#but i also don't think it doesn't look cool in fiction

[toasthaste]

ok here are some In Stars and Time thoughts: (wow! that's a lot of thoughts actually! long post warning! also warning for like every possible spoiler, don't read this if you haven't engaged with the game to your satisfaction)

I'm obsessed with the fact that the loop that ends up being the final one is the one where EVERYTHING goes wrong. I spent the whole game subconsciously building up my Perfect Final Loop in my mind, how I'd get every item to make sure I didn't miss an opportunity to use em, do all the friendquests and such... I didn't even realize I'd been building up that ideal scenario until after credits rolled! Really really cool. The timeline where Siffrin does the worst stuff he does in any loop is the one that stays. And it's still a happy ending! it's a better ending because of that! His friends saw him at his worst and still loved him! He didn't have to do everything perfect to keep them around actually! Something about that feels so right, to me.

I keep using "ludonarrative resonance" to describe this game and yeah ok I'm huffing my own farts here whipping that out but whatever, it's REAL. The player and Siffrin are on the EXACT same emotional journey as each other, we're getting tired of seeing the exact same lines over and over again right alongside them, we're taking shortcuts because we've seen it all before and just want to grab key open door grab crest etc etc make the progress go. We're starting to find these previously-charming characters grating because we've just seem them repeat the SAME lines over and over and over and OVER again until they start feeling like caricatures of themselves who we can barely feel any real compassion for any more.... It's just so.... clean, it's so perfect, to me. It helps that Siffrin is also one of the more relatable characters I've encountered in, like, media. I don't usually relate to fictional characters much, but, man, the emotional constipation, the building scorn, the depression, the Being Weird About Touch... I mentioned in another post that it's really just Siffrin and Murderbot who I've ever found viscerally relatable, of all the characters ever in media. So like, it's a pretty rare position. (I do not relate to the pun-love though. I'm funny I'm good at goofs but bad puns are extremely tedious to me. Which perhaps goes to show how well-realized Siffrin is, given that I'm able to look the other way....)

I think they could have stood to make Loop's Whole Deal a bit more obvious. I had no clue what their fucking deal was at any point. I totally missed the interaction that lets you learn about The Incident and thus get more Loop info at the end, and... it's valid to have different endings in a game of course, but... I felt like I really missed out tbh! And I had no way of knowing I had to keep interacting with the silver coin.... idk. It felt a bit like a gotcha I suppose. And Loop's deal is really cool! Holy hell! I'm doing a quick replay of the game to see more convos with them with this context, and to get the ending with them, and like--!!! There's so much here! Loop tellins Sif to use the royal We, they even tell Siffrin, like-- Loop asks Siffrin why he doesn't just tell his friends about the loops, maybe they can help, why keep it a secret? Meanwhile... Loop!Siffrin is stuck in their own helpless timefuckery world and refusing to let Siffrin know about it! The Siffrin from the Start Again timeline never learned those lessons, they're still trying to help someone else while refusing to ask for help themselves, refusing to even let on that there's a problem! And getting more and more emotionally fucked up about it! Man it's good. I guess it does make a replay more rewarding, not knowing this until the end, the first time, but so much of the game is already a replay that, idk, it does feel weird to replay it. I've already done so many repetitions y'all.... But I guess that's pretty meta, also...

Oh I'm under the impression this is not terribly uncommon but I absolutely did get got by the ?diary? that had the story of the person making a duplicate of themselves so they had someone to talk to. Like I fully thought that was describing the King and Siffrin, I spent a long time under the mistaken impression that Siffrin was a copy of the King in some capacity. Oops.... I might try to gently lead Beloved Roomie away from this interpretation when she plays it. Planning on being pretty hands-off overall but this is one area where I feel it might be justified to violate the prime directive.... But we'll see!

I wish I liked the music more..... This is a game that I think really begs for some real heartwrenching tunes to enhance all of the everything but instead none of it does it for me at all. I think that's a real shame, it's by far my biggest complaint. I'm not asking for Undertale-tier, but, at least something I'd want to put on my playlist for the emotional resonance, y'know?

THEY ACTUALLY KILLED THE KID !!!! LIKE!!!! I guess I have some biases I might should think about but I was not expecting a game that begins with so many explicit pronouns introductions (rather than just giving us context clues) and that has no real cursing to be willing to kill the kid, even impermanently? Let alone so gruesomely? I think I was expecting a much greater level of.... idk, tweeness, fanglessness, than we actually got. In spite of being a fan of insertdisc5's comics for YEARS and years! And like! Damn! Props to them!

God. God. So, like. All the ending fakeouts were fucking great. I genuinely thought the All Friendship Quests ending might be the Real One, I was prepared to be disappointed because it felt too soon and just not.... quite.... right? But I did think that was probably where it was heading! But it wasn't! I got got and it's so heartwrenching and also so satisfying, the mood whiplash from loop to loop is fucking sublime.

And-- AND! The real ending! So like. Some of the stuff I missed was just me not pursuing specific content correctly. But some of it is genuinely just, like, stuff that has no actual purpose besides flavor. Flavor, and.... The locked passphrase door in Dormont. The four-pointed leaf you can get (but not in the final loop!), the bell chime, etc etc. You can't actually really do anything with any of this stuff. But you don't know that! It feels like there's still all these loose ends! And!!! Those loose ends do their job SO WELL! The dev knows Gamer Instincts, knows people are gonna have that mental tally of boxes-yet-to-be-checked. Left some forever unchecked on purpose, which-- At the end, the real end, when Siffrin is about to talk to the Head Housemaiden and find out, for real, if this is the final loop or if it's all going to happen again, again, again. He's scared. He's traumatized! He's thought he Had It so many times! SO many times!!! Hope is terrifying! Hope is a poison! And the game has left these loose threads, and at least for me I really was not sure it was going to work. Like it seemed likely but the same metaknowledge of story structure that made me think it was likely also told me "but wait, there's all these loose threads, and the only way for them to trick us again WOULD BE to make the ending SO elaborate and epilogue-y....." I was nervous right along with Siffrin! I was uncertain! Fucking fantastic work, using my own gamer's instincts against me. Thrilled about it.

All the characters are so well realized. They all have specific relationships with each other, not just with Siffrin (Important!!!!! Huge complaint I had with BG3, they didn't put their whole pussies into this!!!!). And, and, I love how they all have different feelings about the time loops. I love that Mirabelle doesn't want "spoilers," and meanwhile Bonnie doesn't mind them and thinks of their alt-selves as like... them-but-not-them in a very cool way.

There's something about-- the way the game starts as a regular degular videogame and then graaaadually becomes, essentially, a visual novel as the actual gameplay becomes trivialized. Which itself is like, really really cool with the themes! And also, just.... I never would have picked up a straight up visual novel, I just, don't get into them, I'd rather read a book, but! I was already invested! It got its hooks into me when there was gameplay mixing things up and those hooks weren't about to let go just because the gameplay didn't super matter any more!

Straight up when we first see Red I didn't at all process that it was a Color in a game with No Colors, Canonically. They had to spell it out for me. It didn't occur to me to be surprised. I'm just too used to colors existing I guess idk. I think I wish the colors thing had gone somewhere a bit more...? I'm GUESSING it mostly originated as just a cute little explanation for why the game is all grayscale and then fit in with enough stuff to be given elevated importance (?) But it felt... hm. Underdeveloped, maybe. I think I really want more stories in this.... "Setting" and "Universe" and "Series" are not quite the right words but hopefully you get the idea. I want more so there can be one that develops that more. Not that leaving stones unturned is, like, illegal ofc. I just find the idea very compelling....

