stuck in neutrality - she may not be able to do much to it, but neither can they do anything to her (to say nothing of the Alliance houses who stand with her). She's far from the underdog in this race, and she shows off how threatening she can be.

CF? Her route?

She scweams at scawy rats. She gets embawwassed when you find her dwawings. She's just so wonewy, and she's just so gwad that you chose her. She somehow fails to capture Rhea, or frame Dimitri for regicide, and so now has to deal with that on the Kingdom's side of the war. But that doesn't stop Elly Welly-kins fwom twying to find her pwecious teacher, because you're just so important to her. She cwies and hugs you when you meet her in the Goddess Tower!! Because she missed you so much!!

It's like... Dimitri and Claude certainly show different sides of themselves on their respective routes. It's the whole point! You grow closer to them and thus see how they treat those close to them, as opposed to being the Kinda Neat Teacher they see run along every now and then. But, like... Claude doesn't become a blushing maiden whenever Byleth speaks with him on VW. Dimitri doesn't scream at scary rats and get called cute for it on AM. They don't get Basic Bitch Gap Moe Traits slapped onto them that are only ever shown to the player and only on their routes. Unlike Edelgard.

Dimitri's endearing trait is that he's this big huge dude who can bench-press forests and arm-wrestle god who still wants to learn to sew and who teaches kids to protect themselves and who buys candies for his friends. Claude's endearing trait is that he's this mastermind planner who has contingency and lie and obfuscation as three separate legal government names who still wants everyone to be safe and happy and hold hands and be friends.

Edelgard is strong, confident, and willing to do some of the shittiest things known to man for her goals. Her endearing trait is that her screams are cute. She's shy about her drawings of the player character. She blushes over the player potentially joking about having sex with her per her JPN version of her C support; you know, the one about how Byleth walks in on Edelgard muttering in her sleep from a nightmare about her tortured family? Perfect time to joke about fucking her! Dimitri and Claude's endearments are, well, endearing; Edelgard's are all straight up embarrassing for her.

Hell, even the smaller stuff is affected! Claude's passion for poisons and mushrooms are things he has no qualms about having others know about, despite how weird they are. Dimitri laughing at shitty jokes brings him no personal discomfort or embarrassment, despite just how loudly he laughs at them. They have traits to them that can easily be uwu worthy, and they don't care! Of the lords, only Edelgard does! Because, it feels like, the only way for a strong, resolute female character to come off as approachable is if she's knocked down a few pegs for specifically and only you, the player.

And that sucks ass! I'm sorry, but when I'm playing Edelgard's route I don't want to deal with her hiding herself away in her room for a month IN THE MIDDLE OF HER FUCKING WAR because she's just so embawwassed! It is so fucking insensitive that Edelgard is literally the only lord of the three who can have her trauma openly belittled at any point in the story by Byleth, all to have some cheap cutesy uwu moment about her fear of rats (calling her screaming in fear cute and INSISTING that it's really cute which is just. Fucking ew man)! Why can we fucking mock Edelgard's manner of speech during the MASSACRE OF REMIRE?

This shit doesn't happen to Claude or Dimitri! And saying "oh just don't pick those options then" is bullshit because no equivalent options exist for the male lords! It's piss-boilingly annoying that the second you choose to see things from the strong confident villainous ambitious female lord's perspective you can reduce her down to this bumbling moeblob just for you (sometimes unavoidably!) like!! Dude!

[vriska]

togachako really did get done so dirty by the series and a lot of the wider fandom, these two are literally the only two characters i give a shit about bc their dynamic is just so interesting

like the way it becomes a two way obsession and Ochako being forever haunted by Himiko, like Ochako literally admits Himiko's been living rent free in her mind since the night they met, Ochako being the only one who looks and really sees Himiko it just drives me insane

everything could have been different if she had just met Ochako sooner

but it's still bullshit they wanted to kill Himiko off when the whole point is that Ochako wanted to help build that world that would be easier for Himiko to live in, there WAS a place for her in the world Ochako wanted to help create and it's such a disservice to Himiko's character that her whole thing was that she'd been shamed and excluded and called a monster for something she could not help and killing her feels like the story shrugging its shoulders and going 'yeah they were all right to dehumanize her! she doesn't belong here and also she can't get better with help and support, better luck next time tho'

[chayannesegg]

might be worth noting that tubbo got lore today because he made it canon he warped back from the boat.

i think this was confusing bc he wasn't sure initially how to play it (he is not a lore guy by trade we all know this), and waffled back and forth with it (with fun bits like "it's tuesday" or "it's a time rift"), but he definitely did make it canon.

he has the story: the boat didn't leave, he had his warpstone. he knew they would just steal him back, like they did the first time.

he has the reason: he desperately needed to see sunny before he left; couldn't sit idly by

and he made it clear that's what he wants to have happened. he told his chat to stop "-rp point"-ing him about it multiple times bc he's trying to make it canon (and told fit the same when he came back post-ghost bit).

he also asked sunny's admin whether she wanted their interactions to be filler or canon and she chose canon

plus he had a canon interaction with forever explaining it and asking him to watch over his daughter

and he and sunny built things and interacted with each other based specifically off the info he was kidnapped, that he will have to go, and that they both knew it was coming

so while you may have to ignore or recontextualize some of the goofier interactions when he initially came back (phil/etoiles/fit stuff esp), tubbo did come back, the code attack did happen, it's already been fit into the lore, and i don't doubt sunny is going to tell fit about it this week!!

