#have I mentioned that you're evil?

[sanfangirl-cynicalromantic]

what would astrid do... if (23) she had to hold hiccup at gunpoint? why would it even occur?

You. Are. Evil

I don't even know what this is.

~Killing ahead~

"C'mon," Astrid grit her teeth. "Don't make me do this," she pleaded. Hiccup stood there impassively, his face shuttered and his jaw clenched.

"I can't," he said emotionlessly. Astrid gripped the barrel of the gun tighter, not daring to move her finger off the trigger under the watchful gaze of Ryker, but paranoid that all it'd take was one little hesitant squeeze and -

"Tell me they're wrong," she demanded. Please, she screamed internally, searching his eyes for answers. A flicker of agony crossed his face. "Tell me you're not - that you haven't -"

"I'm sorry," he croaked. "Its' - you wouldn't understand -"

"How could you betray us?" she shouted incredulously, her arm dripping slightly as she focused on her disbelief and anger. Hiccup, ever unruly but always with the best interests at heart contrasted with Hiccup the cold traitor before her. Hiccup with his crooked smile and warm hands and soft kisses - "You sided with the dragons?" Hiccup didn't say anything. she gaped in outrage. "They're monsters-"

"No!" Hiccup interrupted her vehemently, a wild look in his eye. She tamped back the flash of fear at his expression, horror spreading through her body like the a broken yolk spilling out of a cracked egg. "They're not monsters," he wrung his hands carefully, ever so aware of the gleaming gun still in her hand, still pointed at him.

"They've killed hundreds of-"

"And we kill thousands!" he cried. "Dragons are beautiful creatures and you're running them to the brink of extinction-"

"I am protecting people," she shot back, stung. He stared at her stonily. She could see the walls in his eyes go up, strong as the thick metal doors of this institution dedicated to taking down fire breathing threats through specialized weaponry and rigid testing. It hurt, seeing the hardened look in his eyes that was just too close to hate. He looked a little insane under the white fluorescent lights, casting stark shadows in the sharp hollows of his cheeks, the bruises and brutality showing in the unforgiving swollen blotches. She hadn't believed them when they'd told her of his treachery. She had been so sure she knew him better than this, so shocked at his admissions and Ryker's smug face. This was happening. Hiccup was defending the very dragons that had taken away his family - her family, like they hadn't joined this faction because of their want for revenge in the first place.

"This isn't you," she whispered. "Hiccup, please. There's still hope. Whatever you've done, we can fix this." He shook his head and she swallowed down the lump that rose in her throat.

"Please, Astrid," he started to babble, the desperation of a man who knew he was about to die kicking in. She'd seen this stage before, had watched other traitors be killed, had stood behind the executioner. "They're not what we think they are. I can show you! Please -" Astrid lifted her chin and willed it not to tremble. This was her chance. This was her test to advance. But at what cost? She leveled the gun right between his eyes.

Bang!

She couldn't stop the sob that escaped her throat as she inhaled the disgusting scent of gunpowder. Hiccup opened his eyes to stare disbelievingly at the blood spreading across the tile. Ryker lay instantly dead on the floor, a frozen look of shocked anger etched upon his face. His open eyes stared accusingly at the ceiling. Astrid let her arm drop to her side, horror and fatigue washing over her.

"Go," she said in a flat voice, unable to look at him. "I never want to see you again."

[yaeggravate]

capitano voice: @ me next time

[hanzajesthanza]

the training montage in crossroads re-ignited a headcanon i had of geralt waking up and doing gymnastics, performing kickflips and mid-air spins around on a fencepost outside an hour before sunrise to ‘limber up,’ and bleary-eyed dandelion wrapping himself up in a blanket to be like "heyyy... what the hell are you doing 💖"

[aroaessidhe]

2025 reads / storygraph

The Stars Too Fondly

scifi romcom

20 years ago a deep space mission was supposed to depart for Proxima Centauri but the entire crew disappeared before launch

now a group of friends who’ve spent their whole lives obsessed with it break into the ship to try and figure out what happened - but when they go to look at the dark matter engine, it turns on and starts sending them into space - and gives them strange magical abilities

along with a holographic ai copy of the ship’s captain, they have to deal with their strange abilities, reckon with the fact they might be spending years of their lives in space, and unravel the mystery of what happened to the old crew

bi & lesbian MCs, trans girl & nonbinary aroace side characters

[what-is-it-to-be-pk-esque]

Ok I know I'm heavily biased here but like I kinda love that Astarion's romance is one of the few in this type of video game where you basically end up canonically unmarried and childfree in his "good" ending? Just travelling the world??