What is it with time loop stories and themes of loss that cannot be outsmarted. Man. I wondered, for so long, if Siffrin's country was going to be restored in people's minds, if that was one of the main big Plot Things we'd see. And it just didn't! Their memory is going to keep being bad, they're going to keep having all these huge tragic gaps and it's just. What can you do. At some point you have to either be permanently paralyzed by the horrific injustice you've suffered-- or you have to try to live a life. And. Man. I don't think I've actually ever encountered a story that was so much about that exact specific form of loss, the loss of one's culture, history, language! All of it. Gone from everywhere. It made me think of the obvious things and just. Man. What a howling void. The contrast with Odile's deal made it a lot more effective too I think. More of an expanded meditation upon these themes than just one toe dipping in, I guess? Hm.

Odile's battle profile pic when she's at low health is so fucking hot this cartoon character is so hot goddammit.

Game good. You're only reading this if you've already played it, I hope, so I can't use this space to recommend it in a meaningful way but. Heck. Game good.

[edennill]

Headcanon: Female Rangers are never common among the Dunedain, but there's also always at least one because it's not forbidden either.

[villain-in-love]

Fun fact: I can dress in a variety of styles in real life, but my outfits constantly swing between masculine and feminine in proportion of 50%/50% depending on the day (and weather).

Meanwhile when it comes to my s/is, almost all of them dress predominantly in masculine clothing.

(Except for Katerina - she's got a unique style that mostly consists of dresses and flowing fabric. If for the rest of my s/is the proportion of masc to fem is 85% to 15%, for her it would be the exact opposite.)

[earlgreytea68]

Okay. It's time for an AI rant.

My nephew is 13 years old. Whenever he writes a paper for school, I check it over and fix all of his mistakes for him. He said to me, "Maybe I'll proofread your paper for you in exchange," meaning one of the scholarly articles I write for work. I said, "Cool," and gave him the file. And he said, "Well, this is full of errors! See, you always say you have a lot to correct on my stuff, and look at all the stuff you got wrong!" And I said, surprised, "What? Where?" Because I'm sure there are typos in the draft I sent him, but not, like, that many.

And then he pointed to the screen and said, "Look at all the blue and red lines you have."

And I said, "Yeah, but those are wrong. Like, those are blue and red lines I'm ignoring because the computer is wrong." And then I paused and added, "You know you can't proofread a paper by just looking at the red and blue lines, right?" And he gave me the blankest look, because that clearly is EXACTLY what he thinks. And it became even clearer suddenly why, whenever I correct something on his paper, his immediate reaction is, "It didn't have a blue or red line."

There's a very good reason for that: THAT'S BECAUSE THE COMPUTER ISN'T SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT IT WAS WRONG.

I am so tired of being sold the idea that computers are better than humans and so we should just outsource everything to them, which is clearly the lesson my nephew is absorbing in U.S. middle school. COMPUTERS ARE NOT BETTER THAN HUMANS. Like, maybe they are better at humans at crawling through rubble to find people trapped inside. They are also better at preserving things in a searchable format. Things like that. Very limited circumstances.

I don't want to sound alarmist but everything I hear about people using generative AI freaks me out. It's not just that I'm freaked out by people being like, "I use it to write novels!" (Although I don't see how they do, I have tried to have it write fiction for me and the output was truly terrible.) But I recognize my bias around creative writing and so no one needs to credit my views on artificial writing. But! Other things are alarming, too! "I use it to brainstorm x, y, or z." But...why? Why not just...use your own brain...to...brain...storm? The computer doesn't even have a brain to brainstorm with! And you might be like, "But it comes up with things that my brain would never think of!" So would other people! You could also brainstorm with other people! Or even through Google to see what other people have thought before you (not AI). Please don't belittle the wonder of thinking.

I just feel like the marketing around generative AI boils down to "Wouldn't it be easier not to use your own brain to think about things?" Everyone. No. It would not be. Please just trust me on this. I'm not just an old person who is out of touch with technology or something. I promise. USE YOUR BRAINS. IT WILL BE OKAY.

[kianamaiart]

No offense to the magical girl story you're doing, but I'm not sure about it. It's looks good, and you've put effort into it, but I'm just not fond of magical girl stories, like, why do they always go for the teenage girls and not, you know, adults, particularly ones who already understand the concept of responsibility and sacrifice. But good luck.

That's fine. If you don't like the genre, you don't like it

I thought about playing with the idea of an adult magical girl (magical woman?), similarly over it, but it was giving like... bitter millennial vibes which isn't what I'm going for LMAO.

With an adult it felt like "ah this is her job and she hates it haha she's so relatable". But I wanted my story to feel more like "Oh this girl hates her job, which makes sense she's a baby she shouldn't even have a job or all these responsibilities actually". Since this series is somewhat of a parody of the genre, I feel like leaning into the tropes is important. Teenage girls having this burden of protecting the world is one of them.

It also falls into the themes of being a "gifted kid who people have a lot of expectations for" that I want to explore. Growing up too fast sucks, Aika's aware of that and trying to reclaim her childhood

That's why I'm doing it but in general, I think magical girls are usually teenagers because the genre is generally marketed toward tweenage/teenage girls. A lot of film and fiction is either made to sell a fantasy and/or to inspire. What I love about magical girl animes is that they aim to teach little girls that you can to be feminine and strong. Not that I don't think you can't do that with an adult character but we all know it's nice to see characters that are like you, whether it be race, gender, sexuality and in this case, age. A child doesn't know what it's like to be an adult so seeing a kid like them doing cool shit probably resonates more. Then on the flipside, an adult can remember what it was like for them to be a kid/teenager. So having a younger protagonist can still be relatable or even nostalgic for an adult. I think teenage characters just cast a wider net of appeal/relatability for audiences.

I would love to see more media tackle broader age ranges also, but also I get why high school is an, admittedly overused, but popular age range to write.

[tunemyart]

So I've just watched the finale and I'm feeling... Weird. I think part of it is because this show started with everything I like in a story (cool badass ladies, a queer romance, found family, redemption, etc etc) and ended up being... Not all that (most characters die, the romance is doomed, and I guess the redemption mostly happened but wasn't entirely satisfactory to me). Also, I'm someone who as Trauma (tm) with death so, I guess my brain's first reaction is "fuck that I just want them all happy and safe" and it takes me a while to accept when stories take these paths, however well written they might be.

Still, I thought it all went a bit fast in the last 2 eps, with parts of the show ringing just a little bit more hollow than I would have expected? I'm left feeling like the characters of Alice, Mrs Hart and Jen were treated a bit superficially (Lillia's story felt more complete). I also wished we had seen more of Agatha's past because spending centuries just conning witches then killing them is... a bit boring? (maybe we learn more about her in WandaVision, I haven't seen it). And obviously I wished we had seen more of Agatha and Rio. It's like the show couldn't decide if it was about Agatha or about Billy (partly because, I'm guessing it's setting up a 3rd show about him?), and with this short format we ended losing a bit on Agatha's part.

Anyway, curious of what you think of all that because your analysis are always super interesting, and like I said my own brain might be a bit biased towards resistance with this one. And obviously would love to read your fanfic(s) should you write any!

So, I've started and restarted a reply to this a few times, but I think what my answer boils down to is: we're meant to have multilayered responses to this finale. We're meant to sit with it. It's meant to change our experience of the show we've had to this point.

I think the best metaphor for this is the fact the revelation that Rio is Death. Bear with me, because I know this got spoiled for us way early on and we all knew it and were all just waiting for the revelation to drop - but imagine for a second that we didn't know that Rio, Agatha's ex-girlfriend and spooky fun vaguely-a-psychopath as played by the delightful Aubrey Plaza, is death. Your perception of Rio would have been turned on its head. Your perception of Agatha would have been turned on its head. Your perception of the Witches' Road and what we're even doing here with Death walking alongside us as a tourist would have been turned on its head.

