#but iirc he's like explicitly said he's not interested in dating

[certifiedwerewolf]

Isn't Riz like canonically aro/ace? Why are there so many fic shipping him with Fabian?

[il3x]

(spoilers for reboot s2, but not the endgame!)

thinking about the reboot cloning plot again and you know I love a clone plot, but the fact that This Specific clone plot is presented as a neutral to positive thing kinda rubs me the wrong way. I think there should be more exploration of how fucked up it was.

Like... Seb decides, without consulting most of his teammates, that the best-slash-only way for Pr0 to escape his pursuers is to die. He does not ask Pr0 about this plan, he does not tell Pr0 about this plan. He just straight up Murders Him. That's already a pretty big violation, and it's done to a character whose arc is about escaping control and abuse.

THEN, when Pr0's cloned, Seb just... decides, again, Without Any Input, that what would be best for Pr0 is to have his memories edited to process/heal his trauma. Better than just deleting it entirely, I guess, but it's kinda iffy that 1. in rebootworld there is apparently A Singular Point Of Healing after which trauma doesn't bother you any more and 2. you can get to that point precisely via invasive surgery/genetic reprogramming adn. 3. this is a kind and good thing to do to (to!!! he's not doing it FOR Pr0! pr0's fucking dead! Seb killed him!!) your friend who Has Been Controlled Posessed And Moulded For Most Of His Life. not to mention that Seb, iirc, specifically words it as like. hey can you make him more useful to us. Kinda fucked up innit

also they straight up inject 4 years of simulated military service into pr0's mind and like That's also kinda fucked up eh. What if that also gives him trauma. What if pr0 was anti-war and would never have wanted those memories and the resulting alterations to his personality. He might've been, man, we don't know. because again Sebastian Killed Him.

anyways pr0 is explicitly a new person (without any of those pesky coping mechanisms that annoyed his teammates, yippee!! /sarcastic) now, and again. like. this Could Have Been Good. if it was treated as "yo that was kinda fucked up". but no. Peter/clone-Pr0 is totally chill with it. Even Xiang, who explicitly believes that peter/clone-pr0 is a separate person and original pr0 is dead, is totally chill with it. She's still dating Seb. Y'know. The guy who murdered your friend/apprentice in front of you.

And for some more fun (worrying) context, Seb is, at this point, Actively Preparing his plan for global eugenics to... forcibly sterilise all mean people, I guess?? I don't actually recall the details. But he is all too happy about making unilateral decisions on who deserves to live.

(His global eugenics plan which he would've gone through with if his gf hadn't talked him out of it, to be clear! His gf Xiang who is disabled and presumably Asian, and therefore probably has a vested interest in Not Doing Eugenics, and this still doesn't impact her opinion of Seb very much. Xiang deserved better, I'm sorry. I love everything about her except her taste in men.)

Oh, and for Further Context, the guy who offers to adjust Pr0's mind and actually makes the adjustments (and takes it upon himself to age Pr0 up four years physically) legally owns Pr0. Just in case you're wondering if it's really that fucked up to make non-consensual mind and body modifications to a human trafficking survivor whose previous non consensual body modifications were explicitly done by his captors as a form of abuse. Y'know.

Oh, fuck, and now I'm realising that said previous modifications (cybernetics, experimental drugs, etc - they're mentioned in ep1) were for the purpose of making him a better weapon. And in-universe, the necessity of giving Jazza's character some more combat levels comes through as Seb going "hey, dad, could you make him a better weapon". clears throat. Fucked Up innit.)

AND the only team member Seb consults about killing and rebooting Pr0 in the first place is Incongruent, iirc, who is also the only other main character with a "replace all humans with a better race [robots]" plan. Also worth noting that when Incongruent, a member of an oppressed class directly reacting to his oppression, wants to replace all humans, it's kinda fucked up and part of the dystopia and the other characters don't like it very much and Incongruent changes his mind of his own accord, but when Seb and his mom, members of the ruling class, want to replace humanity, it's hand-waved as an "oh well" dropped plot thread despite that having Even More potential to be a load-bearing piece of worldbuilding w/r/t "this is a fucked up dystopia".

I do get why this happened on a meta level - Jazza needed to reboot (heh) his character build. And in-universe, it kinda works, it has some fun parts. In isolation I really like how chill Peter is about being a clone. Icon behaviour. I also get that Seb is reacting to his own horrific trauma. But just. Y'know. I didn't like Seb in this arc very much, and I wish the narrative had acknowledged that more.

[querenciasturniolo]

to sort of go off the age thing another anon asked, do you think their preferences in their “type” would be dealbreakers for them?

i don’t think matt has explicitly stated his type, but i remember a video of chris and nick saying their type, and iirc chris prefers creative brunette girls with brown eyes who are shorter and younger than him. i know personality is more important than anything else when it comes to choosing a partner, but what do you think?

as someone who has a super specific type, and has veered off of that super specific type, i don’t think that would matter really !

you’ll be more prone to being attracted to your type (in chris’ case—creative brunettes with brown eyes who are shorter and younger than him), but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll end up with your exact type, ya know ?

i mean hell, my type (for as long as i’ve been interested in men, it isn’t just bc of the triplets lmao) has been dark hair, blue eyes, not too tall (i’m 4’10, so i want an average and/or short guy), and can make me laugh, but i’ve had crushes on people who didn’t fit my type at ALL solely bc of the way they made me feel.

i think personality is an extreme factor in attraction for women, and it’s one of the first things we notice. men (not all men, obviously) tend to notice the physical first, and that’s okay, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll always go after their physical type, and they may go after someone who just makes them feel a certain way, ya know ?

maybe chris will date a blonde, blue eyed girl who’s older than him by a couple of years, and maybe he won’t, but i don’t think he’d stick specifically to that type solely bc that’s his type.

i don’t think matt has ever really said who his type is, like you said, but i definitely think the same would go for him as well.

someone being your type definitely helps, but i feel like being attracted to someone for who they are is the dealbreaker in whether or not they meet your standards, not the physical aspects of it.

[the-invisible-queer]

I feel like this is gonna make me sound both like a know-it-all nitpicking you and an insane weirdo who was way too invested in the relationship of two teenagers I don't know but. As someone who literally hyperfixated on both Nick and Miley for basically all of my formative years, and as a result just permanently has an encyclopedia's worth of useless information about their teenage selves stored in my brain even though both fixations died off years ago and I barely pay attention to either of them now, some parts of your post about them are simply killing me and I HAVE to correct and expand on it or I'll explode lol, I'm sorry it's nothing personal:

Kevin misspoke in the doc; the Hannah Montana episode wasn't when they met, they were already dating by then. They met at a charity event on June 11, 2006 according to Miley's book, with Nick also eventually calling June 11 their anniversary in Wedding Bells. IIRC Miley said in the book that Hannah Montana had only been airing for a few months when they met and the boys hadn't really done much of anything with Disney yet, which would definitely indicate emotions happening before any publicity did.

(There's also a very funny/interesting/wtf piece of lore re: this date from yearrrrrs later where Miley either mixed up the dates herself or tried to retcon her own life and gaslight everyone about public information by claiming on Twitter that June 11 was her anniversary with Liam, then deleted it, then announced her divorce very shortly after. That's not really directly related to anything we're discussing here but it was such a bizarre thing to watch happen in real time that it almost dragged me back into the fixation again as a grown ass adult, so I felt compelled to bring it up anyway lmao.)

A LOT of the og Niley Lore came from Miles to Go, where Miley dedicated an entire chapter to Nick (called "Prince Charming" in the book) and their relationship. I don't remember every detail anymore but she definitely said they clicked instantly, became boyfriend and girlfriend the day they met, and stayed up talking on the phone until like 4 a.m. that night, all of which backs up what Kevin said about love at first sight. She also explicitly said in the book that they truly loved each other and had a serious relationship despite how young they were.

A lotttttt of JB songs, especially but not exclusively the ones from the mid-to-late 2000s, are thought to be about Miley and some are very obvious if you know The Lore, but the only ones I know were ever explicitly confirmed besides the ones you mentioned are Sorry, Can't Have You and, of course, Before the Storm. The "hugs are overrated" part of SOS is sometimes thought to be a reference to the day they met, where according to Miley's book he tried to shake her hand and she told him she only did hugs, but I've always assumed that was probably just a coincidence since it seems like logistically it must have been written before they broke up and that would be a weirdly snarky line to write about your current girlfriend. Burnin' Up is also very very heavily thought to have been inspired by Miley, specifically by her look at the 2007 AMAs, which you can Google if you're interested enough; I do believe this one, which makes Selena's appearance in that specific music video much, much funnier.

Essentially all of Miley's earlier Miley songs (as opposed to Hannah ones) are also either confirmed or commonly thought to be about Nick. Also possibly of note is that some of Demi's early songs are also rumored to have a lot of Miley inspiration in them due to Nick co-writing them, which is simply amusing to me, especially considering the chances that at least one song probably ended up being partially about Nick's ex and partially about his brother. I never fixated on Demi or her music as hard as I did on these two though, so I no longer remember which specific songs were implicated here.

Nick confirmed Wedding Bells in his 'answering Google's most searched questions' video, where you could tell even he was thinking "who tf else did y'all think that one could have been about" lmao.

The messy little ping pong game Nick played between Miley and Selena for a while was definitely confirmed; I don't remember if any of them ever explicitly acknowledged it (outside of lyrics like "you love me, you like her" from 7 Things which...damn girl scalp him again), but to me and the other hyperfixated kids following along at the time, the dates alone made it obvious lol. He first got with Selena after the first time he and Miley broke up and then repeated that exact pattern at least two more times over the next few years, rarely being single for any significant length of time at all in between. Baby fuckboi behavior.

In conclusion, both of them have been pretty clear and consistent over the years that the emotions of it all came first and were very real, even if Disney may have capitalized on those emotions for publicity purposes. My specific examples are fuzzy since the fixations were dead by then but I know both of them have described the other as their first love and first heartbreak well into adulthood, including as recently as I think last year for Miley (where she revealed that the first time they broke up she asked if she could give him a hug goodbye and he said no, which is lowkey hilarious even though it makes baby Nick sound like a douche - although knowing his sensitive ass he was probably just afraid he'd start sobbing or something if she hugged him lol).

The only non-Niley piece of input I have to add is that in recent years Miley has definitely expressed negative and complicated emotions about starting her career so young, not in the sense that she didn't actually want it at the time but in the sense that like...children often want to do things that wouldn't be good for them or that they aren't capable of fully understanding the ramifications of, but that doesn't mean their parents should allow them to do those things or that they'll appreciate having been allowed to do those things when they look back as an adult. I don't know a ton about her feelings on it since again, I don't actively follow her anymore and only really see what comes across my feed, but it seems like it was definitely much more complicated than "her dad sold her to Disney Channel" or "she wasn't forced into it so it was fine." For the record I've often wondered if any of the Jonas boys have similar emotions about their young stardom, as most child stars seem to to some degree, but honestly feel like if they do we'll never ever hear about it; they just don't give me the vibe that they'd ever be comfortable talking about that publicly, especially if it involves any complex feelings towards their parents, who they seem to have much closer and healthier relationships with than Miley has with hers.

OKAY I'M DONE sorry that was a whole novel you didn't ask for but I literally have had all these stupid factoids about these two strangers just bouncing around in my head for like almost twenty years and almost never get the chance to put this wealth of knowledge to "use" anywhere, so on the rare occasions I can vomit all this up I kind of get carried away lmao whoops

BESTIE NEVER APOLOGIZE! Especially not when it comes to rambling about fixations. My blog is a safe space!

Though I wish you could add cuts in asks because RIP to everyone's dash I'll try to add tags so people with long posts blocked can ignore.

I'll be the first one to admit my fuck up with Jonas lore. Deadass don't remember anything Miley wrote in her book about Nick and I read Miles to Go twice but I have the memory of a twig.

I can't even remember what I was doing 5min ago - no joke.

