#character’s political views

[trudemaethien]

kix/slick + example

✨💖✨pillowtalk✨💖✨

(immediately pre-christophsis UwU)

“Do you ever think…” Slick’s murmur comes from inches away, on the same pillow as his bedmate’s ear.

“Hmm?” Kix hums drowsily, moving his hand to reassure Slick he’s listening. He thinks he’s touching his side, or his hip maybe. It’s too late at night for anatomy.

“D’y’think it’s wrong that we have to fight?” is the surprising query from Slick’s busy brain.

“Slick, you love fighting.” Kix’s voice is as dry as Geonosian wind, disembodied in the dark bunkroom.

“Well, I mean. Yeah, but even I don’t want to always have to strap on my shell and pick up a blaster and shoot-move-communicate, you know? Maybe I want to… fight with words sometime.”

“Slick, you—

—Do that all the time too, anyway,” Slick choruses over top of him, “yeah, I know. But, Kix. You hear what I’m saying? If you could do anything or go anywhere, and wouldn’t get in trouble for it, what would you do?”

Kix sighs, chest rising and falling under Slick’s arm as he seriously considers the question.

“I’m a lifesaver,” he says finally. “As long as one single brother needed me to be on call listening for Medic! that’s what I’d choose. I believe it’s my responsibility to use my knowledge and skill for the good of my people; and my brothers, the GAR, are my people, thus by extension, the Republic itself.”

“But do you think that because you were taught that, or do you think it because you think it?”

Kix snorts, rolling half on top of his vod and making his response come muffled between them. “S’a little demeaning, sayin’ I don’t know my own thoughts from some lousy brainwashing, buddy,” he says, more amused than annoyed.

Slick’s arms come up and circle him, hands smoothing down his back and back up under his sleep shirt. He sighs gustily.

This concept must really be bothering him.

“What would you do?” Kix asks, encouraging.

Slick is silent for a long moment, but Kix senses it’s not because he doesn’t have an answer. He waits him out.

“On Triple Zero,” Slick says finally, and Kix makes a tiny go-on noise, “I saw this…bunch of protesters.”

He doesn’t say anything more, and Kix mulls that over. “So you want to …protest?”

“I want to fight for the things I believe in,” Slick says, almost embarrassed. “Same as you, our brothers are my people, and I just don’t think it’s right that we should be sent to seed the stars, that karking drivel, or have to be calling for a medic, if you can get there on time before we die for objectives we don’t even care about.”

Kix kisses his neck, his stubble-rough jaw, his cheek before Slick turns into it and meets his mouth.

Kix lifts his head and touches their brows together. “I’ll get to you before you die,” he swears with utmost confidence, even though it’s a foolhardy thing to promise. “Just call me, and I’ll be there.”

Slick’s throat clicks as he swallows a couple times before he can speak, and when he does, his voice is rough with emotion.

“If I need you, I’ll call.”

Pillowtalk 🔒 https://archiveofourown.org/works/51594214

[beanghostprincess]

A bit tired of people complaining about Sanji's principle of "not hitting women" being misogynistic when it has been clearly stated multiple times that he does not choose it and it's heavily tied to his trauma and admiration for his dad and respect for women and definitely not from seeing women as somehow weaker than him

[gabrielsbubblegumbitch]

I just wrote the scene where Vox asks Valentino if he's a communist, and honestly, I think it would be hilarious if Val were a communist.

Vox learns about it during their fourth sleepover (I assume they started seeing each other not long after Val's death, when he wasn't bourgeois and still held some of his beliefs). That revelation causes Vox's existential crisis because he can forgive being a rapist, murderer, and queer, but a communist? He vents about it to Alastor because you know how angry some people get when you suggest that maybe ten people shouldn't own all the money? And Alastor, who is of course an anarchist, says something like, "But you said he was stupid!" That sends Vox spiraling because apparently, he's weirdly attracted to men who are red in more than one way.

[lucabyte]

this time on purrgatorio: ali and markus learn why i havent made normal pride art in years

Bonus: Ascending to Godhood lets you look at the spreadsheets

[bluebobatea]

if sasuke was the main character then he probably would've been a LOT more sympathised with than he is now (which is to say rarely). like the narrative wouldn't even need to change to show his pains or 'his side of the story', bc it does that plenty. it's just that he is not the main character. and idk what it is about our human minds but we tend to sympathise with main characters automatically (unless ofc you go off the rockers insane and do something like obliterate almost everyone from the planet *cough* eren yeager *cough*)

an instance that comes to my mind where this does happen is with lelouch from code geass. while i don't agree with his character motivations, people generally do sympathise with him as he is the mc and as viewers we know he isn't inherently evil. sasuke's goal towards the end is slightly similar but ofc people love to hate him so they don't even try to understand where he is coming from.

my point is, most people while engaging with the naruto story don't read between the lines and so don't see how traumatised and in pain sasuke is and hence don't understand his character motivations. heck, they don't understand a single bit about him and so they automatically hate him, as he is supposedly going against the main character's goals.

which is really sad given all that he has been through.