Now, we all had an incredibly fun time even with the knowledge that Rio is death before we should have had it. But I think some of the power for what it meant for the story - and our perception of what was really happening - was muted.

Jen, at the beginning of 1.08, says, "She told us who she was from the very beginning."

Sit with that - because the same is true of this story.

---

It turns out that the Road is a metaphor for death. This isn't fully illustrated for us until Nicky, the author of the Ballad, walks down the road with Death's hand in his, and we go, oh. Oh.

Agatha tells us in the beginning that the Road doesn't exist, a rare instance of her giving anyone unbridled truth. And sure - the Road that our coven walked down doesn't exist. The Road that all the witches Agatha lured to the deaths believed in doesn't exist. It's a fiction. But it's significant that Agatha lured them all to the Road and killed them. They wanted to walk the Road. They died. Not "they died instead" - it's a two-fold statement. They wanted to walk the Road and they died. In a gruesome way, Agatha's been taking witches on the Witches' Road since the 1750s.

I don't think the significance of that is lost on Agatha, either, especially where we pick up at the beginning of 1.08. Lilia's dead, and everybody's reeling.

Perhaps Agatha more than anybody.

---

I also want to quickly take a look at Rio's accusation of Agatha regarding Billy.

"The bodies are really piling up." "Did you doubt me?" "Yeah, I did. I thought there'd be a trick in there somewhere. And there was! You were distracting me from him."

Because this is a revelation about Agatha's actions toward not just Rio, but any audience watching her - i.e., us the viewers. She's been distracting us! Not from who Billy is, we know that of course, but with regard to what the Road itself is. Agatha's known the Road isn't real the entire time. She's been protecting Billy from that knowledge. She's been protecting Billy from Rio. She's been protecting the coven itself from disintegrating. And, the biggest con woman move of them all, she's been distracting us - with less and less success as the show goes on - from the fact that she is not even the slightest bit in control.

---

So I definitely want to circle back to what you said about how the show started out with everything you like in a story, because oof, yeah, I felt that. I felt that hard in the finale. Coming off the impact of the incredible storytelling in 1.07, and the queer jokes and campy Wicked cosplay balancing out the sad, I think many of us spent the next week expecting some kind of emotional resolution that probably involved the remaining coven banding together in some more of that found family we've felt them becoming along the way.

Here's where things starts going wrong, right off the bat: they don't. Instead, they splinter. Not only are you aware of just how few of them are left (Jen, Billy, Agatha), but Jen and Agatha can't handle Lilia's death. Jen's distraught. The close up on Agatha running away out of the trial and back onto the Road, alone, shows her looking hunted and wild in her guilt. Everything that follows has its seeds in that moment of rending that began with Lilia's death.

From the beginning, the point has been that Agatha Harkness is a covenless witch. It's something we've seen her revel in - maybe simply because she has no choice but to own it. But the fact is that here, for the first time in centuries, she had a coven. She didn't intend to have one - she intended to kill them all in her basement and not think twice about them again. But events transpired the way they did. They became her coven. And one by one, they all died on the Road.

Rio, of course, has the words to cut right to the quick: "Your coven is shrinking," she teases Agatha cruelly. Agatha looks wild - because she's right. The worst thing is that she killed Alice - and she didn't mean to. She didn't want to. But she did, and in exactly the same way she'd intended to kill her at the beginning, the same way she's been killing witches for hundreds of years. "Your coven is shrinking," and it's Agatha's fault. It's Agatha's coven. It's Agatha's coven.

Hold on to that, too.

---

One of the things that I've been mulling over most is Agatha's character. She's so much fun in the beginning. We're all fucking charmed by her. We also don't have the full context of just how much of a serial killer she is.

So for me, at least, watching 1.08 and not only not getting found family, but getting an Agatha so far away from a "redemption" story that she only just barely is willing to not sacrifice Billy for herself, was kind of a rude awakening. Agatha's a lot more of a villain that I was prepared for. Surprise!

Agatha's so far away from "redemption", in fact, that she's only just barely starting to feel empathy for other witches. She's just starting to be affected by people who aren't #1. And that's a trauma response. And it's so, so, so deeply rooted in her that she's only just starting to be able to conceive of the idea of people who care for her. Of the possibility of being able to live in community. She's not ready for a redemption arc. There was no way that the kind of redemption arc she'd need could fit into nine episodes, because so much of it would for her be predicated on a mental shift that Agatha just hasn't arrived at yet. She's still so angry. She's still so traumatized. She's done almost none of the work. And even at the end, even with the final gesture of sacrificing herself for Billy, that's not a final act of redemption, oh Agatha's now a good person/forgiven/insert word frame of choice.

What this show did in terms of redemption for Agatha was set her up to be in a place where she might want it - where she might want to do and be better for Billy, and someday, for Nicky.

And it's significant that that point comes for Agatha in dying… and after death.

---

This show is about death. The Road is about death. Death is a character on the show.

Like, okay, you're saying. Fine. But what about my gay fun times? What about my queer romance, my found family?

And please know that I'm there with you.

I'm not hugely in touch with what the larger fandom is saying and how they're reacting because I have my little echo chamber here on tumblr and a few friends who have actual social media, but even here I get the sense that we're all kind of :/ for fairly similar reasons. What happened to the show I fell in love with?

And for me, the last few days, I think it's been important to realize that the fact that the show I fell in love with didn't suddenly become a different show. It didn't pull a bait and switch. No twists were in bad faith. Everything has been right here in the text of the show from the very beginning.

And I think it's important to see the story that Jac Schaeffer et al. were actually telling vs. our expectations of what they were telling, or worse, what we wanted them to tell. For just one example, I was convinced we were going to see Alice again - maybe Lorna Wu, too. I wasn't expecting it to be for the sole purpose of recognizing that not only is she dead, but to give Alice herself the space to say that it wasn't fair, that she wasn't ready, that she'd just broken her family's curse, that now she can really do something with her life! Because, ugh, yeah! It's not fair, for all those reasons! But that's also death. Likewise, Sharon's just dead, and worse, her death was pretty much meaningless. Lilia rediscovered herself again, and she chose her death to save everyone else - extremely meaningful. But at the end - she's just dead. We don't see her again. She's gone. She, like the others, walked the Road and away with Death.

I loved these covenless witches. I loved them finding themselves together. I loved them bonding around the campfire and discovering community. I miss them all, so so much. But they told us from the beginning how haunted by death all of them were: Alice and her mom, Lilia and her coven in Sicily, Billy and William Kaplan, Agatha and her son and her ex-lover. And of course, Death herself. Forget haunting these individuals - she came to actually join the temporary coven. Like, fuck. They told us what this show was about.

---

This show is about death, but it's more complicated than that: we'll take our cue from Rio again, who, in being Death, is also the original Green Witch. In short, this show is about Green Craft, "growth and decay in constant flow."

So yes - almost every single witch in the coven dies. Yes, it's permanent. No, the queer romance isn't resolved happily. No, Agatha doesn't have a redemption, satisfying or otherwise. And no, none of it follows what we've come to expect from found family story trajectories.

But the focus shouldn't be solely on the decay. There's a whole cycle of growth coming up after it, even now, and it's being made possible by the death and decay that we just witnessed. And most importantly, it's confirmed that this isn't the end of the story - just the end of "Agatha All Along."

---

I'll finish by actually answering your question - I've been sitting with the finale for a few days, because I also felt weird about it. And I think that's the right word: "Weird." Very spooky season-esque, first of all, but also not tipping all the way right into "bad".

The first thing to acknowledge is that no story is perfect - they were limited by nine episodes by what they had the space to show, and finales are really hard to get just right. The second is that you're allowed to not like any or all of it, especially when something happens that asks you to change your entire understanding of the story thus far, i.e. the Road isn't real, or when you have a particular trauma around death and it turns out that that's what the whole show is about in ways we hadn't fully realized. The third is that it's worth sitting with stories sometimes and seeing how they marinate and develop in your brain and your soul over time. All of these things can and should coexist.

