#idk more me rambling than anything else

[norman-ratri-truther]

svtfoe finale was absolutely MESSY as hell but like. so much of the criticism i see just feels wrong..

putting it under a cut bcz this post ended up being longer than i expected, spoilers obv / svtfoe critical stuff still even if i am defending it

like "star merged two worlds causing total chaos just so she could see her boyfriend of like 3 hours" is something ive seen and that just isnt. really how it happened??

like, no.. star didnt know the two worlds would merge, like ive seen a lot of criticism of her and the finale being "star merged the worlds" but put it as if she Knowingly merged them. She didn't.

Also I've seen the "boyfriend for like one day" comment used to explain why her actions were so rash but it completely overlooks the previous relationship they had??? like they were best friends for 2 years, they spent every single day together for months at a time. They just started dating, yeah, but using that as a reason to why she shouldn't have tried to stay with him is stupid because it makes it sound like she just met him.

also, if anything them just dating could make it make More sense depending on how you interpret it. She's been crushing on this guy for 2 years and the second they get together she has to never see him again? she has to be stuck on a world she JUST wanted to get away from for a bit? a world she wanted to stop needing to hold together, a world that is going to be even more in shambles now? with a mother who just betrayed her???? ofc shes gonna wanna go to earth

like yeah, destroying the magic was an incredibly irrational decision but sometimes it feels overblown, like blaming her for things that just were not in her control. Like I dont get why people make Star sound worse than she is because like, she did some pretty shitty things already??? why do you have to make up stuff to be mad at the character for bro theres enough that actually happened..

i wish this finale was better written, i do genuinely think it had the potential to be a great and solid story. especially the destroying the magic stuff!! i think if the show built up to the concept of the multiverse being better without magic then that could have been great! instead they have the toffee storyline which was incredible for seasons 1-2-the beginning of s3 and it just ... gets dropped?? like they barely brought him up in season 4?

i want this show to get a reboot someday where the writers actually consider the overarching story better, i really think theres some great stuff that could be done with the destroying the magic plotline if it was built up and executed better.

[sunnymainecoonx]

I know damn well I misunderstood the assignment but we roll, I'll understand it some day

It's killer and dust btw. If you couldn't tell. Which you probably couldn't.. forgor to say but shhh 🤫 Killers having a convo with himself..

..I kinda wanna change my url but idk to what

[theokusgallery]

Hiiii I saw you say you have Notes on your Remus and Janus designs 👀👀?

Could we see/hear some tidbits?

FOR SURE !! Here's what the original doodles for their designs look like, first off, (I know you didn't ask for Virgil but I did these three at the same time)

When I drew this I had just finished an exam and had to wait another hour until I could leave the classroom, so I wrote down enough notes that I had to flip the page instead:

Virgil:

- Virgil has light brown hair that he dyes black (badly). It is essential that the dye job look like shit. It looks artificial, his roots are showing, there's patches where the color didn't take, etc etc.

- He also has blue eyes, which I decided on mostly because it makes it even more clear that his hair isn't naturally black.

- He wears earrings, but his ears aren't actually pierced — they're fake little little clip-on things.

- He wears black nail polish at all times, but it's always chipped because he gets the cheapest stuff he can get his hands on.

- His hair (especially his bangs) get very long at times because he gets too socially anxious to go to the hairdresser. Back in middle school, he used to have Janus cut them for him (Remus could have done a better job but trusting him with scissors would have been a mistake). Now he mostly cuts it off by himself — it looks about as good as his dye job.

- Virgil's purple hoodie is a leftover from Remus' fashion design endeavors that Remus thought didn't look weird enough.

Janus:

- He has naturally strawberry blonde hair. The length is very important to him — he started growing it towards the end of middle school. (He allows Remus to experiment with hairdos sometimes as long as he doesn't cut anything off. I need to draw that sometime)

- I'm not entirely settled on his eye color. I know at least one of his eyes is a very pretty brown, but I have half a mind to give him a yellow glass eye for his left side — I'm not sure it'd make any logistic sense for his situation, though

- He got his ears actually pierced when he was 16.

- He also may or may not have a forked tongue. Not sure how I'd ever be able to show that off — but if he does have one, then Remus definitely was the one to encourage him to do it.

- His fashion style was definitely influenced by being around Remus (who may have used him as a mannequin/dummy because he's small.) so much. Remus also attempted to make clothes for him, but Janus is very fancy and picky, so he doesn't wear those clothes very often (though he might accessorize with stuff Remus made for him occasionally).

