#but also maybe it didn't ring

[fazcinatingblog]

my phone was like dying, on 15% battery, for the netball game and then it had just enough life to let me call an uber and then i was home and charged the phone around 9:30pm-ish???? and a voicemail only came through from my boss now????? she called at like 10:54pm on a saturday night????? "i suppose this can wait till monday but i'm thinking about it now" AT 10:54PM ON A SATURDAY NIGHT?????????

[payidaresque]

A bit more than you might think, actually.

[glorfindel-of-imladris]

Erestor and Glorfindel 🤍✨

[jenna-louise-jamie]

i think it's so interesting how different book!yassen and tv!yassen are.

first off how book!yassen sent alex to scorpia, it was a mistake because he wasn't thinking clearly. tv!yassen did it on purpose (to the best of my knowledge).

book!yassen did not want alex to kill. he tells him this twice, “killing is for grown ups.” and asking alex if he can really pull the trigger and shoot him, when alex breaks into the boat during eagle strike. going into great detail to dissuade alex from doing it, and all of me believes not just because yassen didn't want to die in this moment. this makes sense for book!yassen because he himself didn't want to kill. so he's trying to save alex from his own fate.

tv!show yassen doesn't seem to have any issues with killing. he doesn't particularly enjoy it, but it's his job and he does what he has to do so he can survive. so he's okay with encouraging alex to do it. by telling him he should view the people he's assigned to assassinate as nothing more than targets. tricking him into helping assassinate max. encouraging him to let go of his emotions. he wants alex to join him by his side.

ultimately while their methods are different, their end goals are the same. they both want to protect alex. book!yassen thinks he can achieve this by pushing alex away, and tv!show yassen thinks he can achieve this by pulling alex in closer. and both work because they're so compelling.

[swan2swan]

Every single shot in this three-minute span is absolutely insane,

[hightidesandoldmen]

2Fords Au but the other interloping Ford (Fara) is also a teenager from a Magical Girl dimension is this anything

[creativesplat]

ok... so Lambert x Eve...

Eve and the two Blaiddyds

Lambert and the two Fierenes

The step-siblings

@blaiddydbrokeit and I were talking, and they have now sent me down the wonderful rabbit hole that is Eve and Lambert getting married and looking after their children.

[eskawrites]

dont sell yourself short on elden ring au! i just dont know what elden ring is lol

tbf does anyone really know what elden ring is? i'm about to hit 200 hours in the game and i don't think i could tell you

[pink-lightsabre]

cerrit "my friends call me pinch" argupnin. who gets called pinch once in the entire series. by his coworker. and not at ALL by any of his best friends.

makes me crazy.

[krys-loves-otome]

Stolen from Scummy's reblog because I wanted to do it too!

Note that most half-filled squares are ones that are technically true, but it's under specific circumstances and rules, will explain below

So, for now, some Blorbos from me:

-Intense in loves and passions (for Nobunaga, for MC once they get together, for trying to get Mitsuhide to take better care of himself, in his care for others, dude is just passionate for his loved ones!) -His love for Nobu and his interactions with Mitsuhide can get a little fruity, not gonna lie. -Technically orphan since we don't really hear much about his family aside from his poor upbringing and having to be a bum to get by until Nobu came into his life. Agas in discord has also told us about RL Hideyoshi and how much his mom loved Kennyo and I think that's funny to think about sometimes. -Frequently violent but only when it comes to protecting his loved ones. He thinks one of them is in trouble and the man will go feral trying to find a way to help them. Overall speaking, he's not particularly violent, I don't think though.

-----

-Nothing anyone says is gonna make me change my mind about this man being bisexual. Nope, not happening. -Technically a tragic backstory as he frequently does Team Oda's dirty work of spying and torture, but his tragic backstory is not quite to the extent that some other characters go through, like poverty, figure-headness, and killing a loved one.

-Technically frequently violent, but it's mostly in the pranks he pulls. Not ferally violent, in a sense. He's sneaky about his violent tendencies. You don't want to mess with his wife, after all. -Divorced? He's a double agent that always goes back to his ex (Team Oda).

