#imo i could care less about whether its canon or not

[artsycooky13]

k long one here, i dont have a bias nor a strong opinion on peridot and whether or not she's aroace so hopefully, this helps you, cuz i was hecking confused at first too (plz keep it civil for those reading, its been 3 years)

If I remember correctly, it spwaned from a tweet made by Maya Peterson, one of SUF storyboarders, essentially saying, 'Peridot is aroace, thats canon and intended'. This is the only direct statement that 'confirms' aroace peri as far as I am aware of. As for Rebecca sugar, there is not solid statement from her about aroace peri.

(image taken from google images btw, but here's the link [LINK] *Note that Maya seems to imply Peridot being aroace was something "she didnt know" before but has "for a while now" after she had worked on the show (its unknown how long she knew), this may imply other crew members have had the same idea and not just her, at least overtime. This tweet was made while Future was still airing.

another one that a lot of people claim confirmation/implication for aroace peri is from a Steven Universe children's book (I dont know the name, but was created in 2017) written by Rebecca herself. (Peridot not wanting to fuse was interpreted as implied aroace)

As for "lapidot bad" or "shipping peridot is bad", in some cases it's a response to Lapidot or any peri ships are canon claims. In... extreme cases, some people say that cuz they think its an erasure of Peridot's "canon" sexuality, erasing their representation that they dont get often. (some of those people probably feel like they are personally attacked by depicting something they identify with, being shipped romantically/ sexually with someone, thus, those people not liking it very much).

Though to add a little more to the flip side, people who argue its a "headcanon from an animator" is probably due to the show itself never explicitly stating Peridot is aroace, and there is no other canon material that 100% confirms Peri's sexuality other than Maya's word (as far as I am away of). The show IMPLIES this at best, but never clarifies it to be specifically aroace. (though many interpret it as such, especially after Maya's comment).

Again, Rebecca sugar herself never directly confirmed peridots identity (unless there was an interview or smth that I'm not aware of)

For a pretty solid explination on the topic, here's a tumblr page I found that critiques Maya's tweet and other things related [LINK]

Another interesting fact to add context, Maya herself used to draw Amedot(Amethyst+Peri) ship art around 2016-2017 from what i can find, and it aint a platonic one thats for sure. Of course, this doesnt mean its canon, its just fanart Maya used to do (and potentially changed her mind about but thats none of my business). I only say this to highlight that it would be hypocritical of fans that say smth along the lines of "Maya said Peridot is aroace therefore cant be shipped period", when Maya herself has done exactly that before. (Im not linking the ship art here due to worry that some people will easily get triggered, dont harass her over fictional ships, so I will just say you can view it on her tumblr blog still as did I when fact checking this. Take this information as you will)

My opinion on this topic? If people think Peridot is aroace in canon, cool, you do you. Take Maya's word for it? Aight. But as far as the show itself defines it, which is how most people know the show, at most it's implied, but never solid on it and is open for interpretation.

Also different crew writers have different interpretations of the characters, based on Zuke's tumblr comment about the amedot and lapidot stuff- saying that she wanted to depict queer characters, even describing amedot as a "first crush" (taken from the linked Tumblr post cuz it's easier)

And EVEN IF Peridot gets canon material confirming her aroace, people are gonna still ship her regardless, choose to not accept canon. At the end of the day, this is a fictional cartoon, a pretty cool one, but a one fictional nontheless.

so its hecking useless to say whats canon whats not if even the writers themselves have a different interpretation.

I saw people saying Peridot is aroace, I saw people saying it was just a headcanon of an animator but no one shows any proof so idk what to believe.

Lapidot was really popular when I was in the fandom but now I see people saying it's bad cause "canon Peridot aroace" so I want to know.

I'm not trying to attack anyone btw and I'm sorry if it sounds like that. I'm really curious and want to know the truth

[bandtrees]

Also Mingus. Of course

SEND ME A CHARACTER!!

MINGUS!!!!!!!! OF COURSE. under the cut lol

Sexuality Headcanon: bi :] it's ourple just like her. i don't think she especially cares for romance or ponders her sexuality much, but in less of an "arospec" way and more of a "forming human connection with her is a losing battle" way. i usually love arospec hcs and do see aro mingus somewhat often but it's just not something i really see myself.