Like it's honestly the millennial dream lmfaoo cannot believe i chose what would undoubtedly be my favorite option, first try

[taffybee]

not that anyone's asking BUT my hot take on giovanni is he should be retired rn. not from like a "the pokemon company should stop talking about him" (weeeeelll that's sort of part of it but. hear me out) kind of way BUT in a. he should LITERALLY not be doing team rocket shit in ANY canon universe anymore. and it would be TOTALLY in-character of him to do so if the medias still using him characterized him the way he should be. welcome to my ted talk let me explain myself

FULL DISCLOSURE: i like giovanni. like, a not normal amount i fear. all of that opening sounds like i don't but i totally feel stupid emotions about this guy. anyways:

GEN 1. gen 1 games are like... NOT known for their compelling dialogue. and in cases like archie and maxie in gen 3 getting remakes in gen 6, their characterization and dialogue gets (kind of subjectively but i feel this is a popular opinion anyways) Much Better. i think that goes for a Lot of stuff where they give old guys new dialogue in spin offs (gestures at masters ex which i think is Great for making characters Actually Interesting)

but i feel like with giovanni there's been a DOWNGRADE in character since his appearance because he no longer Progresses.

i WILL say masters ex does Some Work to try and make him Deeper than just "I'm Evil for the sake of Being Evil grahgghh 😈" but it's like. overshadowed by All The Other Stuff.

plus he IS rainbow rocket giovanni in masters and i'm like OBSESSEDDD with team rainbow rocket. but i also don't think it should. Exist. I'M GLAD IT DOES but i find it out of character for giovanni to do At All. I CAN EXPLAIN I PROMISE.

team rocket's goals as an organization are and always have been: make money via stealing or otherwise exploiting pokémon. that's all it NEEDED to be. because it was gen 1 and no one needed to be ripping apart the universe yet.

giovanni himself sees pokemon as a means to an end. that much has stayed consistent in all of his appearances. but what CHANGES things in what happens when he LOSES for the FINAL TIME in r/b/y:

I WILL DEDICATE MY LIFE TO THE STUDY OF POKEMON. that's like CRAZY sort of redemption. and you Could argue against me to say "well have you considered he was lying" and i Have but i think it's SO much cooler if he was being legit. if he was so Changed by losing So Many Times to a little boy who just cared So Much for his pokémon that he needed to experience that for himself.

I mentioned in my previous giovanni post that pokémon origins has characterized giovanni "right" and THAT'S because via continuously fighting red and seeing his passion for battling as well as his love of pokémon firsthand, giovanni rediscovers his lost passion for pokémon that he had when HE was younger, and he sees HIMSELF in who red is and decides to disband team rocket after their gym battle so he can turn his life around. i HIGHLY recommend watching episode 3 of origins if you haven't seen it. it's freaking Marvelous.

ANYWAYS. THIS is the characterization of giovanni i support the MOST because it's not terribly complicated but still has nice depth to his character that you could read into.

