#i just really dont want people to compare real people to me when i canonically killed myself like 3 times

[minart-was-taken]

The wild references to Finland in Honkai Star Rail

Hello, in this post I'm going to go over the various references to Finland in Honkai Star Rail (Also touching a little on HI3) and explaining them the best I can so that non-finns can understand how hilariously delightful they are.

_

Starting with a funny one: Welt Yang.

The man is canonically 1/2 finnish, 1/4th chinese and 1/4th german according to sources I dont understand.

The way this is represented in Honkai Star Rail comes in one intentional form and one that may be an accident but I love it anyway:

1.

Welt's given name is Joachim Nokianvirtanen, a name that is utterly hilarious to a finn like me. Why? Well Nokianvirtanen is not a surname anyone here would ever have. Virtanen is a real surname, but for some reason Mihoyo decided slap Nokia in the front of it??

The name translates to "Nokia's rapids." Which adds to the funniness because yes Nokia is an actual place in Finland and not just the brand, but it is also very much the brand.

(Also Joachim is not a finnish name even if many finns are christian.)

This is the equivalant of naming an american character Jesus McDonaldslake.

2.

Welt's hair colour! A lot of people imagine blond and blue eyes when imagining a finn, but that's not actually accurate to the statistics. The most common hair colour here is in fact "Maantien harmaa." Translating to country road grey. Sometimes they leave out the word grey or replace it with blond. The colour is known as dirty blond or pale brown in english speaking countries 👍 This is less funny and just a cute detail.

_

Secondly we'll be going over Sampo Koski, a man many know to have a very finnish name.

BUT FIRST Fun backround info: I didn't know Sampo was in this game when I first started playing, so when he showed up and suddenly dropped finnish words at me I was utterly jumpscared.

Finland is very rarely referenced in media outside of our country, so most of us are NOT used to hearing anything about our home in media.

Furthermore there's actually a meme about this very thing that everyone in the country knows: Torilla Tavataan. This translates to "Lets meet at the marketplace" which is referring to the idea that when something massively cool happens we should gather together and celebrate.

The finns REALLY want to be acknowledged by the wider world lol

Anyway back to Sampo. His name is actually something I could totally see a real finn having, although his first name is a little out there.

Sampo is an item from finnish* mythology that was forged by a super capable smith with the help of his whole village. The item is golden with multiple spouts that produce valuable things like flour, gold and I believe... salt? You can find more about the item online.

Koski meanwhile means a river rapid. Uhm, lotsa water themed names here, huh!

Nothing that funny going on with his references to be honest. I can even say the voice actor did an amazing job pronouncing his name correctly.

_

Yunli's companion quest!

This is the newest batch of references I've ran into, but if I or anyone else finds more I'll be updating this list :]

In Yunli's companion quest we meet... Paavo. His name is Paavo--

This NPC introduces himself as a traveler from far away who's come to deliver a sword from his homeland back to the Xianzhou where it was originally forged. Here's why he made me giggle uncontrollably every moment he was on screen.

1.

Paavo is considered kind of a joke name, very comparable to naming someone Bob in america. The way NPC's referred to him sounded like "Mr. Bob" to me. It was so funny

2.

He is from the PLANET KALEVALA?? SAFlJ LJ ???

Kalevala is the national epic of Finland* and tells stories such as the one of Sampo's creation. The title does refer to setting of the story, but it is still weird to hear it as a name of a planet lol.

3.

Our food is really repetitive u right Mr. Paavo

4.

Paavo explains the sword he has come to deliver is called Miekka Kivessä. This is the finnish translations of "The sword in the stone." he proceeds to then explain the legend of the sword in the stone, which. It's not a finnish legend. We've never had a king, yet alone chosen them with a sword-- Not even in myths. Kalevala's highest ranking guy in the mortal realm is Väinämöinen who's an old wise man.

Also he says Miekka Kivessä wrong but that's to be expected, very funny, and also I admire the effort to at least try and make it sound natural.

5.

Finally, he later reveals his last name-- Which, why are we refering to him as Mr. Paavo if he has a last name...? Oh well! Mr. Paavo's last name is Kalastaja, which translates to Fisher. This is not a real last name in Finland. The english equivalent of this man's goddang name would be something like Mr. Bob Employee.

_

Since you've made it this far I assume you won't mind me rambling a bit more. I'm personally psyched to see Finland mentioned in non-finnish media and love the wonky but genuine attempts to include us!

I think considering how many weebs there are in Finland who've come up with illogical "Asian names" to sound cool online, it's only fair we got the same treatment back :P I hope they'll keep delivering and I'd love to visit planet Kalevala one day.

_

*It's worth noting Finland is a colonizer of the Sami people, and a lot of their culture has been annexed without any care or respect towards them.

Finland was also under colonialism itself for hundreds of years, and our myths have been largely lost to time with only some information left. It's super difficult to tell what is finnish mythology and whats the Sami people's mythology.

That's a fact that's deeply important to remember when discussing things like this, and I hope that the people reading this consider looking into how to help the indigenous people of the nordic region. Thank you.

[betelgo0ze]

People seemed to really like my fanon v canon rant so here’s another rant about the concept of Cybertronian gender and language 

Pronouns aren’t limited to he/she/they, and I’m not just talking about Neo and non-mainstream pronouns. Words like “you” and “our” are also pronouns, so the next time you hear someone say “i dOnT uSe pRoNoUnS” yes you do. Literally yes you do(excluding people who are referred to only by name, I’m talking specifically about homophobes and bigots but I digress)

The English language, along with most earth languages, have unique words that can only apply to that language. Of course you can translate as close as possible, but some words are exclusive to that language and you can’t accurately translate them. I speak English and Spanish(specifically Argentinian) and there are many words that I can’t translate into English. My father’s from Argentina so he taught me, and even he can’t translate a few words because they simply aren’t words in the English dictionary.

Now when we talk about Cybertronian, it is a fictional language that directly translates into English. Each letter has a symbol that represents that letter so people can directly translate it. It doesn’t have its own structure or grammar, it is just a silly easter egg. 

(Also there’s two main versions of cybertronian I could find but they both follow the same format of what is basically a decoding game) 

It’s obvious they have their own language, but it’s presented to us in a format we can understand, but if we’re thinking of cybertronions as a real species than it would not directly translate and just like any other earth language.

Quick but important detail: cybertronions don’t reproduce. They call us organic for a reason. They can’t do the squinty and dirty because they don’t have things to do it with, therefore don’t have a true concept of gender identity or sexual orientation. The only reason they’re referred to as “he,” “she,” or “they” in media is because it’s translated into English, the same way languages don’t always translate accurately.

There are transgender characters but they are for the viewer if anything, and Cybertronian gender is so much more complex if anything at all. A good theory is that humans introduced the concept of gender, but I don’t think that’s the case. Some people might like slimmer frames which just happen to be a characteristic of women. Some want bulkier bodys and to not be as slim, like a stereotypical male. Words like “he” and “she” are translated into words that refer to physical characteristics rather than mental. There’s also instances of this not happening like when Swerve mistakes Nautica for a man despite her having colored lips and a slim body(traits which normally apply to AFAB people)

At the end of the day, Cybertronions are something to dissect with their culture being so vague due to language barriers and Rodimus being British apparently(different areas have different accents, Rodimus is just compared to having a British accent. Don’t think too deep into it)

also if your curious here’s the two languages sorry that ones transparent lmao

Oke thanks for coming to my ted talk I love you drink wawa and eat please I beg of you

[moliathh]

people accusing alutegra shipper of homophobia and lesbian/aroace erasure are so funny because ONE, as a fan, i cannot make or remove a queer representation of a media, that act can only be done by the creator/producer/corporation/ institution themselves, the fanworks you make for a ship does not held the same weight as official materials. It's a bit insulting that you are comparing fanworks made out of love (that could very much be made by queer people) to a phenomenom driven by hate and bigotry and was a contributing factor to the oppression of queer people. Throwing around big words, accusations, that were meant for something very serious and harmful to refer to something unharmful just because you dislike a ship is not a very LGBTQIA+ friendly thing of you to do. Do you think of homophobia so lightly? Accusing REAL queer people who are being subjected to homophobia on a daily basis because of something they love?