Gender Headcanon: generally cis woman but i feel like if she learned what being nonbinary was she would try and release and trademark her own neopronouns and make people pay to use them. i do also see her being interpreted as transfem sometimes and i think that's a really interesting reading but not one that i actively subscribe to.

A ship I have with said character: ghghnmnnormingus. it's been really fuckin funny watching the tides change in the fandom on this ship - for a while i'd pondered it but never said anything, and then there was the time period where it was considered a weird cursed minority and i got vagueposted about it, and THEN mich came and singlehandedly pilled the masses and now its just, like, a ship. funny how that goes. but all of that talk aside, i just think they have so much potential in, like, every stage of their dynamic. the timeframe where norm's consumed by his completely one-sided obsession (/neg) with her is SO fun to think about, as is the idea post-canon of them forging a more normal relationship and possibly more. they're two of dialtown's most intricately-written characters imo, and it really shows in how layered all of their interactions are :'] there is so much baggage between them and simultaneously so little (with the point of "norm cares way more about her opinion of him than she even thinks about him") and it just makes the final confrontation of ch3 pay off so damn well. listen to nemeses by jonathan coulton it's THE normingus song to me. ⬇ SOOO ch3 norm @ mingus to me

A BROTP I have with said character: god her dynamics with all the mingling are so funny, i could listen to that group of people babble on literally forever. i wanna hear them talk about non-green related issues i want to hear what this room sounds like when its time to argue about, idk, taxes

A NOTP I have with said character: dialtown does not have that many options for edgelord proshittery but i have seen efforts at the one(1) they have. Unfortunately .

A random headcanon: always has some kind of headwear on, whether it be her trademark little hat or other ones she has made for her, or headbands or headscarves or whatnot. it's mostly cuz her head looks really off to me without the hat so i work in substitutes when im drawing or imagining her in more casual settings

General Opinion over said character: the height of dialtown's writing, her and everything to do with her. dialtown is already a good game but it goes from good to great when mingus takes center stage, imo. she's so interesting and also funny to watch - i think "seems silly but actually has deeper stuff going on"-type stories are best when the silly and the serious are tightly interwoven and you can't really distance them from eachother, and mingus is a great show of that as an inherently super tragic but also super funny character. there's not a word of dialogue she speaks where you don't get the impression of how pathetic and overcompensating she is, and that works both for humor and for sadness really well. i also like, in general, when typically "sympathetic" character flaws are played to be difficult or dangerous - in mingus' case her insecurity and desperation to follow in her grandfather's footsteps, and her compassion in wanting to be one of the only people left who still really care about him, it's objectively very noble- but less so when it becomes everyone else's problem rather than just hers. she has this in common with her grandfather 👍

[blueskittlesart]

Sorry in advance for how long this ask is. Botw was the first zelda game I played to completion, I played a tiny bit of twilight princess when I was younger purely because you could be a dog, the first dungeon of wind waker, and I have fond memories of both loving and sucking at skyward sword on the wii but ultimately I was just too young and easily distracted by games I was actually good at, and therefore less frustrated by, to have the attention span to beat a zelda game. I think I would have beat skyward sword if not for the motion controls being very frustrating.

Anyway, I played totk and then obsessively read your big zelda doc and basically every post you've ever made about zelda and now I'm insane. Thank you. I didn't have totk spoilers blacklisted at first because I assumed I wouldn't care because I never care about spoilers and then I saw your posts when you were finishing the dragon tears questline and it made me stop just running around doing sidequests and focus down the main quest like crazy.

I'm trying to decide whether to play skyward sword remastered or hrule warriors age of calamity (which I did very much enjoy the demo of) next and was wondering what you'd recommend. I did try to play ocarina of time on 3ds and I WILL go back to it once I stop being so mad at myself about dying in the first dungeon and also maybe give in to using a guide because I don't need to get a Good Grade in Zelda, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.