------

-Being an immortal vampire means you must have some complexities and that doesn't excuse you being fruity, monsieur. -Technically an orphan as I don't think we hear much about his birth family as we do Leonardo and Vlad. They're mentioned sometimes but no word on their current status as he tends to focus more on his found family. Until I get confirmed status, he's orphan status to me, thus why the creation of his found one. -Divorced from Vlad, duh.

------

-Listen. Listen. Devon/batteryrose was onto something with shipping Nokto and Slivio. Plus, been thinking of finding ways of shipping my OC and him with Rio. Just something about Nokto and the Bentonite princes does something to my mind, okay?

-Technically an orphan after what happened to his and Licht's mom, plus the whole reason for the Belle procedure is because his dad died. Maybe it doesn't count because he was an adult when his dad died, but, technically speaking, both his parents are dead, so... -Murderer by technicality because of Blood-stained Roses Day (all the princes at the time were said to have participated, so, technically speaking). He also tried to poison some merchants for a business deal, so attempted murderer too, technically?

-----

-Have you seen this demon when his family is in danger (actual, perceived, or otherwise)? He will go absolutely bat-shit feral when his family is in danger! Once you're under his wings, nothing will stop him from going to the absolute limit and beyond for you.

-Technically divorced from the Celestial Realm because of Circumstances™️, not from a specific person.

-Also on a technicality, because of that... whole war with the Celestial Realm, so some angels were more than likely killed, right?

[pmni]

y'know   ...   pom's   arrival   coinciding   w   kaufmo's   abstraction   makes   me   wonder   if   her   being   a   jester   was   really   a   coincidence   ...

[bellarkeandclintashaandsuch]

Did Thee remove Tanthai’s watch for him? And his rings? He placed them so carefully on the nightstand. And left Tanthai a glass of water. He just wants to take care of Tanthai and make sure he’s safe and happy. How many times has he had to do this? How many times has he driven a drunk Tanthai home? How many times has he carried Tanthai out of a bar? How many nights has he lost sleep, so he can keep watch outside Tanthai’s window all night? And Tanthai answers his call right away and looks almost concerned. And he doesn't want to worry him, so he doesn't mention his nightmare. There's so much love there 😭

[fluffypichu876]

When I started Dark Souls I was already aware that you lost all of your souls upon death, but I admit that I did not expect the game to have an retrieval system! And I really like the way it works.

Thanks to it, dying can actually mean getting more souls, if you're able to safely return to your death point, that is. If you do, you probably had to defeat the majority of enemies in the way (otherwise they just brutally murder you anyway xD), which means that you certainly got a generous amount of new souls on your return trip.

Now sum your retrieved souls with that new amount and get a nice reward for doing your best to survive until the retrieval point!

Of course, there's the risk of dying before retrieving your souls which means losing them forever, but as you get more experient at working around the enemy placement, that barely becomes a problem. Well at least in the area i'm currently at xD. (plus, there's nothing stopping you from returning to the latest bonfire to level up! It's not like you already killed all the threats behind you.).

[thevalleyisjolly]

I am newly amused by that scene in FOTR where Gandalf is telling Saruman about how the One Ring was in the Shire for many years, “right under my very nose,” and Saruman responds “And yet you did not have the wit to see it.”  Because.  Saruman.  My guy.  You have sat in council with all three Elven Ring bearers multiple times across thousands of years.  You are literally talking to a bearer of a Ring of Power right now.  The only way Narya could be more right under your nose is if Gandalf decked you in the mouth.  Well done, o cunning one!  Truly a wizard of great insight and perception.

[cosmos-dot-semicolon]

Requesting Nya, Edgeworth, and Theif for the character bingo!

(It didn't surprise me that you have good taste in characters. Also, I should watch The Last Unicorn...)

(asks about my favourite fictional characters in 2024)

Oddly enough you got me kind of going on a theme with this one - they're all characters I expected to be tropey in a bad way, who all turn out way more interesting than I could've ever imagined. Huh.

A lot of words lie below about Dicey Dungeons (up to Reunion), the first two Ace Attorney games, and Ninjago (up to the end of season 6).

Spoilers for Dicey Dungeons (up to Reunion), the first two Ace Attorney games, and Ninjago up to the end of season 6. A warning for a mention of a suspected suicide in a backstory.

