#but i hope it never gets confirmed

[resident-problem]

Maybe spirits are the strongest emotion/ideal you exemplified or needed during your life? Andrastians believe that souls cross through the Fade when you die and that you can't come back, so maybe they're partially right in that you become a spirit, so utterly changed that you are no longer recognizable (I can't remember as well if there's a concept of being washed in the waters of the Fade, similar to Lethe, but that'd work too)? I re-played Cole's quest recently and it got me thinking that it was possibly part of what happened when the "real" Cole died.

It seems as well, that during a lot of characters journeys into the Fade they are being tested and finding out who they truly are and what they exemplify. Like in Origins for example, where (in my opinion, and from what I've played) you seem to portray hope even in the darkest hours, Cole becoming Compassion to ensure no one else was left without it, there's also something here about Solas being exemplified by a Pride demon as well, but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe that's just how things were for the elven people before the Veil? Where the Spirit and the person weren't seperate, but were one being?

It would also stand to reason that demons are those who either can't find peace, are corrupted spirits, or were already corrupt when they died. Maybe it was a case of demons never existing until a certain event happened and then it spread like a disease. Be it the creation of the Veil, something to do with the Void, or something else entirely, but something possibly provoked a shift in the spirits.

**EDIT** Thank you to @iceta for reminding me that Down Among the Dead Men exists!! I re-read it, and I have some thoughts.

There seem to be roughly two categories of this phenomenon: One is that you're truly dead like Karn and Audric and it's your corpse that's possessed, and the other is right before you die, the spirit inhabits your body. Some tentative examples would be Wynne, Anders (although I haven't played the DLC, so this is just what I read on his wiki page), Cole, and these are out there, but I'd also categorise Lucanis — from what I've seen in the QnA with the devs, specifically the line where someone decided to make the "Demon" part of the Demon of Vyrantium more permanent — and Solas, but that's hinged on my ancient elf theory from earlier. Could also make an argument about the Evanuris being the first demons (something about their useage of power being so against a spirit's nature that it corrupted them), but I don't have enough evidence to prove it either way.

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

I'm sorry but James Vowles criticising how Red Bull has treated their drivers in the past, only to go and then treat Logan far worse while pulling the exact same shit Red Bull did, ie the exact behaviour he criticised and called them out for, is so freaking infuriating like the sheer hypocrisy -

[celtrist]

Hazbin & Helluva Vs. Aromanticism

(Aka: I have a problem with the Spindlehorse team about this, not shippers.)

(Also this is mainly about Alastor but can go for Octavia and Mammon too.)

Alright, so I've cleaned up this uh... rant, to make things a little more clear hopefully. But to summarize here, this is about the team's lack of commitment when every other character is allowed full confirmation of their orientations but these (potentially) aromantic characters aren't.

While I have no beef with shippers (I think you can ship whoever with whoever you want, I ship Alastor too on occasion), there is some conversation about how the fandom might be a bit of a reason WHY they "can't" be confirmed as aro. But again, my main problem is more with the showrunners than the fandom at this point about this.

I'll also be getting into why it's "important" and the double standards against characters being aromantic.

This is not an attack, ship however way you wish (again, I do it myself). My intent isn't really to stop the shipping, that would be ridiculous. But more so to give my thoughts on why it's BS characters like Alastor can't be confirmed as aromantic when other characters are allowed confirmed orientations.

I will start off by saying I don't mind the shipping of Alastor. While it's NOBODY'S business but mine, I suppose it's important to clarify that I'm someone who does currently identify as aroace. I might be wrong but who cares, it's how I think of myself now at least to some degree (I do after all still have fictional crushes. Real-life romance is not an interest for me though, don't like 'em).

I'm gonna get what I don't think people talk about enough on both sides of being for and against shipping Alastor, and then I'll talk about the shippers as they're (I realized) not my main issue at this point.

A little history: So Alastor has been long time confirmed as an ace character. He hasn't been confirmed as being sex-repulsed or anything, but I can personally say I don't mind either flavor of him being repulsed or favorable (though I imagine the series will lean towards the former to counter everyone else's sex-favorable attitude and for jokes). This statement was initially taken VERY poorly by fans who, at the time, were shipping radiodust and radiobelle/charlastor, one more than the other. Care to take a guess which? The answer will not surprise you.

But then people realized "Oh, asexual doesn't mean he COULDN'T get with someone" and people even went further to "Being asexual doesn't mean he CAN'T have sex", both very true statements. So shipping was back on the menus boys! And his asexual was certainly blurred a bit (to the point where it wasn't even him being sex-favorable asexual as much as just not asexual, something that still happens but certainly not as bad). But overall, people were taking his canonicity as asexual with as much grace as a duck.

