#but i have opinions(tm)

[ganondoodle]

anyway, im normal again

[hinamie]

subject, specimen, spectacle;

should i say that you're dead?

[jianghushenanigans]

jianghu bicycle Li Lianhua

[thefloatingwriter]

beetee and coriolanus parallels consuming my every waking thought so coming on here to make it everyone else’s problem too because consider: they both grew up in poverty, their family’s struggling to make ends meet enough to pay for food. they both had something that distinguished themselves from their peers, coriolanus’ charm and beetee’s genius, that became something of a currency to them, something that they had that others didn’t when they were surrounded by people rich in everything else. they both had people they needed to protect, their families. they both rose above others to win something, the games, at the risk of losing themselves, even subconsciously, in order to save their families. they both met the “love of their life”, their songbird, through the games, while in a position of power above them as their mentors. they both risked the threat of death hanging above them in order to win the games, beetee in a bloody fight with another exhausted tribute just to be forgotten mere minutes later by the capitol and coriolanus slowly of starvation on the streets of the city he loved so much.

but the differences between them are what make them so similar and yet so vastly different as well. beetee and coriolanus both lost their innocence along the way to their victory in the games for beetee and the presidency for coriolanus, but beetee was forced into prostitution and to give up his brains for the very country he already killed for the entertainment of at the hands of a man who once watched his own cousin leave for the shadier districts of the capitol in the dead of night only to come back with food and a haunted look in her eyes. beetee was forced to come back every year to train kids to either become killers like him or die like the previous children that came last year and the year before that and the year before that, all to appease their president, a man who watched as some of his fellow mentors of the tenth slowly lost their light as the years go by, as more children die just like the ones they mentored all those years ago, as coriolanus snow himself climbs the political ladder, leaving a pile of bodies behind him. beetee and coriolanus both fell in love with their victors, wiress and lucy gray respectively, but coriolanus never saw lucy gray as a human being. she was district, below him, and besides, she was his, his tribute, his victor, his lucy gray. as soon as she realized who exactly snow was, a controlling, manipulative man who had already killed three people, one that he wouldn’t even admit to, she ran for her life, whereas wiress and beetee have never once strayed from the defining principle of any relationship: trust. wiress trusted beetee to help her win the hunger games, and he did. beetee trusted wiress to understand the meanings behind his sponsor gifts, the reasoning behind them or the lack of them, and she did. wiress trusted beetee with the rebellion even when he was indecisive on it, and he eventually helped the rebels when she couldn’t be there to do it herself. most importantly, beetee acknowledges that wiress is not his; she’s her own person with her own beliefs and opinions and characteristics that are vastly different from his own, but while that’s one of the most important aspects of beetee and wiress’ relationship, it’s something that coriolanus could never accept about his and lucy gray’s.

[faaun]

omw to see a guy im not interested in bc he has my coat

[minas-linkverse]

What do you think about Skyward Sword? I'm playing it for the first time now and it's really enjoyable

Long story short, skyward sword is the game that got me into this fandom! in 2011 when I was but a 10 yo, I watched a let's play that released weekly (or was it daily?) and I was OBSESSED. It was kind of the first time I really got into a game with a proper narrative, and it blew my little mind. It's easily in my top 3 just because of that.

I can admit that now that I'm older it does have its flaws. The story pacing can be frustrating, and to some revisiting old areas isn't as charming as it is to me. Demise's design is racist garbage and I can see why the massive shift in the lore felt like a betrayal to some older fans.

The fact is that to me it is an utterly whimsical and unique experience full of characters I adore so very deeply. Every segment of the game reminds me of another morning I woke up excited to watch another episode. Like a bottle of sunshine!!!! And as I've grown I've found myself marveling how each element of the game comes together in such a solid way. Sure it isn't a masterpiece but the game will always hold a magical place in my heart.

I also own a copy of the original wii version myself, and feel the gameplay is wonderful. There's a lot that can be said about the motion controls, especially discussions of accessibility are important, but I feel it is far from the game ruin-er people make it seem like it is. (Or maybe I just got lucky.) I hear the switch version is great too.