Also my timeliness are SO fucking hazy - it's the trauma - because I'm learning shit I thought happened with JB in 2011 happened in 2009.

I am not the most reliable source.

Also I didn't care about Nick much back then. That's from when he was my least favorite (derogatory).

Thank you for illuminating us on the subject! I actually did learn a lot from that.

[theeeveetamer]

Scarlet Blaze Liveblog, Chapter 5

It got rid of my extra spaces when I hit post :( Why do we live? Just to suffer?

SPEAKING OF SUFFERING! Holy shit the new Tumblr beta editor REALLY fucking hates formatting. Wouldn’t let me make any of these sections into bullet points. I have been fighting with this thing for weeks now (it also really hates letting me remove large sections of text as well). Had to turn it off to get any semblance of formatting so I hope it looks alright when I hit post

Explore dialogue

Now we have an NPC saying that there SHOULDN’T be fog this time of year. Make up your mind, game.

Linhardt: Aw my lazy days are over :(

Shez: You know some of us never had lazy days

Linhardt: Yeah but weren’t you just doing that because you wanted to?

Uh, no it’s called Shez is a commoner and had to literally become a mercenary to SURVIVE. They mention that numerous times. In another support they talk about how they were happy to eat rats if it meant their belly got filled. jfc, Lin, the privilege just oozing from you…

There’s a random mage lady who asks you if anyone on the opposing side uses dark magic. Agarthan lady, perhaps?

Ferdie stands like someone wearing one of those babydoll skirts from Style Savvy and I love him

Interesting that they explicitly state that Hrym was wiped out for resisting Ionus’s power centralization here. IIRC that was a lot less explicit in 3H

We also have explicit trade with Dagda, Albinea, Brigid and others. So I guess that’s another point against “Rhea doesn’t let Fodlan have contact with outside nations”

Why does Randolph look like he has a tiny blanket on his shoulder lmao

Wait why was Constance hostile to living in the Empire again?

Oof. Between Dimitri and Edelgard, Dimitri definitely got the superior Hapi nickname

Random Tidbits

Lmao. Hubert being like “I don’t even have to try not to kill you” during training and Ferdie being like “uh. Thanks. I think.”

I really wish the game would tell me when a character maxes out support points even if the letter is locked. It’s really annoying building support and then just realizing it’s not going up anymore after you’ve wasted so many training points and whatnot

I’ve decided that I’ve stopped caring if units like the food I’m cooking. Y’all will eat it and y’all will like it. I’m done coddling your asses.

I don’t care if you’re bad at the tasks either. Caspar, Linhardt, I’m sure you’ll do fine at running this street stall.

HUBERT WANTS TO GO ON AN EXPEDITION!!! OH BOY!!!

Hol up lemme drop everything

I hope he takes me somewhere nice to kill me

Good thing I unlocked all these new excursion spots. Gonna drive me crazy tho since I’m pretty sure there’s different dialogue in each one

“The shorter a leash, the better”. Kinky

Let’s go on a nice waterfront murder date

“Once, two souls took a boat out on the water… Only one returned. A fine story, yes?” oh my god he’s actually going to kill me

I have a feeling he wanted me to propose a competition… No wonder Ferdie is his type

“Ask thoughts on their employer” that’s a new one, I don’t remember that question ever popping up before

Unfortunately I don’t get to stare at his face. I was really looking forward to more murder dialogue.

Support Conversations

Shez/Caspar C - Caspar has daddy issues lmao of course he does they all do.

Sorry, having daddy issues won’t save your appeal from that hairstyle

I was about to comment on Caspar being like “I’ve got to build my way up from the bottom” but then he actually addressed what I was going to say by acknowledging that he at least has his name to lean on. So good for you Caspar, I see you retain some semblance of self awareness in this game so far.

Shez/Linhardt C - Shez: Just so we’re clear, whatever Hubert said you were gonna do to me, I’m not into it.

Shez is not kinky confirmed :(

How is Linhardt NOT interested in Shez’s power. She literally fucking shapeshifts and he’s just like “eh, whatever it’s just a sword.”

Like. What. C’mon dude.

Shez/Monica C - Ok Monica I hate you

MANUELA/JERITZA B LET’S GO - GIRL STOP BEING SO THIRSTY

Oh my god do not make Jeritza smile

Manuela: Don’t you want to talk to people?

Jeritza: No.

Stop making Jeritza relatable to me

Lmao Manuela realizing she’s still single because everyone views her as a teacher

Come to me Manuela! I have a teacher kink! We can do both!

Caspar/Dorothea C - Caspar: I’m reading

Dorothea: You can read???

This support is weird. Caspar is like “I wanna study” and Dorothea is like “You need to study!!!! Here let me lecture you on how you need to study!!!!!!!!!!” Caspar: “WOW I NEED TO STUDY!!!!”

Like he was already doing it Dorothea, geez.

Shez/Manuela C - Lmao we stan a messy queen

Y’know Manuela we can smash. I’ll never leave you

Shez/Hubert B - Uh wow weirdly abrupt start. Am I supposed to take this as happening directly after the last one??? They’re standing in the same place and Shez starts like Hubert just said something

Like. Really weird way to do this

“Sever ties” so that’s what the kids are calling it these days

Shez: You have emotions

Hubert: *confused Hubert noises*

Lmao he just had to insult my intelligence there at the end. Never change, Hubert

I know this is a lot of supports but since I’m playing on NG+ I have like 8 activity and 8 training points so it’s stupid easy to get supports. I didn’t even talk about all of them. I imagine future posts will have less as I start hitting time gated supports

Side Battle/Story Content

I’ve been putting this off by playing free mode battles with the renown unlockable characters lol.

Omg Maximum ambulation. Ferdie runs so fast. He’s got the zoomies!!!

Oh no Hubert wants to kill talk to me

Hubert: It’s cute how u thought I would let you live, tho

HI DADDY RODRIGUE

Man first Seteth now Rodrigue? This route really hates DILFs I guess

I mean I’m not surprised. Look at Count Bergliez

RIP Gustave is here too. Guess they’re making him fight in this route

Main Battle/Story Content

Everyone: *whispering*

Ferdie: WHY ARE WE WHISPERING!!!!!!!???? :D

Ferdie you lovable himbo

Ok do we really need three rounds of “why is everyone so quiet” so everyone can get their dialogue about being quiet in?

I wonder if this conversation changes with permadeath. It’s kind of written like it

Maybe I should do an “everyone dies” run in the future just to see how the story changes lol

INGRID!!!!!! MY DARLING!!!!!

Lmao I don’t even like Ingrid that much but I already miss my Lions :(

Oh I guess Jeralt is in the Kingdom now

I mean they’re trying to do the whole “oooooh mystery who could it beeeeeeeee” thing but I know Ling Tong when I hear him

Oh looks like Ashe is a traitor. Can’t say I’m surprised

Honestly fuck Lonato. If you have a problem with sexy dragon lady you have a problem with me

I haven’t talked about this but honestly the colors are fucking me. It’s a good thing Warriors games don’t have friendly fire because I keep running right past all the soldiers in blue to try and kill all the soldiers in red, because like. Fire Emblem do be like that normally

I keep finding big purple circles on the ground. What is that. What does it do. Who is doing that

I actually feel like a bad person for recruiting Ashe here. I mean Lonato is literally willing to kill the poor kid

Edelgard: Family should not fight family

Also Edelgard: Unless it’s Dimitri fuck that guy lmao

Also Also Edelgard: Also Rhea, since she probably banged my great great great great grandaddy a thousand years ago (and maybe is my great great great great grandmommy). Fuck her too

“I could not bear to lose another son” Ok then maybe don’t try killing him, Lonato???? What the fuck?

If saving you weren’t a requirement you would be so dead right now, Lonato

Byleth was kind of a pushover on NG+ lmao

… I’m sorry does Monica have jiggle physics

Ok her boobs don’t have jiggle physics, but her bow does. Which makes it look like she has boob jiggle physics. Why.

JFC Bergliez is so ugly

JUDITH MY BELOVED

She was surprisingly absent from AG I’m glad I get to see more of her

I’m sorry, Bergliez got all the way to Deirdriu????? When???????? When did we do that?????

Damn we killing daddy Gloucester, aren’t we? This is dead Fire Emblem dad dialogue

Oh even this guy gets a first name. Not the moms tho. Fuck the moms I guess :/

I’m surprised Fleche got a name and wasn’t just “Randolph’s sister” for the entirety of 3H

Kinda awkward to hear Petra complimenting the dude that murdered her dad

“The head of House Ordelia is one of the Five Great Lords” am I misremembering? I thought Lysithea’s family gave up their seat at the roundtable to Marriane’s uncle because they knew their house was in decline thanks to Lysithea’s condition

I went looking through her supports to see if I was right and apparently Lysithea/Hilda support confirms homeopathy of all things exists in 3H. No wonder these people still die of the plague.

Ok I couldn’t find anything and I don’t care enough to keep looking, but I got my eye on you, continuity guy

“Consider why we chose not to dismantle House Aegir” goddamn Hubert is just going straight for Ferdie’s throat

Ferdie: Haha I’m in danger

Also RIP Ferdie basically blatantly admitting that he’s only still around because he’s willing to “toe the line” regardless of how he feels about anything. Why am I supposed to be rooting for the Empire again?

I don’t get why people are like “We went to school with these people for 30 seconds maybe they’ll listen to reason” like? Why would they, exactly?

Like it was stupid in 3H but at least they had a whole year in 3H. In this game they were all literally at the academy for like a month

Recruiting Ashe also feels weirdly OOC for him after he spent the entirety of AG’s prologue and parts of part 1 talking about how Lonato would want him to do what he thinks is right and how he believes Lonato has gone off the rails, and while it hurts him, he believes it’s right to stop Lonato. Here he’s just like “Ok fine I don’t want to kill him I guess I’ll join you. Fuck my dreams of being a knight.”

I guess they had to make someone from the BL recruitable and everyone else makes even less sense than Ashe. I mean can you imagine if they let you recruit Ingrid here? Lmao

Anyways wrapping up

Spoilers for recruitables in this route here here.

Can I just say, the spread of recruitable characters, from a gameplay perspective, is kind of weird?

On SB, of the characters you get automatically, half of them are mages (5 of your starting 11 are mages).

Not including the wolves or other characters, you get Ashe, Ignatz, Lorenz, Raphael, Lysithea, Marianne, Mercedes, and Leonie (under special circumstances) in addition to the SB characters. But like. That means on SB you get two axes (Caspar, Edelgard), two swordies (Shez, Petra), three mounted lances (Ferdie, Jeritza, Lorenz), one brawler (Raphael), four archers (Bernie, Ashe, Ignatz, Leonie), and eight magic units (Hubert, Dorothea, Linhardt, Monica, Manuela, Lysithea, Marianne, Mercedes). If you include the wolves you get ten. Ten magic users. What do I need ten of these guys for? What is this game’s obsession with mages (the Lions also had way too many, though it wasn’t this egregious and at least Annette can be a serviceable axe unit once she gets Crusher)?

Made even worse because there’s only two magic master classes, and only one magic master class per gender which means you’re going to be ending up with two dark bishops and eight gremories. You can’t equip tomes as a dark knight or holy knight either, you have to use the lance, which is not optimal for many of these mage units. No idea why they decided to take out Valkyrie and Dark Flier if they were going to create so many damn mages. Basically every other weapon type (aside from archers and brawlers) gets at least two different options for master classes, and there aren’t nearly as many archers and brawlers as there are mages.

I guess I’ll use Constance and Hapi more on GD, since at least they only come with Marianne and Lysithea to start

[wedreamedlove]

Xu Mo vs. Mo Yi [Character Study]

I can never get over the aesthetic of these two pictures placed side by side LOL. But, anyway, the point of this post is to nip any undue comparisons in the bud and claims of copying organize my thoughts and compare these two characters to highlight their similarities, differences, and further explore each character through these contrasts.

Q) If you like Xu Mo, would you like Mo Yi?