SECOND OF ALL, let's assume that your headcanon is true (i haven't speak of the fact that its basic fandom etiquette to treat headcanon as something personal and not universal and don't harass other people over unharmful difference in opinion). Let's say, Integra is a lesbian, which is a headcanon. Did we collectively forget Alucard is canonically genderfluid? Yet you're referring to Alucard/Integra as a "cishet" ship? Does a queer person get stripped of their queer identity when they participate in a relationship that is male/female presenting? I thought we are about "queer rep"??? How convenient it is to deem him a cis het man and headcanon Integra as a lesbian to make the shippers look bad. Oh, and on the way of watering down queer identity into a caricature, you are also claiming ace people cannot have sex and it's disrespectful to depict ace people having romantic/sexual relationship. As if asexuality isn't a spectrum ranging from "little to no attraction" and the definition of sexual interaction is very loose, especially for queer people. Do you even care about queer people at this point?

And before any of yall jump me, i am queer myself how can i be homophobic my bitches are gay I AM GAY. I'm so sick and tired of yall justifying hate by pretending to care about the alphabet mafia. DO YOU REALLY? It was never that serious, just say you hate the ship and get tf going. I think its perfectly fine and cool to hate a ship just because you hate it, i do! I have headaches and want to vomit when i see ships that i hate but i dont feel the need to moralize it nor do i have to bring it to the face of the shippers or bad talking them. What really piss me off is how you drag real QUEER people through the mud for some fucking little pixels. Go outside, have some empathy. When fascism and censorship comes to wipe us out none of us gonna be spared because you are "one of the good ones" so stop fucking eating at your own community omg if you dont like something and its unharmful then BLOCK

[mbat]

man so i think about the draenei i guess a lot more than most people do since i cant find as much discussion about them as i Want To so anyway something thats been frustrating me for months is

WHAT THE FUCK IS THE DEAL WITH THE TENDRIL TENTACLE THINGIES ON THEIR NECKS/CHINS

i keep trying to figure it out and nothing sounds right

AND NO im not making it a weird thing because i never even liked that trope of something extra about a non-human characters body being ~sensitive~ and its always something stupid too. ive literally seen people do that with tails and horns. like. no.

im trying to think of a real reason theyd have those

it also bothers me because as far as i personally know, they dont even move in canon, like, theyre not something that can move like a limb or something

but even when i was trying to reference real nature, even something like a starnosed moles nose thingies are able to move, they help them sense things (mostly prey) underneath the dirt for example

and a sea anemones tentacle thingies also move and help them basically latch onto things or push things around or whatever

so one of my conclusions is that somehow the ones on the draenei have to move even though ive never seen or heard of them doing that

and even then its like. okay but what do they do. are they some strange form of temperature regulation? do they help them sense something that they otherwise arent able to?

they cant be something that helps sense vibrations because theyre not in a good position for that, they cant help with balance because theyre not in a position for that either

the worst part is I KNOW that in canon theyre just an added feature to future emphasize how alien the draenei are compared to every other playable species. BUT COME ON. they have this whole universe made of rabbit hole after rabbit hole, theres probably several million words written about this franchise on the wiki alone for all i fucking know, and they cant just have One that says what the hell those tentacle thingies do? on both the page about the race as a whole and the page for the playable race they just mention them in a sentence or two and dont elaborate on really anything

plus theres the fact that they decorate them with jewelry, and the men can have them in their beards, so like, they cover them up as if they dont need to be uncovered and its just

WHAT. WHY. WHAT IS THIS. WHAT ARE THOSE. WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!

i am not a biologist idk what the fuck they could possibly do im just a guy who likes fictional creatures a lot 😔😔😔😔

[boatemlag]

was gonna add this in the tags of a post but it got really long and i was like ok lemme just make a separate post to be pretentious on. but i think the urge to separate character action from cc action in mcyt fanwork is the kneejerk reaction to "what if this is rpf"... its a taboo to talk about rpf or write rpf (in general but especially in mcyt fan space) so we in fandom tend to be very stringent about, like, fuck, i dunno. the platonic ideal of OOC vs IC. im not going to make broad claims about the historic relationship of mcyt fanwork to rpf because well its really late at night and thats the sort of conjecture reserved for annoying my friends in dms. but it seems apparent to me that the birth of even the terms c! and cc! were due to wanting to distinguish ethical fanwork from non-ethical fanwork.

theres a few layers and axises to consider the ethicality of fanwork (of which i will consider fanfic in this post because i am foremost a fanfic writer). a good example to start, when we discard the c! vs cc! labels, and start to look objectively at work, is the level at which a fanwork becomes unethical. we look at the surroundings of the fic --

are they in minecraft? does the work make reference to them doing minecraft things? how is, say, movement or inventory or block shape and placement described how realistic is the minecraft world when compared to our real world? does it seem like a general fantasy setting?

is it acceptable to put the subjects into a fantasy setting? a high sci fi setting? a superhero au? what about an au which elaborates on existing political structures alluded to in canon?

what about a modern au, no powers? does, for example, the description of mumbo having a mustache or tango having hair suffice as distinction enough? what about modern aus where they live in real life cities? what about historic aus? is 1800s london more acceptable than 2020s london?

what about names? generally it is agreed that grian should not be called charles in a fic for it to be considered referring to the character, and not the CC. is that distinction meaningful when we are interacting with the simulacra of grian? what about jimmy? is it enough of a distinction to call him jimmy solidarity? what about calling philza phil? is that acceptable?

what should be considered canon to that setting? does "off camera" count as in character? (this is where i think the lines start to blur a bit for people) what if characteristics that are exclusive to the "real person" are given to the subject of fiction (ie. scar's wheelchair or other aids) (this is the point where i'm lamenting the lack of ability to add footnotes to a tumblr post)

what is the breaking point for all of these ethical considerations? this is something that must be present when considering fanwork from the model of c/cc divide. if one were to question the necessity of the existence of that divide, what changes (negative or positive) does that bring to the community? in art, fic, meta, crit, etc.? do we value the artist's opinion, their intent, over the art itself? i said i wasnt gonna bring up barthes in a tumblr post but the invention of the author as supreme truth maker can only hurt the growth of art. i think that's double edged here. the artist both has the autonomy to decide what is ethical to create but the audience also has the freedom to decide what is ethical in.... fandom. i just had to stop myself writing society, and write fandom. but yeah. food for thought. i dont really have a good way to end this uh heres a picture of my cats