This isn't my first go-round with a series finale that initially made me ???, so I was fortunate in that I felt like I had a cheat sheet. I've still got some marinating to do to see how this continues to change for me. But it's helped me to realize that my ??? reaction is what the story wanted me to have - that the characters are reeling right along with me. Not just Alice in shock about her death, but also Billy at the implications of his creation of the Road regarding his responsiblity for what happened on it. We're meant to feel this way… and then we're meant to reconsider the journey we've been on, the Road we've walked with all of them and the death we've died alongside them, and see it anew for what it really is.

[quimichi]

-ˏˋ . . . ⇢ ˗ˏˋ CRUSH HDCS ࿐ྂ Pt. 1.....

WARNING: × pure fluff in my opinion

SUMMARY: just some idiots with a crush...you :)

CHARACTERS: Aether, Albedo, Al-haitham, Amber, Arlecchino, Ayaka, Ayato & Baizhu x F!Reader

WORD COUNT: 1.537

AETHER

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Paimon is so done with his constant ranting and crying about you

ᯓᡣ𐭩 She had to stop herself from telling you so often like "Just PLEASE date him already" because she couldn't just fall into her besties back like that

ᯓᡣ𐭩 you would think he doesn't really like you cause he's all quite. Wrong, he actually jusz tries to cope with his rising heat and nervousness around you

ᯓᡣ𐭩 did he once tell you that you smell nice even tho you were sweating lile a sinner in church? Yes

ᯓᡣ𐭩 did he also tell you that you look a bit different and like you haven't slept good after a haircut?...yes

ᯓᡣ𐭩 listen, he was concerned for you-

ᯓᡣ𐭩 everything was so embarrassing for him he thought you hate him now--- well, you didn't. Its hard not to find this weird and awkward ball of sunshine nice

ᯓᡣ𐭩 he also helps you out a lot, no matter whats the issue he's ready to help. And Paimon is the third wheel

ᯓᡣ𐭩 sometimes when he's nervous and talks to you he like suddenly needs to swallow down spit cause it gets stuck in his throat?? Idk how to explain it but i have this issue lol and its so hard to cover up the swallowing cause then people know youre nervous-

ᯓᡣ𐭩 literally once walked into a wall because he was looking at you. Luckily no one saw...except Paimon--she won't let him forget that ever

ᯓᡣ𐭩 speaking of Paimon, bro literally asked her for advice, and she was useful? Hey, look. Shes more than just emergency food-

ᯓᡣ𐭩 she was like, "If you truly love someone, you cook them something good! Love goes through the stomach!"

ᯓᡣ𐭩 and thats why he desperately cooks for you every day---just put Paimon out of her misery and kiss him already

ALBEDO

ᯓᡣ𐭩 has no idea how and why it happened but he won't complain, you are pretty so-

ᯓᡣ𐭩 kinda takes it as an opportunity to study love a bit lol. Its not like he's dumb, far from that, he knows what hes feeling and why he feels attracted to you.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 but somehow he can't tell you, words fail him to explain why although he knows

ᯓᡣ𐭩 is confused and is irritated lol

ᯓᡣ𐭩 did tell Succrose about it and my girl can hardly keep secrets-

ᯓᡣ𐭩 oh and like around a week after he noticed his crush on you he confessed

ᯓᡣ𐭩 he's pretty blunt and honest, straightforward if you will.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 there's honestly not much to say, he knows he likes you, also probably knows it's mutual, logic conclusion would be that he confesses so you two can consider a relationship after some time

ᯓᡣ𐭩 easy??? Like what's not to get???

AL-HAITHAM

ᯓᡣ𐭩 the strongest feeling he ever had for someone else was a book character-and that's also pretty rare cause he doesn't read fiction he only reads facts-

ᯓᡣ𐭩 treats you normally with a sprinkle of kindness

ᯓᡣ𐭩 you don't notice, no one would notice. Good for Al-Haitham cause ew what if people realize hes just a regular human being?? Can't have that

ᯓᡣ𐭩 would tell you to take breaks and eat an apple or other fruits in those breaks so you can concentrate better afterwards. Oh and take a breath of fresh air

ᯓᡣ𐭩 keeps the bitch face on. Only drops it when you're not looking.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 finds it incredibly cute when you play with your hair or bite your lip. Your concentration is adorable...

ᯓᡣ𐭩 if you read like him, he would consider reading one of your favorite books, even if it's stupid and not his thing at all. He wants a good reason to talk to you

ᯓᡣ𐭩 has no idea how to get out of the "I'm so fucking cool" bs to actually get closer to you without seeming cringe or needy

ᯓᡣ𐭩 feelings aren't his thing but hey, he trys. Just pay more attention and maybe you make it easier for him by doing the first step

AMBER

ᯓᡣ𐭩 nah cause she's so honest about it-

ᯓᡣ𐭩 probably all Mondstadt and their granny's know that Amber has a crush on you, except for you....dumbass

ᯓᡣ𐭩 she always asks you if you wanna join her on god knows what adventures

ᯓᡣ𐭩 she also always packs lunch for you

ᯓᡣ𐭩 like i said, she is pretty vocal about it and shows it quite well that she has an interest in you....and youre just brushing it off as kindness

ᯓᡣ𐭩 always ready to help! And she doesn't even need a thank you. Helping you is enough to make her happy, seeing your relieved is all she needs.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 gifts you flowers on a regular basis because they're just as pretty as you ♡

ᯓᡣ𐭩 she's so straightforward about her crush on you it's insane. People think she's dating you already, well wrong--

ᯓᡣ𐭩 big talk and actions but when it comes to beinh very vocal about her feelings she shuts down-she would stutter and blush not knowing what to say-

ᯓᡣ𐭩 like, pls stop being so oblivious to her attempts and just tell her you like her--then she'll confess too!

ARLECCHINO

ᯓᡣ𐭩 look, she's a busy woman (father), she doesn't have time for stupid crushes. She'll either tell you immediately once she figured it out, or just waits till the feelings disappear over time.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 why? If she is uncertain that this would work out with a fatui harbinger, then she wouldn't confess at all. You won't notice a thing.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 but if she does feel like it could work out, maybe not immediately because you need time...and yeah maybe she needs to know a 100% too, she would court you (??)

ᯓᡣ𐭩 presenting you the finest things from all nations. Also giving you ifts from your home region cause...well maybe you miss it? And if you're from Fontaine she gives you only the most expensive shit hidden from all normal ordinary people-

ᯓᡣ𐭩 she sneaks her way in your heart ngl-

ᯓᡣ𐭩 and if she ever sees you with one of the things she gave you, she would make sure others know. Who knows who might have an interest in you.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 would also make some space in her schedule just for you. Lets you know too. No, not to make you feel bad, nahhh. She wants you to know how important you are to her.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 and that she will always have time for you no matter what.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 she's kinda advertising herself. "Look, I'm the baddest bitch around."

AYAKA

ᯓᡣ𐭩 also makes space in her very busy schedule just for you. And if she can't find the time so you both can be alone, she takes you with her to her appointments and everything.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 wants her brothers 'ok' for it all. She wouldn't feel quite comfy if Ayato wouldn't like you. Thomas opinion is also very important to her.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 if she every plays this weird cooking game with you, she trys to make it tame. She doesn't want you too disgusted or near throwing up cause then she'd feel bad

ᯓᡣ𐭩 and also trys cooking for you normally. She trys ok, she's getting better and better. Takes this as an excuse to cook your favorite meals.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 dances with you! She's shy about it but she does. Ayaka teaches you her favorite dances and moves, and would get quite close to you by doing this...plus for her

ᯓᡣ𐭩 but besides this she's very shy about her crush on you and won't admit it very fast. Even after months she wouldn't dare say a word about it to you or hint anything to drastic.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 tbh, it has to be you who would need to make the first step lol

AYATO

ᯓᡣ𐭩 very obvious...I mean...he gives you flowers, jewelry, new clothes. He takes you to events or dinners, important meetings. Lets you stay in the Kamisato estate for free. Bitch you even have your own room??