So here's where MY problem comes in. While I have some gripes with shippers, I had an epiphany that "Oh. It's not really the shippers I have a problem with. It's the people WRITING THE DAMN CHARACTER". Which, might I just say, is so much worst.

The shippers, while they got annoying at some points and certainly can be still, are just having fun. Because shipping just happens to be the way most people like to interact with characters in the media they're into. Hell, I am no different. I just have the misfortune of only really getting into rarepairs most of the time (curse you my bizarre tastes). I've even shipped with Alastor, I like AngelicSmile/radiojoy quite a bit.

Back on track. Now, what do I mean by my main problem being with the writers more than the fans with this? Well, queue this darling of a clip about the topic (this is the only clip I've found of the live stream, feel free to watch the whole video but just wanted the clip here).

This. Single. Clip. Infuriates me.

Vivzi, while I'm sure not meant to, pretty much implied "Alastor being aromantic and 'non-shippable' would ruin people's fun". I'm sure she meant it as a way to keep others from policing shippers (which didn't work, it still happens), it really just reads as "a character being aromantic is not a fun character". Like there's something wrong with being aro.

Not to mention some other things that would contradict this statement:

Viv in the past said "fans are allowed to ship outside character orientations", so... what makes that so different here with confirming Alastor as aromantic?

It being confirmed is not relevant to the plot. Great, so is every other orientation not relevant. Why can't Alastor be confirmed as aromantic but Vaggie can be confirmed as a lesbian or Vox bi? What does Vox being bisexual have to do with the plot? Neither is relevant to the plot, but one can be confirmed but not the other?

People were gonna ship him ANYWAY. Like, there's really no point in pretending. They were going to anyway because of the first point I already mentioned, but also people ship against canon orientations ALL THE TIME. It's just gonna happen and there's nothing wrong with that in of itself.

You've kind of just implied it's canon by not wanting to say specifically him being aromantic is canon or not. If Viv had just said "I don't wanna confirm his romantic orientation because...", then this statement would be fine and fair I suppose. But she had to call out him being aromantic specifically. And I mean, he COULD be something else (he was slated to be a couple with Mimzy originally after all), but the context doesn't seem like that would be the case. Plus, would she really feel the need to hold back from saying "Alastor is homoromantic" or biromantic or heteroroman- actually yes for that last one probably.

So riddle me this, with these points, why the FUCK would it be so wrong to confirm Alastor as a canonically aromantic icon and help get MORE REP for this very very very VERY underrepresented orientation? And I've thought of a few reasons to this, one of which being to avoid the same backlash that they got for Alastor being ace. Which, DID HAPPEN WHEN THE VOICE ACTOR AND SOMEONE ELSE ON THE SHOW CONFIRMED ALASTOR AS AROMANTIC BUT BACKTRACKED ON THE STATEMENT.

To which, fine. THAT'S on the fans (especially as no one would've complained if he was confirmed as homoromantic, which is a double standard VERY PRESENT in this fandom, but also many others quite honestly). But I can see another reason is to avoid others policing shippers about it.

Which, if that's the case, shit luck it's happening anyway.

To cower away from this orientation because of fans being upset says a lot, both about the fans and the creators. There is a whisper of "Alastor isn't allowed to be aromantic". That "being aro isn't allowed or appreciated".

We live in a world that at this point has a lot more lgbtq+ characters than ever before. At this point, there's just a lot of gay/lesbian and bi characters, and that's wonderful. But, there's barely a handful of aroace characters. And when they are, nobody wants to pay attention to that part of the character. So why can't the deer man be aromantic? I would imagine it would honestly make things a little better ship wise because ship wars wouldn't occur seeing as, well, there's no ship to be fought for. None of them could be canon.

So you might see where I'm leading into this, but I can only really think of one real reason Alastor being aromantic just "can't be confirmed" where as everyone else's orientations can be.

His popularity. Like, that's weird but walk with me here. Alastor is the most popular character in the fandom. There's honestly no denying it, he just is. And what do people do with the most popular character?

THEY SHIP THEM OFF IN A LOVEBOAT.

But wait, if he's aromantic, he can't be on a love boat. THIS IS BS-

And then... the outcry. And we HAVE seen this happen. I mentioned before, he was stated to be aromantic on two occasions by two people who work on the show, one of which is his voice actor (which I'll be fair, I personally don't think VAs always know the characters they play the best, that's the writers). But they had to backpedal because people DID complain. People WERE upset. So it's kind of shown just aromantism isn't really welcomed, at the very least not for a character like Alastor.