Remus:

- He has naturally very dark hair. He uses temporary/surface level dyes a lot, but if he's using permanent or semi-permanent dyes, he's usually limiting himself to the grey streak — it's kind of a sample strand, since it's already bleached. He 100% copied his hairstyle from Roman's.

- He (and Roman, of course) has greenish blue eyes.

- Janus paid for him to get his ears (and eyebrows) professionally pierced because otherwise he was just going to do it himself with a sewing needle.

- He has a lot of very shitty stick-and-poke tattoos he made/makes on himself. They're almost always hidden by his outfits.

- Speaking of which, Remus makes most of his outfits costumes himself. The quality of the work may vary, but they are always way too over-the-top for casual wear, because he stands out anyway, so... in for a penny, right. (As I said in the tags of a post: he is very creative and has no shame or social anxiety at all, so he had his whole aesthetic ("overdramatic green") figured out by the time he was 13)

- He also has SH scars, but, again — they're hidden by his outfits 99% of the time. He's a slut who never shows an inch of skin

[sideblogdotjpeg]

have been thinking about professor sol even. professor bufo with no clearly discernable lesson plan. sol bufo ostensibly martial arts professor who spent two weeks running a yoga and meditation program and shows up to the next class with crochet hooks for everyone. professor bufo who is technically supposed to be assigning grades to students but hasnt given anyone less than an A because "i think they worked really hard and they did a great job :)" (referring to the ugliest and most malformed pot holder anyone has laid eyes upon in their life). professor bufo who is on his way to cluelessly kickstart the sexual awakening of about half the cohort of the academys new students. sol bufo adjunct professor who is gone half the year and his first class back is so immediately and easily baited into going into a long tangent about how cool his friends are. sol who is pretty sure hes easily the most useless professor on campus and almost cries when he sees his little desk overflowing with thank you notes at the end of the year. professor bufo absolutely fucking gloriously hot in the tightest little sweater vest because there were faculty complaints when he wore a crop top to class.

[skunkes]

i loooove when ocs unrealized development makes them feel like real people like no i dont know whether talon is genuinely attracted to women after years of both clinging to them for safety and years of putting them onto that untouchable idealized Perfect Protector Pedestal that must remain untainted by any bad experiences, so he doesn't even try to Be With any. He doesn't know either

[lesgay-lover]

Sorry for all the ventposting it's just that I'm fucking miserable and no one really loves me enough to stay

[afantasyoffiction]

y'all i check tumblr at least twice a day. its been (*checks watch*) 14 hours since i last checked it and im a teenty writblr/fandom blog with like 10 followers ARE YALL OK??? the hell did i miss

EDIT: i have discovered that 63 of these are reblogs of an eddie post reblog. one discussing how closeted and gay he is. are you guys okay???

[a-gay-little-cat]

truly reading about the blood angels, dante and sanguinius will drive a man insane

the rafen omnibus was a fun read, same with the devastation of baal once I got into it and now im nearly done with thr first book about dante and just

god.

i keep screenshotting so many parts to send to my friend and go a little crazy over just because it's little fun lore details i simply didn't expect to read about and it just makes me so. kicks a rock.

i get it. space marines are brainwashed and bad and all that but. well. 🥺 they are all my darlings

[arsenicflame]

hey does anyone wanna bounce bellhands/they all went to pirate school together ideas with me? im trying to figure out the missing pieces of my personal set up and it might be easier with someone else!

[sonic-adventure-3]

dude i phrased that sonic v shadow post so wrong. in my head “more skilled” meant shadow relies on more specific skills like gunplay and chaos energy manipulation, and more theoretical knowledge, not that he’s generally more proficient. “raw power” is wholly undescriptive and invokes an image of brute force, which isn’t what i meant. sonic has significantly more actual experience and more honed movement. sonic is a very quick learner, and has dexterity and stamina off the charts. he’s most certainly not unskilled, not in general nor compared to shadow, so i supremely failed if i implied that.

in my head at least, shadow would’ve learned to fight in a controlled environment, if he had physical training at all. i imagine he’d be book smart, had a formal education and shit. either he learned and trained on the ark, or when gerald messed with his memories he implanted fighting knowledge too, baymax style, or something i guess. sonic learned to fight through actual experience, so sonic would be the one with far better battle sense and instincts, it’s like second nature to him rather than a studious pursuit. dude’s graceful as hell, makes everything look easy; no way in hell is he unskilled or less skilled than shadow. shadow’s skill is like, classical, whereas sonic’s is pure schmovement. but idk i’m just thinking aloud.