I guess the conclusion is that it's a game that holds a very special place in my heart and without it this webcomic would likely not exist.

[fumifooms]

You’re the resident chilchuck expert, so I was wondering about it there’s any canon evidence that he did smoke or drink alcohol when the kids were younger. I always thought it was something he picked up due to the strain of long jobs, when the kids were already older, but you seem to think differently and I was wondering if there was anything in canon that made you think that way!

Now that you mention it I guess it’s true there’s no evidence he did. Smoking we literally only know he does at all because of one post-canon panel where he has a pipe, so no, maybe this stick-looking thing in the panel below too though, I’m not familiar with medieval blunts eh. We’ve only gotten one panel of him and his daughters interacting when he was younger so that’s not too insightful on that end, and every time we see him young and freckled it’s in a job context so again not really where we’d expect him to be drinking. The earliest proof (/heavy implication since we don’t see inside his cup I guess) is 3 years before canon when Laios hired him, where he’s at a bar, classily placed in front of all the bottles ✨

Yes alcohol is almost certainly a way through which he copes especially with stress, so if we go with the theory he started around when work got stressful, well… Chilchuck started working as a dungeon diver ~10 years ago so when he was ~19, making Mei, Fler and Puck ~6 and ~4 respectively, so from that draw the ‘stressful enough to start drinking’ line wherever. We don’t know what he did before that with any certainty, and it could be he did odd jobs, lived off mostly mutual aid and community work, or just focused on only raising the girls. Half-foots tend to be poor and I see a lot of that in Chilchuck specifically so I don’t think he could have afforded to not have some paying work though.

Alright, so then why do I think he did drink when the girls were younger?

I give a more complete rundown of the info we do have on his alcoholism & his family with panels and references + all the speculation I make from it here. But the most targeted and objective answer I can give is:

Of course there’s just very very little we know of Chilchuck’s life with his family, and I think that’s by design too. I think the details being up in the air is to allow more nuance of the topic, like, will trying to reconcile go well, is their relationship salvageable? We don’t know, because we don’t know. So the message of giving hope a chance even if it’s a long shot, that things could truly go either way, is more relevant, impactful and meta in that way. How long was he usually away for work travels into dungeons here and there? How did he act with them? All we can really do is "it’s likely that", it’s a game of which way we think it’s more implied. There’s no right and wrong answer, it’s all Marcille-like larping the events out.

My main reason for thinking he did is that his father died from overdrinking and Chilchuck is very aware of that. He mentions his death casually in the extra about their stance in alcohol and in his Adventurer’s Bible profile, etc. He acts towards the alcohol presumably the same way his father did: with abandon, uncaring for the health effects, probably happily too considering Chil says "dying doing something you love is a good way to go". Very nonchalant. So you see what I’m saying here right, wether he started early or late, his view of alcoholism is very influenced by what he saw of his father growing up, it’s something he’s always been aware of and saw in a mostly positive light, something that was inherited you could say. It’s something that was normalized to him from a young age. Regardless or where it goes from there I do think this part is pretty inarguable. If he views it positively and we know that in the present alcohol is his favorite food that he loveees, why would he have held out on it? Personally that all makes me think he started drinking very young, especially since I don’t think they limited alcohol to age as much as modern standards (and I mean, teen drinking is obviously still a thing). And here you could argue, maybe his father only started being more alcoholic later when Chilchuck moved out, or something! And to that there’s nothing I can say except I think that’s a strained theory, and that Chil might even have largely cut contact with his family after moving out (since he and siblings are listed as almost strangers and he doesn’t seem to have much emotional attachment to his parents, but also we know he rents out his place to "a relative"), but it’s true we have no evidence. "I’ve picked up the same unhealthy substance abuse as my father haha! No big deal right haha" repeated several times to me just reeks of intergenerational trauma, & the alcoholism gene as they call it. Like effortless sliding into drinking as if it’s second nature, it’s natural after all, it’s normal after all, it just makes sense, it makes you feel good and that’s what matters.