BUT if we're going by this characterization of him, he should. NOT BE DOING TEAM ROCKET STUFF NOW! he SHOULD have been retired storywise by game freak after that and retired job-wise. studying pokémon and touching grass.

but THEN. gen 2 happens. (... well, gen 2 and the first gens 1/2 remakes.)

gen 2 introduces the concept of "let's bring giovanni back". which i wouldn't complain about if giovanni wasn't ALSO trying to get back. WHY. WE ESTABLISHED IN THE FIRST GAME HE'S DONE. and gen 2 didn't DIRECTLY SAY giovanni was up to come back (as far as i'm aware, i did NOT play gsc, someone correct me if i'm wrong). but when frlg released, they Changed dialogue from the original to FIT this idea:

NOW "studying pokemon" has become "training". there IS no character development for him here, he JUST wants to get stronger to be a Better mob boss. and this is supported by the celebi time travel event where he's ABOUT to rejoin team rocket before you beat him

the big problem with this (and any giovanni dialogue in the time travel event) for me is that it frames everything that happened to him in gen 1 as "giovanni wasn't a good enough mob boss then but now that he's had some time to Train he's ready to be a Better Mob Boss" WRONG! THAT WAS NEVER THE ISSUE!! part of the pros of team rocket at its peak was that giovanni was Unknown to most and could direct operations in the shadows AND he could keep his business as a gym leader because NO ONE KNEW. but now EVERYONE knows and team rocket can LITERALLY NEVER REACH THAT PEAK AGAIN. the ONLY CORRECT thing to do in this situation is Disband and Do Other Shit (cough cough study pokémon and touch grass cough cough)

this seems obvious to me that this desire to keep dragging him back into things is the games way of being like "woaahh!! callback time!!" and then later down the line "woaaahh!! nostalgia time!!!" (because they wouldn't have retconned that final gen 1 dialogue if it wasn't) and while i can Appreciate it to a degree (because i am Not Immune to getting STUPID EXCITED when old blorbos show up) i think continuing to make giovanni show up to Be Evil isn't the way to go about it. or at LEAST not canon timeline giovanni.

and the gen 1/2 remakes for ME is like... the beginning of the issue, but as we've gotten Further Away from gen 1 in time, the more i feel they stray from where he ended in the original in favor of making him More Blandly Evil. he feels constrained to one-liners about how the worlds an EVIL PLACE and he's just playing the game or whatever alpha sigma shit he's on in the masters trainer lodge

rainbow rocket is kind of CRAZY to me because they take this mob boss who likes exploiting pokemon and scientists for money and they make him start. opening interdimensional bad ending au wormholes to take over the world with aliens. (also having him willing to share the power with all the other evil bosses, some who have in their universes Successfully taken over the world??? heeeellll no. not even my proposed toned down characterization of this guy would be cool with that realistically.) it all just seems to be Way Beyond what team rocket SHOULD be doing. they're The Mafia. making The Mafia open wormholes is CRAZY. but giovanni HAS to be the main guy because. Nostalgia.

idk how much sense i make when i say this but when you make team rocket less cunning and less focused on doing their work in the shadows and running their shady operations stealthily. you get. a more ambitious team skull. and there's nothing WRONG with team skull but it's NOT WHAT TEAM ROCKET IS SUPPOSED TO BE. they've got more of a reputation than that but modern depictions of giovanni and the organization as a whole water him down to "i love Causing Problems" and less "i love Good Business"

whatever. giovanni in modern depictions MAKES SENSE if you followed along the slow regression of his character in real time. but i feel like if you look where he is now and look where he Ended in r/b/y you have like. Two Different Characters. and i think having a redeemed or even kind-of-half-redeemed giovanni could be SO much more interesting in showing up again than having him be Generally Evil

AND IT'S NOT LIKE THAT REALLY POSES ISSUES FOR MASTERS EX. cyrus is half-reformed WITHIN the story. archie and maxie too (although they were already kind of like that). lysandre HAS an evil moment but he DOESN'T DIE like he does in canon and THEN he's FINE. he still "runs" team flare but he's NOT LONGER A THREAT TO THE PROTAGONISTS

what i think COULD'VE been cool in some hypothetical scenario is have giovanni come back for cameos but Not as team rocket's leader. have him Turn Down the rocket admin radio broadcast. hell, having him come back to help the player Stop Them if he feels particularly annoyed. LET THAT MAN GO ON VACATION. WHATEVER. there's SO MUCH you can do with him the way cameos are done for the Other non-evil characters and there are options where you could Still battle him as a Test Of Strength but THERE'S JUST. SO MUCH WRONG WITH HIM STILL BEING OVERTLY EVIL.

i understand keeping giovanni evil for nostalgia. i Get it i PROMISE i do. i just think it makes him a weaker character, and the companies sacrifice character development for sales. but if you wanted to have a bad guy who was JUST BAD and would CONTINUE to be bad if given the chance,

GHETSIS IS. RIGHT THERE.

that's the end of that for me i think. i'm SO down to discuss or debate this take for fun. i just think giovanni should retire and pet his cat because it's funny.

