#i don’t think i’ve ever REALLY seen fanart of this ship so i guess good for me

[bugisbonkerz]

why am i seeing yellow x red fanart. BEGONE

[jjtheresidentbaby]

Rating Stranger Things Ships

(I’ve seen so many people do this so I wanted to)

(Some of these don’t have ship names as I can’t remember them or just can’t spell sheubeud)

(Btw feel free to send in any asks you have any these or just want me to talk more abt them)

- Byler 8/10- I love them but I understand the people who don’t. Honestly before season 4 Will and Mike were low on the favorite character tower, they were basically at the bottom actually. But I love Will in season 4 and season 4 Mike is so good to me (even if he’s oblivious). Also them being absolute idiots when they start dating is canon, just little whispers back and forth, Mike crushing will in his sleep, wills constant need to do laundry bc Mike drools in his sleep, Mike posing funny for paintings, Will getting his picture taken by Mike every five seconds- just awe

- Mileven- 4/10- Eh. I didn’t even like them in 1&2 so there isn’t much to say, I think season 3 showed some cute moments and the part in the pizza place in 4 was so cute to me. I don’t really love the idea of them staying together but I get peoples liking to them

- Jopper- 10/10- I mean come on, the best, love them, they need to get married and move in together

- Jancy- 5/10- I loved them in 1&2 but three ruined them, it was just so bad and then 4 on top of that proves they need to break up. It’s that thing where the build up is way better than the actual thing, they just aren’t it and some of their fans get crazy so it makes me dislike the ship even more

- Stancy- 8/10- my loves <3, would be a 10/10 if steve didn’t do that billboard sign thing in 1. Steve being a housewife while Nancy is out making the money sounds like heaven to me. Lovers to enemies to friends to lovers again trope give me (I know they weren’t really enemies but shush) (also if anyone tells me Steve would force Nancy to have kids, fuck off and shut up, disrespectfully)

- Steddie- 3/10- IM SORRY!!! They just got so much hype and for what?? I don’t hate them or anything but they do nothing for me. They’re just eh. Meh. Bleh. Bland I guess

- Ronance- 6/10- I could see it and I could get behind it but it’s not like my otp or anything. They are super adorable and I love seeing fanart for them so yeah, good ship just not my fav

- Jargyle- 10/10- if you don’t think they’re gay you’re just plain dumb. Stoner bfs for life

- Stonathan- 8/10- need I say more? Steve and Johnathan? Yeah. Yup. 1&2 just make them have the best enemies to lovers arc known to man

- Steve x Johnathan x Argyle- 10/10- I feel like this is self explanatory but yeah them, them over so many

Steve x Johnathan x Argyle x Nancy -11/10- YES I NEED IT!!! It’d solve every single problem ever!! Omg I would sob so bad if I ever found a fic of them

- Stoncy- 10/10- one of my favorite ship of the older kids. They’d be perfect and having Robin third wheel at all times is great, they are everything to me. The three of them in 2 makes me feral

- Lumax- 10/10- how can it not be a 10/10??? It’s perfcet!! Max is so great for Lucas and Lucas is so great for max!! I love them!! Would die for both of them <3

- Elumax- 10/10- give it to me now!! They’d be so fucking adorable and just so pure. I’d die for the three of them

- Elmax- 9/10- add Lucas and boom 10/10, I’m a sucker for these two together though and that mall scene remains one of my favorites out of the whole show

- Byclair- 5/10- okay so I see potential but it’s nothing I’m actively thinking about a lot, they’d be cute tho

- Madwheeler- 7/10- id pay money for them to be together in a different universe where they’re snarky sarcastic partners that shit on everyone and love doing it!! Their relationship would make me giggle and I know it. They have actual potential for enemies to lovers but just not canon cause y’know Lucas is <3

- Wheelclair- 8/10- yup I see it and I love it. Nerdy broody boyfriend with jock teasing boyfriend?? Yup. They’d be so smart together don’t even lie, also Lucas teaching Mike how to play basketball is a must. Them skipping hellfire to make out- yup! Mm them <3

- Dustin x Suzie 4/10- okay I like season 4 them as Suzie is a queen but season 3 made me annoyed a bit, like girl shut up about a song when the worlds collapsing

- Henderhop - 6/10- I can see it and they’d be adorable but I wish they had more interactions in the show. Like yes they’d be adorable but I have a hard time picturing it with how little I can think of them that relates to actual scenes

- Lucas x Dustin - 5/10- I see it okay but they just meh for me, like season 1 them yeah but I much prefer max and Lucas

- Dustin x Max- 2/10- I remember rooting for Lucas when watching 2 for the first time and my points still stand, it wouldn’t work out good and I know it. Max is too mature (?that sounds mean but I can’t think of another word) for Dustin and it’d crumble so fast

- Will x Lucas- 5/10- okay yeah I can see it but I think it falls into the category of the not enough screen time together for me to get a good visual of how it would play out

- anything with Billy- 0/10- he’s racist and abusive stop trying to pretend he isn’t

[miranimeaeclipse]

¡Hola! Bonjour! Hello in Russian!

Dang, it’s been a good minute since I posted something madrigalcest related. I guess it was because of something someone said it really got to me so I stopped posting for a while. But then I realized, Hey! I don’t give a shit what other people think! Only the ones that aren’t dickheads!

Speaking of, have you guys seen the trailer for The Umbrella Academy S3?! AHHHHH Im so excited, I can’t wait! The only thing that’s ruining it for me is the Fiveya/Fiktor gc that I’m in on Instagram. God, if only you guys knew the things they said on there. They’re starting to give me a migraine.

ANYWAY, enough of that. So I come to you with another madrigalcest ship post. Guess which ship it is! Nope, I’ll just tell you.

Give it up for ISALORES Y’ALL!!!!!! *cue applause*

I was going to do a different ship at first because I already made a ship post with Isabela in it. But this one is dedicated to a new friend of mine who told me they ship Isalores. But I’m not going to tell you who it is because they’re not comfortable coming out about it yet.

So, I found some A M A Z I N G Isalores fanart on Pinterest because I can’t draw for shit. I couldn’t draw to save my own life. Unfortunately, my parents don’t have that gene so I didn’t get it either. So all I can do is find content for you. IF of course, the artists are ok with it.

Poor Mariano😂 but to be honest, I don’t ship him with Dolores anyway. I was reading this CamiMira fanfic on Ao3 and it had the Luisa x Mariano ship and I’ve been in love with it ever since. Too bad I can’t find any content on it, boo hoo😞 BUT MOVING ON….

The animators knew what they were doing. They knew what we wanted and they gave it to us! THANK YOU ANIMATORS!

Is anybody else imagining 1 of these 2 things right now? 1) Isabela seductively putting a flower in Dolores’s hair? Or 2) Dolores laying in Isabelas lap while Isabela makes her a flower crown?

Ooh modern style, nice. Personally, I don’t like mixing modern reality with whatever fandom I’m in. But I’m really loving the modern Encanto art. Not to mention, modern Isabela is HOT🔥🔥🔥

Is it too much to ask to see our favorite ships dancing together? This is with any fandom. I already got my wish with Harry Potter, somewhat TUA, and Gakuen Alice but not with any other fandom. BOOOOO! Now I’m gonna sit here and pout about it.

Or not ‘cause I gotta finish this. So NONE of these belong to me, just making that 1000% clear. I have no idea who the artists are because Pinterest is never accurate. Unless those initials at the bottom of the fourth picture mean something. If that’s the artist, then it belongs to MNM.

Y’know now that I think about it, I wish I could find more than just art. Like TikTok videos, YouTube shorts, etc. but we all know both of those platforms are pretty toxic. TikTok being the MOST toxic out of all the social media platforms.

UGH! Humans suck, am I right? Of course I am. Good thing I’m an alien from the planet Netflix. You wouldn’t know about it because it’s in the Pizza galaxy. WHY DID I EVER COME TO THIS PLANET?!

Anyway, I gotta get some sleep because I have to work in the morning😫😫😫😫 Good Night!

[ninarances15]

Just because us Asians use honourifics, that doesn’t mean we are all blood related, Jesus Christ...

As an Asian and a Hetalian, I just want to say something on this whole discourse.

I don’t know much about the discourse surrounding @frukmerunning, but I have read people’s post about it. For those who don’t know, she made an Instagram story on how she doesn’t see China and Japan as blood relatives, and they technically aren’t in canon, and that Nichu isn’t incest in her own opinion. After that, people started to call her a pro shipper of inc*st, a p*do, and even had the audacity to doxx her! Making her delete all of her social media accounts.

Ok, people have their own opinions and views when it comes to Hetalia characters. Personally, I don’t see China and Japan as relatives either, and if I do, it would be a bit weird for me and that would be racist. Just because us Asians refer to our elders as “big brother”, “big sister”, “auntie”, “uncle”, etc. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re related! It’s our culture and our own way of showing respect! (Jesus Christ, it’s like how people say all Asians look alike🙄. If it’s a joke, sure. But if you really think we look the same, well no, we’re not physically alike.) Just because Japan calls China his “big brother” that doesn’t mean they’re both blood related. And shipping Nichu isn’t p*do (however, it will be considered p*do if someone ships China x child!Japan).

I think the same thing can be said to America and England, Spain and Romano, etc. it’s not incest, nor is it p*do to ship them (for me, they’re not related in any way, and it will only be p*do if people ship England x child!America, Spain x chibimano, etc.) But again, this is just my opinion, and people have their own, I know that.

BUT REALLY, WAS IT NECESSARY  TO DOXX AND INSULT SOMEONE JUST BECAUSE THEY SAID A HARMLESS OPINION?! JUST BECAUSE THEY DON’T SEE NICHU AND JAPAN AND CHINA AS RELATIVES, THAT DOESN’T MEAN THEY SHIP THEM!

I ship Philippines and Indonesia (I’m not sure if the buff guy is him), they are both Southeast Asians, but they are NOT AND I MEAN NOT RELATED! Honestly, I would be confused and offended if people will tell me that shipping them is wrong because it’s incest.

In this case, imagine China and Japan as roommates, living in the same house, but have separate rooms, but they are not related whatsoever. The house is the East Asian region, and the separate rooms are the independent lands that each country has in real life. Same thing can be said, after the amount of fanart I’ve seen of the Asians together, like one big happy family (I have no problem if people see them as that, but I would just say “no”, that doesn’t mean we’re related. Despite the stereotype that Asians get along and love each other. In real life, there are discourse between those real countries.)

I know some people see them as relatives and that’s fine, just don’t shove it down other people’s throats. Some don’t see them as relatives, but don’t shove that down other people’s throats.

I don’t want to point fingers, but there are so many posts indicating that the ones who bullied @frukmerunning are Westerns. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met some people from the West and they’re really nice. But what I really hate is that the harassers are the ones that overshadow the good ones, because of so many drama happening in the anime community (and maybe many others).

Listen, just because you guys don’t call your elders with honourifics before their name that much, and think you’re ALWAYS right, and that different cultures (in this case, Asian culture) are “alien” to you, that doesn’t mean you have the right to harass someone, bully them, insult them, and think you’re always the right person in this argument. Because, honestly, what happened in this discourse, makes people like you lower than anyone else. And all cultures are different, people have a different way of living.

Also, isn’t the whole point of Hetalia is to join together, make pasta not war, and just have fun learning each other’s culture and history, because we’re all equal at the end of the day, even though we laugh at each other’s stereotypes. And not being biased on whose culture is “correct” and whose is “wrong”? I literally hoped that this fandom improved and moved on to be better ever since HWS came out, but no, with this whole discourse happening, I’m so disappointed😑😑😑.

I’m gonna ask you guys this: Would you guys do the same thing to Hima? Because he (I’m guessing) doesn’t see all Asian countries (even his own) as blood relatives. How would you feel if someone did the exact same thing to you? People like you seem to enjoy bullying someone, I’m guessing you would love it if someone bullied you too. But I would also like to add, even if @frukmerunning does ship Nichu, that doesn’t give you the right to bully her. That still makes you lower than anyone and you won’t achieve anything, other than shame and regret and a bad portrayal of yourself from other people’s perspectives.

With this whole discourse, I’m beginning to think bullying and disrespect is part of culture too, huh? I guess it’s a lot easier than simply clicking away when you know someone will talk about something you don’t like.

Anyway, even though @frukmerunning’s social medias are deleted, you can still support her redbubble here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/frukmerunning/shop#profile

(With this whole discourse, you learned a fact: Asians use honourifics to respect their elders (relative, older friends, etc.) I have friends that are older than me, and I use honourifics. Until I stopped, since my friends don’t mind being called by their names. But just to make sure, learn honourifics if you met someone who’s Asian and older than you, out of respect. (I don’t think Asians are the only ones with honourifics, but I’m just not sure. But correct me on that.)) *sighs* First, people generalize all Asians look the same; second, generalize that the only Asians that exist are China, Japan, and South Korea; and now generalizing that we’re all related????

[smp-boundaries]

List of Boundaries: CaptainSparklez

Violence in fanworks: In one of his subreddit videos, Jordan reacts positively to a bloody drawing of him being accidentally stabbed by Tubbo, showing that at least in fanart, he is okay with violence and death.