[river-of-wine]

i agree with ur post abt the RE villians so much… the way people treat the lords is honestly the way people should have treated the bakers 😭😭 who were like actually not even themselves like they were literally being controlled…

donna especially bothers me with how people treat her as a innocent defensless victim that was attacked by ethan when she lured him into her house with a hallucination of his dead wife, OPENED THE DOORS FOR HIM, and then trapped him in there… the end of donnas fight is even more frustrating when ethan was literally forced to stab angie in order to avoid being stabbed to death by a bajillion dolls but people still take it as “ethan chasing her down”

and i 100% agree with ur take on the hcs about karl… there r so many that r taken as fact just to put him in a more sympathetic light which bothers me alot because its clearly not true… u dont have to try and make ur character look better to like them… sometimes u should just accept a villian as a villian! i remember i used to think karl being taken as a child was canon because it was so widely agreed upon and brought up in arguments that i thought it was real 😭😭

and oh brother… dont get me started on the deal… could u imagine how incredibly OOC it would have been for ethan to take that deal? where after fighting tooth and nail and the expense of his own life to keep his baby daughter safe no matter the cost to turn around and be compliant in using said baby daughter as a weapon…?! naw!!! it wasnt on ethan to have to negotiate with karl to make a better deal, especially when ethan turned him down the first time after being rightfully angry at the insinuation of using rose as a weapon. and karl doesnt explain, doesnt negotiate on his side, he kicks his chair down and threatens ethan, he uses fear to try and get ethan to join him

that is not good intentioned!!! and thats ok!!!! hes a villian!!! his ego got bruised when ethan turned him down! so he got mad and kicked him down the propellor hole! thats not on ethan!

i wish people could appreciate the character for who they r… its not karl if u strip away his arrogance and ego 🥲

(sorry for the lomg ask, i really like resident evil and that post u made was so real…)

ALL THIS EXACTLY!! I have been a Resident Evil fan since the year RE7 came out and let me tell you I was baffled when I played RE8 and saw Miss Kill and Maim and Murder and her cocky cowboy brother be treated like the new Jack Baker. He became infected by protecting his daughter from his crazed wife and he doesn’t even hold the events of the game against Eveline when he speaks to Ethan about

The response Donna gets is particularly frustrating because at least with some of the more sympathetic looks at Alcina and Karl, there are HINTS at the fucked up people they actually are. Donna is essentially turned into an entirely different character.

The closest thing I think I can compare Donna’s fanon characterisation to is Eveline, but even that isn’t entirely accurate. Eveline is ten years old and given that fact as well as her upbringing, if that’s what we can call her being raised as a weapon in a lab, I really doubt she understands the gravity of what she has done. She doesn’t understand why people are angry with her and, as we know from both her and Jack, all she wants is a family. But all this in mind, Eveline can still be quite a mean kid. I don’t blame her for this at all, it’s a completely understandable response for her to have as a young child in her situation, but she is controlling the Baker family to be violent murderers, makes Mia attack her own husband and is particularly malicious towards Rose. Eveline has fun with some of her meanness as well. She laughs at Zoe as she runs off to infect her family, she taunts Ethan before he reveals the neurotoxin that he has, she mocks Rose when she tells her the crystal isn’t in House Beneviento. Again, while I don’t really blame Eveline for behaving this way and she was also entirely a victim, Eveline is also not presented as being a naive and palatable villain.

Donna, in canon, is not Eveline. She’s nothing like Eveline. Eveline is a child who can’t comprehend the severity of what she has done to the Baker family. Donna is a grown woman. A mentally ill woman, yes, but we aren’t shown any signs that said unspecified mental illnesses make her into the weak, incapable and naive version of her character that is so spread around the fanbase.

House Beneviento is inaccessible unless Donna lets you in. You cannot get inside if she doesn’t let you, and she intentionally lures Ethan inside with hallucinations of Mia, who he very recently watched get shot multiple times and die. She makes him give her the only thing he has left of her, the photo of Mia and Rose, before he gets inside, and once he’s in there Donna continues to very specifically target fears Ethan has about protecting his family with the hallucinations.

The flowers didn’t just appear around House Beneviento for no reason. Donna doesn’t think Ethan will have fun physically taking a mannequin of his wife apart or hearing her crying voice over the radio. Genuinely, I do not know how people can look at that baby hallucination, a horrifying recreation of Ethan’s dismembered infant daughter chasing him down through narrow hallways and still think Donna had no ill intentions whatsoever.

Donna’s death is jarring and upsetting, it gives a completely new light to what Ethan was doing and just how intense those hallucinations were, but Donna was not just fleeing Ethan unaware of why he was attacking her and Ethan was not just attacking Donna for no reason. Not only is she swarming him with dolls filled with razors and knives, she’s also mocking him through Angie and suggesting that he is a bad, even abusive father.

Donna is the one of the lords who comparatively has the least reason to be attacking Ethan. While I do not think Ethan was unjustified in the slightest, he did trespass on Alcina’s property and kill one of her daughters and he did make Karl mad because he didn’t take his deal. Those are reasons. Donna just kind of fucked with Ethan because??? Like why did she do that??? She’s a fucked up lady that’s why. And that’s what makes her interesting. House Beneviento is insane and scary and watering down the woman responsible for it all is so boring!

Speaking of Karl, I’m not at all surprised he received the response that he did. He’s a conventionally attractive male villain with a cocky demeanour, a fun voice and a backstory with a hint of sympathy. Of course he gets babied and woobified to no end. I completely agree with you about the headcanons surrounding him. For a while I just felt insane and I was convinced that somewhere in my three playthroughs that I had missed something somewhere, like I found his damp cigar but not the document that explains that he was kidnapped as a child by Mother Miranda. There’s nothing that suggests that in his lines or any of the documents about him, and I think people get so blinded by the Heisenberg that they want to exist that the Heisenberg who does exist fades into the background.

AND YEAH! NO WAY ETHAN SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THAT DEAL! ABSOLUTELY NO WAY! To recap what Heisenberg has done to him at this point, he has:

• brought him to the lords and Mother Miranda where he and Alcina argued over who gets to violently murder him

• put him through his little lycan torture tunnel and almost killed him with that spinning spike cylinder

• forced him through another lycan den where he has to deal with them as well as Urias

• suggested using his six month old baby who has already been dismembered as a weapon to further his own goal

Like fuck no! Get away from me! I’m out of here! Ethan’s primary goal was never to kill Mother Miranda, it was to save Rose, why risk both himself and Rose trusting this man who is not only one of the group of people who have been trying to get him killed this whole time and who has also personally tried to get him killed multiple times before now? Ethan’s main motivation is always to protect his family. It’s why canonically Mia will always be the right choice in RE7, it’s why he ended up in Louisiana in the first place, it’s why he’s here, it’s why he’s kept going even after finding his daughter’s head in a flask on the suggestion that he can save her. He’s not going to use her as a weapon because this guy wants to.

Also SO TRUE ABOUT HEISENBERG JUST NOT EXPLAINING ANYTHING!! I hadn’t thought about that but yeah. Yeah! He didn’t explain a thing clearly, didn’t try to negotiate, just got all mad and threatened Ethan when he said no to his deal.

Karl is a total love to hate character for me. Kind of similarly to Lucas, he’s a mad genius type who likes to taunt Ethan over an intercom while Ethan deals with whatever new horror they’ve made for him to face and just doesn’t shut up, and I wouldn’t have him any other way! His huge ego and over confidence is so fun and it’s what makes him as memorable as he is. Same with Alcina! They’re two total show offs who have done incredibly fucked up shit, Alcina more so, and similarly to Jack while he’s under Eveline’s control it’s this cockiness and extreme nature to their violent actions that make them memorable and entertaining villains.

Donna is scary! She’s really scary! Imagine an adversary you can’t even see, who has complete control over what you see and experience, and is using that to force you through some of your deepest fears. Ethan isn’t her first victim either, and the psychological aspect to what she puts him through is deeply unsettling, taking Donna’s very intentional use of Mia and the fears about Rose being unable to be fixed away from her leaves her with nothing.

Why strip these villains of what makes them fun or scary? It’s a horror game! It’s a Resident Evil game! One of the most memorable Resident Evil characters ever is a very tall man in a trench coat and a funny hat. These games are over the top and campy and it’s also a horror game! There’s going to be fucked up people in it and it’s fine to like them if they’re fucked up! It’s weird that that has to be said!