[dykedvonte]

I hate the stretch lines in the front of Curly's uniform because that means the devs rushed to make a model in like a month or so and thought "They gotta at least know he has huge knockers, gotta know he's got back pain." Cause like what is the thematic importance of his tits having overhang?

What responsibility is that representing? Breast reduction? It shows an inherent greed in his character due to the excess and heshouldletmeholdone and that he clearly is blinded cause if he tries to look down his damn ladder all he's seeing is his own cleavage.

[anxiously-sidequesting]

i absolutely LOVE flawed fictional women so Ione is perfect to me because of her trust issues and how that affects the people around her but at the same time Velma Von Venkman, another fictional woman, is the target of these trust issues and as a result is isolated and avoided by Ione (and the rest of the scholars) and i find myself shedding solemn tears in my personal conflict

[cloverrallover]

ok I’m really not trying to act like I hate other interpretations of Anya and curly but omfggggg I’m like sitting here biting my fist at some of these posts dude. what do you mean Anya and curly could be a happy family. what do you mean she seems like she’d keep the baby. what do you mean she seemed like she forgave curly ?!?!?!???!??!?! what !?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? girlie they r not healing together I’m sorry he’s literally half the reason their asses ended up dead in the middle of space 😭😭😭😭

[uncanny-tranny]

Like obviously the whole "they're just doing [x] for attention!" is completely asinine because humans are social creatures who need attention to some capacity, but also... in your narrative, does everybody do things specifically for your attention? When somebody does something drastic or shocking, is it not because they're desperate for help but just because they crave your attention specifically? Does the sun rise and set at your command as well?

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

hmm liu bang being a verified member of the baby-tosser's club is not as cut and dried as i thought, apparently it's only mentioned in xiang yu's biography but is omitted in his. that's a conflict of interest if i've ever seen it. that being said, u gotta admit nothing about han gaozu make this seem at all out of character for him.

[britneyshakespeare]

Had the extremely upsetting experience of a mutual of like 6 years going off on me for occasionally making posts about supporting Harris because apparently that makes me a g n cide denier who refuses to learn and grow, with all of my views just being assumed not even from what I've told them I believe or what I've posted before, but just because I DON'T post particularly the kind of things they THINK I should be. When I pointed out how much they were just completely assuming about stuff I'd never talked to them about, I was told it doesn't matter what I do in real life or "care" about if I simply disagree with their conclusion and vote for her anyway. Like they were absolutely not sorry for the level of maliciousness they not just assumed of my character, but for some reason thought appropriate to bring directly to me before unfollowing me. No apology whatsoever for how discomforting or upsetting that might be and certainly no acknowledgment that I could disagree with them and still be a good person. I just got another even longer rant about how they fundamentally can't fuck with me because of this one thing, no matter WHAT else I do in my real life (which I pointed out that they do not know), and how I'm directly supporting fascism.

Like seriously what is it about Tumblr that makes people think they know someone based off of occasional posts? There were just such DEEP assumptions they were making of me and going off of very little or absolutely nothing. Around the time I first became mutuals with that person I used to express my personality and beliefs and talk about what was going on in my life a lot more openly, but I've significantly scaled back on doing that in many ways for many reasons. One of my major ones is privacy and the way I've had strangers outside my followers and following circles just find random things I say and dogpile me for it. I was fundamentally changed after some T Fs did that to me like 3 years ago. I also just didn't have many conversations w that person anymore (I message people in general on here like 10x less than I did circa 2018-2019, which I'm somewhat sorry about!). My point is to say I think this person felt comfortable assuming that they knew me, especially who I am in 2024 at the age of 25, much better than they actually did.

One of the specific things they accused me of was being afraid of learning and growing (because I don't perform social media activism on here like they think I should). Like AFRAID to take criticism. When again I've never received criticism from them or had to respond to any criticism on here before as pertaining to my views on... well, absolutely any of the issues they accused me of not caring about. They essentially treated it as if the only thing in the world I cared about was the US election and characterized me as the most out-of-touch liberal they could possibly imagine, because I'm not "pushing" Kamala Harris to be better (Oh?? Should I do that on here?? Does she read my blog??).