BUT from my interpretation then we have a whole other layer: Alcohol is of course not all bad always. I think he’s always liked alcohol and drank it on occasion and it brought him joy etc etc, but I think here the implication in the question is, how much effect did his drinking have on the family relations and how early? And that isn’t so much about when him drinking started but when the alcoholism started. Addiction is defined by a habitual need, that has negative effects from filling that need (physical, psychological, social, etc) and negative effects from withdrawal. If Chilchuck drinks to cope and he can’t not cope without it, that’s addiction, if it affects his relationships, if it’s a need he has, it’s addiction. Addiction can be very insidious or look very casual, and how much people around the person are affected by it is case by case. Cheerful drunks can be sooo annoying and uncomfortable though let me tell you. Drunks are drunks. And this sounds harsh, but even if people around them don’t mind drunks it’ll still have some effects here and there, living with one can be such a challenge, ily drunks good luck with everything much like Chilchuck you deserve good things 🫡　

Ok so with the dad thing and the "ok well maybe he’s always drunk casually but it grew worse with time around when he started working as a dungeon diver" precision made, the other bit of info we have that can inform this is that Chilchuck is on a harsh diet and that alcohol is a hunger suppressant. We know Chilchuck "used to be fine not eating for two days", that literally on screen to quench his hunger so it doesn’t keep him awake he goes to drink water, drinking is his instinct to hunger. Again alcohol is a hunger suppressant and if you want info on that the internet has a lot of research and anecdotes about it. He diets to be light enough to not trigger traps, so it’s something he’d have started after dungeon diving most likely. Between the stress and the diet, yes it’s extremely likely he started going harder on alcohol after he started working in dungeons. There’s arguments on wether two days without eating is less bad for half-foots than humans, but apart from smaller portions there’s nothing that indicates half-foots should get less than 3 meals a day. They need less food but that’s because their bodies are smaller: the need is proportional to the body, not smaller than others’ races, the % of need is similar even if the kg amount of food isn’t. There’s also a popular headcanon with support basis that half-foots run hot and have a faster heartrate and whatnot, and that points towards a faster metabolism rather than a slower one: a bigger need for eating rather than a smaller one. He has the same bmi, 18, as Mickbell, but perhaps because Chil is much taller he’s less intensely visibly underweight with ribs showing than Mick during the bath extra, it’s most apparent when he becomes tallman.

Alcohol is something so important and omnipresent in his character that I have trouble believing it’s something that was part of only a small fraction of his life. It’s his immediate go-to, his no-brainer solution to a good time, I’ve sort of always assumed especially after looking at his family that it’s something he discovered decently young. Like he just acts like someone who’s always had alcohol to fall back on and started young idk. Alcohol is one of his 5 keywords. Alcoholism is very ingrained into his world view and life, his "it doesn’t matter" stance his ‘work hard play hard’ mentality his idea that the world is harsh so you get relief where you can, so it just makes sense to me that it’s always been in his life, if not actively then at least looming.

So yes, in summary, my take: Alcohol was always something he wholly enjoyed to an unwise level, but it could have been considered casual until he started working into dungeons and his need for it on a regular basis intensified. Alcohol has always had positive association to him as far as we see, so when it started being a problem he didn’t see it as such. To quote him, "I drink anytime I get the opportunity to". Why always? Approval of father’s alcoholism. Why alcoholism at all? Diet + stress & coping mechanism & emotional stunting + relationship issues, and she decided she had enough after they went out for drinks.