And that's the key: "Not for a character like Alastor". But if it were say, Niffty or Mimzy who are either overlooked or just not very popular, THEN it's probably more than okay for a character to be aromantic. Because no one wants to ship with them much, so they can be aromantic all they want.

AKA. The aro community is allowed the scraps but not the dinner.

At this point, you've probably noticed I switched gears from the creators to the fans because I DO think they could be a reason why Alastor "can't" be confirmed as Aromantic. I'll give credit, I'm pretty sure it's mainly on twitter and wouldn't be surprised if it was a "loud minority" thing going on, but the people have spoken. They vehemently cannot STAND the idea of Alastor being aromantic.

But I don't have a problem with these people quite honestly- I mean I kinda do, but my main issue is the lack of commitment when the other characters are allowed confirmed orientations. Why can't aromantic people get confirmed rep? Because "it'll ruin people's fun?" That's such a crappy reason because it's just saying being aro is bad on some level or isn't okay. Why can't the aromantic community get the dinner this ONE TIME? It's one character in a pool of many others that are canonically gay or bi, so why can't the aro community have this ONE popular character?

I'm not even asking for people to stop shipping him, I think that's perfectly FINE. It wouldn't change the canon. I'd appreciate more LOVE given to the aromantic identity (and I'm talking about the far end of it, so absolutely NO interest in romance as many have used aro Alastor but it still comes off as just normal shipping, but that's just me). There's such a double standard to the treatment of aromantic characters to the other characters in these shows (because Octavia and Mammon are in the same boat here), and the reasons given are so crappy that they sound more like off-hand excuses.

Again, I don't MIND people shipping Alastor, or Octavia, or Mammon who is randomly shipped with Adam the most. Let me repeat:

YOU. ARE. ALLOWED. TO. SHIP. THESE. CHARACTER.

But what I have a problem with is that these characters aren't allowed to be OFFICIALLY aromantic. How would it feel if this was a gay character? That they didn't want to confirm it but there's been indications with past statements and even in-universe stuff indicating so? I WANT Viv and her team to STICK with what route they were gonna go with.

And some might argue "what's so bad with nothing being confirmed?" Other than the fact every other character's orientations are allowed confirmation and Viv's crappy way of putting it in not confirming anything. There's, by all technicalities, nothing wrong.

However, if I may pose a counter, why is it fair for people to demand or ask for gay representation or confirmation but not aromantic? Because it's "not ruining anything"? If that's the case, I'm inclined to say that may be a bit aphobic. Because how is it that a character being aromantic can "ruin" the character or something, but a character being gay DOESN'T "ruin" the character. It's a double standard that I don't think most people realize or want to say because you don't want to be dissing on gay stuff.

But WAKE UP SHEEPLE. The gay stuff has PLENTY of things by this point. Whether through fan works or official media, it is growing and it is growing rapidly. And we should be HAPPY about that. But alternatively, Aromantic (and asexual) rep BARELY gets any attention in either fan works or official media. People would be UPSET if a ship like Angel Dust X Vaggie or Stolas X Verosika got into one of the top most popular ships. But Alastor? Nah, it's fine.

Again, while I don't mind the shipping itself, hopefully, you can understand how it might feel to see one of the most popular ships involve a character that goes against their orientation and it's YOUR orientation. It doesn't. Feel. Great.

And not everyone who ships Alastor even would LIKE him to end up with who they ship. Some people just like it staying in fanon. I have met SO MANY nice people who ship Alastor with characters that I personally don't really like him shipped with. But it's clear that I don't think THEY'D mind if he was confirmed aromantic because it doesn't change their life. They'll still keep shipping him because that's fun for them and that's FINE. People explore themselves through characters with confirmed orientations and they don't always line up with canon, and that's FINE. I don't think people should be policed on shipping with the deer man, they're just having fun. Would I appreciate a little more love for the aro identity? Sure (I mean just look at Alastor's ship weeks activeness vs. his aro week activeness), but if that's not how people have fun they shouldn't be forced to do stuff with it.

But Alastor being seemingly "not allowed" to be confirmed as aro has set a precedent that there's something wrong with being aromantic. And personally, it makes me feel a tad unwelcomed sometimes.

It's the precedents. Again, why is every other character's orientation allowed to be confirmed but Alastor's isn't? What is so wrong with him being aromantic? Hell, he might not even BE aromantic. But at least I'd KNOW instead of floundering around hoping upon a star for some aromantic representation.

It's okay to be gay but- WHOA HOLD YOUR HORSES THERE. WE'RE GONNA HAVE TO PUT A PAUSE IN THAT ARO BUSINESS YOU GOT THERE.