No need to apologies about the long ask!! Resident Evil 7 and 8 are two of my biggest special interests and I love talking about them, especially about a bunch of very interesting characters who get so watered down and woobified it’s basically not them anymore. Thanks for giving me another excuse to talk about it!

[doomsdaydicecascader]

What would you say was the thing that really shifted your opinion on postcanon stuff? I remember reading your long form posts about it and finding them pretty eloquent and interesting given the information I had (and I admit they did nudge me to me to end up not reading the epilogues along with the sheer length and my own squeamishness, though of course you also gave them their due when you felt it was fair)

if i'm being real, it's primarily interaction with other homestuck fans - my social media spaces tend to be pretty heavily curated, i basically only follow people i trust to be intelligent, since like. there is a level of comfort and complacency with social media? i don't like following new people, i don't like unfollowing old people. so i just dont branch out that much.

but i joined the mspfa discord in........ may of last year? while i really enjoy playing the role of like, i compared myself to solaire of astora once. guy who is there to help. i enjoy doing that, there is fun in that. i have spent many hours over the past months explaining homestuck plot points in ways that basically only i would and it is largely, pearls before swine, because the fact is that people dont want to understand post-canon, they don't want to like, pick at it critically, to understand why the decisions were made, they want to hate post-canon. and this is a very critical difference between me not liking post-canon and the majority of people hating post-canon.

and there is something to be said about experiencing homestuck as it is perceived by other people, to really solidify what i liked about homestuck post-canon, because there was stuff i liked to begin with. and seeing people who hate it without good reason frustrate me! genuinely, if you had to see the same "i heard jade has a dog penis" discussions every 2 weeks from some sprout who showed up only to be mad, you would start to defend it too.

like, i actually delayed that second blog post at the time because hatred for the team was flaring up again, for whatever reason, i don't even remember. but i remember putting it off because i didn't want to contribute to people who were blindly angry about homestuck^2

there are reasons to not like post-canon, lord knows there are plenty. i actually stand by basically everything i said about it not actually working and the times where it goes too far. in the second blog post, not the first one. but like, there is a total and all-encompassing difference in what the conversation is, "yeah, the meat and candy thing doesnt really work and dirks graphic suicide is ill-considered at best" doesnt matter at all when the level people are operating on is "say a plot point as a joke, make people mad, have fun circlejerking over how bad it is"

part of it is also that in the process of writing my own comic, it kind of comes with the territory to be less precious about the characters. like, team slime, my home discord server, watches movies every saturday. for a while, our theme was musicals, and eventually, we watched hamilton. and i realized that lin manuel miranda writes alexander hamilton in the exact way i am always afraid i am writing jane and vriska, like. just. truly relentlessly protective of them. and so being less precious about these characters means recognizing the flaws therein, not being afraid to write them just being kind of disasters. i still am pretty precious about them, but its a work in progress. you gotta get your hands dirty with them, and that puts it in context of respecting when others do the same

like, there are still a lot of really glaring flaws in post-canon, dont get me wrong, but theyre not insurmountable, and it helps to have spaces like burning down the house for me to express directly like. what i wanted out of homestuck. post-canon is not what i want it to be, but when has homestuck ever given anyone what they wanted without any complications whatsoever

and i think it is genuinely capable of being extremely good - this recent update (yiffy overlooking the rosemary drama) is extremely choice! i genuinely love how everyone involved is characterized, the panels are flashy, it puts to bed really stupid shit, like. its unbelievably fucking good how the problem kanaya has isnt "rose had another kid with jade in secret, our marriage is in shambles" but "jane knows about this kid", like. the absence of infidelity conflict is refreshing and says so much about everyone involved. and i have been thinking nonstop about how rose and jades daughters takes after caliborn of all characters. like. "you hope they eat each other alive" with the perspective of like, a caliborn grin is such an INSANE direction to take yiffy! holy shit! its awesome!!!!!!!!

[haeresys-realm]

Please DON'T READ IT if you simp her. Because this is mg blog and I can tell what I want to tell (and I forbidden to show everyone everywhere my massages to say – look my jackals how stupid and wrong this man is; I'm really tired of contemporary childish manners and no aim to education. And yes, everything I will say will sounds stupid because I have a pooer English vocabulary and grammar, so, please, if you can correct it, do ut, but dont to correct my further opinions and try to say shit about me) and there will be my first reaction of all this shit happened in spite I thought I was ready for it. But every time it gets worse than I expected. I can't bear it, really.

... because unfortunately she was the reason I started to hate this game. All I've written before was because a year ago it was leaked she is the 4th. Now she and her pathetic pathos that was just taken from other character model is forced so much that I can't see anything but childish praising for such a trivial cliched character.

It is so funnuly because she behaves ABSOLUTELY LIKE THE DOCTOR. As if he was her REAL FATHER AHAHAHA.

And after that this idiots on developpers say this!?

https://youtu.be/SycnWxUMvpU?si=fINqhY0EyT5JJw5l

I guess the author of this cringe deleted my most emotional comment for my canonical pointing out that this is an illogical delirium.

And I'm absolutely horrified of what a shit character they made of her. Just a stupid good-mommy with sad fate who got everything from nowhere. There's no reason she could live so well with such a "curse". There's no reason she would be forgiven. They said she's insane cursed child – no, she's just an absolutely fanservice character for nowadays teen girls and nothing else. Absolutely nowaday-teengirl-fanservice character.

Arlecchino is just a female fanservice mommy character of the so-called strong woman with bad fate. It's disgusting how hoyo uses this image to attract teen girls to this character. And this empty cliche really works.

How idiotically stupid should this little girl be to threaten a GOD. Dottore power lvl can't be even compared with her. Kusanali said he is God-leveled and she isn't EVEN a rival to him. I really feel sick of what a shit these idiots on game developers made with characters and harbingers now just to show stupid children cliched black and white morality that doesn't work in life and what made us all (adults especially) feel too boring while watching it agaaaain and agaaain. I never were so dissapointed in this game. The worst character for me ever.

The girl with Mary Sue powers from nowhere tells she could kill a 500 years old genius who made himself a god who can defeat archons. But children say they like it and respect her. I have no words. If you want the science to improve and new developments work on people you SHOULD TEST IT ON THEM WHETHER YOUR LIKE IF OR NOT. And if there are people the society don't need it is the only way to do, ESPECIALLY when we are talking about JUST A GAME. Fuck. This is not just boring, it's the worst scenario it could be. Some girl killed a Harbinger when she couldn't. And everyone just forgave her and gave highest rank and trust. Just because children wanted to see a mommy character with manly outfit, strict character and transgender nickname. The woman can't be a father. Live with this information. And good luck in your mental evolution, because there's no way for degradation if supporting such a cringe and see no strange things and insane idiotism in it.

Because I know how inadequate the childish community for whom it was done are I know that soon there will be plenty of so-called "arts" with Arlecchino humiliating Dottore, dominating him, etc, and he, perverted as a character, crying and begging for mercy as Furina. I really feel too sick of all of this disrespectful attitude to canonical images and characters stories and core. Bur now I'm afraid the so-called contemporary developers are doing the same shit. They are not much smarter than these teens because they have chosen not to improve their concepts but to make a fanservice primitive shit instead of it.

And you can think what you want but if there are her lickers everywhere, you shall know that there's another point of view and if you're not that dumb and mind-limited child you shall listen to the alternative side and accept it's existence. Don't answer me if you want to say some shit about me just because you feel offence for your waifu. I warned you before you read. Have a nice day.

P.S. The moment of sudden faith in humanity. I must mark it.

[chaoxfix]

I've seen the end of Prime. I didn't think it was super bad, but I absolutely do think it's in the same boat as Forces after all is said and done. Complete with the goldmine for fix-it-fics.