Fanfiction: Jordan has done two videos where he read fanfiction, one of which was an x reader, and reacted positively both times. This shows that he is okay with fanfiction and the x reader did not appear to put him off, as he specifically chose it for a Valentine’s Day video.

Shipping: There is no distinct evidence for Jordan being for or against shipping as a whole. He seems comfortable with being shipped with Tom Cassell (Syndicate) as evidenced by various videos where they joke about kissing and being shipped together. On the other hand, in the third MC Ultimate, when AntVenom made a joking comment about SparkAnt (their ship name) being revived after they both respawned, Jordan replied with distaste, implying that he doesn’t like being shipped with AntVenom. He has also spoken on multiple occasions against being shipped with Lady Ianite (from the Mianite series), and shows discomfort when looking at romantic fanart of them.

AUs where Jordan is Tubbo’s and/or Crumb’s father: Jordan has reacted positively to fanart of Tubbo and Crumb as his children and is accepting of the AU. However, he seems to be unaware that it is an AU and not canon on the Dream SMP, therefore this cannot be used as evidence for his stance on AUs in general.

General PSA: Jordan does not like people prying into his personal life, which includes his IRL friends and relationship status. He doesn’t disclose this information and people should respect this about him.

Evidence: Jordan reacting to violent fanart, CaptainSparklez reads a CaptainSparklez fanfiction, Jordan reads an x reader, Jordan, Tom, and Mini Ladd joking about shipping, Jordan reacting negatively to the idea of SparkAnt (Jordan/Anteler), Jordan reacting negatively to Sparkanite, Jordan talking about Tubbo and Crumb being his children, Jordan talking about how it’s weird when people ask about his IRL relationships

clip transcripts below cut

reacting to violent fanart Jordan: (reading reddit post) uh, “blood. It was a mistake.” (opens post, revealing Among Us fanart) ah, no, dude.. (playing it up for the bit) ah no, back to back! I can’t believe I have to relive this moment again and again! I don’t think I - it’s - it’s - y’know, I don’t think I ever betrayed him, but I got betrayed in return. It was hard.

Jordan, Tom, and Mini Ladd joke about shipping Tom: (hugging Jordan and Mini Ladd) all in - all in, all in, all in - this feels good. hey, no kissing tonight, alright? Jordan: really? Tom: no kiss - (Mini Ladd kisses his cheek) okay. (looks at Jordan, points to cheek expectantly) Jordan: (kisses Tom’s cheek) Tom: (laughs) oh yeah!

reacting negatively to the idea of SparkAnt (Jordan/Anteler) Anteler: this is team Sparkant, being revived Jordan: no, not that - not that word.

reacting negatively to Sparkanite Jordan: alright people do this weird shipping thing with me, and Ianite, and I realize that it kinda stems from season two but let’s just - I feel like we need to keep it as a platonic relationship between a follower and their god, alright? Ianite is m’lady, my god, it doesn’t have to become like a romantic thing. Alright? alright. cool.

about Tubbo and Crumb being his children Jordan: (reading reddit post) “the Tubbo origin story is growing.” (opens post, revealing fanart) Is that Tubbo jumping out of the ____ to catch a bee? and then Crumb saying “there can be only one?” There actually - I’ve seen things on twitter though - Inga(?), who - who does lots of art and stuff and has done some of the MCC thumbnails, like, did a drawing where I was Tubbo’s dad in the Dream SMP server and I was like “is this a thing that’s actually going on?” I know nothing, I’m confused. But I guess I’m like - I’m Tubbo’s dad. on the server. I have no - I geniunely don’t know, but that’s what I’ve heard. And I’m like “oh, okay.” I guess - y’know. I did say I wasn’t having kids but there wasn’t anything about a kid that already has been had. So I guess it works. It doesn’t - yeah - doesn’t mess with my take. But also we have Crumb now. (laughs) “There can be only one.” But it’s been established that I’m his dad I guess, so - so, there has to be two. It’s already been said and done.

talking about it being weird when people ask about his IRL relationships Jordan: (reading reddit post) “Expose yourself, Jardoon. Did you break quarantine for a video?” (opens post, revealing screenshot of Youtube comments under his video) I can’t - I can’t, like, it’s so - it’s so weird.. to me, that every comment is just - who filmed the video - does any other channel get that? It’s bizzare - like I - I feel like other channels just have people film their videos and it’s - the entirety of the comments section isn’t, “who filmed the video,” it’s - it’s about the video content itself. I just - I mean, I don’t know for sure. Maybe that is a thing on other channels. But - also … and also, I do know other people who live in the general LA area. I’m not just completely solo without the ability to reach out to a single person. I know as much as I stay at home and am confined, I do know other people. Weird flex, I know. “Woah, this guy, look at him out here - knows other people? Who exist? Not just on the internet? Oh ho, mister fancy out here dude, okay. He’s got real life acquaintances and all that. Alright, way to flex on us all!” But I - oh my god dude, it’s so weird. And I made this comparison in my stream a couple days ago, that it’s like my mom when she’s asking about plans and what I’m doing, and I’ll be like, “oh, I’m going to such-and-such with friends,” …. she’ll be like “oh, what’s their name?” And I just think - I mean it’s - you’re not gonna meet them. Are you gonna look up their - like are you gonna look their name plus my name online to try to figure out who they are? I’m confused in that regard. It’s just a person who I know. And - and then, anyway, it’s just - you guys are my mom. (laughs) So that’s where we are with this.

[itsclydebitches]

Please stop putting Rwde in the main tags holy shit. Blocked tags dont work on trending tags

Okay, today we're going to have a talk about curating your own content online. This isn’t the first time I’ve had an anon, somewhat angrily, demand that I stop using the “RWBY” tag and I’m sure it won’t be the last. However, my answer remains the same: No. Sorry. I’m not going to stop. Why?

Because my posts are about RWBY.

In case the above isn’t answer enough, let’s do a quick FAQs.

Why are you using the “RWBY” tag when so many of your posts are critical?

Because, as said, my posts are about RWBY. That’s the subject. I’ve been in the RWBY tumblr fandom for over five years now. I want all my RWBY content accessible in one place on my blog, not divided up between praise posts, critical posts, fanart, fic, etc. If an easy division between the first two is even possible (which it's not). It’s just all RWBY and, oddly enough, when I started reblogging and posting here, I tagged it with “RWBY.” Because that’s the show. My tagging system is far from complex, but I’m not about to re-organize or switch up 228 pages of content.

But we decided a long time ago that critical posts shouldn’t go in the main tag.

That’s ridiculous. People realize that’s ridiculous, right? I mean, I know we've all mostly agreed to observe this self-imposed rule, but that doesn't mean I haven't been raising an eyebrow at it since it first came up. I’ve been in a lot of fandoms and I’ve never seen another that insisted only praise could go in the main tag. When you come on tumblr and want to look up RWBY posts, you expect to get everything about RWBY—any post that deals with that subject. I would stake a great deal on the assumption that there are other posts in the main tag that you dislike, anon, simply because that's how people work. We all don't like the same things and, indeed, in a long-running show with a massive cast, there's going to be stuff we hate too. Ships you can't stand, takes you think are awful, that character you’re just so sick of seeing… yet we don’t exclude other, major subjects from the tag just because certain individuals dislike them. If we did, there would be no “RWBY” search because no one would ever agree on what is and is not allowed.

You have “RWDE” though.

We do! And as evidenced by the post you’re upset with, I use it when I think it's warranted. Here’s the thing about “RWDE” though: no one can agree on that either. Some fans think “RWDE” is solely for the angry, curse-laden posts. Others think it’s only for posts that are 100% critical. Others think it’s for ranting critical posts, not analysis critical posts. Still others think it’s for posts that say anything bad about RWBY, no matter if other parts of the post are complimentary or neutral—with "bad" ranging from "Actively insulting aspects" to "I didn't praise this enough to the individual's liking." It's so subjective as to be almost useless, to the point where "RWDE" posters are currently upset that others are posting critical takes about "RWDE" takes. Where do we draw the lines then? Your guess is as good as mine. But the one time I tried to post solely in “RWDE,” I was getting different anons going, “Omg stop posting in rwde this isn’t rwde!” So… my posts are apparently too critical for “RWBY” and, often, not critical enough for “RWDE.” Fantastic.

Just create your own unique tag then.

On the social media website where we post specifically to have other people interact with our work? You may not like my posts, anon, but other people do. “RWBY” is useful in part because it allows like-minded people to find me. If I only used a unique tag, I’d never come up in searches. Besides, I already do have a unique tag: ���mymetas.” Every critical RWBY post of mine has that attached. Thus, it’s your job to blog “RWDE,” “mymetas,” or me entirely.

I tried that though and tumblr’s blocking system didn’t work for [insert reason here]

I really am sorry to hear that, it sucks, but tumblr’s shoddy system is not my fault—nor my responsibility. And now we come to the part about curating our online experience. Sometimes it’s not just about blocking everything because the system itself is flawed. Often you have to go further by scrolling past.

I'm going to say that again because people really need to practice it more on tumblr: scroll past the content you don't like.

If you don’t like a post, don’t read it. If you start reading a post and realize you don’t like it, stop and go find something else you enjoy. Being a responsible fan online often means going, “Huh. I hate that” and moving on, not coming into the author’s inbox to demand that they—impossibly—ensure that you never have to see something you hate ever again. Anon, you spent more time with something you claim to dislike by coming into my inbox to write and send a message demanding that I stop using "RWBY" than you would have by simply ignoring my post and moving on. That tells me you care more about controlling others' online experience than you do managing your own.

But we don’t want to see critical takes in the “RWBY” tag! We come on tumblr because we love the show and it sucks to see people dragging it all the time. I just want to enjoy the show in peace.

A valid stance… and one that doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to RWBY. Between the time I posted about the teaser and the time I saw this ask, two hours had passed and a hundred and four new posts had appeared in “RWBY." I know because I took the time to count. The RWBY critical community is absolutely miniscule compared to the rest of the fandom. There are maybe 2-7 new “RWDE” posts a day, max, and those are coming from a few key blogs that focus on analyzing the show. There is no scenario in which there are so many critical posts that it’s ruining your RWBY time on tumblr, simply because that amount of critical content doesn’t exist. And if seeing a single critical take from my blog—or even 2-4, because that's my own max per day—honestly upsets you to the extent that you can't just move on, you shouldn’t be on a website known for its diverse content and incredibly iffy blocking system. My posts exist in a sea of RWBY excitement, praise, and celebration. It is your job to scroll past, anon, not my job to play a subjective, rigged game to ensure you never brush past a single bit of seaweed in that massive, ever-expanding ocean.

What this argument comes down to is, “You’re not allowed to tag RWBY content with RWBY because I don’t like what you have to say.” Sorry, but that just doesn't work for me.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S5 Ep 19: Yugi and the Only Neck Accessory He Didn’t Really Want to Wear

Been busy! Hopefully stuff will open up soon as I’m taking a hiatus on a different quarantine project and will be finishing painting the entire roof of my car this week? One can hope. Sanding the rust off the whole top of a car takes a long time it turns out?

Also, fun Yugioh fact, I recently painted a book cover for an author who is older so she’s never seen the show, and she looked at my tumblr, saw my Duke Devlin fanart and was like “That’s him. That’s my main character. OMG. You captured him perfectly!” and I was like “Ma’am that is Duke Devlin, hence the single dice earring on his lobes there, but we can work with this.” and now a spiritual Duke Devlin is on the cover of a Wuxia-style fantasy trilogy on the Vella. Had to give him a top knot and delete the eyeliner for Wuxia reasons but uh, that’s just Duke.

So long story short, fanart can get you work, don’t even worry about posting that stuff online because most people don’t even know it’s fanart anyway and older ladies freakin love it.

Back in Yugioh, the team was doing their best to navigate a map through the woods and they do about as well as they normally do.

And inside Tristan lifted up the floorboards and was like “I found the only way out, this is it, this is the only way.”

And they ended up in something that has a color scheme I would actually associate with a jungle. Finally. We have finally left California (in order to go to another Hell.)

Youknow, when we went to California, we visited Hell, and when we went to India, we also took a stop at the nearest death destination. There’s just so much death on this show and sometimes I forget because there’s been a ghost in our party for so freakin long it’s been normalized.

(read more death imagery under the cut)

Joey freaks out at a flock of crows and reveals in this episode something I never realized about him before.

Like I’m not always the perfect observer as I’m sure you’ve noticed, but I love that this is canon for probably only this episode, but I will never forget it for the entirety of this series.

You go on hating birds, Joey.

Bro was like “Maybe it’s a deep cut about Mai Valentine because she’s a harpy lady” but eh...pretty sure we spent like an entire season of Joey telling us that Mai was a good experience? Would be incredibly funny if immediately after all of S4, Joey was like “You know what? Screw Mai, guys.”

So my thoughts...it’s probably just a literal bird experience. Like I had a friend who hated deer because once she went to a petting zoo, got some pellets to feed the deer, but her finger was sticking up, so when the deer came over to nibble on some pellets her finger went up it’s nose by accident. She was so disgusted by this event that was entirely her fault, that she brought up how much she hated deer basically whenever we saw one.