Conclusion

Chilchuck having drunk from a young age makes sense to me and it’s the strongest narrative angle I see on the table, but that’s objectively a me opinion, yes! There’s no evidence, moreso there’s canon basis and supporting info, but it’s all very left up to interpretation. I’ve made my own interpretations of things from the scraps we see, like everyone else making Chilwife and daughters content. Wether you have a stance on the topic or prefer to leave it vague in your takes, it’ll be a matter of what you think makes most sense, or what you’d rather believe I suppose (which is literally fine)

There’s a lot of subjectivity in even just setting up causal links like you probably noticed during this and I was careful with my word choices, because we’re just extrapolating from what we see and unless Kui states it explicitly from a reliable mouth all we can do is have informed opinions on most things. This particular interpretation is influenced by other details I’ve come to form about my interpretation of Chilchuck too, the more psychological and emotional sides of him and the timeline and how his marriage even happened, unplanned pregnancy imo. Like I hope you see what I mean, this wasn’t supposed to be a speculation post just a quick simple answer but there’s sort of just no other and concise but complete way with the subjectivity nuance to put "maybe it could be yes because of this but maybe it could be no because of this" haha

Edit: Wait the phrasing on this… Interesting. "In recent years"— This does imply that if not just his alcohol consumption increasing then the diversity and quality of it did, so either he indeed did start drinking more (not necessarily meaning he didn’t drink before) assumedly because of his wife leaving, or he started drinking other/more different kinds of alcohol maybe due to the union he formed + his experience gave him greater salary than he had previously (and no wife and family to provide money for), a mix of both perhaps.

[maingh0st]

I always noticed that Warner guy is always compared to Cardan. Thoughts?

hm, wild. they live in very different categories of characters in my mind haha. I guess on a surface level, they occupy similar spaces narratively: they start out as a more antagonizing figure to the MC, but you can tell that their obsession with the MC is shot-through with attraction. and they eventually become the I Worship My Wife kind of MMCs, which is fun but not exactly uncommon in fiction.

but while Cardan is an individual schoolyard bully who represents something very personal to Jude (he is a living reminder that she does not belong in Elfhame), Warner is an active representative of an oppressive global order that has made Juliette's and countless others' lives Very Bad. the power dynamic is really different, and has to be handled a lot more sensitively. and (in my opinion) I'm... not sure it is.

I think my biggest gripe with Warner as a character (and I am really not trying to start discourse here—people enjoy what they enjoy, whatever; I thought he was hot when I was a teen, too) is that his actions are almost always presented very romantically, and the narrative rarely tells us he's wrong. Juliette is the silly little woman who just doesn't understand, but thank goodness the love interest knows that she does like him, she is attracted to him, and she does want the power he offers her. silly girl, he knows you better than you know yourself! this is not uncommon in fiction; authors seem to think that a male character knowing better than a female character and forcing her to "become powerful" is somehow girlboss feminism (SJM and the "it's your choice" nonsense 🔪)

Warner also demonstrates a frankly concerning level of obsession with Juliette (maybe another reason people try to compare him to Cardan?), going so far as to steal and memorize sections of Juliette's diary, which she feels very violated by (they're her most private, intimate thoughts from a very dark time in her life! holy shit buddy who gave you the right!). but rather than the narrative being like "wow isn't this scary and weird and a total violation of her privacy?" he gets rewarded for Knowing Her So Well and ultimately gets to be her malewife.

Cardan, on the other hand, is wrong. we know he's wrong! the author knows he's wrong! and while the narrative shows us reasons that he is the way he is, it does not use those reasons to justify him. it makes him more understandable, but he still has to apologize and change. Jude is not treated as silly for disliking and mistrusting him; she's absolutely in the right! and Cardan has to realize that he has misunderstood her and both underestimated her (not realizing just how much of a threat she is) and overestimated her (thinking that nothing really hurts her bc she's so tough).

also, Cardan is more fun. there, I said it! Warner is melodramatic and purple proses @ the reader about what a Conflicted Guy he is. Cardan is a slutty little dude with crushing self-confidence issues who gets tricked into the Number One Job He Did Not Want and decides to cope with it by being Very Silly, and then somewhere along the way realizes that he can actually do a good job at it. he oopsies his way into being Elfhame's best king. who's doing it like him?