I'll start with Thief since I need a bit of warmup for the other ask you sent me:

Thief is the only time I've genuinely enjoyed a protagonist that… I'm not sure how to put it. Is shown to be a jerkass and a realist amongst a cast of otherwise very whimsical characters? Who's drawn to look roguish, sneaky, and clever, whether the writer backs that up or not. And for bonus points, is styled after D&D's aesthetics.

I usually hate characters like this. I think it's an oversaturation problem. Ronin's the closest example I have - a character that does nothing for his season's story and wins against the ninja purely out of plot necessity. Or consider Jax, who takes up a lot of screentime in TADC making the rest of the crew suffer, whose snarking really only makes the creators look insecure about the goofier elements of their own work.

And Jax has been confirmed to be a creator's favourite, which is… not concerning, but it's one of those things a creator can say to make you realise you see something very different in their work to them. Plus, a lot of people like him in the fandom. Which isn't technically part of the work. But it is annoying to see how so many people focus on this archetype even when it doesn't bring anything new to the table. This trope is always extremely obvious, and extremely obnoxious if you don't like it.

The worst thing is this isn't just relegated to the realm of fiction. Do you remember when Rick and Morty was a thing, and you had hordes of people looking up to Rick Sanchez as a role model because he was both smart and an asshole, and therefore the takeaway was that it was okay to be an asshole if you (thought you) were smart?

Maybe this is just because I made the mistake of using Reddit as a teenager, but I'm so sick of that attitude. Throw in the way it only ever seems to apply to men…

(as for the last point - I like the concept of magic and fantasy, but I'm not white and I'm fucking sick of how the genre is based in very strict archetypes when you could do anything with it. I won't elaborate on this or it'd be a whole 'nother essay; let's just say I dislike any aesthetic based off D&D.)

Thief is the only time I've seen a work dress this down: his whole arc is realising that he's been outclassed by somebody who knows the game much better than he does, and actually has the power to back it up (and is much funnier to watch too).

As Lady Luck so elegantly puts it:

"…Thief, who is so strangely proud of being clever and unpleasant! Do you think he minds that I'm so much cleverer, and so many times more unpleasant?"

You know that creeping feeling of dread you got playing the game? He's the character that embodies it best. I expected the game to play this completely straight like all those characters above, but it doesn't. It's not so much a twist as the objectively correct take on this trope, but it's still unique and genuinely insightful in a way I haven't seen since.

(Fun fact: it was actually seeing the episode 2 dialogue between Lady Luck and Thief that got me to stop playing the demo and get the full game! The streamer was fast-forwarding through all the text, but I paused and was like 'wait. this is good dialogue. I have to buy this.')

Reunion really drives this home. I love how he instead starts directing his snark outwards to keep his new friends safe. He actually does things now, as the tough negotiator of the group, rather than just claiming he's better than them. He's still kind of got his old greed in him with how he respects Lady Luck's plans to paint the moon as her face, and how he's here for profit first and foremost, but it's clear he's been forced to grow out of that previous obnoxiousness after being put through hell and back.

Dicey Dungeons has such good commentary on character tropes y'all. Seriously.

Nya's a character that had a personal impact on me growing up. I didn't notice it back then, but at least in the early seasons she's just. Objectively the coolest character in the cast. Albeit only because of misogyny reasons as you've noted, but a signifcant amount of Ninjago's appeal lies in its cool factor, so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I always thought she was going to be Green Ninja as a kid.

I had to go back and check this, but we get the Samurai X reveal just before season 1 gets onto the full potential episodes. There's something about having to build your own power in a way that one-ups all your peers while keeping it secret from them that's so cool to me. While I have mixed feelings on whether it's a good thing or not, it reminds me of how I studied a lot of maths in my own time in primary school and did better than everyone else by a long shot. Plus you don't usually see girls straight up build mechs, so this blew my fucking mind as a kid.

It was cool to see representation like that. I really like how that specialisation then leads into her potential in season 5 - when she finally begins to branch into learning something new that doesn't seem to be her thing. I've seen people doubt how realistic that is, and while you can debate how well it was paced or whether it's a good decision for the series, that's a real problem you can run into when you're AFAB (or in any other oppressed group) and talented at one thing.