Honestly, I think this depends on what you like most about Xu Mo. I already knew beforehand that I gravitate towards characters who think 5 steps ahead, are predominantly logical, and scholars/gentlemen, so it’s not surprising I bias both Xu Mo and Mo Yi.

However, as I got to know Mo Yi further (Themis is around 6 months old now), I find that he’s distinctively different from Xu Mo on three crucial points that’ll determine whether people from either camp will like the other character.

1) Stance on Others

In a post for Xu Mo, “Into Your World”, I argued that Xu Mo is an alienated genius who had troubles getting along with others, until he mastered the social game as an adult. However, you can still see glimpses of this as he tries to understand MC’s world and shares his own.

To be fair, Mo Yi’s past is still under wraps but I feel confident in saying that, while he was probably highly intelligent compared to his peers [SR Sculpted Heart], his isolation doesn’t seem to come from his innate nature but rather his social position (there’s heavy implications that he’s like some sort of noble or something) [SR Snowy Pine Fairytale].

IMO, these backgrounds really shaped the way these two men interact with the world.

Xu Mo has a detached and indifferent view towards other people. They simply exist and don’t bring anything positive or negative to him. His ambition to ensure the survival of humanity reflects this too because it’s pure utilitarianism; everyone (apart from MC) can be sacrificed equally for the greater good. If anything, he probably finds other people to be interesting subjects to study, no matter what kind of person they are. IIRC the only time he expressed dislike to people, or a group of people, was when he told Hades he enjoyed killing thieves LOL.

Meanwhile, Mo Yi has an elitist streak to the point where he and his MC actually clashed opinions and debated each other [SR Warm Fingertips]. It’s incredibly ironic because he’s a psychiatrist who treats his patients without judgment, but at the same time he looks down on so many things and people (PUAs, people who betray love, hypocrites who only seek power and fame) [Ch2; Personal Story Ch1-3; SSR Moonlit Ball].

One of the things I noticed early on is that Xu Mo draws from the Eastern scholar archetype, “Xu Mo Character Study”, while Mo Yi actually draws more from the Western gentleman archetype.

So, just to summarize this section, Xu Mo is detached from the world naturally and likes to observe people and try to blend in. Mo Yi deliberately draws a line between him and others and, at times, has the casual cruelty of someone born as nobility (arrogance is carved into his bones, even if he tends to keep it low-key because he generally has a “gentle and polite” attitude).

2) Stance on Love

Xu Mo didn’t understand love, or really even emotions. Love is grown between him and his MC (there’s multiple analogies throughout the game about how their love is like a seed). I think [Ch25] pretty much sums it up for Xu Mo, where he goes through that emotional rollercoaster and muses about how, at the end of human evolution, emotions should be discarded. He also admits that MC taught him the “fear” of a normal person, because now he has someone he cannot give up no matter what, which goes against his previous utilitarian beliefs.

Compared to this, Mo Yi fell in love at first sight. Yes, you read that right. The “scientist and logical” archetype fell in love at first sight LOL. Not only does he acknowledge it right off the bat, but he fully embraces it too and believes that real love makes people better versions of themselves [Personal Story]. Mo Yi is a through and through psychiatrist in that he never underestimates how primal emotions (and love) can be.

Heck, not only is this central to his personal story, but we also have hints that one of Mo Yi’s parents fell in love at first sight with the other person (and he inherited their predisposition for that). Unfortunately, their love had a tragic end and Mo Yi seems to have a huge grudge against his father for whatever happened to his mother (again, Mihoyo is keeping this a mystery LOL), but Mo Yi explicitly confirms that even if his love leads to a tragic end he will still walk down this road and attempt to change it [SR Cool Summer].

IMO one other difference between them re: love is this exchange that lives rent free in my head which I saw in a Xu Mo/Reader/Mo Yi fanfiction LOL. Bear with me here.

Mo Yi: Wearing a mask for a long time will tire you.

Xu Mo: It’s enough just to wear one in front of the necessary person.

Xu Mo and his MC make great efforts to understand each other’s worlds, but this understanding comes from the doors he chooses to open to her. He reveals himself as much as possible, but I think he’s an inherently private person (and there’s all that Ares stuff) so there are times where he hides things so that he doesn’t worry his MC. I think this is enough to count as a “mask”. Sometimes he pretends he’s okay when he’s not.

On the other hand, while I think Mo Yi shares the sentiment in not wanting his MC to worry unduly, he tries to reveal himself as much as possible. There’s an amazingly relatable conflict in him here where he wants her to know every side of him, but he’s also terrified of how she’ll react if he shows her his ugliest sides and imperfect sides (he has some sort of phobia or fear about imperfection, but Mihoyo has been keeping mum on the exact details of this so far) [Personal Story; SR Sculpted Heart].

It’s pretty ironic that Mo Yi wants to be perfect, but he realizes that the more perfect he is the more of a sense of distance there’ll be between him and his MC because of the subconscious pressure someone “perfect” brings LOL [SSR Border of Light and Darkness].

3) Stance on Growth

If you haven’t realized that one of Xu Mo’s greatest themes is the phrase “Take your time in growing”, then what have you been reading? Jkjk, but seriously this gets repeated in multiple places, although my brain always goes back to [Blossom Date] for this.

Even if he and his MC start off with fundamental differences (she believes all people have inherent worth and can’t be involuntarily sacrificed), he wants to personally watch the journey of her maturation. He also subtly guides and teaches her. Unfortunately, due to circumstances of the main story, he doesn’t get his wish and she grows up a lot out of his eyes, but their relationship still revolves around him wanting her to have as much time as possible to grow.

He’s, for a lack of better word, extremely gentle about this (setting aside as much of the Ares and story parts as we can, because LovePro’s story is tragedy on tragedy LOL). I think [Autumn Blaze Date] shows a good analogy for this, because he holds the bicycle steady for MC until she can get going on her own, and he also catches her the first time.

Meanwhile, Mo Yi... ha ha ha. I just came out of chapter 3 for his [Personal Story] and let’s just say his philosophy is tough love. It’s ironic because, in many of his other dates, he wrestles with an internal conflict to protect his MC but also to let her experience all sorts of things to both test and temper her.

This is going to touch on the previous topic about love for a moment, but a part of Mo Yi’s love at first sight experience is also “testing” the other person through all sorts of situations and, after seeing all their different sides, he can determine whether his love at first sight is one that’ll last for the rest of his life or if it’s just a fleeting moment of beauty and emotion.

He also extremely respects his MC’s sense of justice and pursuit of the truth in the world, no matter what she encounters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what drew him to her in the first place. But MC’s occupation and beliefs will make her confront a lot of dark and dangerous things and so, whenever possible, Mo Yi lets her confront these in “controlled” situations to train her. If I had to make an analogy, IMO, he’d let his MC ride the bicycle and pick her up only after she falls, or when she’s like 0.1cm away from the ground LOL.

Mo Yi is (perhaps rightfully) called out on this by another character, who believes Mo Yi is too arrogant in believing everything is under his control and he can prevent MC from getting hurt whenever he lets her get into dangerous situations, and I’m interested to see if Mihoyo will let him experience failures with his philosophy so he can grow more, like the things Xu Mo went through re: his personal beliefs [Ch24].

Overall

I don’t know how well I explained myself, especially for people who don’t know anything about Mo Yi, and each section goes back and forth between the two characters LOL so here’s another section that attempts to describe their overall atmosphere.

If, like I said in my Headcanon Notes, Xu Mo makes me immediately think of all the words for soft, gentle, light, still, water, etc etc., then the words I constantly think about for Mo Yi is messily human. He’s like a bundle of contradictions, but coherent because it’s being intentionally done.

Mo Yi doesn’t discriminate against his patients, yet he can be elitist and looks down on others. He wants to let MC have dangerous experiences, but also wants to protect her. He wants to be perfect, but he also wants to reveal himself entirely to his MC because that’s real love.

In contrast, Xu Mo has a very clean and orderly personality LOL. You can draw clear cause and effect lines from his personality to his actions.

So, anyway, these are two interesting characters who start off with similar archetypes as scientific logical men of scholar/gentleman dispositions, but yet they’re also on opposite ends for a lot of things such as their approach to emotions and the world.

Oh wait, lastly, because I don’t have a good place to put this—but I think it’s funny—is that both characters are pretty possessive and greedy, but while Xu Mo does things in a sneaky, cunning and fox-like way Mo Yi gets ridiculously open about his jealousy and it’s hilariously cute but also almost childish? I often forget Mo Yi is older than Xu Mo by a year, because Xu Mo honestly feels a bit more mature than him LOL. If we count them actually aging by when their game came out though, then Mo Yi is 28 and Xu Mo is 29 now.

[dancedance-resolution]

andi mack friendom, are you interested in some more thoughts about my andi mack / american girl crossover (which is actually just a thinly veiled info dump about american girl history and drama)? if so, you're in the right place!

the andi / buffy / cyrus doll set i designed would be a contemporary line.

CONTEXT (forewarning, this is basically just an ag info dump about the 2017 contemporary line) (also, tagging @kirstensleepey because i think this write up might be useful for the ag project you're working on <3):

so in 2017, american girl did a brand new thing. they released 3 dolls who were contemporary characters but not girls of the year. (prior to these dolls' release, which are called "the contemporary line" by the ag fandom, the only categories of ag dolls were historicals, girls of the year, and just like yous.)

the contemporary line was controversial for many reasons.

first, we have our main character, tenney grant. (tenney is basically taylor swift as a doll, if taylor were uncool and a r*publican lol.)

one of the reasons why tenney is so controversial is that she overshadowed the girl of the year (henceforth abbreviated as goty) 2017, gabriella mcbride.

tenney was released only one month after gabriella's release. ag's social media gave much more focus to tenney than gabriella. upon tenney's release, gabriella's store displays were downsized (which is unheard of for a goty). tenney even had a larger collection than gabriella!

why are we mad about tenney overshadowing gabriella? well, gabriella was ag's first (and as of 2021, ONLY) black goty. also, gabriella was ag's first doll to have an explicity confirmed disability - her stutter.

BRIEF INTERMESSION - SOME STATISTICS ABOUT DIVERSITY IN CHARACTER DOLLS:

only 7 out of the 22 total historical characters have been dolls of color. only 3 out of 22 historicals have been black (one of which is now retired). only 2 out of 22 have been aapi (one of these dolls, ivy, was just a best friend doll and is now retired; and the other doll, nanea, has a problematic face mold. i wrote an essay about why her facemold is problematic here!). only 1 historical doll, josefina, is hispanic, and ag has actually misspelled her name as "josephina" on their social media before.

only 1 doll EVER has been native american, kaya'aton'my, who is a historical character from 1764. (not even any of the just like you dolls have had kaya's face mold! kaya is truly the only indigenous doll!) in fact, ag has had more colonizer characters than indigenous characters. felicity and elizabeth are white character dolls from 1776, and their books fail to address the issues surrounding colonization and treatment of native americans. and kirsten is a swedeish immigrant to wisconsin in 1854. her book does acknowledge the existence of native americans, and kirsten has an indigenous friend named singing bird. (i haven't read kirsten's books and i'm not indigenous, so i can't comment on this storyline.) ag actually had a controversy about kirsten just this year - in 2021, the t-shirt design for kirsten said "settlers gonna settle", and ag actually ended up changing the design to "cabin sweet cabin" after backlash.

moving on to the girl of the year line - out of 21 goty dolls, gabriella is the ONLY black goty. only 6 out of 21 gotys have been dolls of color. there have been 2 hispanic characters (luciana, who is generally regarded as an excellent doll; and marisol, who is controversial because her book talks about how her family moved from pilsen chicago - a real area of chicago that is home to many hispanic immigrants - to a white suburb due to crime. this storyline involves racist stereotypes.) also, goty 2016 lea clark (slightly tan skin, blonde hair, light green eyes) is 1/8th brazilian, and some brazilian ag fans consider the emphasis on lea being 1/8th brazilian racial feticization. next, there have been 3 aapi gotys. one of these dolls, sonali, was one of two best friend dolls for chrissa (goty 2009) - yep, you heard that right, yet another doll of color that is a side character! sonali is the bully in chrissa's books, but she gets a redemption arc. to this day, sonali is ag's only south asian character doll. [additionally, there has been some criticism that all of the aapi gotys are mixed race - jess mcconell (goty 2006) has a japanese mother and an irish/scottish father, kanani akina (goty 2011) has a french/german mother and a japanese/hawaiian father, and sonali matthews has an indian mother and a father of unknown race/ethincity. perhaps notably, the only aapi historical doll who is not currently retired (nanea) is also mixed race (hawaiian mother and scottish father).]