[captain-space-kin]

I know this is like a “no harm no foul” situation and people are free to do whatever, but y’all we do not need to go through and find + name every single possible ship/character combination. Especially for characters who haven’t even shown up on screen yet. Like it is cool that we get to see and participate in the creation of ship names and all that, but trying to force a dynamic between characters for the sake of thorough cataloging kind takes the fun out of it idk (also, and this is coming from someone who really likes shipping, not every character needs to be shipped etc etc).

After talking with some friends about it one do them did point out that (and paraphrasing here) that it kinda feels like people are trying to brute force another Citrus to happen. But the thing is we already have Citrus, we don’t really need another.

Like I get why people are doing this, it is fun, especially when it’s a community wide effort, but it feels very clinical to me.

Obligatory not a call out, not saying anyone doing this is committing a moral failure, etc etc warning

[ganondoodle]

since i have seen this argument pop up again and again and now its used to defend the minecraft movie

i really hate the argument that something, be it a movie or a game, can be as shitty as it wants when its primarily aimed at kids (or people THINK it is aimed mostly at kids) bc its 'just for kids'

like children are lesser an stupid? like they arent incredibly impressionable and deserve good movies? im not saying they should only watch critical acclaimed drama movies, but you can make a movie 'for kids' AND make it good, its been done before, sure there will always be shit movies, and thats fine, but dismissing any kind of criticism towards them bc "its just for kids" feels so unecessarily mean spirited towards children, like they are little people in wildly different stages of development!! they can think too!!

'kids' itself is such a wide range that i feel its not very useful as a category anyway, a 5 year old isnt the same as an 11 year old, both of them should get good things, and both can watch or play things they may not completely understand yet! i grew up with shrek, and while a big parody and haha fart humor movie, they (1+2) have an incredibly strong core, i didnt udnerstand them fully when i was little, so what? i still enjoyed them, i felt more connected to them than any disney movie (bc hey .. the monster is the main guy and no they dont all turn into conventionally pretty humans as the ultimate reward- i felt othered throughout my life too) and i still do, theres jokes and themes and meaning i understood fully only when i was rewatching them as an adult, i still enjoy them even at 27

and like, shouldnt it ESPECIALLY matter what children watch? (not in the puritan brain worm way) bc they are ... people in development?? do you think if they just sit down and watch shitty movies and play games that dont challenge them at all, be it thinking critically or emotionally, all day it wont have an affect on them??

(im sorry to bring up totk again, but that 'its for kids' argument has been used to defend it so much too, and its so incredibly annoying to me, ah yes, its puzzles are all skippable or easy as shit bc its main target are kids and children are stupid and shouldnt be challenged ever, the story is a simple fairytale type deal maybe to you, but contains alot of harmful stereotypes that have led to real world harm and its repeated unquestionably while offering nothing intersting to think or engage with, theres a reason alot of childrens media contains alot of stereotypes to propaganda even but its just for kids of course its not propaganda bc kids are stupid and cant understand that lol BECAUSE they are so impressionable, if a series 'for kids' only lets the girls be in frilly pink dresses and do 'girly' stuff do you not think that wil affect how they think about themselves??

if they keep seeing the light skinned blonde heroe stab the unquestioned evil arab stereotype bc he wants to take over your holy land bc hes just 'evil' and is never ever humanized in any way and only presented as a monster, while the good little maiden princess does everything she can to support her hero in shiny armor with big sad doe eyes and pretty little white dress- do you not think it will affect them? if it were an isolated incidence perhaps not much, but its a stereotype perpetuated to such a degree that you think its just 'how fairytales go'? yeah, you have been influenced by these portrayals, they are working as intented- and if they are used as such in media without the writer intending to influence you that way? thats even worse bc it means it has been so normalized to think that way people dont even realize it- while alot of real people in the world are ganondorf, they are demonized and dehumanized, others think of them as inherently evil.. but its just a "simple fairytale"

yes i know children can also question things on their own, but you shouldnt assume that comes naturally and then also in just the correct way, i questioned why i was just doing whatever the talking boat told me to do when i first played windwaker as a kid, but more bc i liked how ganondorf looked and hated being told things to do without a good reason being given (autism much?), 'evil' didnt do it for me, but that doesnt mean i knew he was an evil arab stereotype, i didnt like tetra turning white as zelda, bc i thought she looked cooler before and i didnt like 'girly' things myself, not bc i knew it was whitewashing