[utilitycaster]

Hi again! Thanks for taking the time to answer, it honestly was very helpful!

For the first point, the thing I had in mind was the last 4-sided dive from 43:23. To your point, it's honestly less explicitly mentioned that I remembered; but what I had in mind is Matt saying: "He's watched it [...] There's a lot of broken information [...] He's had time to sit with it, to find something that is very important to him and is now showing it to you for reasons he has."

And about the last point, it's not condescending at all! "Wait for it" is something I tell people a lot and I am told a lot when watching something with a lot of excitement, it happens! But my problem isn't really that I can't see them making horrible decisions in the next episode (I'll sure they will, they don't really have non-horrible options and I'm looking forward to it!); my problem is that the set up to whatever is going to happen has been so sympathetic and understanding that even if Luds manages to prove that are problems here with the gods, it will be kinda impossible to then follow it up with "therefore I think they should all die actually!"

However, to your second point, I do think I need to sit with this a bit longer and maybe go into the main tag to read some bad takes to make it more understandable lol, so feel free to not publish this at all if you don't want!

No worries and glad it didn't come off as condescending!

I really do think the situation is that Ludinus does think the gods should all die for this. For what it's worth I think this is what makes him a great villain and a very compelling and real one. I really do believe there are people who see an impossible life-threatening situation and judge those who act imperfectly out of self-preservation and terror more than those who lie down and let themselves be killed.

For of lack of a better way to put it, and deliberately avoiding any specific irl political positions, I think it is always a good exercise to consider why someone may hold political views that are entirely batshit fucking nuts to you. I think of Brennan's "personality pre-dates ideology" line a lot because a lot of political views I find hateful or lacking in empathy or lazy or stupid are based in either valid but not objective emotions; or in good intentions lacking a firm grounding in reality. One will never get anywhere invalidating their feelings, because they do really feel them; the only way forward is to say "just because you feel these real feelings does not mean you can take these harmful actions." So I do think, for example, that Ludinus is genuinely hurt and traumatized. It's just that I don't think he understands that other people's response to hurt and trauma isn't "so kill everyone who caused this" and indeed they might think that's just as bad if not worse. And again, very intelligent people can still fall into this trap.

[thedrotter]

I have a gift for y'all today !!! 😊 Ever wanted to find a line in Re:Kinder in a single place for the sake of reference?? How about multiple chunks of lines. how about all the little variations that arise in the text with it's many endings, item descriptions, text that comes from interacting with the enviroment, and character info from the menu without having to boot up the game and go through it at long minutes!!???

well i sure did😊 Since I do a lot of fanart and think up my own silly theories and thoughts that need me to reference the game lines a lot, i have made a transcript for it for convenience's sake. A weirdly thorough transcript handwritten and proofread by me including all character lines available in-game. And I'm sharing it with you all today for anyone that wants it !!! :3 To use as a reference for creative fanworks or a quick search for a line in-game, whatever you wish to use it for!!

It uses the english translation of the game by vgperson. So naturally all credit for the game lines available in here is to her and Parun who made the game.

I did my best to organize it in a way easy to digest. Do note that I'm still human, and there's still the chance for mistake in it no matter how much I've proofread it, since I'm not even an english native speaker ^^. But I hope it serves you well nonetheless if you wish to use it.