[sukibenders]

When it comes to Penelope I feel like a lot of her fans take any valid criticism towards her and turn it into hate, which does her character a disservice. While some people do hate on her, a lot of it holds valid reasons. Admitting that she has hurt many people isn't wrong because she has, it's been shown on throughout the show and the impacts it can have. From labeling Daphne as "unmarriageable" during her first season and events that followed, her labeling Eloise as being part of a group of rebels, the terms she used to describe Kate [and Simon]-- which carried racial undertones no matter how you try to spin it, who didn't even know personally at that point, what she did Marina. All of these were very harmful and to say that none of these characters should feel angry, that they should just forgive Penelope without any work put into it is very laughable (especially because she's still writing as Whistledown and put many, namely women, at risk during a time where reputation is everything--something in which Penelope herself faces). With this being said, criticizing her actions, at least for me, doesn't come from a complete place of hate but more so from believing that she can be better if she puts in the work. By ignoring all that she's done and having her get her happily ever after so easily in the end, to be honest, would ultimately feel lackluster. I feel like she still has room to grow, but it will take a lot of work and, I personally, think seeing her renavigate who she is with who she wants to be outside of Lady Whistledown would be very interesting.

[dykedvonte]

I dislike takes that Danse would be just as conservative in modernized aus when it's clearly shown his staunch views of things come from his time in the Brotherhood and his deep-rooted desire to belong to something with a greater purpose.

Not to mention lines that show much more open-mindedness that get overlooked for his harsher sentiments when you first meet him. Like the oppurtunity to be a part of something is why Danse fell so far into Brotherhood dogma and it doesn't negate the offense things he does but I feel like it's just lazy to be like "hmmm he'd def be racist" just so it aligns to his BoS beliefs.

[eskildit]

okay so silas knew that gideon was a fake cavalier from day one. he knew ortus had died and that gideon was a serf of the ninth sent in his stead. but silas chooses to hold on to that information until act four! meanwhile he openly calls palamedes an unfinished inbred and camilla a mad dog with an illegitimate claim to the title of cavalier primary. silas says nothing about gideon until hes speaking to her in private. interesting!

[saturnniidae]

Cripplepunk Modern Au Hiccup

[lord-squiggletits]

Part of why I hate this fandom's take on Autobots vs Decepticons is ppl (mainly 'con fans honestly) who can't have any nuance of the situation whatsoever and love to write plots like "oh the humans are racist and abusive towards Cybertronians so this is how Megatron is right" no actually I don't think colonialism/imperialism and racism are justified so long as you can point the finger and say "they were the aggressors first" or "their hands are no cleaner than ours bc their society sucks too" sorry. Please come up with better sociopolitical narratives in your war story.

[northern-passage]

i've shared some of Alex Freed's narrative writing advice before and i recently read another article on his website that i really liked. particularly in branching/choice-based games, a lot of people often bring up the idea of the author "punishing" the player for certain choices. i agree that this is a thing that happens, but i disagree that it's always a bad thing. i think Freed makes a good case for it here.

...acting as the player’s judge (and jury, and executioner) is in some respects the primary job of a game’s developers. Moreover, surely all art emerges from the artist’s own experiences and worldview to convey a particular set of ideas. How does all that square with avoiding being judgmental?

[...]

Let’s first dispel–briefly–the idea that any game can avoid espousing a particular worldview or moral philosophy. Say we’re developing an open world action-adventure game set in a modern-day city. The player is able to engage any non-player character in combat at any time, and now we’re forced to determine what should occur if the player kills a civilian somewhere isolated and out of sight.

Most games either:

allow this heinous act and let the player character depart without further consequence, relying on the player’s own conscience to determine the morality of the situation.

immediately send police officers after the player character, despite the lack of any in-world way for the police to be aware of the crime.

But of course neither of these results is in any way realistic. The problems in the latter example are obvious, but no less substantial than in the former case where one must wonder:

Why don’t the police investigate the murder at a later date and track down the player then?

Why doesn’t the neighborhood change, knowing there’s a vicious murderer around who’s never been caught? Why aren’t there candlelight vigils and impromptu memorials?