-not saying media should be free of anything 'problematic', the problem is how its presented and never questioned or engaged with critically and then that stupid argument being used to dismiss it like children are both unable to think and not influencable somehow-)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

5 years later ghost posting from jason sweettooth williams: "In honor of Halloween and all things ghostly, here is the picture I took of a ghost from the stage of the Lyceum Theater on Broadway. I was on stage in the middle of tech and looked up and spotted this. I think about her often but especially tonight on Halloween! #happyhalloween #ghost #theater #bemorechill #broadway"

[thenixkat]

(Picture in the voice of that one meme with the old man going 'Baby boy' at one pic and 'evil' at the second pic)

[ID: A screenshot of a scene from Castlevania Nocturne featuring the character Edouard in close-up in a night scene with water flying through the air. /End ID]

My guy Edouard is a mulatto from Haiti (oh hey look at that we actually know where he's from and he's not 'ambiguously brown'). Are his eyes blue? Yes, tragically. But it's at least a shade of blue that works ok with with his skin tone. Also peep the nose and lips.

[ID: A screencap from Castlevania Nocturne featuring a close-up of Olrox, a vampire, from the shoulders up nude on a bed. /End ID]

Could I tell what kind of Native Olrox was when I saw him b4 he said anything? No. But I could tell he was Native. But we *do* get to find out where he's from. Does he have pale colored eyes, yes, but again the shades picked work well with his skin tone. Also just lovely nose, lips, cheek bones. Doesn't feel like an ambiguous brown mfer.

[ID: A screenshot from the Dungeon Meshi anime featuring Kabru smiling, winking and giving a thumbs up to the viewer. /End ID]

Go girl give us nothing. Hate that shade of blue, its jarring. Granted given how the mangaka has this man's skin changing colors in the same lighting in the art books like a fucking chameleon in a rave and even making him that weird 'I don't know how to color nonpale people' grey in a few places in the artbooks also just that blue wasn't gonna work anyway.

Also the gross pixie nose. Zero lippage. What fantasy counterpart is this guy from who the fuck knows? Apparently, it wasn't important to make clear or hint at in his design or for him to bring anything that could pin him up directly. Mr. Ambigiously fucking Brown.

Also colorist tropes! Our two plot important brown people gotta have pale colored eyes can't they can't be too ethnic if we have to see them a lot more.

[ID: A crop of a page from the Dungeon Meshi Adventurers Bible showing Kiki and Kaka's heads. There are cut-off words from their page entry on the side and top of the image. /End ID]

Go girl give us nothing but even more! Dark eyes? Good. Everything else just bleh. Nothing. Hell, even the names are as 'no thoughts involved' as the rest.

[ittybittern]

Stupid little post but here's everything I read in 2024!

[altblock-tm]

I love it when you see a mutual like a post and then there are fifteen other notes between that in your activity and they still haven’t reblogged that and you just KNOW that your mutual is furiously typing out a wall of text in the tags.

[highest-seas]

rereading d&e and ngl maekar is lowkey like crack to me. cain in reverse, the younger brother accidentally killing the older brother instead of the older one murdering the younger one. And he knows that he never meant to kill baelor and he will never know if his blow really was what definitely killed baelor but he knows how likely it is He also knows some ppl will always whisper kinslayer behind his back but he marks the anniversary of his brother's death every year. the brother he felt overshadowed by, the brother he then killed. did he ask himself how that's even possible, how the anvil could kill the hammer, when he saw the inside of baelor's head is what I'M wondering