So like...maybe Joey fed a bird wrong at a petting zoo. I can see him getting bit by a parrot because he was too Joey Wheeler.

But now that we’re in a graveyard neighborhood, Pharaoh decides to hop out because there’s a lot of ghosts here and he needs to practice socializing with his peers.

So that’s just a Yugioh monster doing the ostrich dance, right? Like this is a meme from like 2010 but on Yugioh in 2003(4?)

Good to see the Ostrich dance here in the land before Vine.

So they pull out their Pokemon to do some antics, Tea looked like she was about to do something useful, and Yami does a yump across time and space to get her as far away from playing (not)cards as quickly as possible and y’all...sure was a position these animators animated.

Holy crap.

And I was going off about that scene last season where they woke up in the same bed like...

...have these two been together this entire time? Like together together?

They’re like...way more comfortable than you’d figure they’d be considering Yugi nearly passes out every time he gets a hug. But Yami just like....How long has this been going on? As long as Joey’s fear of birds?

Like obviously this show would never cover what the hell Yugi may be thinking about this overreaching move here, because we’re gonna gloss right over that, and just run away up a flight of stairs. No one mentions this ever again. Which is mind blowing for an anime to do. I think in most anime I watch, the kids would be like “ahh ahhhh I bumped into a booooob!” like it does for I want to say every other episode of My Hero Academia. But in Yugioh, they saw that low hanging fruit and they were like “we expect a higher level of maturity out of our audience. Now here’s a fleet of ostrich dancing tree monsters with faces for crotches.”

They decided to sprint up this flight of stairs, and it enough of a slope to deter the monsters who are only unbalanced weird legs.

I want us to take a moment and admire this background painting. I can’t unsee the rocks that are all the same size, just piled on top of eachother. Did Alexander the Great just plop rocks here--or was the mountain made up of tons of similarly shaped boulders?

Like there’s a lot of nice bg’s in this arc, don’t get me wrong, but this one...I’m just trying to wrap my head around the logic of it.

At the top, they meet a pantheon, that is immediately blocked by this wall, because if this arc had a tagline, it’s “Yugi gets inconvenienced every 4 seconds.”

Bro was like “Clearly they would have pushed it over if Tea wasn’t slacking off” and like...she is actually. Look at her. Only used one hand? Slacker.

Joey was disappointed he couldn’t push over a massive wall, and the team decided not to analyze how much Joey Wheeler thinks of his own strength and instead fixate on these statues.

Usually in anthro characters they kinda look birdlike but act human. But what about an anthro that’s just a bird? Like human torso, but can turn his head 180 degrees? Yugioh made me ask this question.

And then Joey was like “wait, there may be a solution that isn’t just to use brute strength!”

Youknow it is a bummer that Kaiba couldn’t witness Joey own a dragon while he himself only has a robot jet dragon. Although, the jet is probably faster, stronger and overall...better than this baby dragon. It would have been great for Kaiba to witness Joey under-utilize this dragon and forget he has it for like huge swatches of the episode.

And then Grandpa pulled some body horror out of nowhere.

Wow.

I mean that is really gross.

I guess Grandpa can’t use Blue eyes, because Kaiba ripped it up, Grandpa can’t use Exodia because Weevil tossed it off a boat, and grandpa can’t use the card that’s just a building because...it’s a building.

So instead Grandpa has a bunch of meat and bones that look like something out of Doom. It’s probably from a more obscure Konami property, but I forget which.

I’ve seen Tristan hold back Joey in this hold, first time it’s been Tea.

So much shipping in this episode, it’s wild.

It’s also wild how low my standards are for what could possibly be shipping when it comes to Yugioh because of how freakin tepid all of these characters are, which as I’ve brought up before, I really don’t mind.

So Yugi decides that because Grandpa was folding his arms like one monster and it made a gem light up or something, to just do the video game thing and use the giant ass statues as clues.

Why was this arc not a video game? Like parts of it really feel like it was meant to be.

So Yugi falls down a hole, where the walls cave in like it’s that dumpster in Star Wars but like...it barely phases him.

Also...Yugi might be able to see in the dark. It’s never been brought up but like...the more I think about it...has Yugi ever struggled to see without the lights on?

After Joey disappoints everyone, he confronts death.

And Pharaoh and Yugi decide to solve the puzzle of “how do I get out of this trap dungeon room” which, honestly, is probably what they’re doing every time they hang out in the brain pyramid.

So they summon their mascot monster, and surprisingly the show decided its ability to fly cannot help them out here.

Kuriboh manages to become enough of a doormat to push Yami up to the stone and they end up in a set of weird cuts that ended in this?

Like seriously it was like flashes of light and then they were just...up here like this.

Hey like...

Alexander the Great, my man...

Were you planning to put that stone in the middle of a exhaust vent hoping someone would touch it? Because there’s no way anyone would rationally have done that. You would need to fly to do it. This is the world’s worst DM.

Like Yugioh pulls a lot of fantasy nonsense but this arc is a lot more like a “it’s a kid’s show, just go with it.” arc than most of them. It’s not a bad vibe, necessarily, it’s just not the vibe I’m used to.

So once I witnessed maybe the most boring conversation I’ve ever witnessed about corn (this was on a twitch stream, by the way, a guy was playing an interesting game, and then a guest came on and started talking about corn and plants for 2 hours) and they would not shut up about how all taxonomy is wrong because there are no such thing as trees and how all animals are labelled incorrectly, and then they started comparing it to like all sorts of mushrooms and phytoplankton as you would if you clearly got a little bit high before dumping your corn knowledge on a twitch stream.

Anyway, after that bizarre experience I suffered so I could learn how to play an obscure video game, I think I can safely say, that while I know everyone here thinks a bird can’t be a dog. If you’re a high biologist: a bird is absolutely a dog. Apparently you can just do that if you’re the most boring biologist alive and no one will argue with you because to do that would involve talking to you. We’ll just say a bird is a dog and no one can fight me or I will talk about the corn book that this guest on this twitch chat was thinking about renting from the library about the different types of corn mutations inherent in freakin Indiana. Therefore, Joey’s fear of birds and dogs is same.

So they use Dark Magician to save them from the statues, and Yugi busts into the pantheon again because they got to open this casket before a time limit that I kind of forgot about, tbh.

And inside the casket, is...this thing!

(enjoy this line on the bottom of the image I don’t feel like fixing it)

And you may say to yourself...it looks like it’s just floating in mid-air, that’s silly, and so I want to introduce you to the next panel where you can see that it is...quite literally...just floating in the air like a video game.

and it just slurps itself onto Yugi before he can be like “nonono.”

Wasn’t there some horror movie where you were stuck in some sort of body brace that slowly tortures you (was that Saw?) This has that vibes. Like man that looks uncomfortable to wear over a jacket and two belts and a collar that is another belt.

That and I...I gotta appreciate that Yugi popped his collar while wearing body armor and chunky necklace. What 00′s fashion appreciation right there.

Bit like...this isn’t breathable, right? Like Yugi’s gonna finally take this thing off and his jacket will just be completely soaked in sweat?

Anyway, that’s it for this post, next week we’ll see if Yugi can walk through a doorway in that thing.

Also, I can’t bring up the ostrich dance without sharing the vines of my generation

[rallamajoop]

The Witcher: The Games vs the Books part 2 – Characters and Accents

So, I've already talked at length about the relationship between the Witcher books and games, but how well they captured individual characters is its whole own subject – and you’d better believe I have enough thoughts on it for a whole extra post.

Andrej Sapkowski's skill for creating vivid and engaging characters really is so much of what brings the books to life, and no matter how much work an adaptation might put into worldbuilding and plot, it's the characters you've really got to nail to get the long-time fans on board. Especially when you’ve done what the games have, framing themselves as a direct continuation of Sapkowski's story. Nothing invites comparison to your source material like basically forcing fans to read the original novels to understand even half the backstory alluded to in-game. 

So how did they do? I can only offer my opinion – characterisation is necessarily going to be a lot more subjective than just telling you what plot points the games contradicted outright – but like any fan, I have opinions in plenty.

Of the main cast, I feel Yennefer is the character they've captured the best. They've done just as well with some supporting players – I have no real complaints about Dijkstra or Phillipa, for example, who are favourites of mine in both games and books. For the main players though, Geralt and Regis seem to be the ones who's differences I'm most inclined to forgive, whereas I don't feel like they've done Ciri justice at all. Book!Geralt is much less of a smartarse, for one thing, whereas Book!Ciri is much more of one. But if we're talking about the differences, I’m afraid we really need to start with Dandelion.

Dandelion

For all the genuinely good work the games do with characters, old and new, I don't think I can overstate what a disservice the they've done Dandelion, who I could not stand in TW3, but is now one of my favourite book!verse characters. Alas, Dandelion is a prime example of something the Witcher games really don't do well: camp. Being the archtypical bard, Dandelion is about as flamboyant as any enthusiastically-heterosexual man can be: you should be able to spot this guy by body language alone, he should be flouncing around and he should talk like a spoiled noble auditioning for Shakespeare. Book!Dandelion is over-the-top and ridiculous and just so much fun, and I loved him well before I'd even really gotten into the rest of the books around him.

Here's just a bit of dialogue from one of his first appearances, to give you a sense of how he and Geralt play off each other.

The  bard  seized  the  fingerboard  of  his  lute  and  plucked  the strings vigorously. ‘How would you prefer it, in verse or in normal speech?’ ‘Normal speech.’ ‘As you please,’ Dandelion said, not putting his lute down. ‘Listen then, noble  gentlemen,  to  what occurred  a  week  ago  near  the  free  town  of Barefield. ‘Twas thus, that at the crack of dawn, when the rising sun had barely tinged pink the shrouds of mist hanging pendent above the meadows—’ ‘It was supposed to be normal speech,’ Geralt reminded him. ‘Isn’t it? Very well, very well. I understand. Concise, without metaphors. A dragon alighted on the pastures outside Barefield.’

Though TW3's Dandelion certainly looks the part, you have to go hunting through art from the Gwent cards to find much that comes close to really capturing his personality (see left pic below – though even there, a Dandelion who'd voluntarily break his treasured lute is a very hard sell). Though a lot of fanart does better (right-below – credit goes to Tatiana Ortaliz).

But as poorly as the games capture his flamboyance, they're not that much better when it comes to taking him seriously. TW3 left me thinking he was all talk and no substance; the books make abundantly clear that he really is renowned enough to be welcome in courts across the continent. Though he often overestimates what he can talk himself out of, he isn’t stupid either: he's lectured at Oxenfurt, spied for Dijkstra, and then there are the moments where the frivolous playboy mask slips and you realise he's sometimes much better at understanding people and relationships than Geralt will ever be (which is honestly kind of funny considering how many of Dandelion’s relationships end with plates being thrown at him from an upper story). He's not at all above mocking Geralt when he deserves it either (and especially his personal and relationship issues) – Geralt will happily mock him right back.

We never do learn how they became friends (I'm pretty sure the incident listed in the wiki is just the date of their first expedition together, not their first meeting), but Geralt just doesn't form lasting friendships or romances with anyone he can't have an intelligent conversation with. And Dandelion is a damn good friend to Geralt – one who, despite being a helpless, squishy little bard, will keep Geralt's secrets under torture, or will follow him into Nilfgaard in the middle of a war simply because you don't let a friend make a trip like that alone. (Seriously, I don’t ship it nearly as much as some, but hot damn there is some material in here if you do.) In short, it's basically inconceivable that he'd leave an amnesic Geralt wandering around Vizima alone, as he does in the first Witcher game – which is the kind of thing I can mostly forgive as a gameplay conceit, only it doesn’t really get better from there.

He’s also supposed to be blond, something I don’t think is technically specified until fairly late in the novels, but 100% what I’d been picturing since his first description as a man in a colourful bonnet with cornflower-blue eyes (let’s face it: Dandelion’s hair isn’t the only thing about him that screams ‘blond’). It’s a shame no-one from the games to the show to the novels’ cover artists seem to have noticed – but at least there are some fanartists out there who were paying attention (credit for these goes to Asphaloth, Ghostcupdraws, Hvit-ravn (tumblr deleted), 94355 and itsmespicaa).

As for the games? Well, I cannot speak to how Dandelion came across in the original Polish, but I think it speaks worlds about the priorities of the English version that they didn’t even bother to cast someone with a halfway-decent singing voice as their master bard. There are isolated moments of dialogue that come close to sounding like book!Dandelion– mostly in Witcher 2, which comes closer to capturing the spirit of the books than either 1 or 3, or his attempts to convince his captor he's a disguised noble when you rescue him TW3 – but his voice actor is just painfully ill-suited to the role.

Geralt

Geralt fares much better than Dandelion, though he’s still a little hard to square with the Geralt of the books. Book!Geralt spends a lot more time sulking, just to begin with: he sulks because his job is complicated and gets him no respect, and because the world is unjust and unfair – and, most of all, he sulks because Yennefer has dumped him again. He also gets mocked for sulking, and usually deserves it. Book!Geralt is generally a lot more taciturn and a less prone to making smart comments just to have something to say – arguably because in book!Geralt's world, making smart comments often ends at the gallows, or at least with some corrupt official making your life much harder. Book!Geralt's world kind of sucks, and he's just got to put up with it.