And most hypocritically what they said was that I only *sometimes* *vaguely* post pro-Harris things (I often post like 5 or fewer things in a day though?). But here's the kicker. "Because I know I'll get shit for it. And rightfully so."

Really????? Not a single person, anon or not, in my messages or in a tagged post or anything, has ever given me shit before for saying who I'm voting for. I'm actually NOT afraid of "getting shit" for that opinion, I just don't start fights with people who are anti-voting. And why should I??? I genuinely don't believe in trying to change the minds of strangers on the internet about that sort of thing. I'm just not confrontational about it; that is so not the same thing as being "afraid of getting shit." I'm not posting ENOUGH about my support for Harris, therefore I'm afraid. But therefore they can also make all these assumptions about me being their strawman for an ignorant Harris supporter.

I'm afraid of getting shit but I still post anyway? But if I weren't afraid of getting shit I'd be posting a lot more?? This is ALL based on their assumptions of what my blog *should* look like, based on what I really and truly believe. My level of posting every now and then is an accurate gauge of my feelings on complex, sensitive, global issues. Because I'm voting for the Democratic presidential candidate and I'm ok sharing pretty much just that little glimpse of myself.

I really don't think that person knows just how inappropriate and insulting that is to just say all of that to me. Like they really know what's going on in my head. Their first message began and ended with like "I'm sorry I love you I just can't take it anymore" but they clearly weren't sorry enough to try and be more respectful to me, and they didn't love me enough not to default to extremely ungenerous assumptions and attacking me based off of those instead of any actual words I've said that they take issue with.

Online radicalization is real and it's not necessarily bad because your political views can start to fall well out of the contemporary Overton window. The way you find it appropriate to treat people whose views, however common, seem to fundamentally misalign with yours... that does matter. You can't just assume the worst of everyone and then act on that in how you approach them as individuals. And then be shocked that you don't stay friends with them. You can't be confrontational with someone about an issue you've never had an honest conversation about, and then expect them to take your bad faith in them as reasonable well-meaning criticism.

I'm afraid of criticism??? I'm afraid of criticism. No I'm not. This person and I have never had an issue before where they criticized me and I got harshly defensive. It was ALL projection. The entire tone of their messages was as if all their anti-voting posts recently were somehow in communication with the occasional go-vote-for-Harris posts that I make. That's not a conversation. I don't post for your satisfaction. I don't post in "response" to my mutuals I disagree with. I just post what's on my mind, sometimes, about some things. I really again can't stress enough how baffled I am by this

[hauntingblue]

Gear 5 luffy's laugh is so contagious I just hear the drums and go insane how does this work. What did he do to me

[roots-symphony]

seeing a post or fic about Jinx and Isha:

it doesn’t make them mother and daughter:

[boarwinds]

so from what i can tell in your h.c's lucy gray, very understandably, starts off cold to coriolanus when they go to the capitol (shocker, girls don't like getting shot) is there ever a specific turning point where they sorta have a new normal (by their standards) and if so do you have a hc of that moment

I think that would only happen once LG sees the twins actually somewhat enjoy/get used to living in the capitol? Maybe its like a lightbulb moment for LG, her kids aren’t fighting over food anymore when they think she can’t see them, (tangent but,, I definitely don’t want the kids to come across as selfish(?) but they’re kids, they’re hungry n underfed, and its natural to fight over stuff w ur sibling. They know their mom does her absolute best so they try not to fight in front of her, but it must’ve absolutely broken LG’s heart when she first saw them fight esp over food. Prob also the first time she cracks n thinks maybe reaching out to CS wouldn’t be so bad, ofc she immediately dismisses those thoughts) they’re warm, and safe n under the protection of the most powerful person in panem. LG realizes she can’t keep believing that the capitol is the worst thing that could happen to her kids when she sees them so happy. Maybe it’s after they come back from their first day of school, it’s a 180 from when she sent them off, both kids were terrified and clinging to her skirt. If it weren’t for CS, she might’ve taken them right back into her arms and gone home with them, but when the twins come back after school all excited and animatedly talking over each other to tell CS n LG abt their day, LG feels relief and grief at the same time. Her twins were fine but now she knows their happiness means she can never escape CS or the capitol.

I think CS clocks this n finds it so amusing. Maybe he picks up the kids in his arms (for visual ref look at my fan art of CS carrying Maude ivory lawl) all while keeping eye contact w LG, only breaking eye contact to face each twin n tells them “slow down, one at a time so ur mother can hear you, right LG?” Or do u think he’d call her a nickname 👁️👄👁️

[aq2003]

the background piano music ends abruptly on a discordant note when hamlet says his father had died in the past two hours, which is when the idea gets put forward that his own perception of time/events might not be totally reliable

[the-vibing-ghoul]

some people will be all about mental health awareness and leftist ideals of at least tolerating the mentally ill who show ''ugly'' symptoms until it's someone they know and ''care'' about having a bad day and acting like it in a way they don't find appealing