I still stand by saying that Nine justified the show existing. I wish he wasn't left to be isolated in the Grim because that puts him right back to the status quo of his life. Isolated and hurt.

Above all else, it's obvious as hell the show needed more time in all directions. More time in the oven, and more runtime than a single 23 episode season. I have to wonder how the production of the show was behind the scenes, as well as if the Writer's and Actor's strikes had anything to do with how much this season stumbled.

under a cut because i dont really want to spread negativity about this show, i honest to god overall liked it. or, at least liked it enough that i dont feel comfortable participating in raking it over the coals. again, im not the target audience, but if i was, i would've absolutely *loved* it, no holds barred.

i do think the ending with nine was kind of a bummer, yeah. but ultimately i think the door is still open for other adventures with him reintegrating with other shatterspace inhabitants. i think nine and rusty rose could have a healthy friendship at some point. plus i think a lot of the other shatterspaces maintain the ability to travel which could have plenty of stories leading from it, not just with nine but with one another and sonic's main universe.

genuinely, my only complaints that feel legitimate are 1) sonic's personality, 2) the majorly extended fight scenes and overall pacing between scenes with the emotional depth i was watching for, and 3) "it's canon to the games"

everything else i didn't fully enjoy was purely because i am not the target audience. im not a fan of childish humor, i like more nuance with jokes and i dont think pointing out the obvious is all that funny, etc, etc. but this was written for kids, so that's just not a legitimate complaint imo. honestly even my #2 complaint doesn't feel all that legitimate, because the target audience probably doesn't really crave that same level of emotional complexity and might prefer the long flashy fight scenes -- why could explain why there are so many, and why they're so long.

but i think overall that anything that didn't stick the landing for me was #3, because of the producers saying that it's canon to the games timeline. because of that, the expectations were heightened by people like me, who care about things like timeline placements -- and we're generally older fans with a long history with the sonic franchise and laughably high expectations and a sense that the sonic franchise should just 'go back to when it was good' rhetoric... compare that to the actual target audience: kids. an 8-12 year old probably isn't going to care about timeline placements. if they would have just not mentioned games canon, a lot of older fans could've enjoyed this more because it would've been disconnected and not beholden to so many expectations. that's its biggest flaw, imo, and that's not a flaw of the series, only with its marketing.

...for my specific timeline concerns..... when i said everyone's clamoring for sonic to 'return back to when it was good' -- the advance series is actually what a HUGE amount of people consider to be the peak of sonic. and guess what sonic prime is meant to immediately follow? sonic advance 3. to be honest the only thing that throws me off is the idea that they all live in green hill, including knuckles. after sonic advance 3, angel island is where it usually is and knuckles is living there full time again, watching over the master emerald. that's my only real concern. i dont worry about people saying it doesn't make sense not to include blaze or silver, because again, this was meant to be set after sonic advance 3, which was released in 2004... before sonic rush came out in 2005 and introduced blaze, or sonic 06 came out and introduced silver. so i dont really care about them not being included, it makes sense for them not to be there, imo.

[justatalkingface]

Can I vent one thing? I kind hate the hipocrisy of some (a big number here) fans on regards Izu and Endeavour.

Like it goes more or less like this:

Fans:😒look at Izu defending Endeavour even through Dabi told how abusive he is.

Me: what you want Izu to do punch Endeavour and praise Dabi? A fucking villain who killed and has no remorse?

The hipocrisy here is how they blame Izu for "siding with an abuser" but Shot befriend BK is cute.

Following that logic, they should hate Shoto too as he is Bk's friends...somehow. BK for all his many flaws, I say this, he is honest in his hate for Izu. Never tried to mask.

As for the other ask I sent and yoy answer. Look, Hori just hates Izu and at this point is just easier to say he is a bad writer (feels lazy but I swear this is the easiest and real explanation here) we dont know why Izu wants to be a hero or anything about his family. His complex of martyr makes no sense (does AM have the same thing? It also makes no sense ....bc we know 0 about AM)

There is so much cognitive dissonance baked into Bakugou and how much people love him, there really is; he hits Izuku and there are Bakugou fans that basiclly say Izuku should thank him for the privilege.

Relatedly, a lot of people apparently find him attractive which... I don't get. But hot people do get away with a lot more than unattractive people, so I could see some unconscious biases on the fact that they think he looks hot, and is therefore more tolerable than if he looked like Mineta but acted like he does in canon.

To be fair, a lot of it is ultimately on Hori himself and the writing; no matter how bad I find his character arc at times, Endeavour's abuse and behaviour was never treated like a joke. Brushed over, sure, but it was never funny. Meanwhile, we passed a point in the story, long before Endeavour's redemption kicked in, and suddenly every abusive thing that Bakugou had been doing, bad things which were Serious Problems he was supposed to deal with, was nothing but a joke, even while Endeavour was still on and off being given shit for being an abuser; it's annoying, but I don't find it surprising people don't take Bakugou's behavior seriously if the story itself doesn't.

Meanwhile, while people's interest in Izuku has died to some extent because of how bad his writing got, I've seen people saying (and I'm not completely disagreeing with them) that Dabi has been carrying a lot of Post War, with all the focus on him and his tragic backstory being something that's actually interesting, and how much character he's allowed to have compared to everyone else, which, ironically enough, is probably enough to make him a more sympathetic victim to a lot of people over Izuku, who isn't even allowed to think about his past abuse with how much his traumatic backstory is being suppressed by the writing.

Granted, it feels like a lot of that was altered to make Endeavour (and Dabi) more tolerable to the readers, and while Dabi is supposed to be a villain with sympathetic origins, some people forget he's very much an unsympathetic person at this point, by his own design, and that would probably be insulted by some of the nicer takes on him.

Ultimately, what Endeavour did was worse than Bakugou, yeah, and I see people say that for why Bakugou is more defensible, but it's not a matter of degree; Endeavour doing shitty things doesn't excuse Bakugou doing shitty things, though there's also the fact that abusive fathers are more universally loathed than bullies, especially with all the extra stuff going on with Bakugou to try and mitigate him.

On the other thing....

Izuku is easy. Izuku wants to be a hero because: societal brainwashing about the heroic system as a whole making the system popular to the people, wanting to help people, and wanting acceptance from others. Being a hero, for him, is wrapped up with all three of those causes.

On All Might... Well. It's been awhile, but back when All Might was allowed to be a character, it was pointed out multiple times that Izuku is, in fact, exactly like All Might (seriously, if we look at what we know about Young!All Might, and it sounds like he's basically taller, more muscular, and to some degree more confident Izuku from the start of the story. He's basiclly Izuku if Izuku never had Bakugou in his life, constantly knocking him down, and maybe had an extra foot or two in height), and while Izuku liked being like his idol, everyone else in the know was worried because All Might went exactly down this road Izuku's going down.

That is to say, All Might is now a lonely old man, scarred and broken, without a life of his own, and the fact he's still alive means this is the good ending for him, compared to him getting himself killed.

(looks at the newer manga chapters meaningfully)

The Izuku and All Might self-destruction parallels is something that came up within the first couple of chapters; it was a very deliberate choice, and it seemed clear, at some point, that All Might was supposed to help Izuku be better than him, temper his natural martyr tendencies, and not get himself killed or horribly maimed, a process that would help the both of them grow past these tendencies.

And yes, we know little about All Might, but after a certain point his development stopped and... in all honesty, as much as Hori seems to hate Izuku, he seems to hate All Might just as much, if not more (or at least All Might isn't mandated to be strong and victorious, anyways, in ways that give Izuku some protections). All Might took this scrawny little boy to the beach and over the course of a summer bulked him up to the point where he could host OFA; he's not this horribly incompetent person that the later parts of the story seem to want us to see him as.