HIII i'm so glad i could be your introduction to zelda lore!! the question of aoc vs sksw really depends on what exactly you're hoping to get out of your gameplay experience imo.

aoc has its. decent points. i will say this. but the 2 most important things to know about it going in are 1. IT IS NOT CANON and none of the events within it actually correspond to anything that happened pre-botw, and 2. its gameplay is NOT zelda gameplay, it's dynasty warriors gameplay. you've already played the demo so you have some understanding of the gameplay, but you should know that that's ALL there is to aoc, and if you don't enjoy hours upon hours of hack-and-slash large-group combat, you're not going to have a ton of fun playing aoc. there is technically a story tying aoc together, and it has its moments, but they're few and far between. mostly it just kind of sucks. if what you're looking for out of this is a well-written story similar to the experience of botw/totk, i would not recommend aoc.

the most important thing i'd tell you about sksw is that even thought this one IS canon, the gameplay is still gonna be noticeably different from botw/totk. sksw is much closer to the classic zelda formula than the games you're most familiar with, and is actually smaller and more linear than games like oot and wind waker. the gameplay is also almost entirely dungeon-based, and those dungeons are gonna be noticeably harder than the botw/totk ones. what sksw DOES really deliver on is story!! i'd say it's comparable to botw with the way in which the story is told and the subject matter it works with. like i said, it depends on what experience you're looking to get! personally i would go with sksw but. we all know how story-focused i am LMAO

[madtomedgar]

Lan Xichen for the ask meme

a song that reminds me of them: this is more a xiyao song but imo it's from Lan Xichen's perspective post-canon so it counts but. "Stairwell Song" by Brighteyes

what they smell like: probably a lot and not very good because pre-modern people didn't obsess about removing body odor and also really liked incense/perfume/etc, and also he's a dude and dude-smell is not good (to me. because i am a lesbian. if that's your thing, fine, but i am not a fan). less a lot than most because i feel like Lans probably wash better and more often but still.

an otp: Jin Guangyao!

a notp: I'm not like... against other ships here, even if I don't enjoy them... I think Jiang Cheng, because it clogs tags, I don't get it, and its execution is always very unpleasant for me. But more than that anything that pairs Lan Xichen with a woman because imo he is like. Gay gay. Like. Knows that people are straight but like... can't really understand that they... enjoy that? They're probably straight because they want kids so they do what must be done, right? Yeah.

favorite platonic/familial relationships: I love him and Wangji's relationship, especially exploring how it devolves post-canon, but I also really really like the dynamic between him and Lan Qiren in cql. Very crunchy. Like. Lan Qiren clearly cares deeply about him but mostly expresses that by holding him to high standards and shaping him for his role. And he shows his affection for Lan Qiren by striving to live up to his expectations, but also runs interference for his brother. And then like. When Lan Qiren sends him away because he is the one who is too important, and it's the most crushing thing his uncle could have done, and the way that sets up this pattern of him being the one everyone decides must survive, whether he wants to or not. Yeah. Good stuff.

a headcanon that is popular in the fandom but that i disagree with: Centrist himbo Lan Xichen my beloathed. Also the like "too nice, too trusting, weak and effeminate" (mis)characterization.

the position they sleep in: flat on his back like a good Lan but. Also. He has secretly and sneakily mastered the art of sleeping while sitting so it looks like he's meditating. (I hc that the Lan sleep schedule doesn't really match his body's natural rhythm so he's often a little tired so. Stealth-nap).

a crossover au i’d love to see them in: star trek!

my favorite outfit they’ve ever worn: I like the sunshot outfit and also the blue and white one from the second half of the show with the tighter sleeves.

[gabbynyssa]

This does kinda give a good explanation as to why the only canon Joker kill on his hands Pre-Flashpoint is the one in Countdown that killed the Bruce that gave him the Red Robin costume, as that Joker actually was a threat and had taken this apparent second chance from him with a Batman that had killed the Joker over his death.