Why doesn’t the victim’s son grow up to become Batman?

We construct our game worlds in a way that suits the genre and moral dimensions of the story we want to tell. There’s no right answer here, but the consequences we build into a game are inherently a judgment on the player’s actions. Attempting to simulate “reality” will always fail–we must instead build a caricature of truth that suggests a broader, more realized world. Declaring “in a modern city, murderous predators can escape any and all consequences” is as bold a statement on civilization and humanity as deciding “in the long run, vengeance and justice will always be served up by the victims of crime (metaphorically by means of a bat-costumed hero).”

Knowing that, what’s the world we want to build? What are the themes and moral compass points we use to align our game?

This is a relatively easy task when working with a licensed intellectual property. In Star Trek, we know that creativity, diplomacy, and compassion are privileged above all else, and that greed and prejudice always lead to a bad end. A Star Trek story in which the protagonist freely lies, cheats, and steals without any comeuppance probably stopped being a Star Trek story somewhere along the line. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, takes a more laissez-faire approach to personal morality while emphasizing the large-scale harm done by men and women who strive for power. (No one comes away from watching Game of Thrones believing that the titular “game” is a reasonable way to run a country.)

These core ideals should affect more than your game’s storytelling–they should dovetail with your gameplay loops and systems, as well. A Star Trek farming simulator might be a fun game, but using the franchise’s key ideals to guide narrative and mechanical choices probably won’t be useful. (“Maybe we reward the player for reaching an accord with the corn?”)

Know what principles drive your game world. You’re going to need that knowledge for everything that’s coming.

[...]

Teaching the player the thematic basics of your world shouldn’t be overly difficult–low-stakes choices, examples of your world and character arcs in a microcosm, gentle words of wisdom, obviously bad advice, and so forth can all help guide the player’s expectations. You can introduce theme in a game the way you would in any medium, so we won’t dwell on that here.

You can, of course, spend a great deal of time exploring the nuances of the moral philosophy of your game world across the course of the whole game. You’ll probably want to. So why is it so important to give the player the right idea from the start?

Because you need the player to buy into the kind of story that you’re telling. To some degree, this is true even in traditional, linear narratives: if I walk into a theater expecting the romcom stylings of The Taming of the Shrew and get Romeo and Juliet instead, I’m not going to be delighted by having my expectations subverted; I’m just going to be irritated.

When you give a player a measure of control over the narrative, the player’s expectations for a certain type of story become even stronger. We’ll discuss this more in the next two points, but don’t allow your player to shoot first and ask questions later in the aforementioned Star Trek game while naively expecting the story to applaud her rogue-ish cowboy ways. Interactive narrative is a collaborative process, and the player needs to be able to make an informed decision when she chooses to drive the story in a given direction. This is the pact between player and developer: “You show me how your world works, and I’ll invest myself in it to the best of my understanding.”

[...]

In order to determine the results of any given choice, you (that is, the game you’ve designed) must judge the actor according to the dictates (intended or implicit) of the game world and story. If you’re building a game inspired by 1940s comic book Crime Does Not Pay, then in your game world, crime should probably not pay.

But if you’ve set the player’s expectations correctly and made all paths narratively satisfying, then there can be no bad choices on the part of the player–only bad choices on the part of the player character which the player has decided to explore. The player is no more complicit in the (nonexistent) crimes of the player character than an author is complicit in the crimes of her characters. Therefore, there is no reason to attempt to punish or shame the player for “bad” decisions–the player made those decisions to explore the consequences with you, the designer. (Punishing the player character is just dandy, so long as it’s an engaging experience.)

[...]

It’s okay to explore difficult themes without offering up a “correct” answer. It’s okay to let players try out deeds and consequences and decide for themselves what it all means. But don’t forget that the game is rigged. [...]

Intentionally or not, a game judges and a game teaches. It shows, through a multiplicity of possibilities, what might happen if the player does X or Y, and the player learns the unseen rules that underlie your world. Embracing the didactic elements of your work doesn’t mean slapping the player’s wrist every time she’s wrong–it means building a game where the player can play and learn and experiment within the boundaries of the lesson.