And yet, the more he's developed the more Hori just adds flaw upon flaw to the poor man, starting with being completely incapable of helping Izuku in pretty much any way all of a sudden ('clench your butt' my ass) and turning more and more pathetic over time as his powers waned, and he never got to grow as a character to filled the void in his characterization.

Presumably, mixed with the part where he was meant to teach Izuku... literally anything, All Might's backstory (beyond being basiclly tall Izuku, anyways) was probably going to be organically expanded on over time as their mentor and mentee based relationship developed, but that never happened, and so we have a character whose defining traits are largely having super powers, who no longer has those super powers.

[notriipentry]

(this is me talking about fanon mizole,,, yk the kind of fanon that you'd find on twitter lmao. ignore if you'd like)

mizole doesnt like ichiya because his whole brand is defying standards n expectations and whatever. he doesn't hate him, but he shouldn't be compared to him

let me explain:

"He considers himself a rival to the Squid Squad, particularly Ichiya, though he fails to escape their influence. ...his personal creed is to either exceed or betray the expectations of others."

1) bands and artists will be rivals. its quite normal in the music scene. idk how people dont know this

2) he doesnt want to keep being compared to ichiya, and wet floor to squid squad. they have very different sounds, so i understand why that might be annoying

3) continuation of #2, this is basically him trying to break out of that constant comparison to ichiya and SqSq in general from fans and listeners. wet floor is defying expectations set by the listeners.

same can be said for what he's said in the interview:

"Are you bored of it? What is that 'what we haven't done yet?' That's what I'm always looking for when working on the next song."

they're trying to be different, to break the mold in the splatoon music scene that ichiya and the rest of squid squad set for the other bands, an expectation for them to live up to.

what im trying to say is that whenever i see people saying that mizole hates ichiya, or that he's jealous of him in canon (i mostly see this on twitter, go figure) isnt really true. its just fanon. idk headcanons are alright and stuff but i dont feel like thats mizole, the real mizole.

also when people compare wet floor to squid squad (again, on twitter), cause ive seen a lot of "oh wet floor is nothing like squid squad" and of course whether you like them or not is totally valid, i just dont think they're really comparable is all. like they are two different genres (ska punk vs. whatever wet floor has going on. it sounds like a mix of different genres which i really like) and also for the reasons mentioned above they are REALLY different from squid squad. like really

sorry i really like him and wet floor a lot

[idyllic-affections]

Ooooo i love your ideas for Huohuo sibling! Especially with it being canon that Huohuo actually does have a sibling (a sister). While i love your idea, have you consider Huohuo with a younger foxian sibling? A sibling that deeply admires their big sister and would brag to anyone who would listen how their brave big sister is a judge in the Ten Lord Commision, meanwhile Huohuo keeps trying to get braver just so she wont let her sibling down and let them see how she really is. (+ Tail also has begrudgingly taken a liking to Huohuo’s little sibling and usually called kid or pup or something..)

(Also here are some scenarios i have for your ideas btw:

Older foxian sibling: A sibling who would nag at Tail to be much nicer to Huohuo, a sibling who would let their sister sleep with them if she thought there was a monster also there’s Tail snarking how Huohuo was being a baby and the sibling just give him a death glare, a sibling who has a weird relationship with Tail that’s like “they seem to hate each other a lot but they actually secretly care for the each other” kind, and a sibling that Huohuo loves a lot and vowed to be a much braver judge for them.

Emanator sibling: A sibling that Huohuo tries to impress a lot even though she doesnt have to, a sibling that Huohuo compares herself a lot to, a sibling that is much favored by their parents who saw Huohuo as a monster because of Mr. Tail, a sibling who never cares about any of that and loves Huohuo for who she is

I apologize for the sadder tone for the emanator sibling but i imagine that having a sibling who’s an emanator will definitely get you to be compared with them a lot, whether it is you or other people that will do it)

- 🐱 Anon

P.S. I hope you dont mind me asking again but have you seen the Dottore poem i sent?

BABY FOXIAN SIBLING WAHHHHH THATS SO REAL TOO i often write older sibling thoughts because it's, more often than not, my instinct to feel responsible for and protective of a character i like, especially if they're young (-ish, huohuo IS foxian so she's chronologically older than a normal mortal would be but she's still a child by foxian standards)..... but huohuo as a big sister is the cutest to me :(

she tries so hard to be brave for them because she knows how much they look up to her and how they brag to everyone that their super awesome and brave and strong big sister is a judge in the ten lords commission!!! AND she's younger than most adult luofu natives!!!!! their big sister is just the coolest to them!!!!!! and she wants to be brave sooo bad for them. AND AWWW TAIL he's so real for that...... i like the idea of tail yelling at someone for berating huohuo bc only HE can and younger sibling [name] just nodding, firmly crossing their arms and shooting the person in question a pouty glare (they try so hard to look mean but really it just ends up being cute) and saying "YEAH!!!!!!! SHUT UP DO NOT SAY THOSE THINGS ABOUT BIG SISTER RAAHHH 🗣" tail probably thinks it's funny and i think he might say something along the lines of "you tell 'em, pup" he's so dad coded to meeee 👍 cries sobs weeps

older foxian sibling!reader, who always kisses huohuo's tears away when she cries. older foxian sibling!reader, who welcomes her with open arms in the middle of the night when she has a nightmare and can't sleep unless she's with them. older foxian sibling!reader who always gets into petty arguments with tail--"no, you absolute idiot, you CANNOT say those terrible things to my sister, what's wrong with you??????" ...but they actually quite like him, and he won't really admit it, but he cares for both of those foxian siblings. ...and huohuo, who promises herself that she'll be stronger for them. because they can't kiss away her tears forever. so, for them, she will be brave.

emanator of the hunt!reader, who is widely recognized on the luofu for their prowess in battle and seen as someone worthy of a leadership position. emanator of the hunt!reader, who probably works closely with jing yuan and other important figures on the luofu. emanator of the hunt!reader, who knows that some people like to compare huohuo to them (much to their absolute rage; who is putting those stupid fucking thoughts into her head? it's not as if they chose to be seen and acknowledged by the aeon lan, you fools). emanator of the hunt!reader, who always protects huohuo; she is at her safest when she's at their side, and she knows nothing could possibly hurt her when someone so strong is always watching over her. emanator of the hunt!reader, who always reassures huohuo that she doesn't have to impress them or live up to their achievements--"i don't know how being an emanator is an achievement anyway... i didn't choose this? anyway... sweetheart, you don't have to impress me or live up to me. you are perfect as you are. if anyone says otherwise, let them know that they can answer to me, yeah?" ...and huohuo, who can't protect them, but can instead heal them at every opportunity. she will uplift their strength as best as she possibly can (the hunt and the abundance have never historically gone well together, have they? but this is different. where [name] falls, huohuo will raise them up again. something something.... what lan and yaoshi could have been, their pathstriders have become instead...... blah blah blah /lh)

don't worry, dear!!!! i don't mind you asking. i did see it. i have to respond to another bunch of asks soon, i just havent had much motivation today ajkshlfjs <3

[crunchchute]

need to know when exactly hw2 is taking place so that i can work it into my headcanons cause right now its just not fitting at all. a lot of "..unless?" but i wont know until i get the timeline (more under cut i guess. spoiler territory ahead 🚨🚨)

also i had 6 hours of copium for my sleeptime. if youre a hater just take this as if i was pulling this out of my ass, unless you agree, in which case youre welcome to comment or. nod in agreement.

so how does this help wanted economy affect the fazcoin?

but no for real now. to preface im very forgetful when it comes to fnaf lore and i sometimes miss some plot points and many times they affect my headcanons (once i remember them) but i cant check everything. im just forming my own little timeline with my own ideas i guess, but i still want it to be canon adjacent So!