As much as he often plays into the expectations of being an uneducated monster hunter, he's also got a more of an intellectual streak than you’d guess. He may prefer to stay out of politics (because damnit, his job is to save people from monsters, not people who are monsters), but he attended school at Nenneke's temple and has even taken classes at Oxenfurt academy, and there's a lot of thoughtful nuance to his opinions – his speech to Ciri about why he can't in good conscience take a stronger stance against the Scoiata'el contains a wealth of historical perspective, just for one example. Even his smart comments tend to be, well, somewhat smarter in the books.

Book!Geralt’s explicitly a lot younger than Yennefer – around 50 is the usual estimate, falling far short of the 100-ish the games suggest (the scandal of having a man fall for – gasp! – an older woman clearly didn’t bother Sapkowski one bit). You don’t see nearly as much "I'm getting too old for this" from book!Geralt, who's really not that old by witcher standards, and is apparently still hunting monsters long into his future. I'm also a little annoyed by the way they play off his hatred of portals like he's a grumpy old man who doesn't like mobile phones, when his distrust originally came from having seen the gruesome deaths that result when portals go wrong. This is not to say Book!Geralt lacks other ordinary human flaws, however – twice in the last two books of the main saga, he gets severely sidetracked after his ego gets the better of him (in the adulation he receives after being knighted, then after arriving in Toussaint), and it's quite some time before he properly gets back on track for that whole rescuing-Ciri thing again. He’s also pretty hopeless when it comes to romance and relationships – breaking things off gracefully is really not in his skillset.

So why does game!Geralt not bother me more? Well, he's the main player character of a game franchise, and one who has to carry the experience largely solo. Some adjustments for genre are pretty much inevitable in that position. He's certainly fared better than Meve, for example, who's been softened far more from her book characterisation for her PC role in Thronebreaker. Then there's the whole amnesia thing – it's easy to believe that sort of experience would change a man – and if he doesn't sulk so much as he used to, maybe he's grown up a bit. Geralt's also in many ways the straight-man of Sapkowski's Witcher universe – there largely as the reliable centre for other, louder personalities to play off. But I expect the real bottom line here is that I do still like game!Geralt enough to forgive him a lot of what he lacks.

The books never do describe Geralt as being very attractive – something book-based fanart often tries to reflect. The point has been made before that the rather-alien-looking Geralt of the first game (left pic above) is probably a lot closer to his book-description. However, the main distinguishing factor you’ll see in book-based fanart is probably the ubiquitous headband, which genuinely is what book!Geralt wears to make his hair behave (the example on the right above comes from Diana Novich).

All that said, if Sapkowski really wants me to believe that nearly so many women are eager to jump into bed with him, I’m going to have to shallowly assume our witnesses are unreliable on this front, and Geralt is at least as attractive as Witcher 3′s take on him. Nothing else makes sense. *g*

Regis

Regis varies mostly in that book!Regis is a lot more smug, sometimes verging on obnoxious – and a lot keener to make fun of Geralt (who generally deserves it). But then, Regis is old and wise and superpowered enough to dance rings around most everyone else – can you blame him? By Blood and Wine, Regis' overconfidence has been recently smacked down hard after his near-death-experience at the hands of Vilgefortz, and that kind of thing could knock some chips off anyone's shoulder. Throw in the fact that with Dettlaff, we have a situation not even Regis could make light of, and the changes to game!Regis make a certain amount of sense.

I do feel it's a bit of a shame that the vocal direction didn't work just a little bit harder to capture some of Regis' smugger side, or emphasise that his long-winded philosophising on human behaviour is supposed to sound a bit pretentious. This is actually something I suspect they were going for a few times in the script, but which didn't come through in the dialogue quite the way it was meant to. Still, again, I'm sure I'm biased by the fact that I like game!Regis far too much to find much fault in what they've done with him. They've done a lovely job capturing his friendship with Geralt too.

Looks-wise, there's a tendency in book-based art to portray Regis with long hair (even some pre-Blood-and-Wine Gwent art did so – see the two pics on the left above, from Gwent and early B&W concepts. The right-most pic is cover art from the books). I couldn't rightly tell you where long-haired-Regis comes from, though – perhaps it's described more explicitly in the original Polish, or perhaps it comes up in passing in some passage I've forgotten, though it may just as well just be a fannish meme.

The books do describe him as looking rather like a tax collector, slim, middle-aged, with an aquiline nose, prone to wearing black, and his hair as 'greying' or 'grey streaked', so presumably somewhat younger-looking than the game would have it. The hammer-horror-esque sideburns are likewise a game-verse addition, though I do like the look they went with – it's distinct from Geralt in a way that making him another long-grey-haired man wouldn't have been, and that's probably the point.

Being the hopeless Regis fan I am, I have quite the folder full of different fanart takes on book!Regis, so have a selection – art here is by gellihana-art, justanor, greysmartwolf, Nastyaskaya, NatalyLanier, beidak, natalliel, ellaine and afternoon63. For what it’s worth, I feel beidak’s (bottom pic, second from the left) comes the closest to what I’d have pictured personally, based on how he’s first described.

Ciri

I find it much harder to rationalise the changes to game!Ciri, who I didn't exactly dislike, but found stuck too close to the role of generic-macguffin-girl-who-just-wants-to-be-normal to be very interesting. Having read the books, not only do I much prefer book!Ciri, I'm not sure I can emphasize enough how much the game did NOT prepare me for utter gauntlet of whump and misery that girl survives in the last four titles. Book!Ciri is a character who works for me mostly because of the same flaws the game mostly strips her free of – TW3 makes some token noise about how you can't tell her what to do, but she’s an utter little royal brat when we first meet book!Ciri, and it’s so much of what brings her to life. She throws herself into her witcher training with the enthusiasm of a kid going completely native, but still revels in getting to be girly for a change when Triss first arrives at Kaer Morhen. She hates Yennefer at first, but soon bonds with her just as strongly as she ever did with Geralt, picking up some of Yennfer’s haughty mannerisms along the way. And then she gets thrown through a portal and lost in the distant wilderness, and the whole world comes down on her head.

The build up to the first time Ciri actually has to kill someone is intense... and things only get worse from there. Steadily. For another couple of novels at a stretch. Seriously, a major caveat that pretty much has to go into any rec for these books (and I will absolutely rec these books) is that Ciri's story gets heavy. So heavy one finds oneself using phrases like, "that time that one guy died of his wounds on top of her while semi-consensually feeling her up was honestly one of the less traumatic incidents in the period."

By the end of the novels, Ciri has nearly died of thirst, been beaten, tied up, dragged around the country as a prisoner, run with bandits and killed innocent people for the fun of it, done fantasy-cocaine and got a tattoo, fought off more than one attempted rape, been drugged, lain for multiple nights next to an impotent elf who completely fails to impregnate her, watched the bodies of her friends and girlfriend being mutilated in front of her, and did I mention where she got that scar? She has survived hell, and it is absolutely a testament to her own strength that she somehow comes through it and puts herself back together at the end. When Geralt finally arrives to rescue her, what matters most isn't that her ordeal is over, but that she finally knows she hasn’t been abandoned by everyone who’d ever loved her after all.

The Ciri of the books is fierce and wild and arrogant, but she's learned her morals from the best, and she holds onto them until she can't, then picks them back up again when she can, and above all she survives. For all that her story turns arguably too much of the last two books into a slog of misery, oh boy does it pay off at the end. And that's probably about as much as I can say about her Big Moment in the last book without spoiling too much, so suffice to say that by the end of the saga, Geralt has pretty much become a supporting character in Ciri's story, not the other way around. (Seriously, you’d be surprised how few chapters of the last two books he’s actually in.)

Finding art which captures the aspects of Ciri’s character and history which are missing from the game has turned out to be pretty hard, though the fanart above from her bandit phase takes a decent crack at it (credit to Loles Romero and NastyaSkaya). I do rather like that one shot of her on horseback beside her girlfriend too, which comes from Denis Gordeev’s illustrations for the novels (below).

How much of this does TW3 get across with her portrayal in the game? Well, she's still pretty headstrong, I guess. And they let you give a 'sorry, I like girls' answer in one bit of dialogue, so they remembered her girlfriend existed. That's nice. But game!Ciri still has a kind of wide-eyed innocence that book!Ciri lost years ago, while book!Ciri is a little force of nature in ways the games hardly even hint at, and that's a really shameful loss.

You'd think, with a character so young, it ought to be easier to imagine she's simply grown up since we saw her last, but so much of what's changed about Ciri feels like a step back rather than forwards. I can shrug off Geralt and Regis' differences and still enjoy their game-verse-selves, but Ciri leaves me genuinely disappointed.

I’d say the official art that comes closest to capturing book!Ciri is that one portrait of her as a very grumpy young child (right above). Some of the early concept art (left above) feels a little more like it has her attitude, though she’s rather too yellow-blonde – not to mention too pretty. I think it also bears pointing out that Ciri isn’t really supposed to be the kind of beauty she is in the game – even before she gets what’s meant to be a seriously ugly and disfiguring scar. (Fanart below by justanor and bobolip)

But of course, the male gamer fanbase can’t be expected to give a fuck about a girl they wouldn’t want to fuck, so game!Ciri must be generically gorgeous. Le sigh.

Triss

I suppose I should at least touch on Triss, too, though she's a very odd case. She's so out of character in the first Witcher game that I am wryly amused that the biggest thing they arguably do get right is that taking advantage of Geralt the moment he showed up with amnesia is... pretty well in-character for her (look, I gotta be honest here, I'm not much of a fan of Triss in any of her incarnations).

The second game does a much better job with her – she actually feels like book!Triss, she has some good dialogue, we're finally dealing with some of her conflicted loyalties to the Lodge and to Geralt – though by the third, her characterisation has been so softened into “the nice one” that none of that potentially meaty conflict is ever resolved, or even really mentioned. Perhaps there's more buried in the Triss-romance path, which I've never bothered with, but the writers seem to have just given up on dealing with anything that might make her look less than wholly sympathetic. Heck, we hardly even get a clear statement about why she and Geralt broke up between Witchers 2 and 3.

Even speaking as such a not-a-fan of Triss, I promise there is more they could've done with the character the books give us. There's her ongoing trauma in from the Battle of Sodden, where she was injured so badly she was memorialised as one the dead: the 14th of the hill. There's her furious impatience with the neutrality of both the witchers and the Lodge: Triss has fought and died for a cause, and is ready to do so again. The second game sort of gets into this, but by and large, the games really aren't up to tackling the moral complexity of having such a theoretically-sympathetic character as Triss, who was still broadly willing to go along with the Lodge's plans to pair Ciri off and get her pregnant as soon as possible – her own wishes be damned. No, instead, Triss has conveniently left the Lodge before the rest of them go spiraling into abject villainy in the second game, clearing all that messy grey stuff out of the conflict.

Of course, the really big unresolved plot point still hanging over book!Triss is how badly she needs to terms with the fact Geralt's just Not That Into Her, and never has been – but since the games want Triss to be a serious romantic option, that's definitely not getting the resolution it could've used.

Book!Triss also pointedly avoids any outfit with a plunging neckline because her chest is covered with the ugly scars she received in the Battle of Sodden, something the games did not have the guts to reproduce. In a more confusing note, the books do consistently describe her hair as 'chestnut', which we'd usually think of as meaning 'brown' – though it turns out the games actually may not have been wrong to make her a redhead, since in Poland 'chestnut hair' apparently mean dark red hair (google some pictures of actual chestnuts, and you'll see why). Still, the firy-red-haired Triss of TW3 who wears nothing but plunging necklines remains a bit of a stretch, however you slice it. Once again, TW2 gets her best (and I must say, gave her the nicest outfit) – though even here she's conspicuously unscarred in all her sex scenes.

(Leftmost pic above is official Witcher 2 art, whereas Triss-with-scars fanart comes to us – once again – from nastyaskaya)

Shani

Shani sort of falls into a similar category as Triss as someone who isn't terribly well-served by any of her appearances, given that both exist in the first game largely to compete for Geralt's attentions. But I can't honestly say I find Shani’s portrayal in the Hearts of Stone expansion to be much better – the degree to which either version exists solely to fall all over Geralt is a bit painful, especially given that their relationship in the books is limited to a single, undramatic hook-up. Book!Shani really only appears in a couple of chapters: we meet her as a medical student friend of Dandelion's, who's been surreptitiously selling pilfered university supplies to fund her degree, then later see her again in the final book, where she proves herself as a battlefield medic during the climactic Battle of Brenna. She's pragmatic to a fault, and I really can't see her as the type who needs Geralt to point out to her that her patient is dead, for example, or who'd subject a guy with Geralt's problems to such an extended feelings-dump as you'll get out of her during the wedding.

Shani is a reasonably logical book-character to bring back, if only because she’s one of those who explicitly survives the ending, but for my money, "serious contender for Geralt's affections" is just not a role she works in.