ᯓᡣ𐭩 ITS SO OBVIOUS

ᯓᡣ𐭩 i can't tell you more, except, just...just talk with him about it. Confront him and say, "yes" that's all he wants to hear from you.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 and see you happy ofc

BAIZHU

ᯓᡣ𐭩 if Chansheng can keep her mouth shut he wouldn't tell you at all. Or at least not so fast.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 if you know, you know. Baizhus story is...something. i won't spoiler tho

ᯓᡣ𐭩 because of that he needs to be very sure about it all. He can't just jump into something that might not work out at all or have no future in the beginning.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 he would show his interest with nice little gestures. Giving you medicine for free, helping your loved ones when sick also for free, smiling just a bit more at you or teaching you about herbs and all.

ᯓᡣ𐭩 he's very gentle with you, scared he might break you. In truth it's actually him who would break--

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Qiqi would notice, she's a smart girl ofc she would. Yeah she knew you two were a thing before you two knew lol

ᯓᡣ𐭩 oh yeah and Changsheng blew it all-

ᯓᡣ𐭩 "Your hands wouldn't shake so much if you wouldn't love her"

TAGLIST ♡

@hehothrowawayfae @lucienbarkbark @ryu--19 @theblades @rikasurl

[thelesbiansuperjesus]

bro i'm tired of seeing the most brainrot takes on arcane, especially relating to vi like "erm... she's a cop now... thats problematic...😥"

holy fucking shit thats actually like the whole point. like the whole point of her character is to show the bending of morals that can happen in a person under certain circumstances, and in this case the circumstances are that her sister is a legit terrorist. (im also not anti jinx btw i luv her too)

also, she isn't fucking real. applying the same ethics to fictional characters that we do to real life people is never a good way to process media. and liking vi as a character does not automatically mean you love cops. christ. like am i crazy? is this not common sense?

also, i feel like with the reveal that she's an enforcer, people just automatically forgot all the character development that she went through the entire show, like she obviously does not just automatically become #1 enforcer/piltover lover.

christ, look at her and tell me that's the face of someone who's absolutely pumped to be an enforcer. like have we all just forgotten who vi is as a character? and if you are genuinely clutching your pearls over the fact that vi is an enforcer now, i'm sorry to say that you just don't know league lore cuz this was always gonna happen. like she's a cop in the damn game i don't know what you expected.

also, arcane has always been explicitly very anti-police brutality/ anti- oppression in it's themes. i mean, it isn't spoon fed to you, and it doesn't portray everything as black and white, just how nothing is black and white in real life, but it is very good at getting these themes across. do yall genuinely think it has thrown that all away and is now a super pro establishment alt right copoganda? NO! obviously not! and that isnt what vi as a character is here to represent.

also i saw some rando on here dissing vi, and then said that SILCO is a better person?! and dont get me wrong, i fucking love silco, he's so cool to watch and is an endlessly interesting character, but are we as a society really gonna pretend that the drug lord who floods poor neighborhoods with drugs for is own personal gain is the morally superior character? sometimes i feel like you guys did not learn basic reading comprehension. like these are very simple concepts to grasp i'm afraid.

ok im done thanks 4 reading :) i had to rant a little lol

[humanpurposes]

I really feel like the writers of HotD could benefit from keeping in mind the phrase "don't play the ending."

At the end of season one, Alicent has Aegon crowned King and puts herself physically between him and a dragon.

And all through season two she's having a miserable time. From episode one she straight up dislikes her sons, is terrified of Aemond, is hooking up with Cole and feeling guilty about it, is feeling guilty about Rhaenyra, feeling guilty about the war, constantly being undermined... but is there actually a moment where the stakes escalate for her? Jaehearys dies while she was doing the dirty with Criston, but she already felt guilty about that. She feels sorry for Helaena, but she already struggles in her relationship with Helaena. She hates Aegon and thinks he'd be a bad King, but she already hated Aegon and thought he'd be a bad King. Then she doesn't want to start a war, but she already did that by naming her son King over Rhaenya. She gets dismissed from the Small Council by Aemond but in the first episode she's already aware that none of the men around her actually respect her. So what is she doing here? What does she want? How is she relevant to the story aside from looking sad and feeling all this guilt for a conflict that is way more complex than her misunderstanding the final words of her rotting husband?

At the end of season one, Rhaenyra learns that her son is dead after she's been hesitant to let the conflict come to all out war. In that final shot of epsiode 10 she's full of anguish and rage. I'm thinking "cool, so when the story picks up again she's going to be ready for war."

But then she's spent so much of season two stalling because she doesn't want to incite bloodshed because war is bad. And she can't justify getting revenge for her son but she can justify letting hundreds die because of some dream her ancestor had. She wants the throne but she's hesitant to fight for it.

There's such a disconnect between where we left off and where we picked up, because there's no starting point in the character arcs. Alicent will become haunted by grief and guilt, oh so lets do that from episode one. Rhaenyra wants to be Queen and was vilified by the fictional history, so lets absolve her of her wrongs and effectively remove her agency.

And my boy Aemond... I love the idea of him feeling remorseful about Luke's death but knowing that he can't appear weak, and so losing his humanity more and more to this image of a Kinslayer. But the execution leaves a lot to be desired for me. I would LOVE to have seen this through his family relationships. Let him have a conversation with Helaena, when her son was murdered as revenge for someone he killed. Let us see the distance growing between him immediately after he comes back from Storm's End. It was clearly the intention all along that Aemond was going to become "the villain" of the series and I love that, but if he's going to feel like he has no choice but to "dracarys" his brother, boot his mum off the Small Council and then leave his family undefended by flying off with Vhagar, I want that to feel earned. (also I want my fav to have more screen time obvs) but I would love for his scenes to have more room to breathe, like the only interaction he's had with Helaena was a scene that was one sentence long, I AM SUFFERING HERE.

In a season with only 8 episodes the pacing is crazy. We've skipped over what clearly was a crucial few days between 1.10 and 2.01. We've got characters stalling for no apparent reason. Simultaneously we're rushing through scenes and character interactions to move on to the next thing. It's genuinely frustrating to watch. Kudos to all the actors doing an amazing job with the script they've been given.

[the-badger-mole]

I've seen people criticize Zuko for not taking the opportunity to kill Ozai during the eclipse but expecting Aang, a 12 y.o. pacific monk to do that instead. He was called hypocritical for being unsympathetic towards his unwillingness to take a life when he himself couldn't. I do like Zuko and tend to side with him ( post redemption ofc ) over Aang, but that seems like a valid take, I don't think I have a counter-argument to that.What is your opinion on It ? Also, what do you think was the in-universe reason for Zuko to make such a decision? He said that It's not his destiny, do you think there was any other reason for It? Is he not wrong for not doing It just bc of destiny since It's just an abstract concept and the stakes were really high ( plus It's against the show's message about shaping your own destiny) ?

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it sounds like the people criticizing Zuko for not killing Ozai when he had the chance wanted Aang to do it? That doesn't sound like a contradiction, so I'm not sure if that's how you meant it?