A character's worth is in how shippable they are. And if they're aromantic, they're not shippable. And unfortunately, there are just enough people to throw a hissy fit about it that Viv doesn't want to confirm it.

Because apparently being aromantic would "ruin" things.

[nemmet]

🌻💙 happy autism month to this wonderful silly guy, and all his boundless enthusiasm for what he loves!!!

[romanticatheartt]

Lucien's color skin

Recently, I've been seeing discourse around Lucien's heritage/skin color and it seems artists in this fandom can't agree on one skin color and feature (like archeron sisters' hair color💀) so I wanted to give my two cent on this, based on canon and sjm herself.

Feature:

So back in 2017, which is the year acowar was released, Charlie Bowater was commissioned by sjm to do a coloring book for acowar, mentioned in this post that sjm imagined Helion as Persian/Iranian.

And normally Persian feature contain strong, straight nose and most of the time with a bump at the top of the nose, definitely tick, black brows (unibrow are a symbol for Iranians and if you look at their traditional art style most of women and men have unibrow), and cat like eyes or as Charlie said tilted eyes.

I've seen so many artist draw Helion/Lucien with Black feature, which are not the same as Persian feature.

note: In these arts, there is a huge chance that they have the wrong skin color due to the belief that lighter skin color, the better or more beautiful. The classic racism... This idea isn't that potent in Iran anymore.

This is what Helion looks like based on that post and how sjm pictured him:

Thick brows and strong nose. It was also mentioned in the books that he uses kohl for his eyes which imo gave him away as middle-eastern.

Skin color:

Now this is what we have on Helion's skin color in acowar ~ chapter 43:

A golden cuff of an upright serpent encircled one powerful bicep, offsetting his near-glowing dark skin, and a radiant crown of golden spikes—the rays of the sun, I realized—glistened atop his onyx hair.

Acosf ~ chapter 41:

His dark brown skin gleamed over the strong muscles of his bare thighs and legs, ... ... and the spiked golden crown atop his shoulder-length black hair.

And for Lucien which we're gonna use the description in acowar ~ chapter 47 and not the one in acotar since sjm has retcon it:

Look at him. The nose is the same, the smile. The voice. Even Lucien’s skin is darker than his brothers’. A golden brown compared to their pale coloring.

Let's see Persian's skin range color:

Helion being dark skinned can mean many range of skin color. But sjm saying he is a middle eastern, it narrows down his skin color pretty well.

White-passing?

I also wanted to address why he's not white-passing since there's no such thing as white-passing. Even if Lucien's skin were white as paper his feature would've been pretty obvious. Do you call a black person who has Albinism, white or they're white-passing? It is clear that they have black parents/heritage but because of their condition their skin might not be the same dark skin as their parents.

The same can be said about Lucien. If his skin was the same as his brothers', his face would've betray him anyway but still sjm retcon it and turned his skin to golden brown. All the more reason that Beron is aware of him not being is blood son.

note: people are free to have their own interpretations ofc but I tried to prove this based on everything we have at hand :)

[sci-bax]

Sebastian Solace sleeping peaceful in 4k hyper resolution oculus meta quest 2 quality

Drew him sleeping cause of this:

Same drawing but without the slight darker filter over it:

I wanna draw fish man angst

Also its 4am so im going to sleep goodnight, or goodmorning idk

[blundering-owl]

Certain bi Mike truthers like to claim that headcanoning Mike as anything but bisexual is "bi erasure." (I'm convinced that some people just use words with no regard for their actual meaning.) the idea that, by claiming Mike is gay (or pan or queer), we're "erasing" his bisexuality, would only make sense if his sexuality was confirmed to be bisexual. right now, we still don't know.

that claim also has some overlap with milktoasts, who like to say we're "assuming Mike's sexuality" by headcanoning him as gay or bi (when they, in reality, are assuming his sexuality by claiming that he's straight). mitochondrias' only argument for Mike being straight is that he dated A girl (when there are many facts to refute this, and plenty of gay and bi men have dated women).

[dadailybocch]

"Tsundere Kita isn't real, she can't hurt you."

Tsundere Kita:

[personwithatophat]

Founder Theory

do you like generation loss? do you see a neat person with vague background implications? well! good news! That Person Right There Could Be The Founder!

in honor of this id like to introduce a game TOP FIVE GEN LOSS CHARACTERS WHO ARE SECRETLY THE FOUNDER

#5 SecuriTV

This Is A Collection Of Sentience "Maybe Flesh" And Technology!! also known as literally everything that we relate to the founder! the SecuriTV could be the first attempts at making the founder a digital person and this is what remains!