[cdroloisms]

not super polished meta or anything but something i do think is really interesting and kind of a trend with how c!dream sees factions is how...quite consistently, c!dream doesn't judge a faction as umm holistically as one might guess, especially because a common thought in this fandom is that c!dream just hates factions in general by default (and i mean, id say he's not fond of factions and obviously has a distaste for faction conflict, but he's not nearly as immediately going after factions guns blazing the way that i think people can think of him sometimes)--rather, quite consistently, c!dream's perception of a faction at any point in time is a reflection of his perception of its leader.

lmanburg, at the very beginning, he clearly saw as unreasonable, kind of stupid and delusional, but still something to be treated with a degree of caution...which is how he saw c!wilbur, this guy who was making really fucking preposterous claims (what the fuck do you mean new server. like for this guy he might as well have been declaring that this place was a whole new planet while making pretty overt moves towards war if you disagreed with him) but also had gathered quite a following and wasn't going to take no for an answer. l'manchildburg and all that

later on, c!dream sees lmanburg more neutrally and even positively when his relationship with c!wilbur improves. this is most telling when he talks abt lmanburg to c!wilbur at the beginning of pogtopia and during vassal--of course it's up to debate what c!dream's concrete plans were, but i'm pretty solidly of the belief that he wasn't planning to get rid of lmanburg at this point as i outline here. c!wilbur was willing to be reasonable and even peaceable, and so the same applied to the faction he ruled over

c!dream repeatedly expresses that his disagreement with c!schlatt is what causes him to align himself against manberg, and downright says that with c!schlatt at the helm he doesn't believe that peace between their two nations can be maintained. this is a constant, honestly, down to when c!schlatt dies--c!dream never truly thinks well of manberg, and it seems quite obviously to be a direct result of who was in charge

after c!wilbur dies, despite expressing positive sentiments to c!wilbur later on in statements such as "the smartest person on the server" and quoting him during doomsday and the like, c!dream's assessments of him as a leader as he expresses to c!quackity are quite negative. which is interesting, when you consider that part of the angle c!wilbur takes up during vassal is specifically that he'll be ambitious like schlatt the way c!dream explicitly says he felt threatened by in his sales pitch to convince c!dream to blow up lmanburg with him. c!dream wanting lmanburg to be blown up at the same time as its "ruler" (as c!dream clearly did see c!wilbur as the authority over lmanburg) wanted it to be blown up...hm.

c!dream expresses sentiments along the lines of willing to cooperate and coexist with c!tubbo especially after c!tubbo "puts the good of the nation" first instead of choosing to pursue a conflict against c!dream. to c!quackity, c!dream talks about c!tubbo to be fair and reasonable, qualities he evidently values in a ruler

in stark opposition, c!dream's disagreement with mexican lmanburg has everything to do with his perception of c!quackity as a reckless, conflict-seeking (and that's the common thread, really. c!wilbur sought conflict in the revolution and then with his painting himself as chaotic and ambitious and seeking destruction, and c!schlatt was ambitious and murderous in a way that had very clear consequences in terms of starting conflict on the server) ruler with little regard for the consequences of his actions, as he says repeatedly over the course of the mexican lmanburg debates

finally, c!dream explicitly outlines c!tubbo's "failings" as ruler as being the breaking point in terms of green festival + doomsday and specifically says that c!tubbo is willing to let people in the cabinet walk all over him, as well as the fact that c!quackity is more of a president than he is. when we consider c!dream's already very negative assessment of c!quackity as a leader and how c!quackity had pushed a lot of the decisions that really made nlm a threat that was impossible for c!dream to reconcile with (especially with moves such as the butcher army), some of the underlying sentiments behind well the overt villain-isms of c!dream's speech here do seem to come to light.

and for some other moments that aren't quite as Big but still reflect this same idea--c!dream explicitly rejects nlm if it was under c!tommy's rulership but is willing to coexist with c!tubbo as president, both dethronements have a lot to do with c!eret and c!george's actions having negative consequences for the whole faction by compromising a neutral stand (and therefore compromising the quote unquote neutrality of the entire faction and possibly embroiling everyone into conflict), c!dream's willingness to work with the badlands, the difference between the factions that c!dream ignores post-prison versus the one that he attacks (las nevadas, obviously). it's interesting to me how often c!dream seems to view factions as almost being extensions of the will of the person leading them and how his opinion of a faction an his opinion of its leader bounce off of each other, yknow?

(this post is mostly a series of observations and absolutely oversimplified to a certain degree, but yeah 👍)

[beanghostprincess]

Sorry I really didn’t mean I’m attacking you or your ship. I also don’t think it’s a red flag, most gay men I saw don’t really like shuggy either. I mean, probably the entire world prefers any other shanks ships? On almost every site, con or store there’s always tons of mishanks and Bennshanks and never shuggy. I get it’s also about dynamic and connection those two pairs have, like with the parallels to other ships the base for them is extremely strong. But the minimal shuggy does speak volumes. I genuinely wonder about this. Shuggy is unpopular and again while I do agree there’s strong connection between “rival ships” I don’t think that’s the only reason… and like…. Buggy is ugly, isn’t he? He doesn’t have cool style, doesn’t look cool, makes ugly faces all the time, also is a coward. I like him as comedy character and shanks brother though!