That's my gift for today!!! Not the usual art, but still a project I'm proud of. Enjoy!!! 😊

[weirdo-from-bonesborough]

okay i think enough time has passed that i can joke about it

Jason: Your methods are ineffective. If you don't permanently stop criminals they will just continue to hurt people. Bruce: *finds a permanent way to stop people from being violent and uses it on Jason, a dangerous criminal* Jason:

[a-hollow-forest]

genuine fucking shoutout to all the guys that live with false accusation OCD & have their own mental illness used as 'proof' that they're 'just as bad as a rapist' or just flat out get called rapists for being honest and open about a very fucking serious mental health condition. or those too scared to ever admit to it in the first place because they've seen it happen to others who were

[fagdykevash]

some of y'all are monsters ngl

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

All the "Rick became worse than Shane" this and "Negan was actually the good guy" that-

Y'all forget that Shane SA'd Lori and was willing to kill his best friend to keep her, not even giving a shit how she feels. Rick would never. And he would never burn his own people's faces off for being 'disobedient'. He was a total dictator at times but to a group who actually love and care about eachother. A family who aren't glorified bandits thinking they're entitled to everybody's stuff and would kill you if you didn't give it. Dude was very trigger-happy for a while there, but he brought it back. There's a lot of similarites between Rick, Negan and Shane but the differences are key. Can y'all stop tryna be so transcendent?

[outdraws]

expanding upon my characterization of l.eon, his motivations and breaking the typical heroic mold.

the events at rac.coon city catapult him past his previous perceptions about the world and he is wrestling with his place in current state of affairs. he has a drive to help people more than himself and most believe it stems from an idealistic view but he is more grounded and alone than most think.

there is this overbearing need to protect others and i won't say it comes from one single thing but a lot of experience and factors he dealt with prior to being assigned to rpd. he dislikes cruelty/abuse but views it in a sense of being unnecessary. it frustrates him and he can empathize but the latter tends to cycle back to frustration. he thinks he'll feel better if he helps.

( i won't delve into his time within special forces but i will say i diverge a bit more here, since i don't have him forcibly enrolled, at least not the same amount as insinuated by game cutscenes )

he comes back and actively enrolls into the military with goals to climb higher. in the beginning he didn't make an immediate decision when presented but eventually he does.

fast forward a bit, he is highly guarded and tends to place mission/directive above all else. the only times he is really free is when he's on the field, where he can freely collect information. what he wants is the bigger picture.

leon despises the system that made him, as well as those in charge of it. but the knife driving his anger is sharpened by all that he learns - the affiliations that come to light. and he isn't quick to drive that knife anywhere. he recognizes the merits to having heads where they count, the benefits of structure and the image of solidarity. he isn't naive and he understands and accepts that he is fighting under an influence he loathes. ( all terms and conditions right? ).

( it follows him well into the fourth installment )

i would like to point out that leon has trouble viewing baby eagle as anything but a task that needs completion. initially, he keeps up that wall of duty masking his desire to sap more information. but as the mission progresses and he is de-stabilized by rough reminders and the infection, his attitude slightly changes.

leon, by himself, is more aggressive and less direct with a pinch of gorilla warfare tactics. but when within the company of ashley, he is willing to take the more predictable approach, if it means she feels a bit more comfortable. slowing down and operating on terrain more frequently traveled. but the beginning is hard and he slowly begins to recognize it. steering back to his previous " abuse isn't necessary " / " why am i doing this? " mindset. that self-awareness starts creeping up on him.

and then she asks him if they're a team.

with ashley it's like peering into a mirror full of ghosts. and he remembers saying this to someone once it's like seeing brief flashes of the sun while locked in a cell angled towards the dark.

leon is not a hero. he is a stubborn, selfish, burdened soul. but ironically capable of the most unfiltered altruism. he is still guarded with answering and bantering but in his own words "things need to be different this time".

[lustyargonianmaid]

wait orin is a product of incest????

[jestiamy]

horrified by the realization that jestiamy is very incredibly easily shortened to jes(s) and some day if I actually get mutuals on here that aren't already my friends I may be called this at some point

[aceoflames]

Of course my family is talking about p*dos as if they're a part of the LGBTQ+ community or we support them at all

Then when a member of the LGBTQ+ community points out how BS it is and that it's just p*dos dragging the LGBTQ+ community's name through the dirt they say "No but they do support it!" without any examples or evidence that ISN'T literally a p*do talking about it