Anna Henrietta

The duchess of Toussaint, Anna Henrietta, is another case who differs more from her book counterpart than you might think. In the books, the duchess is by far the least competent of the (pleasantly many and) various female leaders and rulers we meet – she comes across as rather young and naive, and every bit as absurd as everyone else in the ridiculous fairy-tale duchy she rules. She is, for example, most displeased to learn that Nilfgaard's war against the north is ongoing (something her courtiers have carefully avoided mentioning in her presence), because she'd long since sent the Emperor a stern note demanding he brought it to an end. She promptly has one of her ministers sent to the tower for misinforming her, and demands the others prepare an even sterner note for the emperor, which will surely do the job.

After Dandelion (inevitably) cheats on her, she has him repeatedly sent to the gallows, only to change her mind and send him a reprieve at the very last minute each time. Picture yourself a much younger and prettier version of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, and you've about got her general vibe.

Blood and Wine sort of waves at this part of her character when she first speaks about Dandelion, and again in suggesting there's a widespread feeling she lacks compassion, and once more as she proves utterly immovable on the subject of her sister. But the generally sensible and insightful woman you deal with for most of the main story is a far cry from her book-verse characterisation. That’s a bit of a shame, because I feel like there's a lot more they could have done to blend the two versions of her. Still, it’s hard to argue the duchess we get suits the story being told around her.

Other characters

Much as I love Yennefer, Dijkstra and Phillipa, I don't really have much more to say about them because I feel the games have done such a good job. The Yennefer of the books gets to show a lot more depth and complexity simply because she has more scenes and more space in which to do so, but when ‘there isn’t more of her’ is your biggest complaint, the game is officially doing pretty well. I could certainly gripe her about how “dresses in black and white” seems to have been taken as “dresses in black with maybe a trace of white trim”, or how Yennefer and Triss seem to be the only sorceresses in the world capable of wearing pants, when Phillipa (just for one) is in sensible men’s clothing the very first time we meet her, but that’s getting into serious nitpicking territory.

(Not that Yen can’t look amazing in outfits with more white – art by Emily Caroll, theclashofqueens, BarbaraRosiak, and cosplay by greatqueenlina)

Vesimir, Lambert and Eskel, Geralt's fellow witchers from the School of the Wolf, fall into a similar category for me – though we spend far less time with them in the books, everything we see of them in the games feels like a fairly logical extension of their book-roles. Vesimir is somewhat over-played as the old fogey, and his death is painfully cliched, but the impact on the characters and Kaer Morhen still hits home – and the games do some especially great work expanding Lambert into a much more complex character. To my mind, the only shame is that more of the book-original characters didn't get the same treatment.

Who have I missed? There's Avallac'h, of course, but I think I've got him pretty well covered by that last post. Zoltan, perhaps inevitably, has had his personality largely flattened into 'generic dwarf', with nothing better to do than hang around Geralt and Dandelion. You wouldn't know Book!Zoltan was apparently incapable of turning away women and children in need, for example – even human women and children with the chronic inability to say thankyou for his help. Or that he eventually admits to Geralt that the luggage he and his friends are carrying comes from a decidedly unsavoury source for such a supposedly charitable, upstanding guy. Yes, even Zoltan gets to be a morally complicated character in the books – who knew?

Speaking of dwarves, pleased as I am that Yarpen Zigren gets remembered in TW2, he's an odd one to talk about, since even in the books, he appears to have had a substantial personality transplant between his two main appearances. Yarpen’s a largely comedic figure in The Bounds of Reason short story, where he cheerfully admits to having considered letting his men knock down a particularly pompous aristocrat and piss all over him to teach him a lesson, but he’s evolved into a studious voice of reason against the scoiata'el by Blood of Elves. TW2 doesn't do a particularly good job of capturing either version, which I suspect probably bothered me more than most people – I liked the later book-incarnation of Yarpen immensely (and not even just because he's one of few ever to really call Triss out on just how much she needs to stop misreading Geralt's friendship as anything more than it is). His chapter in Blood of Elves packs a hell of a punch.

On the subject of accents

I do have to wonder if I'd have warmed up to characters like Triss, Shani and Dandelion (or even Letho) more if they'd only had halfway decent voice actors. It's not just that none are exactly leading the talent at the acting part of the job, it's that their American accents stick out in TW3 like a sore thumb.

Geralt mostly gets away his own US accent by dint of being the very first character we meet, so we've gotten used to the way he talks long before we notice how he stands out – hell, maybe that's just how they talk down in Rivia (hilariously, book!Geralt eventually reveals he's not even from Rivia, but simply picked the place and taught himself the accent so he could feel a bit less like the abandoned foundling he is, which only gives us yet more excuse for why his accent might sound a bit weird). More importantly, Geralt is meant to stand out, to be the outsider wherever he goes, so having him sound like no-one else fits the character.

But neither Triss or Dandelion are "of Rivia", and by the time they show up we've had dozens of hours in a game where literally everyone else sounds British, or Scottish, or Irish, or vaguely-eastern-European in the case of the Nilfgaardians. So why do these weirdos sound like no-one else on the continent?

The short answer seems to be that every character with an American accent in TW3 is someone who had an American accent in at least one of the previous games, which were way looser with their casting and had enough incidental American accents around that they didn't stand out. Clearly, by TW3, consistency with prior games has been prioritised over consistency with literally anything else we’re hearing.

Gaetan is an exception to the rule as the only new character (at least that I caught) with an American accent – presumably because between Geralt, Eskel, Lambert, Berengar, and Letho (and cohorts), some sort of 'witchers have American accents' rule has been pretty well established (another random American-accented witcher shows up in Thronebreaker, just to underline the point). We're going to mostly ignore Jad Karadin here, since his British accent is presumably a recent affectation to go with his new identity, and so makes sense.

This still doesn't really work though, since Letho’s school is all the way down in Nilfgaard (land of the Eastern European accents), while the oldest witcher from Kaer Morhen (Vesimir) is the one guy with a British accent. He sounds nothing like any of his students, despite the fact he's logically the guy they ought to have learned their accents from. So the logic falls in a heap however you slice it, and I'm thrown right out of the game.

With TW3 as your intro to the series, it feels almost as if characters like Triss and Dandelion have been assigned American accents because they're just too important to be saddled with the same pedestrian British accents as everyone else, which did nothing to endear them to me. The only one I eventually warmed up to was Lambert, and then only because he's just such a bitter asshole that he eventually goes full circle and comes out the other side (somewhere around when you've heard his miserable backstory, then gotten drunk together and told him how much you love him, man). Gaetan similarly snuck in under the same clause – American accents clearly work better for me in this series when attached to characters you're supposed to find pretty insufferable on first impressions.

Some final notes

To conclude, it seems only fair to throw in a quick nod to some of the more memorable book-characters who don't appear in the games. Neither Mother Nenneke (Geralt's sort-of-surrogate mother) or Vissena (Geralt's biological mother) ever appear either, alas – Vissena doesn't even merit so much as a Gwent card, which seems quite the wasted opportunity.

Milva, Cahir and Angouleme – the three remaining companions of Geralt’s who died alongside Regis but who were not so easily resurrected – naturally don’t appear. But nor are even really mentioned in all the games, which seems rather less than they deserve after giving their lives to Geralt's cause.

Cahir and Angouleme do at least have pretty badass Gwent cards to their names, though I am properly offended that Milva (who has the dubious honour of being my very favourite book character who doesn't ever appear in the games) is stuck with a card of her freaking death scene – which not only gets the scene wrong (believe me, there was no grimacing and gripping the arrow buried shallowly in her chest for poor Milva), but doesn't even bother to get her hair the right colour, for fuck’s sake. Basically, Milva was a stone cold badass and absolutely deserves better. #justice4milva

One can only guess how I'd have felt about some of these characters had I read the books before playing the games – I am obviously biased towards forgiving changes to characters whom I liked in their game incarnations, regardless of how they compare. Still, I think it does speak wonders that there still all these characters who suddenly made sense only after I'd met them in the books.

Even if only for Dandelion and Ciri, I can only dream of seeing a bit more of the book-original characterisations make it into the collective fannish consciousness. There's nothing wrong with getting into the canon purely based on the show or the games, but having read Sapkowski's novels, it's no longer any mystery how they spawned this massive franchise. That the saga wasn’t even fully available in English until well after Witcher 3 was released – a solid couple of decades late, and long after it had already been translated into Russian, French, German, Spanish and more – is a real shame. For once, it’s us in the anglophone world who’ve been missing out: these books deserve so much more than to be thought of as a footnote to the games or the show.

[ryuichirou]

I saw one very stupid post on my dash about how snk is OBVIOUSLY nazi propaganda and trying to convert all of us into imperialists and white supremacists. tbh it’s not the first time I’ve seen that kind of stuff and probably won't be the last, but for some reason this time it gave me a lot of anxiety (I got wordy, I'mma need to send another ask, sorry)

(part 2) It's been more than half and hour and I still feel this awful sensation in my chest. It's just overall pretty fucked how to have something you hold dear being misinterpreted in the worst way possible, and I was just wondering what are your thoughts on this situation or how you deal with people claiming all sorts of awful shit.

(part 3) I imagine that as an artist some people probably direct their issues with snk towards you, 'cause I don't even post that much fanart and I've gotten anons "trying to educate me" on why this series is so wrong, after posting drawings. Of course, you don't have to reply, maybe the topic makes you anxious too and I don't want to bother you, so sorry for the depressing topic (｡•́︿•̀｡)

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

Tiiish, I want to hug you, I’m really sorry that this happened to you. I hope you’re feeling a little bit better now.

Like we already mentioned a while ago, when we were talking about that darn article, after we read through it and did a little fact checking (and I mean it when I say a little, because there weren’t many facts to check), we stopped caring about it. It’s not research at all, just a manipulatively written speculation on Yam’s motives and worldview, but sadly, people easily believe these accusations because they hate SnK and want to find a valid reason to hate it and shit on its fanbase. Because “I hate it because it’s nazi propaganda” sounds much cooler than “I hate it because it’s popular”, doesn’t it?

It’s easier to ignore the article itself though, and it’s much harder not to think about tumblr posts or those Twitter threads that get very popular (although there are a lot of bots on twitter, trust me…), and it’s especially difficult to ignore it when it’s specifically directed at you. But the only thing that these people deserve is a good ol’ block and (if they’re getting too offensive and abusive) a report for harassment. The thing is, their opinion doesn’t matter: it won’t change SnK’s story, it won’t affect its success and popularity, it doesn’t affect anything other than our mood (temporarily lol). Because they aren’t critics who actually give a flying fuck about the subject matter, they’re just random assholes with a hateboner for SnK, who sit in their echochamber and discuss the same shit over and over again. And if they’re “fans” of the SnK, it’s just them “consuming it critically” 🙄 such a convenient phrase and so easy to abuse.

If we think about these accusations again… they’re so damn nonsensical, it’s almost amazing. I’m not going to reread it or to make a proper counterpoint article out of this ask, so this is just based on how we remember these accusations.

Like, what part of SnK approves and pushes the idea of imperialism in any way? When the entire idea of the story is that war is bad? When people like Onyankopon, whose homeland was invaded by Marley, exist? And it’s never portrayed as a good thing? Having only one country dominating the world’s situation is literally the main reason why everyone’s suffering??

And come to think of it, Isayama is one of the few manga artists to kind of sort of openly critique Japan: he literally drew Kiyomi losing her cool and drooling while thinking about all the profit and wealth she would get from the deal with Paradis. Why do people never talk about that? What is it, if not a critique of greedy and two-faced nature of people from Azumabito clan, who are heavily implied to represent Japan? I don’t read a lot of manga in general, but do you know how many mangakas I’ve seen who directly talked shit about Japan while being Japanese? Two. Excluding Isayama.

Isayama is clearly invested in the Western culture and he understands the World’s History. He understands that political relationships are complex and that there are no “bad” or “good” countries. I don’t want to make assumptions about how much perspective of the world’s relationships the average person from Japan has, but I still feel like Yams has a pretty good understanding of it. He did his research for the subject matter, and while it’s obviously not perfect, it’s clearly there.

These people also claim that SnK is anti-Korean and anti-Semitic, but if Hetalia had taught me anything, it is that if the story has or used to have any anti-Korean undertones, the Korean readers wouldn’t want to have anything to do with it. They would be the first people to ditch the manga, they would be the first people to critique SnK, and rightfully so. They burnt Uniqlo clothes, their overall domestic policy is pretty anti-Japanese, so there’re literally zero reasons for them not to destroy SnK if they see it as anti-Korean. But the size of the Korean SnK fandom suggests otherwise, doesn’t it.

And the “big noses = Jewish caricature” argument, seriously? How anti-Semitic can you get? Who the fuck looks at people and goes “oh, those have big noses, bet they’re caricature of Jews”?? Sorry I’m getting heated lol The argument about “Asian artists portray Westerners with prominent noses because that’s what we look like to them” has been done a lot of times, I’m not going to go over than again.