as for the disability thing i mentioned - ag also has a disappointing track record regarding disability representation, lol. it was very lightly implied that mckenna (goty 2012) had a learning disability, but that was never confirmed. mckenna's tutor, who used a wheelchair, was ag's first big disability rep, but she was just a side character in mckenna's story. then, many ag fans were disappointed when mary ellen, a historical character released in 2015, was able-bodied (in canon, she had polio as a child, so it would make sense for mary ellen to be disabled and use mobility aids). finally, in 2020, goty joss gave us some disability rep - she has a hearing aid.

ag's lack of disability rep is very frustrating, especially considering that doll companies, like our generation, have made some really cool disabled dolls. and ag has been doing this ad campaign with the paralympics that feels performative to me - like, they want to seem inclusive by featuring dolls with prostetic legs, but they don't even sell dolls like that!!!

lastly, religious diversity - iirc, there are three jewish dolls (rebecca, goty 2001/2002 lindsey, and goty 2009 chrissa). the rest of the dolls are either christian or of unspecified religion. there has never been an explicitly muslim, hindu, or buddhist doll, or a doll who is a member of any religion other than judaism/christianity/unspecified. (there is some hope that we might get a muslim doll, though, since an outfit with a hijab was leaked, and ag trademarked a persian name that i can't recall off the top of the head at my moment. but take these with a grain of salt - ag trademarks a ton of stuff that they don't use, and the leak could be false or just a truly me outfit.)

END OF INTERMISSION - BACK TO THE TENNEY/GABRIELLA CONTROVERSY:

so, we get our first black goty, and she's being totally overshadowed by tenney.

here's where a conspiracy comes in:

we can track when ag trademarks their character names. goty names are usually trademarked early in the year prior to their release (by may). but gabriella mcbride wasn't trademarked until october, iirc.

and gabriella is a very underdeveloped character in comparison to most gotys. one of her main hobbies - dancing - was the same main hobby as both marisol (goty 2005) and isabelle (goty 2014). her store displays were underemphasized in comparison to tenney's, as i mentioned before. she was the first goty who didn't get a movie in six years (since kanani, goty 2011). and gabriella didn't even have a big ticket accessory item available until summer!

so, we get our first black goty, and she's underdeveloped, underemphasized, seems to have been rushed (due to her trademark date), and overshadowed by tenney just one month after her release. why is that?

well, some people think that tenney was actually supposed to be goty 2017! (i agree)

tenney was trademarked earlier, had more development, had a bigger collection, etc. we think that tenney was supposed to be goty 2017, but ag decided to do a doll of color (gabriella) at the last minute. (keep in mind the climate of 2015/2016 - ag probably wanted some clout for doing a black goty, and they also probably heard the ag fandom's demands for more dolls of color.)

so that's tenney.

next we have logan everett. logan was ag's first boy character doll. i'm glad that ag had a boy character doll, but logan kinda missed the mark for me. the main source of controversy surrounding logan is his face mold: he, a white boy, uses the kaya face mold. !! it kinda felt like a slap in the face to many indigenous ag fans - kaya is literally The Only Doll with the kaya face mold, and when we finally get another doll with her face mold, he's not even indigenous.

lastly, we have z yang my beloved <3. z yang was done dirty - she is yet another doll of color who is a mere side character, and also, she was available for only a total of 20 months before being retired!

so, that's everything i have to say about the 2017 contemporary line.

now i'm going to talk about the 2021 contemporary line :3

so, it's summer 2020. the black lives matter is becoming more mainstream. brands are now getting clout for appearing "woke."

so, admist this climate, ag is (as always) facing demands from its fandom/collectors to diversify its doll line. so they announce that they're going to be doing a new contemporary line, to be released in "the second half of 2021"!!!! and they promise that the contemporary line will have a black lead character

fast forward to modern day. thanks to ag's trademarks, we can safely assume that the new contemporary line will be called "world by us." we can safely assume that the line will have 3 characters. the 3 characters all live in washington dc and are best friends :) we can safely assume that the characters will be maritza ochoa, evette peeters, and makena williams. i talked about makena and maritza on that ask regrettable-username sent me about my andi mack/ag headcanons! personally, i'm excited for world by us, and i think it has a lot of potential!

alright sawyer, that's the end of the ag info dump fhjhdhfskf.

now for my andi mack friends:

i think the andi/buffy/cyrus line would be structured similar to world by us: andi is the main character, and buffy and cyrus are her best friend dolls :) all 3 dolls would be released at the same time. andi would have 3 books that have buffy and cyrus as side characters, and buffy and cyrus would have one book each.

the big ticket item for this collection would be andi's andi shack. i'm imagining its design sort of like kira's tent mixed with lanie's camper mixed with blaire's farm. andi the walls of andi shack would open up so that when it's fully opened, the four walls are on an even plane with the back wall and extended out like wings. you remove the roof before opening up the walls. the shack is tall enough that the doll can comfortably stand up even with the roof still attached, and wide enough that all three dolls (andi, buffy, and cyrus) can comfortably stand next to each other inside of andi shack.

andi shack would come with a ton of craft supplies inside of it. it would also come with a little flower box that has cece's african violets, like blaire's flower box. (thanks to regrettable-username for coming up with the african violets idea fdjfsj.)

alright i have to go now, so these are all my andi mack/ag thoughts for now, but i might be back later with more thoughts fhdfjs (hopefully not though, since typing this out took me over three hours [sweating emoji]).

sorry for any typos and sorry for how scatterbrained this is! also this may have some forgotten things/mildly incorrect things bc my only source is my brain (and a photo of all the dolls so i can count how many dolls for the statistics portion) and my brain is not the most reliable thing on earth lol.

[roublardise]

my "Crowley isn't attracted to women" take

for @spnprideweek - day 2 - mlm

cw: dicussion of homophobia & transphobia all in all I wanted to highlight how canon gay Crowley is bc I love him 💕 thank u spn for Crowley even tho he deserved better

in the last weeks I've realized there's a huuge consensus in the fandom for pansexual Crowley. if you're pan or not and wanna hc Crowley as pan, power to you! but what's bothering me is the non-discussion of it all. the way it seems obvious for everyone. whereas, to me, Crowley has been canonically gay all this time.....

disclaimer: I'm aware Mark Sheppard alledgely said he saw Crowley as pansexual, however I can't even take these words for canon without context. Especially not when a year later he'd say Crowley's sexuality didn't matter. The way Mark Sheppard talks about characters' sexuality is more a "why are people making a big deal let them be" than "the character doesn't care." Moreover, actors pov can't be taken as canon imo. Jensen Ackles thought Dean straight for so long when Dean's been bi all this time as well. Sometimes actors are biased by their own experiences & stereotypes!

disclaimer #2: on god I don't wanna start discourse lmao. I just wanna share my silly thoughts about a tv show & question the way Crowley's sexuality is written in this silly homophobic tv show. don't @ me about what's making you think Crowley is indisputably pansexual bc I assure you I already know your points

That being said, here's why I think Crowley is a bear, a gay man, a trans gay man actually, a homosexual, who isn't attracted to women & some food for thoughts about why the unquestioned consensus towards pan Crowley could have roots in both homophobia & panphobia.

I don't think we can think of Crowley as your usual demon. We know too much about Crowley's life as a human, and the numerous ways in which he acts un-demony, almost humanly after. Considering him simply like a demon with no concept of gender preference who would be pan “by default” wouldn’t be right with his character. But we also can't question his sexuality in the exact same way we would a human's.

It also can't be thought in the same way as angels': as once-humans demons do have a concept of gender. Crowley especially cares a lot about his gender presentation and the way he's addressed. Not only does he literally sell his soul for a bigger d*ck as a human ; as a demon he uses the same vessel where other demons are shown to move once they had to leave one ; and for the few hours Crowley's possessing a woman, he clearly states he should still be referred to as king.

This will all be used for homophobic & transphobic jokes in the show, but I'll get back to that later on. Gender does matter to Crowley's identity, and I think it could be extended to his sexuality.

I've seen numerous descriptions of it all saying Crowley's sexuality was "ambiguous" and I guess it is, as he never explicitly used any label. However "ambiguous" doesn't mean bi or pan. It doesn't mean anything besides the fact we can't draw a clear-cut conclusion of his sexuality.

Imo we can actually draw a clear-cut conclusion of Crowley's sexuality but yeh, I'm getting there.

----------------

Let's take a look at canon events around Crowley & sexuality!

His character introduction is him enjoying making a homophobe man kiss him for a deal

It is rumoured that he was a demon's lover (Lilith's)

He heavily flirts with Bobby

He french kisses Bobby for a deal and takes a pic

He never kisses a woman on screen (tell me if I forgot anyone!)

He flirts with every single man he sees, and even more strongly when it's making the other uncomfortable

The other parent of Crowley's son is never mentioned nor even brought up

He has two orgies that we know of

He has sex with a demon who's possessing a woman (Lola) when he was addicted to human blood

He dates, has sex with, and asks Dean to rule Hell with him. He's in love with Dean

On late spn he drinks fruity drinks

He flirts with and implies he had sex with an angel (Naomi)

He flirts with Death (Billie)

He's into BDSM

I'm not gonna go into details with all the sexual stuff he says bc there's a lot.... But it's always about gay sex. (once again, if I'm forgetting smth pls tell me nicely)

Now, with all that I'd like to question specifically the elements people use to say Crowley is canonically attracted to women.

He has two orgies that we know of

There’s the one Crowley has while he’s himself possessing a woman ; iirc it’s a foursome with two other men and one woman. Crowley still counts as a King, as the show makes sure we know, admitedly this dialogue implies we should still think of him as a not-very-manly-man.

Honestly, if one is convinced Crowley is attracted to women based on this scene.. okay. Personally I don’t see it because the orgy is unplanned, it’s an opportunity Crowley takes. Is he even attracted to the two other men?? Who knows. We don’t even know if Crowley even touches the other woman, there’re so many ways to have group sex. Even if he did, having sex with one woman doesn’t make it impossible for him to be homosexual.

The second orgy is with Dean. Crowley describes it then: “We've done extraordinary things to triplets.” It’s interesting how before I went to check, I thought it was clear the triplets were women. But not at all! I’ve been tricked by heteronormativity myself. So this is up to interpretation. Even though the way the show doesn’t make sure we know the triplets were women is pretty telling (as I’ll talk about later).

It is rumoured that he was Lilith's lover

Well, this is a rumour. In this relationship Crowley would know Lilith as a demon possessing a woman, and Lilith would know Crowley as a demon possessing a man as well. Who's even to say they met in their vessels to sleep together. That's the kind of cases in which the ambiguity of Crowley human/demon situation makes it impossible to draw any kind of conclusion towards Crowley's attraction to women. Also if anything Lilith is clearly a lesbian lmao.

He has sex with Lola when he was addicted to human blood

Same thing here, the relationship is one of demon/demon. Though we do now they do meet in their vessels to sleep together. Besides that, the sex happens while Crowley is at a low point. She's the one bringing him human blood, which makes the sex more of a transaction than anything. It does fit a very grey area of consent which would be fair to question.

We can't know for sure whether the demon possessing the woman was a woman as well, but let's say she was: 1/ Crowley having sex once or twice with a woman doesn't prevent him from being homosexual. 2/ What is he seeing if not a demon's true form? 3/ Wasn't he in a self-destructive mental state?

It's a stretch, imo, to assume Crowley was attracted to her.