Plus it makes a good headcanon turning point for why he's brought up the "you should've killed Joker" stuff less since then; as he met a Bruce who did kill to avenge him, and while he was so glad to see a father do this thing he thought he wanted, imo you could kinda see him holding onto the denial about how much worse this Bruce was, and not only did this new Joker take away that blissful ignorance too quick, but he took him before Jason could process and tell this Batman that he'd gone too far. Which I think is supported by him leaving the Red Robin costume in an alley to get picked up by a Tim Drake villain; As, if he truly thought that Bruce he met in another universe was a better father, he would've kept the costume as a reminder regardless of whether or not he was gonna wear it.

He left it there to let that Batman stay dead and forgotten, the Bruce that would kill the Joker for him isn't the Bruce he really wanted in his life, and I like to think that's also why I've never seen him mention its origins to Tim.

That said, the writers keep circling back to Jason trying to kill the Joker but imo it only really lands when the Joker is a threat to someone like he was or someone he cares about, as he knows from experience he can handle the Joker, by crowbar or by rock, but what he can't handle is loss and guilt over if he could've made a better choice.

Like obviously there's a ton of reasons why jason just didnt kill joker in utrh or in any subsequent comics after, first and foremost being that he's dc's little cash cow, but I always did like the in universe explanation being that Jason himself doesn't want the joker to die

Not bc the joker is important to Jason in anyway shape or form quite the opposite in fact, joker dying wouldn't benefit Jason bc the joker doesnt matter to him outside of being a living constant reminder of Bruce's failure that can be used to hurt both himself and bruce, if jokers dead then the healing process can start and Jason doesn't want that he wants to be angry and hurt

So Jason doesn't go kill Joker to get revenge bc he already got his revenge when he beat Joker with a crowbar in utrh and killing the Joker himself wouldn't bring him any more catharsis since he doesn't really care about the clown outside of using him as a prop in his ongoing feud with Bruce

[tarobytez]

disability in the Six Of Crows Duology; an analysis of Kaz Brekker, Wylan Van Eck, and the fandom’s treatment of them.

****Note: I originally wrote this for a tiktok series, which im still going to do, but i wanted to post here as well bc tumblr is major contributor to what im going to talk about

CW: ableism, filicide, abuse

In the Six of Crows duology, Leigh Bardugo delicately subverts and melds harmful disability tropes into her narrative, unpacking them in a way that I, as a disabled person, found immensely refreshing and…. just brilliant. 

But what did you all do with that? Well, you fucked it up. Instead of critically looking at the characters, y’all just chose to be ableist. 

For the next few videos paragraphs im going to unpack disability theory (largely the stuff surrounding media, for obvious reasons) and how it relates to Six Of Crows and the characterization of Kaz Brekker and Wylan Van Eck, then how, despite their brilliant writing, y’all completely overlooked the actual text and continuously revert them to ableist cariactures.

Disclaimer: 1. Shocker - i am disabled. I have also extensively researched disability theory and am very active in the disabled community. Basically, I know my shit. 2. im going to be mad in these videos this analysis. Because the way y’all have been acting has been going on for a long ass time and im fuckin sick of it. I don’t give a shit about non-disabled feelings, die mad

Firstly, I’m going to discuss Kaz, his play on the stereotypical “mean cripple” trope and how Bardugo subverts it, his cane, and disabled rage. Then, I am going to discuss Wylan, the “inspiration porn” stereotype, caregivers / parents, and the social model of disability. Finally, I will then explain the problems in the fandom from my perspective as a disabled person, largely when it comes to wylan, bc yall cant leave that boy tf alone.

Kaz Brekker

Think of a character who uses a cane (obviously not Kaz). Now, are they evil, dubiously moral, or just an asshole in general? Because nearly example I can think of is: whether it be Lots’O from Toy Story, Lucius Malfoy, or even Scrooge and Mr.Gold from Once Upon A Time all have canes (the last two even having their canes appear less and less as they become better people)

The mean/evil cripple trope is far more common than you would think. Villains with different bodies are confined to the role of “evil”. To quote TV Tropes, who I think did a brilliant job on explaining it “The first is rooted in eugenics-based ideas linking disability or other physical deformities with a "natural" predisposition towards madness, criminality, vice, etc. The Rule of Symbolism is often at work here, since a "crippled" body can be used to represent a "crippled" soul — and indeed, a disabled villain is usually put in contrast to a morally upright and physically "perfect" hero. Whether consciously on the part of the writer or not, this can reinforce cultural ideas of disability making a person inherently inferior or negative, much in the same way the Sissy Villain or Depraved Homosexual trope associate sexual and gender nonconformity with evil. ”

