#crystal's thoughts

[fictionadventurer]

Those "modern fairy tales where the princess saves herself" types of books not only misrepresent the gender roles in fairy tales (there are tons of stories where girls get to save the day), but they fundamentally misunderstand the entire genre.

Fairy tales aren't about saving yourself.

These aren't epic myths or heroic legends about the great warriors who slay every monster in their path because they're so awesome. Fairy tales are almost always about ordinary, even incompetent, people who get thrown into strange situations where they only succeed because of the help of others.

It's not a gendered thing. The boy who goes off to seek his fortune is usually the dim-witted third son whose older brothers are the strong, smart ones. The third son succeeds because he is kind to the magical helpers who then complete the tasks for him--and the exact same thing happens when a girl is the main character.

The characters in a fairy tale rarely succeed because they embrace their own strength and take their own path. Much more often, they are told step-by-step what to do, and they succeed because they obey--respecting the wisdom of others.

The core virtue of a fairy tale is not pride, but humility. It's not a story about the strong, but those who are weak, small, helpless. The people who can't do it all on their own, but can recognize the worth and wisdom of others.

Turning this story into a "girl power" (or even a "boy power") story warps it into something that is fundamentally the opposite of a fairy tale, and it has nothing to do with the gender of the main character.

[kyri45]

LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOO

[fear0phobia]

I noticed that in ep 4, when they watch the woman jump off the lighthouse, edwin and crystal have a similar reaction and niko and charles have a similar reaction. what does it mean? idk I just think it's interesting

[claitea]

my favorite slime :)

[karvokr]

munch!gojo who's between your legs– again today for the third time. “mm, what's with the shy act now? you were pulling my hair ten minutes ago.”

he’s grinning, of course. all pretty teeth and flushed cheeks, chin slick, white hair stuck to his forehead like he’s working for it. because he is.

he’s been between your thighs for what feels like hours– talking, teasing, groaning into you like it’s his favorite place on earth (because it is). he hasn’t even fucked you yet and his pupils are blown, his voice wrecked, his hands gripping your thighs like he’ll die if you move an inch.

you try to close your legs, overwhelmed– he growls. “hey. uh-uh. you don’t get to tap out now. not when you were so cocky earlier.”

you didn’t even say anything earlier. you just wore a skirt. and now he’s got your legs thrown over his shoulders and he’s saying “c’mon, gimme one more, one more– be good, baby, let me have it,” like you’re holding out on him.

he’d stay down there all night if you let him (sometimes you do).

[the-travelling-witch]

i know we all got hit hard by the “why couldn’t you love me?” - “i do” - “all of me!” scene between rumi and celine, but what makes this scene hit so much harder is that celine refuses to touch any of rumi’s patterns

while trying to comfort her, celine raises her hand and almost touches rumi’s cheek, the one where her patterns and eye are glowing specifically, but pulls her hand away in the last second. and it’s only after putting her jacket over rumi’s shoulders that she actually makes contact with her. she literally won’t connect -physically and emotionally- with rumi’s demon side

combined with her refusing to look at rumi and even at this point being more concerned with appearances… oh this movie and its metaphors, i’m gonna be so ill

[cracklewink]

I have been wracking my brain on my mane 6 redesign for the past week. Here's my ideas for Rarity!! RD is up next >

[twilightofthesandwiches]

It’s funny… Ramb refer to the Mantle game as being more ‘free’ than the restrictive and railroady ‘Legend of Tenna’. Calling it “the original game, where you decide what to do” is obviously supposed to call into mind Undertale, and so do the designs of the enemies.

But… how ‘free’ is it, really?

Tenna removed the sword-based combat and replaced it with more ‘wholesome’ activities like puzzles and quizzes that progress in a fairly-linear order but… the ‘original game’ was nothing but combat. Fighting is something you have no choice but to do if you want to progress the game. In fact, you have to literally follow orders the game tells you.

This is obviously a huge contrast to Undertale, and Deltarune's Weird Route, as well as the Dragon Blazerz game that seems to have been the in-universe inspiration to this game (as well as kind of an Undertale parallel in its own right).