He flirts with and had sex with Naomi / flirts with Billie

This one is so ridiculous to me bc Naomi is an angel and as a demon, Crowley sees her true form. We don't even know who was her vessel when they had sex.

The flirt thing is interesting however, bc iirc Naomi and Billie are the only "women" we see Crowley actually flirt with. During the orgies or the demon sex there's no flirt involved. It's interesting bc, as Cas would say: "Naomi's vessel is a woman. Naomi is an angel."

Same case for Billie who's a reaper then Death. Spn is pretty unclear about how the whole thing works but we know reapers are kind of angels. In any case, I won't go as far as saying Billie has any connection to gender.

Moreover, the way Crowley flirts with them is pretty light next to everything else Crowley says to men. It's pretty personal, I'm aware, but I do relate a lot with the way Crowley flirts with them VS how I flirt with men just because (and I'm a lesbian).

Anyway! Both Naomi and Billie are supernatural creatures, which brings the count of women Crowley flirts with to... zero.

-> What I take from all that is that Crowley is attracted to men for sure ; to angels and demons ; and doesn't care about the genitalia involved in the sex he has. We have nothing about the kind of relationships he had as a human. His gender presentation matters a lot to him. The only long-term commitment he has is with Dean. I wouldn't even say he had a committed relationship with Gavin's other parent bc we don't know anything about them.

----------------

But what's my deal with homosexual Crowley? One can wonder, if Crowley doesn't care about bodies, doesn't that mean he can still be written as pan?

No! First because sexual attraction isn't about genitalia (even if transphobes would argue the contrary but they're transphobic so...). And second, well....

I would refer to this point as "how do I know Crowley isn't attracted to women? bc Dean is"

I'm convinced that if the show wanted to write Crowley as anything other than a gay man, it would have been way more obvious.

This is a show who wrote Dean catcalling a faceless woman on the street, for no other reason than to remind the viewers Dean was attracted to women & to balance it with the following homoerotic scene.

One could say spn doesn't have lots of women characters to begin with, but that's my point exactly: when spn wants to show attraction towards women, they do find women for people to be attracted to. Hell, they even give Gavin some girlfriend but never ever bring up the topic of Gavin's other parent. Even though an entire episode is dedicated to learning about Crowley's past.

What's important to understand Crowley's sexuality isn't the people he slept with ; it's the people he doesn't show interest in.

The absence of something is the presence of the thing, blablabla. It's a way to look at homosexuality that heteronormativity makes hard to see because, unconciously, we don't tend to question attraction towards the expected gender. One would ask for a 10 pages essay on why a character is gay, but one would need only a 2 sec kiss to assure a character's heterosexuality or attraction towards the expected gender.

----------------

In Crowley's case, his attraction to men is a huge part of his character right from the beginning (thanks god, at least no one's questioning that). Spn as a show that hears what the fans are saying and twists writing accordingly, is perfectly aware of that. Yet rather than pushing women at him along the course of the show to remind everyone how Not Gay Crowley is - the opposite happens.

Yeh, Lola, Naomi, Billie, they all happen in the later seasons. But even then, the show somehow can't write Crowley as attracted to a human woman.

What happens then is: not only does Crowley fall for Dean ; he engages in some BDSM play with Lucifer : and he switches from drinking only the finest Scotch to fruity cocktails.

The BDSM thing as well as the drink thing are choices rooted in stereotypes, that's how spn is! But it does canonize Crowley's homosexuality. They're depriving him of his "masculinity" as the show goes on, because they purposely write him as homosexual. I don't think spn would have ever written a bi or pan character that way.

We learned a few days ago that Crowley died in a gutter. He died in a gutter for a bigger d*ck. I'm just gonna refer to Oscar Wilde & Mika on this : "some of us in the gutter are looking up at the stars."

The "referred to as king" scene isn't about Crowley being a demon and so not caring about gender - it's the opposite. Other demons are the ones poiting out Crowley's vessel. This is a transphobic joke. It's the demon edition of the "gay boy in a dress" transmisogynistic trope.

Viewers aren't supposed to be on Crowley's side ; we're supposed to be giggling with the other demons while Crowley is being emasculated. Crowley gets a woman vessel because he's a not-very-manly-man, because he's a trans man, because he's homosexual.

And I know that bc Dean is written as bi, and all they're doing is reaffirming the way he does like women while being extra subtle with his love for men.

Meanwhile Crowley is losing influence and power, loses his authority as he loses his throne in Hell, gets humiliated by Lucifer, until all his character revolves around is his love for Dean. The way Crowley is then protrayed as some lovesick ex who can't move on is, imo, a straight man fantasy. Crowley's love is both used as predatory and as a tool to validate Dean's Peak Masculinity.

Spn has been burying their gays all along, and Crowley was right there being punished for not only being in love with Dean but for not being attracted to women. For never being able to be a "normal" guy. For never being able to be seen as a "normal" guy. For checking every homophobic stereotypes in the books. Crowley as a human dies because he's a trans man. Crowley as a demon dies because he's homosexual.

----------------

That's what leads me to be uncomfortable with the way the fandom seems to have a consensus towards pansexual Crowley. (Once again: idc about people's personal hc of Crowley as pan, I just want to think critically about the way no one thinks twice about it & accepts it as canon so easily. Hell, just bc I dared to ask what started the pan Crowley confirmation I got accused of erasing his pansexuality. All I did was ask a question.)

To me, it feels like erasing everything his character went through because he was gay. And it seems to be taken from a reasoning which is going to assume Crowley is attracted to women.

I mean: the reasoning would go "oh, Crowley clearly has a non-straight sexuality -> he's attracted to men -> he's pan" His attraction to women being accepted by default, without needing any backup. And when I look at the canon I see nothing implying he'd be attracted to women. Taking Crowley's attraction to women for granted is following an heteronormative thinking.

Being into people isn't all about who one sleeps with. It's about love. And when we look at what spn shows about Crowley's close relationships, the only meaningful one he got is with Dean. When Rowena wants payback for Crowley making her kill Oskar, she goes for his son.

And it's SO interesting to me because if angels can't be in love because they don't have a soul - can demons? as they're beings with a destroyed soul? And if so, how powerful of Crowley to still fall in love with Dean Winchester.... the power of gay love :) (Crowley 🤝 Cas)

----------------

To conclude all this with some more stuff to think about if, like me, you love questioning everything:

While it's not wrong per se to hc Crowley as pan, it can be worth questioning what's making us so sure we collectively just vibe with it? To me there's a few things: - As I was saying: heteronormative bias - Crowley being a non-fully-human character - Crowley being masculine (despite the show's attempts to erase that) - Crowley being into BDSM - Crowley flirting and making sexual remarks in every context

These, unconsciously, gives a vibe of a character who's "outside" of the gender norm, not making big deal of their sexuality, not even questioning it. This creates this idea of "ambiguity" around Crowley's sexuality. The way Crowley particularly seems to be really chill about sex, is a demon (so what does he know about gender?), and heavily flirty, ... is what most people will link to pansexuality. That doesn't mean thinking of Crowley as pan is being problematic™ ; this means in western medias that's what fills the "pansexual character" imagery (like basically: the Jack Harkness type).

However, when we look at it like that, none of these elements are defining of pansexuality. None of them are excluding him from homosexuality. If not stereotypes.

That's where it gets personal ; but it does make me feel like the huge consensus towards a pansexual Crowley (when there is no clear-cut evidence of it) is erasing the complexity of homosexual experiences. As I said at the begining: I'm happy if pansexual people can relate to Crowley ; everone's free to headcanon. But saying Crowley is canonically pansexual is a stretch - and a take rooted in homophobic stereotypes.

Imo Crowley may have been created with all these traits pushing towards a pan reading of his character. However, as the show went, he was clearly written as a homosexual man. The changes in his portrayal took a turn to be specifically homophobic. He gets imagery that only strictly homosexual characters got (such as drinking fruity cocktails like Aaron. Meanwhile Dean, on the same scene, is allowed beer & whiskey.)

We're used to taking spn's homophobic rep and jokes to make it our own. Yet it seems, when it comes to Crowley, the fandom doesn't see it.

Sometimes people aren't attracted to the gender heteronormativity expects them to be attracted to.......... sometimes people are gay and it's not an umbrella term.

[sinenominea]

1~5 “But you know who Talia and Laura wouldn’t avoid? Deaton, who happened to have a young man working at his clinic who he thought was a very special young man. It was far more likely that Scott would becoming involved with the Hale family far more than Stiles ever could possibly be simply by virtue of who they are” It is canon that Peter Hale and Cora Hale despise Scott’s guts and that Scott said that the hunters had a valid reason to burn Derek’s entire pack and family - including humans and

2~5 children – alive. And it is canon that Scott McCall was just an average asthmatic teen with average/below average grades obsessed with girls, fame, lacrosse and popularity, and not the ‘very special young man’ user @princeescaluswords desperately wished he was pre-bite. Not to mention that the production explicitly said that both Stiles and the Sheriff knew about the Hale fire (Scott didn’t), that Stiles knew about Paige (Scott didn’t), that Stiles recognized Derek (Scott didn’t),

3~5 and that Stiles had a very special, unique bond/emotional connection with Peter, Cora, Derek and Malia despite not being a werewolf in the series (Scott didn’t.) Meanwhile, there’s literally nothing tying Scott to the Hales except a random bite born from insanity… so yeah: why would the Hale family ever want to become involved with human!Scott exactly? Scott’s just the average self-centered kid who scrapped the crap off animals’ cages at the vet clinic after all, nothing more.             

4~5 It was far more likely that Stiles would becoming involved with the Hale family far more than Scott ever could possibly be simply by virtue of who they are to be honest. The Hales would literally avoid human!Scott like the plague.

5~5 PS: on another note though, it was very likely that human!Scott McCall would becoming romantically involved with Allison Argent anyway. Or at least try to            

____

Nomi:

This is a lot.

First of all... In reference to the post this ask is about, I really don’t understand why Pew can’t understand that this is what fanfic is?? If someone wants to write an alive!HaleFamily fic where Derek and Stiles get together, of course the Hales are going to be connected to Stiles and/or the Sheriff. Why would sterek writers care if Scott is connected to them when it’s not about Scott? If a fic is primarily meant to be about a ship, then the two characters in the ship must interact. You make up a reason for them to interact. This is what we refer to as a plot. Pew has actual Lit degrees, shouldn’t he know these things? Why is he like a child that you have to tell the same thing to over and over, except he never learns? No, wait, I know. It’s because he already knows he’s wrong, and all of this is just because we don’t love Scott as much as him. I swear to Sekhmet, it makes me want to hit myself in the face with a baseball bat, honestly.

Second of all... Yeah it doesn’t really make much sense that most of the Hales would care about Scott or even know of his existence, unless you’re writing a fic where you give them a reason to. In ~canon~ I doubt Deaton would mention he’s an emissary to a werewolf pack to the random kid who works for him. I doubt Scott would even be there if Talia or Laura met with with Deaton. I mean, would they even meet at his clinic? It seemed like they preferred the warehouse place in S3, ie somewhere not public, for meetings, iirc. It actually makes more sense that Melissa might know them, if they had to bring a human pack member to the hospital or something, but why would she tell her son about that specific patient out of all the other patients she saw each day? Same with the Sheriff (I refuse to call him Noah, sorry), it makes sense for him to know members of the town. Maybe he pulled Peter over and gave him a ticket one time. Maybe someone complained of howling in the Preserve and he went to knock on the Hale’s door and ask if they heard any disturbance in the forest one time. Scott and Stiles might have both known Cora, if she’s the same age and went to school with them, though. But none of these things happened and all those what-ifs are just me coming up with canon-compliant reasons for them to interact, which... is what you do... when you need characters to interact... in a story. And now we’ve come full circle to my First of all, lol...