And god forbid Isayama to use Germany and Europe to draw a story where his characters are (approximately) Germans and Europeans! Let’s go fetch our pitchforks to punish Isayama for using their aesthetic to make his story look more believable and authentic, right? “Oh, those areas where they hold Eldians resemble places from real life”, like no shit???? Ofc they would??? That’s what references for making the story more grounded are used for??? If I were to write a story about a fictional place based on a real one that I don’t live in, I’d use some visual references to help me to make it more believable??? Why do I even need to explain that?

In my previous post I talked about the armbands and ghetto and stuff, but I’ll reiterate: even if there are thematic similarities, it doesn’t mean that the story mirrors our history. And it doesn’t mean that there is an analogy, since Eldian’s situation is quiiiite different than what Jewish people had to go through. It’s just thematic similarities. And it still doesn’t plant any specific idea in the reader’s head, other than “having people shoved into ghettos with 0 civil rights is a horrible thing”, and I can’t comprehend what’s anti-Semitic or imperialistic about it. Also I’m sorry, but nazis are not the only people who genocided a bunch of people, breaking news. Nor did they invent armbands. Same goes for Japan in WWII.

And now for my favourite argument: Erwin is nazi because his name is Erwin and he was born on the same day than some nazi guy died… I won’t even talk about why this idea is hilariously stupid, I just want to appreciate the level of nitpicking that’s going on here.

So… yeah. People who have nothing else to do but to complain about the show they hate don’t matter. And people who consider themselves a part of the SnK fandom and still say this bs (yep, there are people who do that) are huge hypocrites. The heck are they doing in this fandom then?? Of course, any story is up to interpretation, but this is so backwards?

Sorry for rambling so much… anyways. We’re happy enough not to encounter any hate related to this topic, but we think it’s because we ship Ereri and people already hate us for that, so the majority of shit we get is related to that, I guess we’re a lost cause for them. We’ll see if anything happens after this post though.

But once again, I’m very sorry that you had to go through this. Please remember that this isn’t personal at all, and people who harass strangers on the internet just want to flex their high moral ground while acting like complete assholes. You don’t have to explain anything to them, you don’t have to talk to them, you don’t have to listen to them or give them any attention. I hope you’ll never stumble upon anything like this; but if you ever do, please block them, don’t even bother reading their attempts at “educate” you. Isn’t worth it.

Please have a good day, Tish. And everyone who’s reading this reply.

[adaliak]

writing tag game

how many works do you have on AO3?

22 fics

what’s your total A03 word count?

104024 total

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

In the Seashell - Ahsoka gets in trouble at the Temple for fighting and worries what Anakin will say when he finds out. (He’s more understanding than she thinks, given his own history.)

Lightsaber Lesson - Another Anakin & Ahsoka. In this one, Anakin tries to force Ahsoka to flip her lightsaber grip and it doesn’t go over well. Ahsoka gets snippy and Anakin takes her lightsaber as punishment. Meanwhile, the whole situation amuses Obi-Wan, who is separately approached by both of them.

Aurebesh Soup - A very fluffy sickfic. Obi-Wan makes Aurebesh soup for his sick little Padawan as comfort food and uses it to help Anakin learn his letters. 

Secrets of the Temple - Youngling Ahsoka escapes from a meditation time-out and has an adventure in the lower levels of the Temple, where she meets Grogu.

The Bacta Tank - Another fluffy baby Padawan Anakin. Anakin breaks his arm and needs a bacta treatment but is terrified to get in the tank because he’s never seen that much liquid. Obi-Wan ends up having to strip down to his underwear (!!) and go in with his Padawan.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I always respond to comments. I appreciate them so much, whether they are paragraphs long or just a simple heart. i want readers to know how much I love that they took the time to take that extra step.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Most of my fics end happily, but I particularly love the endings of the Rebels ones because they usually involve a fun space-family moment. I also like the end of “In the Seashell” where Anakin and Ahsoka are laughing together.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Definitely Analyzing Anakin. Both chapters end very badly. (Sorry! Order 66 - what are you gonna do??)

Do you write crossovers?

Nope. (But I guess never say never!)

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not really. I’ve had some nitpicking and maybe a little misunderstanding of intent, but no hate.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope. I like reading it though!!

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not really. Once someone wrote something very similar to one of my fics but it’s hard to totally avoid the same stories in the Star Wars universe. And when you read a lot of fics, things stick in your head and you start to forget where you got them - is it canon, headcanon, or someone else’s headcanon? - so I think similarities are inevitable.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of!

Have you ever co-written a fic?

Many times! With my fanfic BFF, @peachybitters! She is a joy to write with. We have a very similar thought process and similar writing styles so I feel like the things we write together are seamless. Sometimes I can’t even remember who wrote which parts.

What is your all time favorite ship?

I’m actually not sure. I guess I ship Anakin & Obi-Wan as soulmates so I like reading about them in any configuration even though I don’t write any Obikin myself. I also really, really love Kanan & Hera - they have such a healthy, lovely relationship.

What is a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

Hmm... I have an Obi-Wan and Anakin one that I started a long time ago that I’ve kind of cannibalized bits and pieces of for other fics, so I probably will never actually finish it.

What are your writing strengths?

I write good dialogue and I think I’m pretty good with dynamic beginnings and endings to stories (it’s usually the middle where I get lost - lol)

What are your writing weaknesses?

Trying to think of a million different ways to say “he said” - haha! Also fics that are very plot-heavy are hard for me. I tend to want to skip over the action and get to the meaty conversations.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Kudos to you if you can do it! I don’t think I’ve ever tried (other than some random food words.)

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Star Wars is my one and only, baby!!

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Probably “Lightsaber Lesson” - I just love the disaster trio so much and that fic has all of them in their various permutations. But I’d give a second place to A Day of Reflection which is another disaster trio one and is loosely based on the movie “The Breakfast Club.” Also @thenegoteator made me some amazing fanart for it!

Now I want my fanfic friends to answer these same questions so I’m tagging @peachybitters @rexismycopilot @believe-in-alderaan @theagentnerd and @kckenobi - no pressure of course because this was very time consuming and I also want all of you to work on your WIPs that I am dying to read!!

[anileahvictoria]

Adam Kendall from My Little House on the Prairie.

Cutie Mark: Adam has always had a fascination with law and thought about becoming a lawyer many times, but ultimately decides he could do more good as a teacher for the blind. His cutie mark was inspired by the saying that justice is blind, so the scales of justice represent balancing his love for the study of law with his responsibilities as a teacher, and husband, and the cloth is Lady Justice’s eye covering that makes her blind, just like Adam is.

I accidentally referred to Little House on the Prairie as My Little House on the Prairie, and this fan art was born. More on that later, It's time for a rant. Adam is my favorite character from the series until I got mad and left the fandom cause they did this beautiful man dirty, so It’s time to rant about it.

#1. The Romance. The romance between Mary and adam was totally out of the blue. When Merry goes blind, she's shipped off to blind school, and her teacher is this capable, intelligent and hard-working young man named Adam Kendal. His teaching still is very much tough love, and he doesn't take crap from his students. Mary starts as a reluctant, uncooperative, self-pitying, closed-minded student doing things like throwing her things across the room. Adam handles all this brilliantly, saying stuff like: if you're gonna make a mess, your gonna clean it up. Doesn't baby her or pitty her AT ALL. Exactly what she needs. After a few months, Mary's attitude changes drastically, and she's thriving thanks to Adam. But when Adam sits her down to teach her some piano, she has a moment of self-doubt: 

Merry: I could never learn...

Adam: I wish you would forget about that. Some of the greatest writers and composers in the worl were blind.Have you ever heard of John Milton? 

Merry: Well of course. He- he wrote Paradise Lost, one of my favorite books.

Adam: Well, he was also blind. Now, do you want to play the piano or not?

Merry: There wouldn't be enough time. You know my family's coming to take me home. They'll be here in a few days.

Adam: It's been a long time, hasn't it, since you've seen your folks?

Merry: It seems like a lifetime. Adam, I'm so scared. I mean... I know I'm ready to go home... But here it's- it's easy, and I've always got you to help me.

Adam: Merry, you can't depend on me forever. And I'll be leaving too. 

Merry: Where are you going?

Adam: To Winoka, to start a new blind school.

Merry: Why didn't you tell me?

Adam: I don't know. It just never came up. 

Merry: Then I'm glad I'm going home.

Adam: Merry, it's not that much different out there. Not really.

And now it gets all angsty:

Merry: Yes, it is. I wouldn't expect you to understand. How could you? 

Adam: Mary...

Mary: The world isn't like the Burton school for the blind. It... It's a huge, dark place filled with... hidden obstacles and... strange sounds and voices coming from faceless people. Even you. I've never even seen you. 

Adam: Well then look at me. 

... And then they start feeling each other's faces and, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure blind people don't actually do that...

And then it gets randomly and weirdly romantic...

Mary: What color are your eyes?

Adam: Blue.

Mary: Your hair?

Adam: Brown.

Mary: Thank you Adam.

Adam: ...What do you look like, Mary? Ive never seen you either.

Aaaand more face touching.

So apparently, they're a thing now. I'd understand if Adam fell for her cause she looks like a literal angel (seriously, no girl has any business looking that gorgeous), but Adam's blind too. So he's going ultimately off of personality, I'm guessing. And when he first meets Mary, she is not a pleasant person. Yes, she does improve quite a lot, but what makes her any different than all the other students he's taught? It certainly isn't their age, cause Adam's 22 and Mary's 15 (back then, I guess it wasn't a big deal). Also, It creeps me way out that her teacher falls in love with her. The man who spends most hours of the day alone with a vulnerable teenage girl falls in love with said girl AND THEN asks said girl to work for him at his new school in a busy city away from her family where it would just be Adam, Mary, one old man who lives on the top floor, and a few students, not to mention Mary would also be spending the nights there... It's a good thing this isn't that kinda show cause there's a million different ways that could've gone... But because this is Little House on the Prairie, nothing happens, and Adam asks Mary to be his wife soon after she moves in.

#2. Regaining his Sight And Becoming a Lawyer.

This really makes me mad. When Adam gets his sight back and sees the faces of all his friends and, most importantly, his wife for the first time. It's beautiful and wonderful and heaven knows the man deserves a miracle like that, BUT his whole character changes. He goes from a responsible teacher and loving husband who knows who he is and where he's meant to be, to an ambitious young man who would rather chase his dreams of becoming a lawyer than take care of his responsibilities to the school he started, the children he teaches, and the wife he loves. I can understand wanting to go and see the world and do things you couldn't do before, but sighted or blind, he has responsibilities. Mary is kinda left in the dust when Adam makes all these new sighted friends and drags her along to all his fancy lawyer parties while he plays games, runs around laughing and talking, and leaves Mary sitting in a chair all by herself. Like, he doesn't even consider how she must be feeling! He doesn't try to include her in conversations or introduce her to his new friends; she's just a pretty thing that sits there to be cared for. And the thing is, this is exactly what Adam was afraid would happen to him when Mary thought her sight was returning a few episodes ago! Now Adam's new fancy friends get him an opportunity to take some fancy tests to become a lawyer and Adam, without a second thought for Mary, goes off to take the test, not evening considering who would run the school if he passed and became a lawyer. Then some bad stuff happens, and he can't make it to the test, and I'm all relieved cause we all know he belongs with his wife teaching at the school and now he'll see things clearly and get his head off the cloud and onto the here and now. But nooooo, this whole time Mary is hoping he'd fail (and so am I), but when she sees how heartbroken he is, she goes and has a talk with the professor and convinces him to let Adam take the test. He finally relents, and Adam passes and becomes a lawyer, giving the school away to a wonderful woman who teaches there. This whole thing is treated like he made the right choice when he obviously isn't! Not I blame this on the time period the show was made in. Back then, a man had to be ambitious and provide for the family and leave the teaching and such to the woman, so back then, it was a good thing he went off and became a lawyer, but still, I'm mad. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when Adam hands the school over to the lady, Mary no longer teaches there, which means that Adam has taken away Mary's dream of teaching on top of not spending nearly as much time as he used to with her and (though he doesn't realize it and I don't think anyone brings it to his attention cause men are supposed" to do all the work) doesn't let her do things for herself.

#3. He's Fictional.

This one makes me the madest. At first, I turned a blind eye to all these flaws cause I assumed Adam Kendall was based off an actual person, like most characters in the series, but noooo. They made him up just for the tv series. This means his romance with Mary WAS totally random, and Mary staying in the same building as he did BEFORE they were married WAS the writer's choice, and Adam regaining his sight and leaving his wife and school in the dust WAS ALSO THE WRITERS CHOICE! AND he was basically just made to me Mary's husband because Mary doesn't marry or have children in real life. So yeah, my favorite character's development went down the drain. But oh well, that's what we have fanfic and fanart for, am I right? Oh wait, this show is old. No one's made any good fanart/fanfic. K, I'm gonna go cry now. Bye

Also, if anyone has a different opinion or point of view, please tell me about it. I'd love to go back to loving this character, so please change my mind 🥺. 