Our introduction to Kaz affirms this notion of him being bad or morally bankrupt, with “Kaz Brekker didn’t need a reason”, etc. This mythologized version of himself, the “bastard of the barrel” actively fed into this misconception. But, as we the audience are privy to his inner thoughts, know that he is just a teenager like every other Crow. He is complex, his disability isn’t this tragic backstory, he just fell off a roof. It’s not his main motivation, nor does he curse revenge for making him a cripple - it is just another part of who he is. 

His cane (though the shows version fills me with rage but-) is an extension of Kaz - he fights with it, but it has a purpose. Another common thing in media is for canes to be simply accessories, but while Kaz’ cane is fashionable, it has purpose.

The quote “There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.” is so fucking powerful. Kaz does not want nor need a cure - its said in Crooked Kingdom that his leg could most likely be healed, but he chooses not to. Abled-bodied people tend to dismiss this thought as Kaz being stubborn but it shows a reality of acceptance of his disability that is just, so refreshing.

In chapter 22 of SOC, we see disabled rage done right - when he is called a cripple by the Fjerdan inmate, Kaz is pissed - the important detail being that he is pissed at the Fjerdan, at society for ableism, not blaming it on being disabled or wishing he could be normal. He takes action, dislocating the asshole’s shoulder and proving to him, and to a lesser extent, himself, that he is just as capable as anyone else, not in spite of, but because he is disabled. And that is the point of Kaz, harking back to the line that “there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken”. 

I cried on numerous occasions while reading the SOC duology, but the parts I highlighted in this section especially so. I, as many other disabled people do, have had a long and tumultuous relationship with our disability/es, and for many still struggle. But Kaz Brekker gave me an empowered disabled character who accepts themselves, and that means the world to me. 

Keeping that in mind, I hope you can understand why it hurts so much to disabled people when you either erase Kaz’s disability (whether through cosplay or fanfiction), or portray him as a “broken boy uwu”, especially implying that he would want a cure. That flies in the face of canon and is inherently fucking ableist. (if u think im mad wait until the next section)

Next, we have Wylan.  

Oh fucking boy. 

I love Wylan so fucking much, and y’all just do not seem to understand his character? Like at all? Since this is disability-centric, I’m not going to discuss how the intersection of his queerness also contributes to these issues, but trust me when I say it’s a contributing factor to what i'm going to say.

Wylan, motherfucking Van Eck. If you ableist pricks don’t take ur fucking hands off him right now im going to fight you. I see Wylan as a subversion another, and in my opinion more insidious stereotype pf disabled people - inspiration porn.

Cara Liebowitz in a 2015 article on the blog The Body Is Not An Apology explains in greater detail how inspiration porn is impactful in real life, but media is a major contributing factor to this reality. The technical definition is “the portrayal of people with disabilities as inspirational solely or in part on the basis of their disability” - but that does not cover it fully. 

Inspiration porn does lasting damage on the disabled community as it implies that disability is a negative that you need to “overcome” or “triumph” instead of something one can feel proud of. It exploits disabled people for the development of non-disabled people, and in media often the white male protagonist. Framing disability as inherently negative perpetuates ideals of eugenics and cures - see Autism $peaks’ “I Am Autism” ad. Inspiration porn is also incredibly patronizing as it implies that we cannot take care of ourselves, or do things like non-disabled people do. Because i stg some of you tend to think that we just sit around all day wishing we weren’t disabled. 

Another important theory ideal that is necessary when thinking about Wylan is the experience of feeling like a burden simply for needing help or accommodations. This is especially true when it comes to familial relationships, and internalized ableism.