But otherwise it’s just speculation and, while that’s fun, it doesn’t matter and Pew is no more right in his speculation than I am because speculation isn’t canon. For real there is some kind of disconnect in that man’s brain that makes him fundamentally incapable of listening when we say fanfiction doesn’t have to follow canon. The entire concept of the Hales being alive is already not-canon, ffs, so why does it matter that the Hales know Stiles or that Derek is interested in Stiles and not Scott?

Because the entire world in every single fanfiction ever written has to revolve around Scott McCall, or else it and the people who read/wrote it are racist, right?

Okay.

(P.S. I agree human!Scott would try to date Allison still, but who knows if she’d be interested. I kinda think she has a thing for werewolves, just saying.)

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

I cannot figure out how to sign up or log in to gizmodo to explain directly to the author how wrong and broken they are so this will have to do. If anyone is able to post on this site I’d love them to link to this.

 “Although Peter Parker had several love interests in his early comic book history—most notably, of course, Gwen Stacy—when Mary Jane Watson was introduced, she was clearly the be-all and end-all of Spidey relationships. ”

 This is wrong on two counts.

 If we define MJ’s introduction as ASm #25 where we first see and hear her then she was absolutely not the be all and end all of Spidey’s relationships. They weren’t in a relationship and she existed as a gag nothing more.

 Fair enough though, few people count that preferring her furst full debut in ASM #42. Even then that statement is wrong.

MJ was introduced as a rival and foil to Gwen Stacy who was the actually intended endgame be all end all love interest.

 “Before that, early issues of Amazing Spider-Man spent almost a year teasing her as a potential romantic partner for Peter, with Aunt May constantly trying to set up a date between Peter and the mysterious, unseen Ms. Watson. Peter wouldn’t first meet MJ until the final moments of Amazing Spider-Man #42—with the cry of her famous line, “Face it, tiger... you just hit the jackpot!”—and it was love at first sight.”

 Oh okay so they do know about her pre- ASM #42 appearences they are just wilfully ignoring it.

 More importantly it was never love at first sight. Peter was attracted to her but he wasn’t in love with her at all and like 2 issues later was thinking how he actually didn’t like her.

 “Peter immediately began dating her, but it didn’t last that long, and the couple eventually broke up for the first of many times. ”

 Again wrong.

 Peter and MJ at best casually dated. They were not exclusive and not going steady therefore no break up ever occurred.

 “This led to Peter dating Gwen again while MJ, still a good friend to the duo, hooked up with Harry Osborn.”

 Again wrong. MJ and Gwen being friends is contentious. They were in the same friendship group but were not particularly close. Moreover Peter and MJ as I said never broke up. Peter began courting Gwen and said nothing to MJ who had herself been casually dating Harry too.

 This was the 1960s and college kids there was a lot of freely traded flirting and dating at the time. In truth Gwen and Harry were dating slightly more seriously but they didn’t even break up and when Gwen and Peter began courting that pissed Harry off.

 MJ didn’t even immediately begin dating Harry after Peter and Gwen got serious and when she did they were again not exclusive though Harry believed they were. Hence the famous panel in ASM #97 wherein Harry tells MJ she’s his girl and she dumps his ass telling him she’s no one’s girl but her own.

 “Gwen’s now-iconic death at the hands of the Green Goblin in Amazing Spider-Man #121 drove Peter and Mary Jane together again as they both tried to come to terms with the loss of Gwen.”

 This is also not strictly speaking true. Yes Gwen’s death was the catalyst but they were not bonding over a mutual loss of Gwen. MJ supported Peter in his time of need which led to their friendship deepening and spending more time together and from these interactions they fell in love.

 Had other circumstances served to allow a (single) Peter and MJ spent more time together, gotten to know each other better, showcased a lot of care and loyalty to one another the same scenario would’ve occurred. But Gwen’s death was such a big deal it threw them together is all.

 “But once more, it didn’t last that long—Peter’s dual life as Spidey began to tear them apart, and when Peter offered a hasty marriage proposal, Mary Jane turned him down, and decided to escape her stressful life with a move away from New York, leaving Peter on his own again.”

 Again this is incredibly incorrect.

 The first time Peter and MJ were explicitly dating on the page was ASM #136 (the debut of Harry as the new Green Goblin btw) in 1974. Their relationship BEGAN to fall apart after Peter’s proposal in ASM #182 and her rejection of it in ASM #183 in 1978. They were still together though but there was an understanding they were no longer exclusive or going steady so they saw other people whilst still seeing one another and steadily drifting apart in spite of efforts to try and repair their relationship. The final end came though in ASM #1992-193 in 1979. Peter made one last effort to fix things with MJ and convinced her to go on a date with him but Spider-Business made him miss it and so MJ decided she was done with him, telling him as much in the next issue.

This means Peter and MJ had some form of relationship, USUALLY a serious and exclusive one (across THREE titles!) for four to five years!  So ‘didn’t last long’ my ass.

Moreover MJ’s move out of New York wasn’t immediate. She appeared two more times, once in Spectacular Spider-Man #38 and then again in ASM #201 both in 1979.

Only after this did MJ move away and at the time it wasn’t even talked about IIRC. She was just phased out of the series without mention and only later did we learn her absence was due to her having moved away. It was even later that we found out her move away was partially prompted by Peter’s proposal and more significantly her learning he was Spider-Man.

 “Upon her return (and the reveal that she had figured out that Peter is Spider-Man), the two remained friends.”

 Again this is grossly over simplifying things.

 MJ returned in ASM #241-242 in 1983 and revealed she knew Peter’s identity in ASM #257 in 1984. During the interim Peter and MJ were still friendly with one another.

It was the reveal of her knowledge of his dual life along with her own painful past that made them CLOSER friends and confidants.

 “But dual traumas—Peter losing his close friend Ned Leeds, and Mary Jane confronting her crooked father—led to the two getting closer again, and this time Peter’s second marriage proposal stuck. Well, actually, MJ turned him down again but eventually reconsidered.”

 Again no.

 Peter and MJ grew closer following MJ revealing her secret history in ASM #259 and then they CONTINUED to grow ever closer thereafter.

 Ned Leeds death and MJ confronting her father were part of that sure, but they weren’t the root cause.

 Ned’s death was likely the motivation Peer needed to propose a second time and dealing with her Dad is THE thing that led MJ to accept the proposal, but they were already in love, already effectively dating and already very close.

 “Peter and MJ’s married life was defined by a frankly absurd amount of drama. ”

 God. An absurd amount of drama in a SUPERHERO story. Who’s ever heard of such a thing.

 Thank God there wasn’t as much drama in Superman and Lois Lane’s relationship across 70 years or Reed and Sue’s marriage across 45 years.

 It’s not like at one point they split up because Reed put their son into a coma   or Sue miscarried their child only to become reimpregnated with her years later.

 “Mary Jane’s modelling career hit new highs after her marriage, only for her to be stalked by her former landlord, who not only ruined her career but then kidnapped her (the first of many, many kidnappings during her marriage). ”

 Again kidnappings of a superhero’s loved ones! *clutches pearls*

Also MJ’s career was ruined by Jonathan Caesar AFTER he stalked and kidnapped her. FFS at least get the sequence of events right Wikipedia explains this better!

 “Meanwhile, Peter was distraught by the arrival of a couple claiming to be his long-thought-dead parents. Once they were revealed to be Life Model Decoy robots sent by the Chameleon (hired by Harry Osborn in an attempt to get revenge for the death of his father Norman, a.k.a. the Green Goblin) to kill him, Peter had a total mental breakdown, abandoning Mary Jane for a while before they eventually reunited.”

 The article pretends like the above event quickly followed the former when it didn’t.

 Moreover it claims Peter’s mental breakdown was specifically due to his parents being imposters but it wasn’t. It was actually multiple incidents gradually putting him under immense strength and the straw that broke him was actually Aunt May’s coma.

 Like...maybe fucking READ the comic where he breaks down maybe?

 It’s also debatable to say he ever actually abandoned MJ. He went off the rails briefly in that story but it was actually MJ who temporarily abandoned him though she made it clear she would be coming back.

 Then after a lot of other stuff they reunited.

  “And then, oh and then, there’s the Clone Saga, one of the most infamous Spider-Man stories ever told. ”

 FALSE! Peter and MJ’s reconciliation happened DURING the Clone Saga not before.

 “In between all the wild nonsense about Peter clones, Ben Reilly, and Peter being convinced that he’s a clone so he abandons being Spider-Man altogether, Mary Jane became pregnant, only to tragically give birth to a stillborn child after she was poisoned by an agent of the Green Goblin. ”

 Again not true.

 Peter didn’t abandon being Spider-Man because he was a clone. The story arcs ‘Exiled’ and the ‘The Greatest Responsibility’ make it explicit that just because Peter is the clone doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be Spider-Man. It was decided peter SHOULD remain Spider-Man but it was actually his impending fatherhood that led Peter to retire and hand the mantle to Ben.

 Also MJ giving birth to a stillborn child is at best debatable.

 It’s HEAVILY implied Norman merely faked the baby’s death. This makes more sense for his character too.

 “The horror and stress of the whole event—which culminated in the return of Norman Osborn, the apparent death of Ben Reilly (don’t worry, he got better too, eventually, sort of), and Peter’s return to the Spider-Mantle—understandably put the couple’s relationship on the rocks.”

 No it didn’t.

 The story arc in which Norman returned, Ben died and the couple believed their child to have died actually ends with the reaffirmation of their relationship and shows them growing closer and stronger from it.

 This is then corroborated in the very next issue, Spec #241 which again reaffirms they’re relationship is strong.

 “Then MJ got kidnapped (again) by a telepathic mutant who wanted to steal Peter’s life (and his wife) and staged a plane explosion in Amazing Spider-Man#13, which led to Peter believing MJ was dead for over a year. ”

 FALSE!

 Not only did he skip over more than TWO YEARS worth of stories by jumping immediately from the end of the Clone Saga in 1996 to the Mackie/Byrne era (which began in 1998 with the plane crash in 2000) but he also falsely claims Peter believed MJ was dead for over a year.

 He didn’t.

 MJ was presumed dead by the public for just 6 months and for the MAJORITY of that time Peter was in denial over her death. When he found her alive he even admitted he never truly believed she was dead. Meaning Peter NEVER thought she was dead and felt that way for 6 months not 12.

 “As if all this wasn’t more than enough kicks while Peter and MJ were down, Civil War broke out in the Marvel universe in 2006, which saw Peter’s identity made public, the superhero community tearing itself apart over something that is in equal parts tragic and dumb, and Aunt May and MJ having to go on the run after Spider-Man’s ginormous roster of foes started chasing them in the wake of Peter’s big, foolish reveal.”

 Wow there is so much misinformation to unpack here.

 Okay, so first of all Peter and MJ WEREN’T separated or dealing with the fallout of MJ’s trauma when Civil War occurred.

 They parted ways in 2001, got back together in 2003 and Civil War was 2006!

 Furthermore the Parkers didn’t go on the run because of Peter revealing his identity, it was because he no longer trusted Tony Stark and thus decided to go on the run...I said the author was wrong I never said the story was logical.

 “That still left the problem of Peter’s identity being made public during Civil War, however. Peter asked Doctor Strange to cast a spell that would wipe his identity from the mind of everyone in the world, including Mary Jane, in Amazing Spider-Man #641—only for Peter to protect Mary Jane from the spell’s effects at the last minute. Despite being kept in on his greatest secret, Mary Jane ultimately decided she couldn’t keep risking the danger of being someone special to Spider-Man, and told Peter to move on and find someone else to share his life with.”

 Again this misrepresents the sequence of events. The author pretends that these events occurred after Peter and Mj broke up in the new revised timeline when in truth the mindwipe was the thing that led to them breaking up (stupidly).

 Moreover the break up was spawned by MJ (stupidly) not wishing to risk her family not herself.

 “The two remained friends and confidants over the next few years, until another wild Spider-Man event—The Superior Spider-Man, in which a dying Doctor Octopus took over Peter’s body and seemingly sent Peter’s consciousness into the villain’s previously dying body, effectively killing Peter”

 FALSE!