i believed that its taking place post SB, pre Ruin. which i was super happy with as i was worried it would be pre-SB and not give enough lore that i crave. however, just as ive seen some people say, this didnt help with the lore much, and it just got more confusing for me. still a fantastic game but from a lore point it doesnt give us anything too big or a conclusion (well. maybe one) i also saw people say its post ruin, which i dont agree with but i would agree with during ruin. (when ppl say cassie is the player, i dont think so, need more arguments) its unclear once people bring in other arguments than the obvious roxy's mask or the state of the pizzaplex. but basically as an afton believer its hard for me to work around this, but i will try. never back down never what?

so my hc is iykyk, scraptrap->man in the room->ghost/amalgamation->latching onto tech and the mimic in the form of glitch and burntrap->mimic "shedding" him->wills ghost forming mxes; it also works without the frights books but the afton amalgamation and everything around it is too cool to not use. i fucking love ruinborn afton graaaaah *tears shirt apart* i also liked the idea of his spirit shattering and a piece of it forming glitchtrap for years, and i believe it can coexist with mimic, i think burntrap was real and is both mimic and afton.

now. this game. really messing it up for me as glitchtrap existing post or during burntrap just doesnt make sense, i dont want -trap multiples or something (sounds like the years old 2-3 purple guys theory lmao) but i will look into it as glitchtrap and mxes connection..? honestly, i really expected getting to see burntrap here (or at least mimic shown). was burntrap like retconned or something for real??? also still dont understand when people say burntrap isnt the mimic or whatever. no, it is, just with something a little extra on. and that extra is again, wills ghost or remnant or whatever you wanna call it, symbolized by the bonnie parts on his endo, but theres also flesh so yeah, as funny as it sounds i fuck with the afton homunculus growing over mimic theory. its stupid enough, he would do it.

but i wanna focus on mxes, i knew we wouldnt see the entity in the game, didnt expect it. but i also didnt expect the system to show up, which it did, but obviously not the entity yet as i believe they were formed only after burntrap has been "scooped" by tangle (comparing the scooper mimic ending and the burntrap one as a parallel) i just dont understand how glitchtrap is in here. thats the thing i cant figure out! this is 100% post SB so at that point glitchtrap is just gone. how did we get him back now? only ends up with me reaching with like MEGA SPOILERS the vanny ending crushing glitchtrap being a metaphor of her locking away or deleting the code. extreme reaching would be stuffing it into the mxes system where glitch would turn into the entity. but thats way too loose, but ive seen many people call the mxes entity glitchtrap, which doesnt even work with their theory that glitchtrap is mimic, because the entity is obviously not the mimic. like you have to consider this too, not just mimicmimicmimic but then agree that a glitchy rabbit is similar to another glitchy rabbit

lost my thread of thought. and thought of how this all is just, an end to glitchtrap era and only mimic in the future. well.. without an evil rabbit, fnaf will lose its charm for me, i dont know if vanny!cassie would save it for me, i only want wiwi. more wiwi, no mimi *starts glowing red and then explodes* anyway its not that bad. as long as i get to see the mxes entity again i will be good. and as long as im right about the clickteam game, i will be happy :D

also im intrigued by the fallfest showing up again, i really want to see how the maps look and look at all the details.. but in general the area is either underneath or next to the pizzaplex, the body of water in curse of dreadbear imo is the same as the underground water in ruin and hw2 to me confirmed that it truly is all in one place (goes nowhere with this). i love how the hw2 hub is in the pizzasim building. also, another thing, need to check it out again but i want to see if scrap baby is in a vr level or reality so i can theorize about scraptrap, as in, if at least tangle and scrap baby are still around and real in the plex, it would make sense for scraptrap to not show up because he has gone through digitization /j you know the whole pipeline. and so on and so forth

anyway im gonna pet my dogs and maybe read tse and then get back to hw2 in the afternoon. just getting this out of the system and my brain

[swearyshera]

Was the bit where Catra mentioned Prime said she and Glimmer had "sexual tension" supposed to be a pisstake at Glitra shippers, or at least the ones who love to dig into the interactions they had in this portion of canon? I mean it was obviously foremost to underline how much of a gigantic invasive sleaze Prime is, but it is also the former thing? It seemed pretty pointed to me, but I'm me. I'm the most vindictive mfr I know.

I know the allure of enemies to lovers is guaranteed to ensnare pretty much any two characters with a sufficiently volatile emotional charge between them, but people glomming onto this really rubbed me the wrong way, especially in the shrieking void that was the lack of any acknowledgement of Catra's part of Angela's death*. And here its difficult to imagine it being founded on any more solid ground given the verbal hammer kick to the solar plexis Glimmer gave Catra during the "apology". Still lowkey reeling from how great that scene was.

I dont want to directly s*it on anyone who likes exploring the dynamic of these characters. Two characters with every good reason to want each other dead in a gutter suddenly being each others only real possible refuge in the face a greater evil is obvs great ground for drama and exploring uncomfortable, conflicting emotions, its just using this situation as outright ship fuel given the history btwn them makes me uneasy and made me read into that comment more than I think was intended.

Apologies if I'm completely off the mark with this.

To a small, gently mocking extent, yes. Now don't get me wrong, I love the idea of 'I can't stand you... but secretly I want you' - heck, I'm currently writing a show about a couple with exactly that vibe - but I just found it funny how no matter how much I had them argue or insult each other, someone would always tag it with #glitra.

Honestly, I think it's one of those ships where you just have to take a step back, say "These two would be a disaster as a couple" and start laughing about just how much of a disaster they'd be. Don't think too seriously about it and it's great.

On a more serious note, I think that the apology scene between them on this blog would have given them both a lot more respect for the other. From Glimmer's point of view, the fact that Catra is even offering up some kind of acceptance of her role in Angella's death (I know she's not dead in the show, she is here because we're allowed to say it) is a sign that something inside Catra wants to atone. It might be a tiny part that gets drowned out by everything else, but it's there. And from Catra's point of view, seeing Glimmer react in a much more mature way than she expected - on past performance, she'd be yelling insults and trying to smack her in the face.

When you compare their interaction to, say, Ties That Bind, the hard lessons they've learnt along the way are starting to take effect.

[blujaymi]

why are we calling him "adam"??

i dont even really go here so i don't know if this is canon or just popular fanon, but i've noticed that there seems to be a common consensus of naming the creature "adam". and honestly??

hot (or maybe not) take: giving the creature the name "adam" is actually kind of more disrespectful to him than calling him "the creature"

preface: this is not me saying "the creature is monster so he shouldn't have a human name!!!!". in fact, the creature is repeatedly shown to be painfully human in many ways, and that's a whole essay and half to ramble about.

i especially don't like the implication i sometimes see that the creature murdering people makes him less or not human when humans do it literally all the time. which is not to say murder is good, but to say that humans are flawed and can be just as "evil" if not more than how the creature is perceived. (i feel like that's an overarching theme presented in frankenstein in general but that's ALSO a whole other ramble. also sorry i do not have any page numbers or chapters for the quotes. i'm using the project gutenberg ebook and ctrl+f lol.)

ANYWAY, moving on now. thoughts under the cut because this ended up being way too long.