You get attached to your best skill, because that's how you prove yourself as a person. It comes easily to you and you never really work on anything else, and when you're pushed to do it, you hate that it doesn't come easily to you. I didn't consider myself an artist or writer or programmer for years because I thought the stuff I made was ugly and awkward; I knew a trans guy in secondary who straight up told me that he liked his subjects because they came easily to him (which good for him, but it still proves my point that this is a real thing people go through).

I'm reminded of Wu telling Nya that while earth is strong and air is fluid, water can be both. I thought it was just a thing they wrote in to sound wise back then, but on reflection it's some really kind encouragement for her to branch out. And I like how she quits angrily in her training and tries to run for ages. How she doesn't figure it out until the end. I can see myself in that. It's very nice.

And while Skybound's very. Divisive. I think it's a good 60% of a season for her. Her story up to the ending of episode 8 has been compelling - she wants Jay to respect her boundaries, she struggles to make herself known as a new part of the team due to her status, maybe she doesn't mind being in a relationship, but she wants to at least choose for herself. And the sheer amount of optimism encouragement and energy she has throughout the season for everyone is just great.

Yeah. She's great. She kicks ass. She's unfortunately stuck in a show lead by Male WritersTM but we sometimes stumble into some decent characterisation for her despite that. She's unfortunately lowkey but that means there's less parts of her to mangle over time.

…Ninjago was such a great show. It's such a shame it was capped at 6 seasons, but at least that means they treated Nya with respect throughout her runtime except for that one time…

Also I don't know how to tie this neatly into the essay. But a while ago LEGO released a really funny Ninjago explained video done by the Honest Trailers guy, and I still fucking love how he goes off about how talented Nya is for ages instead of making fun of most of the other Ninjas' archetypes (sans Cole), and just ends it with:

'so naturally she was the last one picked for the team. Seriously, they picked [Jay] over her?'

Edgeworth I have the least to say about - it's been a hot while since I've touched AA (and only the first two games at that) and I don't want to risk misremembering fandom concepts as canon.

But the main impact he made on me was that he seems so tailor-made to be your frustrating, comically evil anime rival for the entire plot. Opposing colour scheme, stupid animations, and all. You go in thinking he's made to be a smug bastard you can knock down, and you come out recoiling from that as soon as possible in horror.

And you feel so powerful when you finally get to team up with him against someone.

Yes he does pull out absolute bullshit like the updated autopsy report, and he's still pretty insulting even in later installations. But when you're working your way throughout the first game, and you start to poke at his motivations a little further? He has an iron-clad reason to want to become a prosecutor, even as potentially corrupt as his methods may be. He seeks to help Wright if it truly brings someone to justice, which is a better portrayal of the legal system than I've seen than from many other places.

And in the end, after he saves you, you have to go back and do the same for him. And it's the best case of the game. You not only blow open a decades-old case that's been hinted towards throughout the entire game, but you also finally cut your friend loose from the ghost that he didn't even know was haunting him for years. It ties the overarching plot and the main characters' personal endeavours together so well, which is the series' greatest strength, despite what the memes going around about its wacky hijnks would have you believe.

Plus, while it's not Edgeworth's doing himself, the amount of dedication Phoenix has towards this guy is great. Whether you read their bond as romantic or platonic (or otherwise), you get the sense Edgeworth must've been someone really special to Phoenix for him to try and chase him down through years of law school and all the bullshit you're put through in the previous 3 chapters. That's devotion right there, and it catches you entirely off-guard with what you go in expecting.

He feels very human. You learn about things like his Steel Samurai collection, you give him advice on how to grow beyond the mess that is DL6. You see him take that in the worst way possible by running off to a foreign country and implying that he might've killed himself. You expect none of it. It's very touching.

[greed-the-dorkalicious]

All the #RyouSweep propaganda got me thinking like. Yeah we all criticize Ryou for STILL FUCKING GOING BACK FOR THE DAMN RING in Battle City (and every other time lbr), and rightfully so, but if we’re being honest. In his defense it WAS kind of horrendously irresponsible of the Yugis to just leave two wholeass Millennium Items just sitting on a table and then leave the room. Why did they do that