All of these feature a choice between being a Horrible Murderbastard and solving conflicts through other means to some degree. The Mantle Game is a one where you have to be violent, you basically don’t have a choice.

Sure, I guess you can go to any screen you’d like and decide to fight the enemies in whatever order you want… but by this metric, even “Legend of Tenna” had some degree of non-linearity in terms of which puzzles you do when or the order you pick up keys/take photos. I guess comparatively, Mantle has more freedom of movement, but it also had it's own progression-based roadblocks.

Even when you can upgrade your sword to go ‘out of bounds’ in the Mantle Game, there’s really only one thing to find and one thing to do there.

If anything, you can argue that Tenna’s game is a lot more ‘free’, because Tenna replaced the in-game combat with regular Deltarune battles… which do allow you to choose between different violent and non-violent options.

I’ve often said that Deltarune’s central theme is less “your choices don’t matter” and more like “do your choices matter?”, "what makes your choices matter?" and this feels like an extension of that. How many roadblocks does a game need before it starts feeling truly railroady?

How do games sell you the illusion of freedom, and what do they need to do to make it truly convincing?

Does a game that allows you to do a violence actually feel more ‘free’ than non-violent game, even if they’re both equally restrictive in terms of your interactions?

And of course, neither of these games have any ounce of ‘Freedom’ from Kris’ perspective. Because violence or pacifism, puzzles or swords, they never get to be the one in control.

[starlightseraph]

obsessed with them.

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

Then all those years of building - were they worth anything? Yes - they're just hoping you don't realize it.

Rebecca Sugar going in for the kill with some sketches out of absolutely nowhere. Here's my best attempt at getting an okay-ish image out of a blurry vertical phone recording of a screen. Original video was posted on the official rebeccasugar account on TikTok - a big thank you to @jeejyboard for bringing it to my attention.

[majorlb]

AU where Charles has come to terms with being dead a long time ago. (It's pretty mint, actually. And it brought him to Edwin, the best person in this world or the next.)

That also means that when they meet Crystal, his thought isn't "cute girl", it's "lost amnesiac child".

He argues with Edwin that as the only adults in the vicinity, it's their responsibility to help her.

(Crystal is baffled. Edwin hates that he's right.)

They call her "young lady" and call out things like "Oi Missy! Watch the language!" and tease her about how flustered she looked when Niko showed up.

She hates that she enjoys their encouragement and weird old people humor.

And when she gets her memories back... she's so grateful for their love and support.

Aunt Cindy and Uncle Earl start going to PTA meetings and helping her get her grades back up.

They go to her graduations and offer love and congratulations.

When Aunt Cindy Edwin pats her shoulder and tells her they're proud of her, she does cry, but they don't talk about it.

They don't even tease her when she slips up and calls either of them Dad.

They DO tease her when she catches them kissing and has the same reaction any teenager would have catching their parents kissing.

"EW! GROSS!"

JUST Crystal gains two teenage ghost dads.

And of her real parents find out? So what! If she's forgettable, then they're replaceable.

Also what are they even going to do? Call the cops? Pssh

[landedinpayne]

love how not a single person thought the pink sparkles crystal and niko saw were from anything other than homosexuality because falling in love at first sight with the girl that you live with is just about the most on the nose sapphic experience in existence

[mirellapryce]

I have an especially stupid idea for you all today. One day Charles comes back to the office with a bisexual flag patch added on his coat. Crystal and Niko immediately flag it like "!!!!!" and ask him about it. He just smiles and says "Pretty mint, right? It's got all of your favourite colours." pointing out each colour for Edwin, Crystal and Niko.

Crystal and Niko would love to be touched by this gesture if they weren't busy crying at his ignorance.

It gets worse when he passes Edwin a button with multiple different blue stripes saying that it reminded him of his best mate. Edwin also doesn't know why both girls have their heads in their hands. He thinks this is a lovely gift.

[majunju]

after death and then even after that

[caldoderuby]

[technically-human]

Shop policy.

Esther is here! Port Townsend's very own immortal witch seems to be doing well. She's not that helpful in this case, though.

@i-am-as-normal-as-you-are commissioned this one! Slowly but surely we'll get all the cast reversed