[thetaoofbetty]

this was a submission but they asked me to hide their name so, here you go, lovely: 

I hate being petty, but I’ll make an exception today. Just a note, right now at the most unusual jughead/veronica ship on ao3 590 fics.—i wonder how much overlap there is between b/a and j/v fics? because i’m guessing a lot of b/a fics have them as a background pairing.  

While the “most popular, desired, long-awaited, romantic, slowburn” (atc.) ba ship has 806 ficks.—they finally got to 800? good for them!

And I guess that’s all there is to know about ba shippers. I’m many years old, and although I have been in a few fandoms, I have watched many. And I have never seen such loud, aggressive, embittered, toxic, arrogant, harassing, clamoring, climbing the other ships, judgmental, mesogynistic and incredibly lazy fans like BAs before.—they are the baby version of antis that i’ve encountered tbh. so, i’m like, yawn. been there, done that, the others were better at it than they could have ever hoped to have been.

to be fair, i have no doubt there are level headed and totally chill b/a shippers. unfortunately for them, the angry trolly ones are the loudest. There are bad shippers in every fandom, that’s not new but when the majority of your fandom has made hating something their personality, i think that’s pretty loud about what that sort of ship seems to attract.

I joined the fandom in the middle of the third season and since then I have seen just one ba fan art. Not cutting from a comic or a repost from a comic artist’s page. A real shipper fanart. Of course, I could be wrong here - I have never looked specifically, but until last week I had never turned on filters on my social networks. So I’m sure that if there were a lot of ba fanart, I would have stumbled upon him sometimes.—huh. you know what? i just realized i’ve never seen b/a art either. i don’t have any b/a filters on either. i’m sure there’s art for them but you’re right, it seems to be sorely lacking comparatively.

I’m sure there are ba shippers out there who really enjoy their ship, but it’s mostly a noisy mass of teenagers who don’t actually ship ba, they just ship against everyone.—oh, for sure. there’s definitely b/a shippers just doing their thing and enjoying their content. but you’re not wrong, most of the shippers i come across are only interested in telling me why my ship sucks. as if i care about what some teenage gremlin thinks of my otp.

Sorry for the grammar. I am not native english, so all errors and strange phrases are on the conscience of Google translate.—your english is fine, lovely! english is hard enough as a first language. as a second, it must be absurd. my exchange students always, always hate their english classes for the first few months and i hear constantly about how stupid it is, ha. they’re not wrong, tho.

And obviously I have absolutely no tumblr skills, so I hope I sent my text correctly. You can completely ignore my message, I definitely do not want to waste your time here. But if you still decide to comment on something, please hide my nickname, because I definitely will not be able to resist the ba trolls as virtuoso as you :) Have a good day!—you’re not wasting my time, doll. you’re expressing yourself and we all need that once in awhile. have a good day (or night) too!💜

[redxblueihateloveyou]

I hate episode 10 of sk8. Just... all of it. It was so quick and random and stupid and nothing made sense. And i hate Reki pushing Miya away, and the way they made Reki "remember" that skating is fun, and i hate the scene of Reki and Langa "make up". He didn't even apologize! And that thing they did with Shadow? I just so pissed i don't wanna watch it anymore. The only thing i still wanna see is Cherry and Jo's relationship really

haha I just wanted to write a post about it and I got your ask. that was so ridiculous, I literally started laughing at the end. 

Okay, Reki and Langa, I genuinely do not get why some ppl are happy about, cause that was the most anticlimactic shit I’ve ever seen. You know, I wasn’t even that much invested in them, but even I was disappointed. For a moment there, when he started running, I was like “yes, yes, okay, here we go, here we go..... ah no no we don’t” haha then when they slammed into each other, I was like... “now then... now it’s gonna be... ah no it’s not gonna be” lmao 

I just thought they’re gonna you know do the thing, you now the the super emotional make up thing. Like all of this fucking build up...  for this??! I was like.. this is the climax??! this is THE CLIMAX for the two? for real?! that was so... I can’t find the word for it... flat? meh? this was their last chance to win me over and they didn’t, so sorry, this is cute and all, but no, not the level of emotion I’m looking for, that’s all.

Shadow needed to go lmao, like 2 episodes left, they don’t have time for your random races haha. At first I was kidding, when I called it a soap opera, but honestly this episode felt like the cheapest one and not in a good way, you know. He was hit in a head with a baseball bat by an ex? I mean, that I certainly didn’t expect. What is this... “Days of Our Lives”? lmao

Miya... that was so unfair. I don’t even know, at this point I’m like “does anyone even care for the little dude”? it was just sad idk. I guess he has bad luck with friends :( He also always feels like a third wheel, you know. Either to Langa and Reki, either to Cherry and Joe.

Adam and Tadashi, I’m interested, but this whole Adam being obsessed with Langa thing is just like an absurd comedy already, like a drone, seriously? He wants to race Reki, who isn’t even in this anymore, for Langa as a price? I’m.. the fuck am I watching seriously. Now if Reki beats Adam in a race, this thing will for sure deserve a Golden Raspberry Award, istg. I suggest, the power of frinedship gave wings to his board and he flies to the finish xD

Idk, it’s just not what I expected, that’s all. It’s also super inconsistent and like they start smth good, but then finish it in some absurd way. They try to prepare everyone for a tsunami, but then it’s just a bloop. I’m just confused at this point. They stretched the whole Reki thing and wasted so much time for it to unravel in that way? 

And we knew that the main climax is Adam and bringing him back thing, okay, but like... will it be also meh? I just lost my hope for a great culmination, you know? 

At this point it’s like... is it a good skating show? No, cause skating is pretty ridiculous in this. Is this a good borderline b-romance show? Also no. It’s a one kindergarden level b-romance and other one-sided line of god knows what... a love penthagram? lmao

I like matchablossom, a lot, but I have 2 slight problems with them. 1st they’re like so in the back, like side ships can be good too, but they do not have time to create any depth of the characters for these two or make it complex really, so it’s like a super mega potental wasted, cause I don’t even think they’re gonna be part of the next 2 episodes really. I was happy he carried in his arms tho, that was the cutest, but I also was like “waaaait, I saw that already! oh no, that was a fanart on my phone lmao”. 2nd, Cherry is obsessed with Adam. Like there are times, when he doesn’t even see Joe, when Adam is there and you know, how much I hate this kind of stuff. I mean, he’s still obsessed with him, it’s not like its all in the past or smth.

Also why why don’t I ever follow the saying “expect nothing, that way you won’t  be disappointed”? smh. Nevermind *still expects smth in these last 2 episodes* lmao. The idiot in me still thinks that they left the main course for ep12 like in Free, but heck, I’m always this idiot and once again this is not Free, so.

[theexecutionerssong]

I want to ask you as spn expert hdbfbdj i heard that destiel made creators/actors uncomfortable and they banned mention of it at the cons? And made anlotbof writing decision to keep dean and cas characters from each other in the show? So how do you think what changed and why the decided to make deancas canon (bad as it is but canon) in almost last episode when they could just not do it jrbfkf

Hi! Oh damn I hope you’re ready for a long ass answer because I have 13 years worth of memories to answer this question dfghjklm

So, your first question, when you say creators, you have to keep in mind that the original showrunner stepped down years ago and since then, there’s been several showrunners who each had a different view on where they wanted to take the story, which explains the disparities in writing quality from one season to another, in my opinion. Of course the orginal showrunner is still around and would chime in from time to time but he went on on working on other shows (which flopped, besides The Boys, tbh), and we definitely didn’t see it that way in 2005.

Then comes the writers team, that has also seen many changes over the years. I truly believe some left because they wouldn’t make Destiel happen, among other things like the treatment/lack of representation of female and POC characters. Robbie Thompson definitely left because they killed Charlie in the most horrifying way, and Charlie was his baby, and he got better opportunities elsewhere. I remember over 7 years ago when Bo Berens (the writer of last night episode) joined the team, my whole dash was full of people screaming because holy shit the new SPN writer is gay!!! and wouldn’t that change things??? Well it did. He wrote, along with Robbie Thompson, some of the most explicit Destiel episodes that they could get away with. I don’t believe this was ever queerbaiting, not from them, and I think they took advatange of the other writers just not seeing it, or not wanting to see it.

For a very long time, the showrunners and writers were kind of oblivious to the shipping, they didn’t take it seriously because it wasn’t how they had thought it could be interpreted. As time went on and the shipping only grew and as the cast and crew actually started to see what we were seeing in their own damn writing and acting, they started to be more aware and careful around it. Some were downward enjoying putting down fans, like fucking Guy Norman Bee gloating on Twitter and engaging with fans over it. A mess. He left 5 years ago that one, good riddance. It was also the time when actual canon queer ships would appear on TV - keep in mind that in 2010-12, Destiel was as explicit as it could get. We had nothing else, so of course we would latch onto that. But we started getting more and more actual explicit representation with Shameless, Shadowhunters, Eyewitness, Skam, HTGAWM, Orphan Black, etc around 2013, and shipping Destiel got very frustrating. 

The actors have always been another story, and I saw a lot of comments being made today towards Jensen so I’m gonna copy paste my answer to an ask I got last year : “I think he was just extremely “protective” of Dean and would get actually mad and shut down every conversation about Destiel because that’s not how he sees his character. Like, proper pissed off. He would get uncomfortable about pride flags during photo ops. It came to the point where people would walk on eggshells at cons. 2012-13 was hard on the fandom on this point. He would never speak up about lgbtq related topics in politics either. Liking a tweet like Chris’s 10 or even 5 years ago? Never. He used to say that people in highschool would bully him for “looking too gay” because of his pouty lips and big eyes. I think he didn’t want to care about it but bullying leaves scars. Getting married to Danneel, meeting Misha, who are both very outspoken about lgbtq matters, opened him up, and he’s said himself that having his first daughter changed him deeply. He had a whole new perspective on unconditional love. Now, he’s enthusiastic about posing with pride flags, to sign fanart, he’s always so supportive of lgbtq fans at cons, hugs them, gives them words of encouragement, etc. Years ago he said “my father told me that there’s no manly way to drink out of a straw” and now he’s out there being crowned King at the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, posting rainbows on his social media, having makeup sessions wit his daughter, etc. He was very outspoken about his support for Beto in Texas last year, he goes to rallies, posts about it on social media, etc. And yeah maybe that’s the bare minimum but he wouldn’t have done it years ago but now he does and that’s worth something. He’s not a Destiel supporter but now the topic isn’t banned at cons anymore. He jokes about it, he understands better where people who see Dean as bi are coming from, even if it’s not his take on the character. He’s much more comfortable with himself and has come a long way. I’m happy for him.” That was my reply last year to somebody asking if Jensen was homophobic and while I obviously don’t know him, it’s what I gathered over the past 17 years or so. I was already a fan of him beofre Supernatural soooo, I’ve been around a while. Yes there was this moment, over 7 years ago at a con, where he let fans boo other fans for asking a question about Destiel, and he shut down the question, then the questions about Destiel were banned. That’s not the case anymore and it hasn’t been that way for years. Misha on the other hand as always been supportive of the ship, his “You’re not crazy” tweet from 2013 fueled us for years, and the fact that he went back to like it and bring attention to it today is the biggest I Told You So he could have given us.

About your question, making decision to keep them away from each other, yes, that has been a pattern for years, something would go in the script, and then they would change their minds - “the only thing we have left, Dean and I, is each other” in 5x04, the “A part of me always believed you would come back” in 7x17, the “I love you” in 8x17, Castiel’s heaven being just pictures of Dean everywhere, etc. The decision would come from either the actors or the writers and they gave tons of reasons but I won’t get into that. And every time we would have a Destiel heavy episode, it would be no Cas for weeks. Their reason for that is that if Cas was always around, what with how powerful he is, then there would be no plot for monster-of-the-week episodes, because he’d be able to fix the situation with a snap of his fingers. So they gave him storylines that would weaken him and/or keep him away from the Winchesters. But I also think they would give us crumbs to keep us hooked and then backtrack because it wasn’t the end yet.

Destiel is the only ship I’ve really invested in that wasn’t canon. Yet. Because, to me, it’s been canon for years. And I am absolutely convinced that had Supernatural ended with season 10 as planned, it would have been canon then. There were tropes and parallels that nobody could ignore. The whole of season 10, with the Cain/Dean and Colette/Castiel thing was so obvious even my Dad picked up on it. But the series got renewed again and again and they pushed it back, because The Powers That Be at the CW didn’t want to lose their homophobic fanbase, I guess. Isn’t that great :)))) Now that it’s ending for real, who cares? They don’t have anything to lose anymore. It must be quite an unpopular opinion but I think making Deancas canon at the end of the series has been the plan for a while, but it got pushed back with every renewal. 

To me they have been canon since season 8 thanks to a few selected writers, and as infuriating and sometimes hurtful as it was to keep watching for all these years when it could have been so much better, I’m still ecstatic they finally did it. Maybe for the wrong reasons, definitely not in the right way, but 1. the show isn’t over, and 2. this was my first real big ship when I had nothing else, and to be able, after over a decade, to hear that I love you, with no room for doubt that it was meant romantically, is making me happy., 

[szivtalan]

character ask: kagami, momoi, alex and himuro 👀👀👀

!!! omg thank u Ceru! u might be one of my favorite mutuals <33 (putting this under a read more just so I can speak at lengths about each individual character)

Why I like Kagami: this is where I sarcastically ask “why DON’T i like him” but that’s literally the next question so; he’s everything i want to be and more. He has the determination and the willpower to make his own dreams come true, he’s gay as shit, he’s tall and buff and well-adjusted, mature enough to live on his own at an annoyingly young age, he’s funny and dumb and a total himbo as well as an excellent advisor bc of how grounded he is.