 In Superior Spider-Man Doc Ock created back ups of his own and Peter’s minds and uploaded said copies into one another’s bodies.

 The Peter who died in Otto’s dying body was never the original, the original was simply a passive observer within his own body.

  “When Mary Jane noticed that something was up with Peter, the two quickly broke up again”

 SUPER FALSE!

 MJ DIDN’T NOTICE anything wrong! THAT was why the story sucked shit.

 Otto himself ended things because he believed that they shouldn’t be together because he’d always endanger her.

 “And when Peter was eventually restored to his body and Otto’s deception was revealed to her, Mary Jane decided once and for all that Peter’s absurd life as a hero shouldn’t define her life as well, choosing to remain friends with him but remaining mostly separated from his life. (Valid.)”

 No. INVALID.

 MJ victim blamed  Peter and wasn’t saying his crazy life defined her. She was saying some nonsense about wanting a normal life but still wanted that in the city where Skrulls invade ever summer.

It was toxically out of character.

It also wasn’t ‘once and for all’ since oh I dunno she still stuck around in his fucking life.

“The revitalization of Marvel’s continuity in the wake of 2015's Secret Wars kept this status quo for MJ and Peter—although fans jonesing for the couple’s time together were thrown a bone by Marvel in the form of Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, an ongoing series that began in 2016 about an alternate-reality version of Peter and MJ that remained married, had a daughter together, and currently fight crime as an entire Spider-family.”

 Okay true but how is that relevant to the point of the article?

[randomidiocyncrazies]

some TM thoughts...

sometimes i think abt how the female antagonists in TM s1 are treated, and then i think about declan's corrective, and i just get So Frustrated. god. stop trying to make him sympathetic. stop giving men the leeway of moral ambiguity that isn't afforded to women. stop making him this beleaguered hapless dude getting dunked on by tender, haha poor guy, isn’t it funny

like... he never showed any remorse onscreen for destabilizing so many ship-societies and wrecking lives. he stayed in contrition’s figure for hundreds of years specifically because he has ZERO REMORSE for his actions. he explicitly said something to the effect of “we’ll starve [the divine fleet] so that they’ll have no choice but come running to us.” forgive me if i don't forgive a guy who used "it's just a job" to justify engineering so much suffering AND gets unearned redemption from the PCs who knows what he did (esp tender t b h). fuck this guy.

and maybe i'm being Too Harsh, but the female antagonists in S1 of TM weren't really allowed to develop imo -- iirc they either uh die (mother's story, the doyenne) or are otherwise incapacitated (open metal). like, open could've been a really interesting antagonist, but her deal boiling down to 'she’s a scared/naive little girl deep down, even though she is a grown woman, and needs 2 be told what 2 do' is. hm. not gr8. just... the emphasis of open’s childish quality (eg. tender’s mental construct of open is a young girl) is a little weird when combined with ‘open secretly wants 2 be bossed around by tender’ & ‘open&tender used 2 date’

also have some mixed feelings re:Mother’s Story’s death scene, despite it being cinematic and cool af -- she basically died in a cutscene, and while i love 1415 i kinda doubt they could take her out in normal gameplay given how their encounters have gone so far? frustrating that the players involved kinda... really relished killing her, but iirc that kind of vitriol was never really directed at a male NPC, or at least never really acted upon on a male NPC?

i’m hopeful for nuanced female antagonists in s2 tho, with the waking cadent and the final hegemon lady. they’re shaping up to be major players so hopefully their development won’t be cut short?

[whatsupzombie]

some thoughts

this is probably gonna get kind of long, but i wanted to organize all my thoughts on a couple points of the dragon age fandom...

so. like i said,  the closer april 2022 gets, the more complaining about varric not being romance-able i see. that and anders apologists. these two things seem to hint at a lack of healthy boundaries.....

and here’s why:

varric

firstly, on varric. he’s in two of the games and it is made explicitly clear that he is not interested in a romantic relationship, hinting at being preoccupied with a the woman his bow is named for. 

immediately there, you can he sets a boundary, and a huge portion of the da fandom doesn’t appreciate it. in fact, i mostly see people upset about this boundary. on the one hand, sure, he’s not a real person, but on the other, part of bioware’s whole goal is to create interesting characters that you can form genuine relationships with on some level. 

varric became best friends with two of my PCs (in DAI, he’s second to dorian tho), and tbf, i never had the goal of even trying to romance him, and i’m not sure that would have changed if he wasn’t involved with bianca. however. he says multiple times across da2 and dai that he is not interested in a relationship. which is a big reason in why i stayed away from flirting with him. 

a lot of the fandom tends to hate bianca because of all this. which. i mean. she’s not like, a great person, so ehhh, but it’s also not entirely her fault that their relationship didn’t work out. however, hating her solely because she is “the reason” that there’s no romance option for varric is. questionable at best, i think. 

don’t get me wrong, i don’t like bianca. but it has to do with the fact that she had a very active role in getting people killed. her relationship with varric is, i think, really none of the PC’s business. and, iirc, after dai, varric doesn’t want to have anything to do with her anymore, but still isn’t open to romance. 

which is fine! not every character has to be a romance option. sometimes people need their space. 

there is another point in which people mainly being upset there isn’t a lot of dwarf options for romance, but that does not mean that a character written specifically to not be interested needs to change in order to fill that role. 

leave varric alone party. he just wants friends. just be his friend.

anders

hhhh. okay.

so. i despise anders. this is 100% an anders hate account. 

now that that is out of the way, i’ll be more civil. first of all, anders is meant to be a bad guy. no matter what you do in da2, he blows up the chantry, destroying any remaining options to peacefully resolve conflict between the mages and templars. he literally started a war. and i chose to kill him, even though i always play a mage. 

here’s the thing, though. anders is like the epitome of why the general public is terrified of mages and why they are consistently oppressed and treated horribly. and he knows that he is, and he does not try to change. 

honestly, i don’t get his appeal. he’s bi, blonde, and has a cat? is the bar that low? sure, he had a bit of a tragic past, but he also brutally murdered grey wardens that he perceived as a threat. he’s also a blood mage AND an abomination. like, everything about him is bad. 

now, this isn’t the point, but i do want to touch on blood magic and abominations for a second. in thedas, blood magic is pretty universally feared, and which good reason. it is a powerful form a magic that usually requires a pretty hefty sacrifice. however, on its own, it’s just magic, neither good or bad, really. the problem tends to be that mages use it to further their own goals, which, more often than not, involves making oneself as powerful as possible. so you see it linked to some pretty nasty stuff quite often. anders knows this and knowingly engages with blood magic. 

additionally, spirits are in a similar sort of situation. on their own, they may be good, bad, or neutral, but the problem is when they are introduced to a human host. justice, for example, started as a fairly positive spirit with good intentions, but it was anders’s humanness that corrupted justice into a spirit no longer of justice, but of vengeance. and again, anders knows this and chooses this route anyway. perhaps he didn’t know fully that he would corrupt justice, but he knew full well what other abominations had done in the name of good intentions. 

so, anders is all around a mage that the public fears, he destroyed one of the only bridges of redemption he had, and he even says awful things about party members in da2, like approving of the idea that fenris should be sold back into slavery. this is largely because fenris doesn’t believe mages should be free, i think, but that doesn’t absolve him of being a horrible person. 

once again, anders, a mage who think all mages should be free, blew up a chantry filled with innocent people, most of whom did agree with him, just because mages would not have been fully freed within the hour. i mean, shit, the game fully implies that had not anders done anything, the templars and mages would have worked together to make life better for the mages while still providing both them, and the public, some protection. 

(also, this is not something i’m going to get into, but equating templars to cops is horribly reductionist and missing the point of their story entirely. please stop doing that.)

even varric hates anders by the end of da2, and it’s because of anders’s own actions. so, no, i don’t think it’s cute to like anders if you played through da2, i don’t think he has any redeeming qualities, and his cat is better off without him. he started a war out of SPITE. he is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of mages. DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE. 

to be clear, i’m not talking about anyone who likes his character in that it is an interesting one. i mean i literally saw a screenshot of someone titling their da2 shortcut as “anders dating sim.” that’s gonna be a huge red flag for me. 

anyway. this was a huge long post, but i had to get it out of my head. aaaaaaa.

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

re: edit, Seele x Bronya is the most canon because they have an onscreen kiss. Technically two.

Kallen x Sakura is canon-but-died because Kallen got to say explicitly that she was in love with Sakura and they’re shown living together and kissing in the cooking anime as well.

Mei x Kiana however is technically not canon, not because they don’t explicitly like each other, but because they never dated.

Yep that’s right they didn’t get to the actual dating part.

Kiana was very loudly pining and Mei was in love but a tsundere for the two and a half years they knew each other and when they met again Kiana was too busy dying to date. And then Mei became a terrorist.

So it’s not actually “canon” in the “committed relationship” sense. Only their love for each other is canon. Nuance.

Further canonicity thoughts:

Siegfried x Cecilia and other parents are canon obviously.

Bianka and Rita are unclear on where in the dating department they would be but they live together in Cooking with Valkyries and there’s the official japanese comic where their summons go on a honeymoon after it’s noted they take after their owners, complete with little hearts. Additionally Bianka was last heard off going on a honeymoon trip to Vesuvius with Rita after going to meet her parents. I guess that yeets them in the “heavily implied” spot, similarly to Kiamei?

Due to being emotionally constipated Hua doesn’t get much in the way of canonicity but she DID get called St Freya’s most eligible bachelor. Additionally Moon Shadow heavily implies she’s had a crush on Kiana (she denies it but blushes) for a little while, and Shattered Samsara is fruity af so. Not canon but not a complete invention either.

Mei explicitly trusts Sim!Hua the most on the basis that she’s essentially the same as the one in reality, and Sim!Hua notes that she feels intimate with her, so uh meihua rights I guess. They also stayed up all night. Closeness is canon, nature of closeness not disclosed, no commitment.

I’d argue Elysia’s crush on Mei is canon because she makes multiple references to finding Mei attractive and going on dates, and Eden notes she was “enamored” with Mei. Like I don’t think it can get more explicit than that short of Ely dropping “marry me please”, and it’s already been mentioned multiple times that her Herrscher outfit is a wedding dress… (Regarding whether Mei likes her back, it seems Ely grew on her like fungus. Mei associates her with laughter, calls her dreamlike and perfect, and has difficulty admitting/saying that she’s actually dead. Rough.)

Similarly, Raven’s crush on Elysia at the end of ER ch2 is about as explicit as any straight crush would be (“I don’t care what Elysia thinks!” “I never mentioned Elysia” “…just don’t tell anyone”) so I’d call it heavily implied or maybe even canon too.

Eden and Elysia falls just short of canonicity because Elysia confirms they’re closer than others but doesn’t imply it’s romantic (rip). Elysia’s other girlfriends tend to be very fruity at her but also fall short right into “definitely close”.

Lyle calls Adam his soulmate on sight idk where to put that on the canonicity spectrum

If you’ve got ggz context Sin having a crush on Bronya is heavily implied (the ugly green monster oooh) but it’s hard to pick up on the clues without.

Mobius’s attachment to Klein is fully canon (to the point of getting referenced in dorm) but it’s not explicitly romantic at any point. Honestly not sure it should be? It was a queer kind of love, just like Mobius.

I’d argue Otto’s interest in Kallen would also be canonically queer, rather than straight up romantic or sexual. He never wanted her physically beyond maybe seeing her in cute clothes (which he also gets to wear…) and while he offered to marry her iirc he said it was perfectly fine if they never consumed it, he just wanted a way to keep her alive.

Fallen Rosemary seems canonically interested in the Captain and offers dates. This actually spawned a “Captain is an alt universe Durandal, omg trans” joke hc in me but yeah that’s that. There’s a similar story with Kongming but I’d lean more towards friends/friends with a one sided crush?