(tl;dr: i get why he could be called adam, but i feel like he himself would not take kindly to it and it is dismissive of his pain)

alright hear me out

i feel like calling the creature adam is kind of against everything about him. like, i see your "i ought to be thy adam". in isolation, it makes "adam" a perfect contender for the creature's name, even one he may choose himself. he says that he "ought to be", implying a sense of want (or maybe more of a sense of obligation).

but that's not the complete picture, because what does the creature say RIGHT AFTER that?

the creature continues, "but i am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed".

well, then the implication becomes that he SHOULD HAVE BEEN adam, but he isn't (which now i am inclined to wonder if that is the idea behind the name. a sort of "what could've been" of the creature in a fanon sense. if this is the case then i can see it, but i'm mainly trying to focus on canon creature here.)

so, the creature does not feel any real connection to adam, which is even further emphasized when he recalls paradise lost. he may initially compare himself to adam: "like adam, i was created apparently united by no link to any other being in existence"; however, he once again follows it up with why he doesn't truly relate to adam: "but [adam's] state was far different from mine in ever other respect".

in fact (even if we just completely ignore the creature's mention of not feeling united to "ANY OTHER BEING IN EXISTENCE"), the creature more personally likens himself to satan, recalling, "many times i considered satan as the fitter emblem of my condition". i get the idea behind him initially comparing himself to adam, and him envying adam and all of that. but the point still stands that he really doesn't feel associated with adam from his own perspective.

which brings me to my next point.

i don't think it's necessarily disrespectful to call the creature "the creature", because he himself does not feel a connection to who was viewed as the perfect human and child of god. and in general, he doesn't feel any connection to humanity. it's why he wants victor to make him a companion. he is done with trying to fit in with humans because he tried so many times and it never worked. in his eyes, there was no hope left to try and become a part of human society.

in this lens, i feel like calling him adam sort of undermines all that the creature has been through because he's been perceived by others as inhuman. like sure, the creature may be in essence, a human. he was made of human parts, has deep and complex emotions and thought, yada yada (once again, not getting into it. beating a dead horse.) but the harsh reality is that none of that matters because no one actually perceives him as human. his appearance is regarded as inhuman (or at the very least, repulsive), and it's the reason for all the suffering he endures in his life.

should the creature feel any lesser than for his appearance? no, of course not. yet, he still does because he gets constantly emotionally and physically attacked for it. to me, calling him adam is a way of saying, "it's okay, you're still perfect no matter what". and yes, the creature should have had that kind of reassurance from someone before he went on a quest for revenge.

but he didn't.

and because of that, any sort of comforting implications of the name are just...gone. the creature doesn't relate to humans and human culture. he feels other, and it's valid considering all that he's been through. so, what would a name mean to him?

to me, naming himself adam would be him saying, "i'm human" when he doesn't feel that way at all. and to add "frankenstein" as his surname on top of that he most definitely would hate, i think. i understand the idea that he inherits victor's name because victor created him, but even if the creature did decide he was part of humanity and named himself "adam" i feel like he still wouldn't consider the surname "frankenstein". victor is a Deadbeat Dad (for lack of a better term). the creature shouldn't feel any obligation to tie himself to someone who wasn't there for him. and thinking about this from a real world perspective, neither should anyone who deals with absent or abusive family members, or for any reason feels disconnected from their family name. you're not REQUIRED to have a name connecting you to your family.

if the creature ever did name himself, i think it would be more suitable and meaningful that it's just...some random name that he comes up with. nothing connected to adam or satan. nothing connected to victor. just something completely unique and his own. i think it would give him a sense of personal identity, which i find much more humanizing than defaulting to "adam frankenstein" as his name (and to reiterate, this isn't to say i can't appreciate the idea. truly, i see the vision).

okay. im done now.

thank you to anyone who read this far because i did NOT mean to ramble for over 1k words

[technicallyblakebelladonna]

Anything you want from ilia that’s isn’t related to Blake or yang? Personally I want to see a little of ilia finding herself not in relation to Blake or Adam. And my personal hope is that we see anything to suggest she isn’t just following in ghira’s footsteps, I’ve been dissapointed by the white fang plotline and that’s really all I can hope for at this point

im trying to discern whether or not this is a subtle passive-aggressive dig at the fact that when i rambled about ilia earlier, basically all i did was talk about her and her relationship with blake and future interactions with yang.

but i'll do my best to answer in sincerity in the case that it's not.

so just to quickly state, i'm of the stance that i'm not someone who should be speaking about the white fang/faunus arc and how it's been handled previously since i am white (and the faunus arc has been most widely discussed as a metaphor/narrative vehicle for real world racism) -- and also i don't believe that my opinion should matter for that very reason. far better people than me have had better things to say about all of it, and usually i try to avoid getting too much into rwby fandom discourse in general bc it just turns into a hot mess extremely quickly no matter where you end up in the fandom. so i'm just going to avoid all that and say it's not my place.

having said that, i genuinely believe that i don't think it's a bad thing for ilia to work with ghira and kali to reestablish a better white fang. it feels like a natural continuation of ilia's arc to have her further split from adam and his influences. blake even directly compares ilia and adam, but follows that comparison up by stating "i don't think ilia is like adam - not yet at least" so it really makes sense that ilia would continue to strive for a goal that she once had -- working towards the betterment of the faunus -- but through a lens that is no longer twisted by spite and rage and a overzealous desire for power, as adam's goal for the white fang was. actually, adam never used the white fang for what they were actually meant for in the first place, he just was doing whatever he could to have as much power as possible (but most specifically, as much power as he could over blake -- and he sought to do anything and everything he could to gain control over here).

so for ilia to continue her journey, unfettered by misguided leadership, to step into her own leadership role in regard to the white fang, i personally feel like that's a good continuation for her character. for her to completely abandon the white fang and just leave it for ghira and kali feels like a weird characterization for her, in my opinion. plus, on top of that, really what else would her character do? with her character redemption arc resolved and now that she's on the side of good, why would she just stop there? that doesn't make any sense to me, personally. like, canonically, that makes sense to me from both her character stand point and giving her an in-story reason to continue on with her journey, rather than just having her drop off the map entirely bc all of the sudden now her redemption is complete and we have no need for her. she's a tertiary character for sure, but i dont think even miles and kerry and the other writers are that lazy to just simply drop an entire character. not when they went decided to include her in the montage shots during ruby's v8 monologue. they plan to keep her around, and clearly they plan to keep her around through her connection with ghira and kali - likely meaning, the white fang.

now for something that i would LOVE to see them do with ilia that "isn't related to blake or yang", but will likely not happen, is for ilia to become a maiden in some way, shape or form. i've seen, specifically, that ilia will become the summer maiden somehow as a theory that's gained some popularity. specifically because the maidens (other than cinder, who is basically ruby's main antagonist) are tied to our protagonists in some way -- winter is weiss' sister, and raven is yang's mom. so it feels like a fairly short leap to assume that the next revealed maiden could end up being tied to blake in some regards.

there are a couple other posts that completely sold me on this (as if i needed much convincing in the first place bc i love ilia so much and having her be a maiden would just be dope as fuck) that you can read HERE and HERE if you so desire to, but basically they boil down to how thematically ilia could fit in as the summer maiden and how it would make sense, actually. one point is that the maidens themselves have interesting relationships/connections between themselves, so it stands to reason that the next maiden-maiden connection would have something similar. and it would be a connection that winter would have with another maiden. and winter and ilia have interesting established narrative parallels already that could be more deeply explored in ilia becoming a maiden.

the other post talks about how team rwby would become guides to the maidens, rather than becoming maidens themselves. this is already showing up with yang and raven, with ruby and cinder (to a degree), and certainly with weiss and winter. blake currently does not have a guide position to fill -- except that she already has guided one character along their path back to redemption. so, again, not a massive leap to see the possibility of blake further guiding ilia in that journey. again, the posts say far more and say it much more eloquently than i did, so feel free to read those instead.

there's certainly a lot the writers could do with ilia's story that isn't related to her interactions with blake or yang, and a lot that i'm excited for if they choose to bring her back, but in the meantime, i'm just gonna keep hoping we see her again, somehow.