Aside from that, I can only speak for myself. I understand why Zuko didn't kill Ozai. I also understand why Aang didn't want to. What my problem with the resolution for that was that it was the first time Aang seems to have even thought about what ending the war would entail. It doesn't make him look noble, or idealistic. It just makes him look stupid. What do you mean? What do you mean that he took this entire journey to get him to master all the elements on a deadline so he can end the war, and he had no idea what ending the war would even look like? He didn't even consider it? It had to be told to him. He really goofed off this entire series and didn't think about his project until the night before it was due. And don't anyone try to use his age to excuse this to me. First of all, Aang isn't a 12 year old. He's a fictional character who was created by writers. Writers who were telling a story. THEY are the ones who didn't consider how Aang would end the war. Second, within the story, Aang's age is never used as an excuse for why he did this. In fact, not only is an excuse not given, it's treated like a virtue on his end and not a lack of forethought on his part. He's rewarded for it.

Listen, I hate the Lionturtle/Rock of Destiny double deus ex machina, and I have made no secret of it. It was a cop out. It cheapened the finale. It made everything Aang was supposed to learn irrelevant, because no, he didn't have to make sacrifices and hard choices for his victory. He won because he was supposed to win (and how's that for shaping your own destiny?). Here's the thing, though. The Lionturtle, at least, could have worked. If Aang had to come up with the solution himself, go find the Lionturtle and ask for help (and maybe have to perform some challenge to earn it), then it would've been a satisfying ending while still not making Aang himself have to shed blood (nevermind that keeping his hands clean was a privilege most of the heroes in this story couldn't have).

I didn't necessarily want Aang to kill Ozai, and definitely didn't want him to kill Ozai just because it would look cool (although...). I would have been fine with a no-kill ending, if it had been set up right. I just think having Aang kill Ozai given the set up of the rest of the story would've been more satisfying than the cop-out ex machina double team. Or someone else could've faced Ozai, because he was never the main villain of the series. Azula was. And that fight was both satisfying and didn't end with her death, either (because it's a kids' show). It wouldn't even have to change. Aang was not the real hero of this story. Katara was the hero of the first half, and Zuko was the hero of the second. Aang was just the McGuffin. He could've sat this one out and been the one to make the "Real Hero" speech instead of Zuko. That would have been a good ending.

[zettaireido-emotion]

Camus character analysis: games VS anime

If you finished the Uta no Prince-sama anime and your opinion of this man is "wow, he's kinda terrible," I don't blame you. in fact I've seen a lot of people say this

In this post, I want to talk about his characterization in the games and give my two cents on what the anime was trying to do with him, especially in his single focus episode Saintly Territory (S3E6).

Disclaimer: I wrote this on a whim because I'm sick and stuck at home so if anyone reads this, sorry I might go all over the place

Spoilers for all of the games!

The "be my slave" thing

Starting with Anime Camus's most egregious crime: treating Haruka like a servant/slave (however you want to translate it)

Basically in his focus episode, Haruka is tasked with writing a song for Camus. She wants to learn more about him in order to write it, but Camus will only let her follow him if she acts as his servant. She accepts without complaining, Cecil is rightfully angry, Haruka continues anyway and the song gets completed.

Now, am I about to say that Game Camus would never do this? No because he literally does lmao.

The anime doesn't pull this "servant" plotline out of nowhere, here's the context in his route:

Haruka accidentally overhears Camus talking about a plot to assassinate Saotome on the phone. When he notices that she heard everything, he basically tells her that he has to kill her now. But if she served him, he'd be able to keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn't leak anything, so she could escape death.

Okay uh "work under me or DIE" isn't exactly better, nor is it a good start to a love story, but I'm not finished!!

(A side note: I have to add that the anime made him look like an even bigger asshole and borderline dumb when it came to the things he made her do. Like he expected her to know that snapping your fingers means you want coffee without prior explanation. bro

^This might have been for comedic effect but I promise he can be actually funny and endearing.)

What the anime couldn't cover

The Camus episode wraps up with Haruka pulling through and writing a song that makes Camus "sincere," he says it's cool at the very end and that's the episode. I think the problem is that we technically didn't see him being sincere or what that even means to him, besides when he was singing (banger song btw)

It's a shame because in a 20-minute episode you really can't show the game experience of slowly piecing together what this man's problem is.

First of all, in Debut and AS you'll be quick to notice that he always has homeland and duty on the mind, constantly reminding himself that he's in Shining Agency/Japan for a reason, and it's NOT to have fun or make friends

The truth is, he slowly starts to appreciate the banter with his colleagues, music, and working there in general.

But because of his initial mindset, he has to rationalize & justify every connection he forms, like "it's just for work" or worse: "actually it was ALL A LIE and I NEVER ENJOYED A SECOND OF THE TIME WE SPENT TOGETHER, I'm such a great actor haha"

He uses that to fool himself and to push the other person away so it doesn't happen again. This scene is probably the best example:

(I'll be using google lens because it's faster but I checked that the tls were okay)

He also does this in the Non-Fiction drama, which may or may not have actually happened, but I think it's still a pretty good reflection of what could happen in reality because he tells Ranmaru their bond was a lie, then mopes around in his guilt thinking about the good times and wondering why he's sad, and THEN later doubles down on the "it was a lie, I don't care about you" because he just can't let himself get attached to anything.

Basically, he's terrified at the thought of forming actual bonds because he genuinely thinks he's nothing if he stops being a cold weapon:

At one point he does admit he sucks (as a love interest)-

-which is pretty huge by utapri standards. I love these games, but the amount of times where a male lead does something icky, and everyone, including Haruka, acts like it's normal or like it's Haruka's fault is ehhh but I digress

Upbringing

Of course he's very proud of his homeland and status, but sometimes it's to the point of thinking he can't be anything other than his title. So why is he like this?

We got to hear about his childhood from Camus himself a few times, and it often ended with Haruka thinking "wait? that's kinda messed up?" and Camus insisting it's nothing/it's normal so yeah that's something...

His parents were in an unhappy arranged marriage, and his mother was forced to birth an heir which traumatized her so much that she can't see Camus without falling ill. Overall it's a pretty tragic situation since what happened to her was horrible, though not Camus's fault either. Even now she refuses to see him, and I wouldn't say that makes him sad because he never really met her, but simply knowing of her sacrifice probably adds a lot of pressure. As in, he only exists for this one purpose (inheriting his father's title and serving the country), so if he doesn't play his part correctly, it would have all been for nothing.

He was raised by his father not as a child or son but as the heir, always treated and judged as an adult (even during physical training apparently, make of that what you will)

When Haruka asks about childhood memories he has a very hard time finding something that doesn't have to do with his duties or the nation. And then admits he didn't truly have a "childhood" since he was never treated like a child

As for the queen, I think his love for her is sincere: she taught him a lot of things growing up, and according to him, she's also a victim trapped by her duties so he wants to ease the burden.

So hypothetically, if he found things or people that made him happy in Japan, he would feel obligated to lock them away because that happiness is incompatible with his life: he'll have to leave when his mission ends, he shouldn't be spending time on things that aren't "useful" as he doesn't have the free will to pursue them

In his mind he's completely tied down by the fact that he was born and raised for a single reason, and the fact that he does want to serve the queen.

(This is Saotome describing him btw)

Also it might sound ridiculous to bring his self-worth into question because of how pretentious he is, but I've counted a few situations where he seemed to have complete disregard for his own life, only worrying about Haruka and Cecil's safety in scenes when they were present. And he thinks wanting to be loved unconditionally is a childish thought he shouldn't have.

"Double Face" was a lie. There's like at least 10 layers

On the surface he does have two personas, his perfect polite butler act for the media, and his cold bitchy attitude off camera. But honestly, even when he's not acting as a butler, he's often putting up a front to hide any form of vulnerability (from himself as well)

His main struggle is finding who he is outside of what he's being told to do. Before, he never actually stopped to think about what he WANTS because it just never occurs to him, or if it does he ignores it.