Why I don’t: I’m... not really good with explosive people. Violent men with loud voices especially scare me, and I’d think I’d flinch around him a lot and that would make me rlly anxious.

Favorite episode: it’s a toss-up between the Seirin fam visiting his place for the first time (is it where Kuroko confesses his love to him and then passes out in his arms? idk), and the onsen episode. I also loved all his plays against Kise and Aomine. AND the training camp w him running a lot in the sand.

Favorite season/movie: season 2 probably because he’s not a jerk anymore, but he’s still on his way to shed off any asshole behavior stuck to him. And I actually liked Last Game?

Favorite line: “There’s no such thing as useless effort.” and “This is our drama and we write the plot.” because he’s so ridiculous.

Favorite outfit: all of his casual fits... comfy but manly is my Jam

OTP: AoKaga....they’re truly soulmates, star-crossed lovers, canonically brought together by fate.

Brotp/otp no. 2: KagaKuro, I love them

Head Canon: I have several collections because I think too much about this boy, but here’s something I think about his family: he doesn’t know what happened to his mom. He never asked, because it wasn’t relevant, and he didn’t want to inconvenience his dad by questioning him. Occasionally, as a kid he felt like he was missing out on something (seeing other kids with their moms, feeling like they’re being treated with much more gentle care because they have moms), but as he grew older he realized that nurturing behavior shouldn’t have been limited to only a mother, and that he was just straight up neglected without any regards to missing a parent in his life.

Unpopular opinion: I never realized this was an unpopular opinion but I’m glad he went back to America at the end of Last Game. Obviously, it’s sad that he had to separate from the others, but I felt like Japanese basketball has always been just a stepping point to him, and now that he’d beat the best of them, it was time to move on. And it also warms my heart that him getting scouted in the US gave Aomine hope to aim big, too. I felt like both of them would’ve felt trapped in Japan with their skill sets.

A wish: I want him to be happy and gay and to confront Himuro and tell him how hurt he was by how he treated him and probably do the same to his dad too

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: ....whatever I’d say Shinsun has probably written it/will write it, but I don’t want him to forget about the GoM just because he becomes a world-famous athlete.

5 words to best describe them: sweet child with anger issues

My nickname for them: not mine (it’s Sypha’s) but “Kags”, Kagami, Tigerboy, Kagababe, Baby

Why I like Momoi: she is SO nurturing and sweet and she cares so much about her boys!! I’m sorry it always turns into “how they remind me of myself” but actually I get feeling like a background character and being the moral/emotional/physical support of those who are more talented or in any way better than you. I feel a strange kind of kinship with her and also,,, feminine girls make my heart stop, and it doesn’t get more feminine than Momoi. Added: Aomine aside, the Touou team wouldn’t worth shit without her skills tbh, and she’s not in any way less than the GoM. Also, I appreciate her being the one person to try to keep their friend group together.

Why I don’t: Analytical People Scare me like!! how do u know stuff people are Unknowable!! I usually am also irked by her pointing out Riko’s breast size but I can just pretend that’s in a gay way (maybe Momoi likes girls with small boobs and she’s just bad at flirting) (also I don’t exactly liked her calling Aomine a “ganguro” but I have too little knowledge on the use of this word to say exactly why)

Favorite episode (scene if movie): uh the one where Aomine made her cry? It really came through how much love she actually has for her friends at that one.

Favorite season/movie: she was great in all of them!!

Favorite line: I can’t remember the exact quote and Google isn’t really helpful either but the one where she made Kuroko promise they’ll always play together or something? Or that they’re gonna beat Aomine?? idk?

Favorite outfit: I like all of them but mostly I just appreciate her wearing so many hoodies, she looks so cute in them

OTP / Brotp: it’s both AoMomo. I feel like the have the most special and strongest bond in the entire series.

Head Canon: She’s never been shown to do, but I feel like she wears Aomine’s clothes a Lot. Also, they definitely have sleepovers To This Day.

Unpopular opinion: Momoi is good at basketball and she loves playing!!! But try being successful in it when ur opponents are Giants and Way More Buff than you are

A wish: I wish people appreciated her more!! Both in fandom and in canon. She’s an amazing person and she has her own skills and strengths that are rarely explored or even mentioned anywhere.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: her falling out with her boys ;-; I do not want that

5 words to best describe them: strawberry sweetheart to steal ur heart

My nickname for them: Satsuki :> I feel like it’s a little too much to call characters on their first names sometimes but hers is so cute I can’t

Why I like Alex: yet again another woman with an extensive skill set. I love her persistence and again I appreciate getting disillusioned and finding your way back to the thing you love. Also it’s just sweet that she did that by teaching (again, something I can relate to)

Why I don’t: the whole “kissing children” thing rubbed me the wrong way but again, just like Momoi’s obsession with comparing breast sizes, it’s just bad/sexist writing from Fujimaki probably

Favorite episode (scene if movie): adshg any and all where she expressed that Himuro and Kagami are equally important to her <33 that shit makes my heart burst

Favorite season/movie: she only appears towards the end of s2 and in s3 so... I guess s3?

Favorite line: its so Bad that u literally can’t find the iconic quotes of these iconic ladies anywhere but... her story on finding her passion again through teaching kids, and anytime she mentions her fondness of Kagami and Himuro.

Favorite outfit: her iconic olive green coat with the short red shorts... wtf was that I loved it.

OTP: she doesn’t really interact with people her age but I’ve heard she’s shipped with Masako Araki and I’ve seen some seriously good fanarts and like... Yes Good I’d Love To See It

Brotp: I feel like her and Himuro would be that sassy pair that Kagami tries and fails to contain and they get into all sorts of weird, absurd situations asdjs what I’m trying to say is Kagami has to bail them out of jail from time to time

Head Canon: fck me if I’m wrong but she’s the lesbian single mom of the two gay kids she reluctantly adopted from the streets

Unpopular opinion: it’s more like another headcanon, but she can dunk and she taught Kagami how to do it.

A wish: I’d love her to coach the Seirin fam more!! Pls let her be part of her children’s lives (she could also judge streetball games between the goms it would be fun)

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: anything about her being romantically involved with her pupils makes me.................no

5 words to best describe them: Beautiful Beach Blonde Basketball....goddess

My nickname for them: Alex!! sometimes An Icon

Why I like Himuro: em dash Asdgsdj I’m joking, I’m becoming more and more fond of the boy. Once I realized that he shouldn’t have been the “bigger person” in that situation and one year doesn’t really mean much when you’re that young and that hurt, I realized he’s actually a good and hard-working kid and I’m sorry for giving him so much shade. Also I really like his snark and sass, but that might not even be canon at this point tbh

Why I don’t: I’m still sort of irked by him beating down on Kagami because he was envious/mad, but I realized the aspect of that situation that Really got to me was how devoted Kagami still was to him after all that. That devotion was what felt toxic, nothing that Himuro actually did to him.

Favorite episode (scene if movie): the time they met up w Kagami just to exchange a dramatic socially distancing bro fist and a few encouraging words.... gays be Like That

Favorite season/movie: I really didn’t mind s3 Himuro

Favorite line: apparently he’s said some iconic stuff that I don’t remember (and my sources don’t seem really legit) but I’m gonna say “let’s see you become number 1, bro” because again, that’s just so ridiculous and endearing. On one hand he really went from loathing Kagami to rooting for him and wanting him to reach his full potential and on the other, honey ur  like 17 stop speaking like That

Favorite outfit: his knitted V-neck sweaters and the black coat with the white fur.... boy’s got all the fashion sense that’s missing from Kagami

OTP: can I say.....AoHimu asdfh I ship 3/4 of these characters with Aomine what does that say about me

Brotp: KagaHimu. They can be sweet, but I’ve only ever seen Jake write them really well

Head Canon: I’ve been entertaining the idea of....trans Himuro.....

Unpopular opinion: everyone thinks that Kagami is the violent kid and Himuro is the chill, sweet child who’s somehow wound up with this mess of a fiery tiger, but it’s actually Himuro who taught Kagami how to fight and Kagami learned quite a lot of aggression from him

A wish: I feel like Himuro should’ve gotten a separate episode to explore his thoughts, feelings and past. He had so much potential as a character Is2g

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: him quitting basketball would fucking destroy me. I’d be devastated for others too, but it would really pull on my heartstrings if he just dropped the only thing he’s been so passionate about.

5 words to best describe them: gender-non-conforming emo child

My nickname for them: Himu, Tatsuya, Tatsu

[revengerevisited]

okay well, some people requested that i post my anti-ship rant, so here it is. please read the tags first for content warnings before continuing. also i really don’t want to get into a big argument over this particular ship, i’ve already been through that sort of thing before years ago and i don’t want to go through it again. >_>’

so... talking about my ‘most hated ship of all time’™ is kinda hard for me, because it means bringing up one of my major squicks— selfcest/incest, which i’m afraid makes me look like an anti if i complain about it, doubly so since everyone has their own personal interpretations of what selfcest/incest is in the kh series, if it exists at all. like for example, is ro*kushi incest? i don’t think so, but some people do (and yet they often don’t consider ro*kunami that way... hmm suspicious :P). in other words without any common ground on whichever characters are actually related to each other or not (seeing as half of them are magical clones), the hypocrite finger could potentially be pointed at anyone, including myself. XT

anyway, it’s easier and more comfortable for me to complain about te*rraqua, because (ignoring the væ*nqua haters and weird ‘aqua is ven’s mom’ stuff) my dislike of it essentially boils down to, “it’s boring and overshadows my otp,” which is a relatively mild take. but with ve*nvan, and yes this is about ve*nvan, it’s more like, “it overshadows my otp AND the selfcest/incest aspect makes me physically nauseous,” which is a much more intense yet also subjective take that draws proshipper ire and potentially hurts people’s feelings. >_<

now as far as canonical sibling relationships go, i can point to vanitas repeatedly calling ven (and sora) his brother multiple times in canon, but then the ve*nvan shippers could also point to ven saying that they’re not, and technically they’d be right. ve*nvan isn’t incest or even selfcest anymore, not after re:mind. i’m still surprised that the shippers i talked to back then were actually upset by ven and vanitas not being related (in the sense of being the same person) anymore, since that’s actually a benefit to their ship and all. in fact, i’ve only ever seen one celebrating the “we’re not brothers” line. i guess the original connection between the characters in bbs is what they like about the ship, and why they’re upset that that relationship doesn’t exist anymore, even though for me that exact same connection is what i like about them being brothers.

idk, i guess before re:mind it was easier to point out why i didn’t like ve*nvan, but now if i ever say the reason is because incest ships squick me out, probably the mildest response i’d get would be “but it’s not really incest...” and that just ends up circling back to what vanitas said vs what ven said. like, if vanitas truly feels that his relationship with ven is a brotherly one, is him saying that they’re brothers good enough for me to be allowed to call them brothers, canonically? or do i have to accept ven’s rejection of that notion? because i’ve also encountered ve*nvan shippers who’ve personally gotten angry with me just from me casually calling them brothers without even mentioning disliking the ship. and if i say that adopted/step-sibling incest grosses me out too, regardless of blood relation... ultimately it doesn’t really matter, does it. 

i mean, there’s already hundreds of ve*nvan fanfics and thousands of fanarts out there; complaining about it does nothing but paint a target on my back— same as it did years ago. it’s a helpless feeling, really, how inescapable that ship is, if i ever want to look up anything involving my favorite character. :( just imagine if væ*nqua was half as popular as te*rraqua or ve*nvan. there’d be so much content i wouldn’t even have a reason to be upset. ...i’m just now realizing that’s really what this all comes down to, isn’t it; a lack of content for ships i like, and an overabundance of content for ships i don’t.

*sigh* at least i’ve learned a lot about the whole ‘anti vs proshipper’ thing since then (including the term ‘proshipper’ itself, that’s how little i knew), and also what not to do when it comes to posting about ships i don’t like (ie don’t tag them like an idiot). like obviously i’m not gonna go after anyone for shipping ve*nvan, and if you like it that’s fine, but personally it’s just not my cup of tea at all, sorry. that said, will i ever write a va*naquaven smut fic? most likely, but there’s a reason why aqua’s name is in the middle. ;P

anyway, so yeah i guess that’s the end of my big dumb rant against my notp, which i probably wouldn’t hate nearly as much if my otp was even just a modicum more popular. there’s just no solution other than to make more va*nqua content... and that takes a lot of hard work. anyway, most of my opinions on other kh ships are basically just, “it’s fine,” “not interested,” or “why ship that when va*nqua is right there?” but otherwise my feelings on those ships aren’t particularly strong nor rant-worthy. mostly. o3o