I understand where you're coming from when you say Shuggy is unpopular amongst some people (actually, before anyone says anything. It IS an extremely popular ship in Japan but I have seen A LOT of hatred towards it in this side of the fandom, so that's what I'm talking about when I say it's unpopular). I have talked about this before. And I have said a lot of times that the reason why is often because people only focus on looks and Buggy is not conventionally attractive for the fangirly twinkified sexualized gaze numerous sides of the fandom and the general audience seek. Like, I am not forcing people to ship them, but I have had people admitting the only reason they don't is because of the looks, and I personally believe that is a very (despite valid, of course) dull way of seeing ships. And respectfully, I don't care that other gay dudes or all the people in the world agree with you. It's not a red flag to not like Shuggy, what it is a red flag, though, is to come into people's inboxes to do what you're doing!

I know you don't mean to attack me or anybody who ships them but your tone does wonders showing otherwise. Your perception of shipping is just based on looks and the fact that you came here, to a blog that explicitly ships these characters and is fond of Buggy, talking shit about one of the characters' looks... Is just straight-up mean and not following the social etiquette this site should follow, which is "let people do whatever the fuck they want".

So with all due respect, what makes you think I won't find your questions offensive in any way? Because you keep talking bad about a character I like in my inbox for literally no reason. Do you expect me to admit that the ship is unpopular because Buggy is ugly and boring? Well, I do admit people view him as ugly and only a comedy relief, but I don't. Expecting others to find beautiful and interesting the same things you do is having a very close-minded vision that One Piece's plot itself is against.

By the way, you're showing that you clearly don't like Buggy in the slightest because you're only talking about the traits that you find negative about him. But of course, you like him as comedy relief. Of course, you like him as a character in Shanks' story and not as a character himself. Despite Buggy having lots of depth. Your perception of these characters seems, in my opinion, extremely empty and, as I said, only based on looks. And you're free of shipping whatever you want however you want! But please, please, don't do this anymore. This is just petty high school mean girl behavior. Even Regina George would word this in a more polite way.

So, as a little advice for you, let people ship whatever they want without questioning their favorite characters! I am sure you will live a more peaceful life!

[antianakin]

I recognize that this mostly happens because Obi-Wan is and always has been a direct foil for Anakin, but I am SO tired of all of Obi-Wan's more canon love interests ending up being more about making commentary on Anakin and Anidala than they are on exploring OBI-WAN. It's just sad and I'm so tired of it and I think that until people are willing to write a romance for Obi-Wan that isn't actually about Anakin at all, Obi-Wan should just be made off-limits for romance plot lines entirely. Leave the man alone, please, I am begging you.

[papakhan]

I think in game it's kind of presented that Julie Farkas thinks poorly of, if not outright dislikes, the Great Khans which I guess is fair enough but also reeks of the attitude of the writers viewing drug addicts and raiders as subhuman. And I don't think really it lines up with either the Khan/Follower relationship depicted in game nor does it Follow Julie's reestablished personality. I think she's a little exasperated with them but not enough to warrent the "who? Oh you mean those raiders who used to clash with the vegas tribes 🙄" line that she has about them like cmon girl 1) people are like your only allies outside of Freeside and 2) why are you taking the Three Families side in this??? They're causing just as many if not more issues than the Khans even Arcade has lines about how the Families are exploiting Freeside and I can't think who else she means by "vegas tribes" Anyway. It does make sense for her to be annoyed with how they're causing more drug problems in Freeside but i don't think it makes sense for her to be written in a way that makes it sounds like she's angry with the Khans for *using their precious medical knowledge to make the evil morphine rather than the morally good morphine* when really she should be more angry with House/The Families for causing the poverty in Freeside and the NCR for forcing the Khans into the precarious position they're in while disallowing the Followers from truly helping them. The fact that by the time that Fnv comes around the Followers and NCR's relationship has broken down should be enough for the Followers to revisit relations with the Khans since, as I said, the Khans have been the only truly consistent allies of the Followers and more importantly, the NCR JUST MURDERED ALL THEIR CHILDREN. In this essay I will

[normal-about-charcters]

i have a fanfic/universe rewrite in my head of a transformers series and if I ever hunker down and work on it these two will be irrevocably linked together in my head for it