That's why realizing that he has his own desires is essential to his character development, and him staying with Quartet Night (and Haruka in his routes) is so important. It's why Reiji feels the need to reach out and when he does, Camus either freezes up or tears up;

This all makes him the opposite of Ranmaru (being true to yourself and sincere), and similar to Ai (gradually learning to view the world in a less cold and logical way), but I kind of want to save that for another post lmao

He is especially hard on Cecil because Cecil says & does whatever he wants, and everything still works out for him, which is a way of life that Camus can't imagine for himself at all (despite maybe wanting it?)

That he can realize this and eventually admit out loud, despite all his pride, is also one of my favorite things about him

Season 2 does hint at something, so that's pretty cool!

Side note, I really love that his theme in the new Oracle series is "Change," the melting of ice.

So what was the anime supposed to do??

Of course there's no way to show all this in a single episode or even during the runtime of the anime, and I never expected them to because the story is very surface-level (that goes for all characters).

It's just unfortunate since the anime is the most accessible and well-known utapri media in the western fandom, and the character's main episode is bound to leave the biggest impression.

I understand the choice of being laser-focused on the servant plotline, it's supposed to be funny (?) and waters him down to a trope that's easy to understand at first glance (the step-on-me guy I guess)

Still, I can't help but compare it to Ranmaru's episode, who was also hard to work with in the games but was chill in S3E7 and got to pet cats. Anime onlys will never know how much Camus loves to dote on his dog smh.....

[oswaldthatendswald]

Occasionally I come across the idea in fanon that Donquixote Rocinante is a bad liar and-- I don't like to say no this is not true with fanon and headcanon, because I think a) interpretation of source material is very much a personal affair that depends on your own feelings and background and b) it's really not that important for me to agree with everyone else.

But I gotta admit, lately its been bothering me a little, because. Well. I don't think it is true?

I think I understand where it comes from. It's half trying to explain why Rocinante decides not to talk during his undercover mission and half the result of his frantic insistence to Law that he is not a Marine. We, the readers, don't believe his lie, it seems blatantly, obviously false, and so we say alright, he's a bad liar. Law also doesn't believe him, because at this point the evidence is mounting up against him, but he wants to believe him, so he doesn't say anything.

But I think this is doing him an injustice-- or giving him too much credit, depending on how you want to look at it. Because we are readers, and as such are privy to a lot more information about what is going on than the readers. Of course we know he's lying; this is the second time we've heard him tell this particular lie, and the way the story is presented to us highlights this scene-- the fact that we are seeing this scene, out of everything that could have happened, tells us that it's important. The way that we read the story gives him away, not his inability to lie or even the evidence against him.

The way he tells this lie is significant too. He lies smoothly and without hesitation, no stumbling or giving excess information. More than that, as I said, this is not the first time he's told this lie. The first time, back when he originally kidnaps Law, often goes unmentioned because, I think, it is convincing. I think people forget about it because they don't necessarily doubt him on first read, and neither the anime nor the manga draws attention to that line. Again, he lies easily and calmly. Law almost certainly believes him, this first time! He only starts to doubt when Rocinante is very obviously talking to Sengoku about Marine business in front of Law-- at which point, whether Rocinante can lie believably or not no longer matters, because Law has fairly damning evidence.

Rocinante isn't just a liar, he's a very good one. He was undercover for years with Doflamingo, who seems to have entirely trusted him. That requires acting skills-- perhaps not lying with words, but still deceiving by way of silent falsehood. I think the reason for him not speaking is less fear of being caught in a lie and more using ableism against the Donquixote Pirates. People tend to seriously underestimate and dehumanize anyone who doesn't speak, which is bad (obviously) but very useful in this fictional context for, say, a character who wants people to talk about important information around them.

Maybe my favourite scene to point out, in discussing Rocinante's ability to lie, is his death-- more specifically, when he apologizes to Law for lying to him. This is maybe the most honest he's ever been to Law-- and he's still lying, because he is looking Doflamingo in the eyes when he says this, but he is not apologizing to Doflamingo. He is still lying about Law's location, he is lying about being sorry, he is lying about why he lied.

Rocinante is a nesting doll of falsehoods and masks, and that makes him such an interesting character. I really think it does him a disservice to suggest he is anything other than what he is: a very competent spy who is exceptionally good at his job. He might not be a good person, but he doesn't have to be. He is fictional, he is flawed, and he is incredibly interesting.

I just think he's so damn cool.

[tswwwit]

familiar!au thoughts:

i've been mentally handwaving all of dipper's reincarnations having the same names, bc it would just be confusing to read, if they didn't (and bc tbh i feel like bill would just ignore it anyway, lmao. this is pine tree! that's all that matters. what, is bill supposed to remember whatever dumb new thing his mortal parents have named him every lifetime?)

HOWEVER, a funny alternative- do you think, after bill & dipper have gained enough notoriety for dipper to be recognized as a Big Heroic Demon Hunter, there's a sudden spike in people naming their kids "mason", and/or "dipper" becomes a new & notable given name?? are there magical families out there naming their baby boys mason or dipper, in the hope that they'll grow up to be powerful practitioners, or that they'll be especially resistant to demonic temptation? (lol. lmao, even.)

second: imagine familiar-verse's pop culture landscape once enough time has passed that bill & his mortal have passed into legend. 😭 what do you think it's like to be a teenager growing up in the Between Times, when there's mythologized history, daytime TV dramas, and bad historical romance novels about these two?

do you think there's like, tiktoks about how to tell if you're regaining past memories in dreams, of your time as bill's mortal? IG reels of kids who have Wildly misunderstood the situation, w/ captions like "13th bday, i think my birthmark is finally starting to come in?!! 🤯😱 #ChosenMortal #BeastWithOneEye #WelcomeBackDipper" and the comments are full of people going "bestie that is a rash, please go to the doctor 🙏😭"

Thank you for accepting my handwaving of Dipper's name in the reincarnations! A majority is of course the readability and understanding it's the same guy, but bit of it is 'I don't wanna come up with new names for each one'. I also agree with 'Mason' and 'Dipper' becoming much more common after Dipper's first life! Turns out he made quite the impression. That'll happen when you're a clever guy with the full power of Bill Cipher behind your spellcraft. God, though. The cultural phenomenon behind this weird Demon Bond. With how little information the public has on how things went down, imagine all the fictional interpretations. Dramas, of course. Soap operas, even! Horror movies! Tons of different versions of what happened! Of course there's tweens daydreaming about being next, it's a Pretty Cool Thing to happen to someone - if you don't know Bill very well. I will also take your rash story and invite another possibility - A Dipper who thinks he's totally gotten away scot-free from any involvement with Bill. After all, he doesn't have the birthmark.

Only to wake up one day, wash his face at the sink, and look up to see the damn birthmark plastered right on his forehead.

[bowtiepastabitch]

Heaven's Not Homophobic in Good Omens, and Why That's Important

I need to preface this with, I am not trying to start a fight or argument and won't tolerate any homophobic or bad faith arguments in response to this. Cool? Cool.

This is in large part inspired by this ask from Neil's blog, which sparked some discourse that I don't want to get involved in but that brought up some analytic questions for me.

He goes on to reblog a question asking about Uriel's taunt specifically, clarifying that "boyfriend in the dark glasses" can just as easily be read/translated from angelic as girlfriend or bosom buddy. The idea is that an angel and a demon "fraternizing" is seriously looked down upon, not that heaven is homophobic. And that's super important.

We see homophobia in both the book and show, of course. Aziraphale is very queer-coded, intentionally and explicitly so, and we see the reaction of other humans to that several times. Sergeant Shadwell, for example, and the kid in the book that calls him the f-slur when he's doing magic at Warlock's birthday party. These are, however, individual human reactions to his coding as a gay man.