Adam canonically (and respectfully) thinks Carole’s mom is hot

just wondering which ships in honkai impact does count as canon? like i know there are many versions for one character but is there like canon ones you think?

uhhhhh if i recall correctly-

kallen x sakura

bronya x seele

kiana x mei

uh. those are the only canon ones i can think of at the moment. but honestly i ,, forgot if that's all of them. they're the ones i remember off of the top of my head though.

edit: none are stated just heavily implied due to censorship shtuff.

[solidandsound]

I finished Persona 5! It took me ~140 hours and I ended it at level 81, with about 70% compendium completion. I don’t know if I can say it beats P3 as my fave Persona just because P3 holds a special place in my heart, but it is probably a better game and I most certainly liked it more than P4. More in depth, spoilery discussion under the read more!

I beat the final boss primarily with Satan and Beelzebub, which felt really satisfying considering that I was using them to kill God. I also thought it was interesting that you literally use the seven deadly sins to defeat the final boss. I mean, it uses them to try and keep you down, but you in turn use them as your strength. I love the final boss for having battle mechanics that are ideologically significant, and everything taken together at the end, I think the game gives a very clear thesis. It reframes the seven deadly sins as seven core desires, and states that, even though they can lead to terrible things (ie the palace rulers who are all based on the sins themselves), we should be free to feel them, and that freedom is the most important thing. It’s a very American ideology, and for that reason I think P5 will probably resonate more strongly with a western audience than previous Persona games (the Bible belt notwithstanding, perhaps?). It’s also way cleaner and easier to play, which will help a lot.

I finished all but three confidants. The video game kid and Iwai I got to rank 9 and the fortune teller I got to rank 8. I probably could have finished them all if I focused on the fortune teller sooner since her abilities are so kickass, but she’s such a pain to get started. I also probably could have done Kawakami sooner to make the most of her abilities. The one I most regret not finishing is Iwai. I didn’t expect him to become such an awesome dad figure for the player. Oh yeah, and that’s one way P5 trumps P4: two cool dads instead of just one!

I ended up dating Hifumi. I liked her design, and I liked that she was willing to put herself at a disadvantage to do what’s right, which is something her and the protag have in common. Of course, my first choice was Ryuji, but alas, all teenage boys are straight I guess. I thought I would want to date Yusuke, but I ended up reading him as ace. Maybe I just wasn’t picking up on it, but nothing he said ever seemed like he was hitting on me. Protag and Akechi definitely had some tragic star-crossed lovers vibes, though. I thought about dating Futaba, but in the end she works better as a sister figure. In particular I didn’t want to interfere with her goal of being able to be okay on her own. I also see how Haru is a pretty good option, but I’m kind of turned off by how she’s the only one who has a strongly negative reaction to being turned down. Of course, I saw said reaction after already making the decision not to date her, and I can see how it could help someone’s argument that she is the best girl to date because she likes you more. Makoto was another girl I considered dating, mostly because I love a girl who can beat me up. I was not a big fan of how many adult women (four! four of them!) you are allowed to legitimately date. I don’t remember if there were any adults in P4 that were presented as date options the same way as the other characters. I only remember the nurse, who you can sleep with but not get romantically involved with, and IIRC she’s the devil arcana and the whole thing feels kind of intentionally shady. It seems like that was a gateway to just not caring at all about appropriate age differences. Thanks Persona! At least you can’t date Sae. When she comes up to you on Christmas I got really worried the game set that up for her to be a dating option, maybe just in case you hadn’t started dating anyone else yet by that point.

I like that the game is explicitly about social reform, and that it meaningfully discusses sexism and the Japanese justice system and how these things can be changed. At the same time, the game is shockingly tone deaf. Kamoshida treats Ann like a sexual object, and that’s bad, but somehow multiple anime shots panning over Ann’s boobs are fine? The maybe worst example is when they go to the beach (note: as soon as the beach was presented as a thing that exists I got ready to cringe. The beach is never fun in Persona) and the boys go off to get girls, because of course they do, and they approach and hit on a bunch of random girls, because who doesn’t want to be approached by a group of boys when you’re by yourself? And then when they fail they return to Makoto to see HER getting harassed by some dude, and when he finally leaves everyone agrees that he was a bad guy and what he was doing was shitty, with no self-awareness that that was what they were just doing to other girls. I can say, at least, that the sexism and fanservicey garbage seems to have been toned way down from the last two games. I can only hope this downward trend continues.

Of course, my biggest objection is to the two stereotypical gay dudes whose only traits are that they’re really into teenage boys and are really creepy about it. Nothing about their portrayal is okay, which should be really obvious to literally everyone.

The gameplay itself is really good this time around. I love the new dungeon designs, though I still love the randomly generated dungeon crawling as well and am glad the game has both. I also feel like I benefited a lot from having played not only P3 and P4 but also SMT Nocturne. I was really bad at P3 when I played it, and I thought I was pretty good at P4 but I’ve improved even more. I did not feel this powerful with this cool of a Persona set at the end of either of those games. Nocturne also made me appreciate how much more like SMT this game is compared to P3 and P4, particularly the last stretch of the game, as well as all the stuff around demon negotiation and whatnot. If you’re up for a more traditional RPG experience, I’d recommend playing Nocturne. You’ll appreciate P5 more for it.

In the end, I’d probably give P5 a 9/10. I think the series is (mostly) moving in the right direction, and I’m excited for P6, though I guess we won’t see it until they’re done milking the P5 cash cow. I wouldn’t mind a sequel starring Morgana, though. With the hints at the end about how if Morgana became a human he’d be a lot like protag, I can see Morgana achieving that dream and becoming a resident of the velvet room himself ala Aigis in The Answer.

Now that I’m done this long, long adventure I should take some time to do actual life stuff, but there are still more games on the horizon. I’m still not done Persona Q, though I am trucking along slowly but surely. I also have Tokyo Mirage Sessions waiting for me, and I can get SMT 1 on my phone, so I’d like to play that at some point, too.

[wedreamedlove]

Hello, I hope you're doing okay ❤️ I would like to ask what you believe the MLQC boy's love languages are. Thank you ☺️

i’m doing good, thank you! i hope you and yours are staying safe with the pandemic around the world right now ;w;!

i touched on this in my “the 4 men and their chinese archetypes” post but i’ll see if i can go in more detail here. first, just so everyone’s on the same page, the 5 love languages are:

words of affirmation: expressing affection through spoken affection, praise or appreciation.

acts of service: actions, rather than words, are used to show and receive love.

receiving gifts: gifting is symbolic of love and affection.

quality time: expressing affection with undivided, undistracted attention.

physical touch: it can range from having sex to holding hands. with this love language, the speaker feels affection through physical touch.

people can have a dominant one or be spread out among many of them. the last time i did one of these tests i had 8/10 points in acts of service, quality time, and physical touch LOL.

ZHOU QILUO

words of affirmation is definitely a biggie. he’s always hyping MC up and calls her his superhero just like how he’s her superhero. he seems to get reassurance from words too because a lot of times when he reveals his weaknesses it’s through a call or asking questions.

ex. [Apricot Forest Date] or [Old Friend Date] about whether people like him for him or his persona.

receiving gifts is another huge one because he’s always bringing back souvenirs from his trips! i still remember that cute call from [Spring Sonata SSR Secret Password Call] where he shoved a teddy into MC’s suitcase, haha.

those two are probably the two main big ones but physical touch isn’t that far behind. it’s just unfortunate that his job keeps him away for long periods of time so that’s why i don’t think it’s as important as the other two. he’s certainly a physical person but hmm just to a normal extent?

again, because of his job, i think acts of service and quality time go further down. these acts and times are perhaps more precious because of how rare they are with his schedule but that’s also why it’s not his love communication.

if he had a SO whose love language were these two, i think a lot of effort would have to go into the relationship to make sure both parties were being fulfilled. his idol job is just so consuming.

BAI QI

he’s an interesting guy because, when push comes to shove, he can deliver monologues of loving words, [Spring Festival Date] anyone!? But his true nature is to be quiet. he’s just content to sit or stand there and watch with heart eyes.

very much an acts of service and physical touch lover. if you think about it acts of service was everything he was doing in high school! beating punks up who threatened MC, carrying her to the infirmary when she collapsed in PE, and dropping his jacket on her when it was raining.

i can’t stress how much he’s all about touch though. in fact, that might be above everything else. he really is like a big doggo who will nuzzle MC at the smallest opportunity (y'all i’m never gonna get over his shaving ASMR and how drunk in love he sounds when his face is caressed).

anyway, he pats MC’s head, holds her around the waist (happens often because of his flying), and iirc they hold hands often. i bet half of the reason he invites MC out on motorcyle rides is so he can have her holding onto him LOL. also, again, [Spring Festival Date] anyone!? he just reached out to grab her hand and kissed the back of it!!

quality time is also pretty big imo. even though he does have a job that takes him away for long periods of time like Kiro he’s willing to forgo sleep to be with MC for even a second longer, ex. [Endless Abyss SSR Beside You Call] where he goes to her place right after work.

all this being said i think that, while words of affirmation isn’t his main one, it’s still present. he’s a bit shy in general about the enormous breadth of his love towards his SO but he’s not shy about expressing his emotions, if that makes sense? so words still feature in his love language!

despite him gifting the gingko bracelet though i don’t think receiving gifts is high at all in his love language. the bracelet is very meaningful between the two of them but it was a one-time thing.

XU MO

another words of affirmation man! the literati gene is super strong in him and his family, haha, and he’s always praising the MC and reassuring her or building up her confidence. a guy who can flirt through poetry is definitely a shoo-in for expressing love through words. not to mention he’s just a wordsmith in general.

i’d say another high one is touch which may be surprising? or maybe not since he comes off as being the most sexually aggressive amongst the men. but yeah he’s always reaching out and stroking MC’s head and he seems to really like hands too and entwining the fingers! his ASMRs have a ton of skinship, like a lot lot (my brain is flashing back to the pottery one and how he explicitly tells you to stop moving or else he can’t guarantee that nothing will happen).

i don’t really see any of the others featuring as high. they’re present but he doesn’t seem to put much emphasis on them, you know? in fact, i think MC gifts him more things than he does her LOL. quality time… both of them are busy and spend time with each other whenever they can, but again there doesn’t seem to be a particular weight associated with these.

LI ZEYAN

quality time oh god SO MUCH QUALITY TIME. li zeyan just letting you breathe the same air as him means he loves you— i’m kidding. but, no, seriously him accompanying MC on all sorts of fanciful things shows just how important he places her. efficient capricorns got no time for anything they don’t care about.

another high one is probably acts of service. the motto with this man is that he rarely says anything nice and doesn’t initiate touch that much, until he’s sure you’re into him, so instead he’ll just do things in the background.

when MC was researching about a show he had his assistant send her all the materials, [Gentle Confrontation SSR Animal Like You]. then when she was staying at that leaky hotel he switched her to a better one and had his assistant pick her up, [Marauder SSR Change Hotel Call].

i don’t think this is super high but receiving gifts is a thing with him. he seems to enjoy gift giving and receiving (even if he scoffs at it half the time). much like kiro, he brings back souvenirs from his trips. and i wonder if making and giving the pudding counts as a gift rather than an act of service.

anyway, i should have given this disclaimer in xu mo’s section too, but just because these two men don’t have high values in the rest of the love language doesn’t mean they don’t like them. it just means it’s not a priority but the average levels for a healthy relationship still apply!

LING XIAO

hmm maybe too early to talk about him? haha, but he did get an ASMR track and he’s been introduced a bit so let’s see… i think he’s a touch and words of affirmation man except his words of affirmation comes off more as ribbing. he’s not shy about manhandling the MC so that’s why i think touch is somewhat important to him.

not as high as the rest but i think quality time is something too. he’s like a wild animal LOL and just the fact that he’s spending any time with you means something. otherwise, you would have been ignored or he wouldn’t even be near you.

he’s also a bit like li zeyan in that he does things in the background or makes you feel like you’re abandoned before he swoops in and helps you (he just wanted to see you panicking first). i don’t know if that counts as an expression of his affection though, since it was mostly done for his own enjoyment LOL. like he definitely reluctantly helps out because he’s bratty like that but hmm…