#4 Charlie

The Slime demon! The Patient! The Villain! but could any of these titles have more significant meanings?? charlie is the only other character outside of our hero who has been theorized in the past to be related more internally! charlies character as the slime demon takes yeild from the 1800s, possibly during The Lostfield incident??? and has also been rumored to be a test tube baby! what a wacky, goopy, sludgy guy that could just be the root of narrative evil, always right behind the hero and out of suspicion!

#3 Squiggles

The loveable showfall mascot! Squiggles being the founder in of itself is generally ridiculous, however. its VERY noteworthy that our favorite faceless figurehead of darkness has taken a personal intrest in this project! and could for all potential be using squiggles as a type of surrogate for communications or else wise has a piece of themself as squiggles if youre a supporter of the AI theories. that being said heres some things that squiggles has said live on show "I love rats" "Nightmares of Bart The Vorer intensify" "nyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrwwww *crash"

#2 Zero

What a Mysterious Lady we have! Recently Zero has been getting more attention with the bonus addition of the name "Miss Roads" and many like to speculate the connection of Gen 0, Cron 0, and the founder! Could chronicle zero our local A/V shop retail stooge secretly be using those dusty 20% off tape recorders to start her media manipulation empire?? do we have THE founders diary posted live on twitter?? Or is Miss Roads a truman character with a placed therapist? the answer might surprise us!

#1 Ranboo

Our Very Own Hero! Ranboo being the founder is truely a crowd favorite of these times! spanning through the casual viewers, to the general theorists. The concept of it being a case of memory manipulation and full beginnings although the Ranboo as Founder theory took a significant drop in popularity after matpat made a theory not even picking up on the main plot of the show, there are things that make it still have significance !! This spans from a love of the memory lost protagonist being the main villain and a comforting circle of life deal they have going on where the founder ends up killed by the horrors of his own creation in a cruel circle of fate! This will likely never cease ANYWAY here's a fun challenge! who do YOU think is the founder? o r who do you think is even a little bit suspicious? they can be the founder too!

/lh -Tophat

[puhpandas]

hi mutuals im just curious.

[rainsofcamelot]

I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M WRITING THESE WORDS BUT RUMOR HAS IT THAT EVA, REEVE, PATRICK, AMBER AND ANDRÉ ARE GOING TO JOIN WEST END HADESTOWN IN FEBRUARY TO FILM A PROSHOT FOR NETFLIX

[lulu2992]

Anyway, after months of observation and hesitation, I’ve finally started interacting with the Far Cry subreddit. We’ll see how that goes...

[orcelito]

Tally still isn't quite back to 100% yet, but she's recovered a lot in general. Every time she does one of her normal habits that she'd stopped doing while she was sick, my heart just squeezes with gratefulness. Stuff like her yowling like I died after I go to bed, her climbing onto my lap while I'm sitting on the toilet and/or watching me from on top of her litter box, her jumping onto furniture, her getting up in my face and sniffing my breath as I slowly blow air at her, her trying to eat the plants, her PLAYING.... and of course, her eating.

I also discovered the coat rack toppled over onto the couch after getting out of bed today - surely her doing. Didn't break anything so im just glad she's back to being at least some semblance of a chaos demon, even if she's not totally recovered yet.

It's the little things, sometimes. All her little habits, some harmless and some annoying, that make up who she is and her presence in my life. When all of these stop, so she's just a lump on the couch, barely eating and barely getting up... it was unsettling. And worrisome.

But I've got my baby back. She's still not super high energy, but she's got enough to feel like herself again. And I'm so, so grateful.

[buddiesmutslut]

I would pay an honestly absurd amount of money to see one of Eddie’s friends that Chris knows & likes (whether that’s Tommy since everybody wants him to be an MC, or a good friend from the army or Texas) come over & hang around them, and for Chris to be excited & greet them like, “Uncle Tommy!” (Or whether their name is.)

Especially if Buck is there & gets worried like, “he’s never called me Uncle, am I not as important to this kid as I thought I was?”

Force them both to really look at the role Buck plays in Christopher’s life vs how the rest of their friends act/treat Chris, bc even if Buddie doesn’t get together, I’d love to see it acknowledged canonically just how fatherly Buck acts with Chris.

(Obviously in my dream world & in the fic I’ll probably write, this will be what kickstarts Buck & Eddie figuring their shit out and getting together but that’s just me)

[apprentice-s]

what are everyone’s thoughts on the allura ships

[elemental-plane]

i love how we never got like confirmation on what elsie and raj were but everyone saw them and immediately deduced they were a divorced couple and i think that's the funniest thing ever