[lunanoc]

this is probably definitely an unpopular and potentially controversial opinion, but i saw a take recently on npss and the female characters of dmbj that to be fair pops up often that i feel it’s a pretty prevalent one, so i just. decided to give my two cents on it that once again no one asked for

more under the cut because this got a little long

just to be clear, this a topic that has quite a bit of nuance and multiple layers to it, and perception entirely depends on both personal interpretation and your medium of choice. i’m also not saying that npss is some pioneer in terms of writing female characters because he’s not. but i also feel that saying he’s a blatant misogynist and that he can’t write female characters properly at all is a gross exaggeration and doing the ladies of dmbj a disservice

i’m also going to be talking about the books specifically here, since the books and the dramas/movies treat female characters differently not only because of plotline reasons, but because of the differences in the nature of their narratives. the dramas have quite a bit more of the accusations people tend to like throwing at dmbj like reducing female characters to flat, one-dimensional archetypes or fridging the dramas do have su nan though, but contrary to what a large part of the fandom seems to push forward, the dramas don’t and can’t represent dmbj in its entirety, and if you’re going to try and do that, you can’t leave out the books and vice-versa, but seeing how different both versions of the story can get at times i just tend to separate them entirely

as it stands, the only female characters who die in the books zhang haixing not counting because we technically don’t know what happens to her are a ning and yuncai, and i guess you can add huo xiangu to that, but she's part of the lao jiumen and chen pi ah si dies similarly so not sure that counts here really. and while you can argue for a ning at least that her death for narrative purposes was fridging, npss also used panzi’s death later on for similar narrative purposes, so at least in that respect he doesn’t discriminate

don’t get me wrong, the books aren’t perfect either, and you do get misogynistic comments from the male characters from time to time that make me squint, which is why i’m not trying to pretend dmbj is peak feminism, but they’re also not egregious or frequent enough comments, and in my opinion the main difference with the dramas is that the male gaze in the books is at least somewhat more justified, because where the dramas are necessarily presented from a third person pov, the books are wu xie’s first person pov for the most part. dmbj is essentially written as and treated as wu xie’s memoirs, and so everything and everyone is seen and filtered through the lense of his perception. and wu xie is a man, so that comes with its own set of ramifications. and even then ironically, wu xie is far from the only or the worst culprit when it comes to casual misogyny. pangzi has his fair share of takes, as do a number of other characters

but for all that the female characters are sometimes placed into archetype boxes by virtue of not only the narrative being from wu xie’s pov, but also the fact that the tomb robbing business is shown to be a male dominated one, and also just because npss himself is a man, that doesn’t mean those female characters aren’t complex and fleshed out characters in their own right to the same extent as their male counterparts of similar narrative relevance

i’m thinking of huo xiuxiu for example, who’s arguably the most prominent and recurring female character in dmbj, who from the get-go is very quickly made out to be not a pretty girl (or rather not just a pretty girl) but quick-witted the likes of which wu xie resonates with as a kindred spirit and draws a number of parallels with himself because he finds they share similar ways of thinking and problem solving. she’s capable, skilled, and sees herself as an equal to the iron triangle and the men around her, and yet none of this detracts from either her femininity or her vulnerability as the youngest lao jiumen member, and later as the one left behind to pick up the broken pieces of her own family. she’s a leader in her own right, and she gains support from xiao hua and wu xie in the years leading up to sand sea just as much as she lends them her support in later canon. all of this without ever being presented as a potential love interest and reduced to only that wu xie’s lack of interest in women in a practical sense as romantic/sexual partners is a topic for another post but it’s also a thing that contributes to not relegating most of the female characters to just that too

i’m not about to say npss is being particularly progressive, but it’s also interesting and nice to note that even in recent canon, just like the iron triangle and xiao hua, huo xiuxiu is well into her 30s and unmarried without it ever either being mentioned really or being an issue, which considering the cultural significance of marriage in china, even more so seeing as xiuxiu is the heiress and head to a powerful family, it’s worth noting she’s not treated any differently from the male characters who make the same equally culturally problematic choices. she’s too busy going with the iron triangle, xiao hua, and hei xiazi down into dangerous tombs (which is why she’s often featured in official merch as a main cast member alongside the iron triangle and heihua)