I am, personally, not a fan of heaven redemption theories for the show; no hate for people who want that it's just not something I'm interested in. I don't believe that heaven is good with bad leadership, or that God Herself remains as a paragon of virtue. To me, that's not in line with the themes and messages of the show. It's important, however, that heaven doesn't reflect human vices. Heaven can be nasty and selfish and apathetic in its own right without ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or racism. This matters for two reasons.

Firstly, we don't need the -isms and -phobias to be evil or at least ethically impure. In a world where we spend so much time fighting against prejudice and bigotry, our impulse is to see that reflected in characters whose motivations we distrust or who we're intended to dislike. While it's true that that's often the big bad evil in our daily lives, it can really cheapen the malice in fictional evil from a storytelling standpoint. A villain motivated by racism or as an allegory for homophobia can be incredibly compelling, but not every bad guy can be the physical representation of an -ism. Art reflects the reality in which it's crafted, but the complexity of human nature and the evil it's capable of can't be simplified to a dni list.

Secondly, and I think more importantly, is that for Good Omens specifically, this places the responsibility for homophobia on humanity. If you're in this fandom, there's like a 98% chance you've been hurt by religion in some way. For a lot of us, that includes religious homophobia and hate, so it makes sense to want to project that onto the 'religious' structure of Good Omens. It's a story that is, in many ways, about religious trauma and abuse. However, if heaven itself held homophobic values, it would canonize in-universe the idea that heaven and religion itself are responsible for all humanity's -isms and -phobias and absolve humans of any responsibility. Much like Crowley emphasizes repeatedly that the wicked cruelty he takes responsibility for is entirely human-made, we have to accept that heaven can't take the blame for this. To make heaven, the religious authority, homophobic would simply justify religious bigotry from humans. By taking the blame for religious extremism and hatred away from heaven and the religious structure, Good Omens makes it clear that the nastiness of humanity is uniquely and specially human and forces the individual to take responsibility rather than the system. Hell isn't responsible for the Spanish Inquisition, which by the way was religiously motivated if you didn't know, and heaven isn't responsible for Ronald Reagan.

This idea is perhaps more strongly and explicitly expressed in the Good Omens novel, in the scene where Aziraphale briefly possesses a televangelist on live TV. It's comedic, yes, but also serves to demonstrate that human concepts of the apocalypse and religious fervor are deeply incorrect (in gomens universe canon) and condemn exploitation of faith practices. Pratchett and Gaiman weave a great deal of complexity into the way religion and religious values are portrayed in the book, especially in the emphasis on heaven and hell being essentially the same. They're interested in the concept of what it means to be uniquely and unabashedly human, the good and the bad, and part of that is forcing each individual person to bear the brunt of responsibility for their own actions rather than passing it off onto a greater religious authority.

Additionally, from a fan perspective, there's something refreshing about a very queer story where homophobia isn't the primary (or even a side) conflict. The primary narrative of Good Omens isn't that these two man-shaped-beings are gay, it's that they're an angel and a demon. The tension in their romantic arc arises entirely from the larger conflict of heaven and hell, and things like gender and sexuality don't really matter at all. Yes, homophobia and transphobia are very real, present issues in our everyday lives, but they don't have to be central to every story we tell. There's something really soothing about Crowley and Aziraphale being so queer-coded and so clearly enamored with each other without constantly being bombarded with homophobia and hate. It's incredible to see a disabled angel whose use of a mobility aid makes no difference in their role and to see angels and demons using they/them pronouns without being questioned or misgendered. It's all accepted and normalized, and that's the kind of representation that we as queer people deserve.

[tealvenetianmask]

Some thoughts on Blitz having combined type ADHD and why it matters to me . . .

First, I'm not negating other neurodivergences that he might have or other roots of his issues. I do think he also has dyslexia, and I also think his father didn't bother to get him much of an education. And yes, a lot of the traits I'm about to write about overlap too with ASD and various trauma responses. Comorbidity is real, and we're talking about fiction and only have so much to go on. Your interpretations/ways of diagnosing him are valid even if they don't match mine. Cool? Okay, let's go.

Inattentive symptoms. Blitz's plans come off as disorganized/chaotic, he doesn't do paperwork, doesn't know what insurance is, and visibly zones out during some conversations. He also hyperfocuses when something strikes an emotional cord, i.e. following M&M and looking for his sister, and can't focus on anything else. Random tangents and doodles seem to be a regular part of his workday. He can do fucking somersaults in midair but falls on his cute little face when he's not paying attention to where he's walking.

Hyperactive symptoms. He's bursting with energy and almost always seems ready to get up and go. He's randomly climbing things/sitting weird in chairs all the time, even as an adult. I thought this was an imp trait. Other imps don't do this. It's a Blitz trait. He speaks without thinking a lot and seems to process things out loud.

Strengths. He's calm and strategic in a crisis. He's creative and excited about his own ideas. He's at home in chaos and makes chaos WORK for him. He improvises. He's always wanted to be the boss of his own company and do things his own way. I love him so much. I love that being different/original/chaotic is portrayed so positively.

RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria). Without going into Blitz's everything, the gist is that behind the front that he doesn't care, Blitz is super sensitive to being rejected and spends a lot of time scared that rejection is going to happen. Look at him at the end of Ozzie's. Listen. This can be caused by A LOT of things, but it's super common with ADHD too, mostly because we have a ton of experience with being rejected and trouble predicting when it's going to happen. Among everything that's happened to him, Blitz had lots of "not good enough" moments as a kid.

There's a lot more. I was going to do screenshots but got overwhelmed by how many episodes I'd have to sift through.

Why I care:

I'm feeling well represented of course. So often, the person with ADHD in a piece of media is a kid, or if they're an adult, they're the primarily inattentive type. I'm still hyperactive in adulthood, and when I'm not masking enough, my behavior gets misunderstood a lot (some of this also comes from being a woman, but since I'm talking about a male character here . . . another time). It's fun and affirming to see a character in fiction who's not masking his ADHD much (because he really isn't good at that lol) and has a ton of issues but kind of rocks at being himself anyway.

[triasticalwarlock]

So, I'm ashamed to say I am officially having a sonic faze. I don't know how I got here. I came across a really cool piece of art of dark sonic. And there it was, that little fucking tingle, that little thing you get when ever you look at a fictional character you've liked for, well, a few years. And it comes running back, and you feel like a miserable son of a bitch... because you like THIS DUDE.

Where did I go wrong? I was perfectly fine with hazbin hotel, and the mother fucker called Adam. Also, due to this, I'm starting to realize a pattern. The characters I liked in the past: Leon from pokemon, sonic the hedgehog, bill cipher, Stanford pines, secret history tails, Adam the first man. Am I the only one seeing a pattern? I AM FOR SOME REASON ATTRACTED TO EGOTISTICAL LITTLE SHITS.

Why do I love this mobian? I honestly don't know, prideful man that is reckless and enjoys danger? Doesn't show much vurnability around people, but that one person(us)? I don't know, don't bother asking. But, it could be that it's a hero, with the ability to snap.

I'm talking about this version of the dude. I don't know why, but when ever I see this motherfucker, I feel something. It's like something is stirring my stomach, but in a good way. I don't know how to describe it, all I can say is that it makes me giddy and makes me kick my feet. It's like, cuteness aggression. And, honestly, I want him to baby me in this form. Imagine, the usual calm and looked up to hero, cupping your face and saying something in a baby tone (i think I've been reading to much Lucifer). Also, this has nothing to due with me wanting this man to ram me in. But to the people out there who still think that dark sonic would hurt his friends, get a service dog. Because you clearly blind. The reason sonic ever even turned dark mode was because his friends got hurt, what makes you think he'd intentionally harm them? I needed to say this, because the amount of art I run into that shows dark sonic about to hurt his friends, usually amy or tails, is pissing me off. Service dogs people, service dogs.

And, just a bunch of things of sonic, because I can.

Silly goose