i’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty about every single female character otherwise this would get way too long but i could, but even someone like liang wan, who is absolutely portrayed as vain and sometimes unrealistically obsessed with her appearance and chasing after men, i personally find still has more depth given to her in the book in some respects, because as zhang rishan isn’t in sand sea the book, she has no romance plotline, and so not only does she get pov chapters, she gets pov chapters that flesh out her involvement with wu xie’s plan and the wangs by extension, and her goals, though never followed through on because npss didn’t tie up that loose end, i find are far more driven by something deeply personal. zhang haixing in tibetan sea flower is arrogant and condescending, manipulative as much as she is competent, and while pangzi especially responds to her behavior with borderline misogynistic provocations, it’s very clear that her character isn’t so much the fruit of putting her in the femme fatale archetype box as it is a consequence of her being a zhang. because both zhang haike and zhang hailou (aka ‘little brother zhang’) who are both men, are very much also like this. special mention also to the girls from the side novel a thousand faces because yes npss wrote a book that’s entirely about two women who may or may not be girlfriends

i could also talk about chen wenjin whose entire story runs very much parallel to wu sanxing’s and they both end up with similar endgame situations and are both tragic characters but this post is already long enough. there are more minor female characters who get their share of both “screentime” and development on par with their male counterparts, and for the sake of argument, some of these female characters have as much presence and/or depth given to them as a character like liu sang, who while being a fandom darling, is also very much a minor character. so what i’m saying is that while yes most of the characters in dmbj are men, and the main cast even more so (excluding xiuxiu), at equal level of importance, there’s about as much depth to a character like liu sang as there is to a character like liang wan, or a ning, and so at some point it begs the question of how much of the fandom’s perception of depth in minor female characters is colored by personal preferences rather than objective fact. are there female characters who are basically reduced to being a romantic interest and serve no real purpose other than to be the source of a man’s pain? yes looking at yuncai whose death is both sudden (while it does have some minor foreshadowing) and happens so far towards the end of the book that it almost seems pointless, and in the end only serves as the catalyst for pangzi’s own suffering and justifies his almost ten-year on-and-off retreat to banai

because again, npss isn’t out here making dmbj a feminist manifesto, and there’s room for criticism and pointing out a number of things if you wanted to. but he also doesn’t write bad female characters. they’re as much people as the men are for better or worse, and saying npss can’t write women properly is doing them a disservice. not to mention the fact the dmbj never leans into romance and that actually almost every single ‘canon’ romance is doomed in some capacity means women are rarely relegated to solely being potential love interests, which in a narrative dominated by the male gaze is actually nice?

[obsidiannebula]

Husband apparently found some posts of people complaining about trying to play Divinity: Original Sin 2 after enjoying BG3. And to that I say, just be glad you weren't playing with my husband, whose favorite battle strategies were "Laser Ray everything and I mean EVERYTHING in his path" and "use Internal Combustion on allies to turn them into walking time bombs if that maximizes the number of enemies hit, and also out of combat just for fun"

[sskk-manifesto]

:)

[fairy-ganj-mother]

yesterday at 29.5 years old I watched as many videos as I could find from my high school marching band, choir, and theater run crew days and realized I barely have any memories of my junior year of high school (13-14 years ago btw) other than feeling bad™️

[joshuaalbert]

another thing I do wish had at least come up in ds9 while talking about the bajoran faith is the idea of just like. secular bajorans. I think the way they’re written that’s kind of ‘everyone just believes in the religion and that’s it’ is honestly a little flat? but I think there would be people who have a very complicated relationship with the prophets, who maybe didn’t believe in them before the events of the show and now maybe they have to but they think of them more as the wormhole aliens rather than gods, or just don’t believe (anymore, if they once did) that they should be worshipped because they allowed the events of the occupation to happen. but that wouldn’t mean entirely disengaging from the practices of religion as a community thing, or as comfort in times of need bc sometimes that sense of ritual can be a good one, who still wear the earring not so much as a sign of faith but just as a sign of being bajoran and being connected to their people.

idk not to sound like I’m overexplaining secular approaches to an ethnoreligion when that’s a lot of people’s lived experience but I’m just kind of thinking about what it would look like in this context, and I don’t know that it ever would have been a whole plotline but I think a mention could have been interesting. maybe something as small as rearranging duty schedules and it’s something that would interfere with religious services, but a couple specific bajorans are willing to take that because they’re not religious, and it’s a one line mention (which is the kind of thing ds9 often did well so it would feel natural), but it makes them a little less homogenous as a species.