The rhetoric that Wylan’s father drilled into his head, that he is “defective”, “a mistake”, and “needs to be corrected”, that he (Jan) was “cursed with a moron for a child” is a long held belief that disabled people hear relentlessly. And while many see Van Eck’s attempted murder of Wylan as “preposturous” and overall something that you would never think happens today - filicide (a parent murdering their child) is more common than you would like to believe. Without even mentioning the countless and often unreported deaths of disabled people due to lack of / insufficient / neglectful medical care, in a study on children who died from the result of household abuse, 40 of 42 of them (95%) were diagnosed with disabilities. Van Eck is not some caricature of ableist ideals - he is a real reflection on how many people and family members view disability. 

Circling back to how Wylan unpacks the inspiration porn trope - he is 3 dimensional, he is not only used to develop the other characters, he is just *chefs kiss* Leigh, imo, put so much love and care into the creation of Wylan and his story and character growth that is representative of a larger feeling in the disabled community. 

That being said, what you non-disabled motherfuckers have done to him.

The “haha Wylan can’t read” jokes aren’t and were not funny. Y’all literally boiled down everything Wylan is to him being dyslexic. And it’s like,,,, the only thing you can say about him. You ignore every other part of him other than his disability, and then mock him for it. There’s so much you can say about Wylan - simping for Jesper, being band kid and playing the fuckin flute, literally anything else. But no, you just chose to mock his disability, excellent fucking job!

Next up on “ableds stfu” - infantilization! y’all are so fucking condescending to Wylan, and treat him like a fucking toddler. And while partly it is due to his sexuality i think a larger portion is him being disabled. Its in the same vein of people who think that Wylan and Jesper are romantically one sided, and that Jesper only kind of liked Wylan, despite the canon evidence of him loving Wylan just as much. You all view him as a “smol bean”, who needs protecting, and care, when Wylan is the opposite of that. He is a fucking demolitions expert who suggested waking up sleeping men to kill them - what about that says “uwu”. You are treating Wylan as a burden to Jesper and the other Crows when he is an immensely valuable, fully autonomous disabled person - you all just view him as damaged. 

And before I get a comment saying that “uhhh Wylan isn’t real why do you care” while Wylan may not be real, how you all view him and treat him has real fucking impacts and informs how you treat people like me. If someone called me an “uwu baby boy” they’d get a fist square in the fucking jaw. Fiction informs how we perceive the world and y’all are making it super fucking clear how you see disabled people. 

Finally, I wanted to talk about how the social model of disability is portrayed through Wylan. For those who are unaware, the social model of disability contrasts the medical model, that views the disability itself as the problem, that needs to be cured, whereas the social model essentially boils down to creating an accommodating society, where disability acceptance and pride is the goal. And we see this with Wylan - he is able to manage his father’s estate, with Jesper’s assistance to help him read documents. And this is not out of pity or charity, but an act of love. It is not portrayed as this almighty act for Jesper to play saviour, just a given, which is incredibly important to show, especially for someone who has been abused by family for his disability like Wylan, that he is accepted. 

Yet, I still see people hold up Jesper on a pedestal for “putting up with” Wylan, as if loving a disabled person deserves a fucking pat on the back. It’s genuinely exhausting trying to engage with a work I love so much with a fandom that thinks so little of me and my community. It fucking shows. 

Overall, Leigh Bardugo as a disabled person wrote two incredibly meticulous and empowered disabled characters, and due to either lack of reading comprehension, ableism, or a quirky mix of both, the fandom has ignored canon and the experiences of disabled people for…. shits and giggles i guess. And yes, there are issues with the Grishaverse and disability representation - while I haven’t finished them yet so I do not have an opinion on it, people have been discussing issues in the KOS duology with ableist ideals. This mini series was no way indicative of the entire disabled experience, nor does it represent my entire view on the representation as a whole. These things need to be met critically in our community, and talked about with disabled voices at the forefront. For example, the limited perspective we get of Wylan and Kaz being both white men, does not account for a large portion of the disabled community and the intersection of multiple identities.

All-in-all, Critique media, but do not forget to also critique fandom spaces. Alternatively, just shut the fuck up :)

happy fucking disability pride month, ig

[markets]

ok well c!shittypenis analysis essay under the cut

c!shittypenis is so fucking sad. let me explain.

during season 1, c!shittypenis was inseparable. they had the most beautiful relationship on the whole penissmp imo (you dont have to agree, that opinion does not affect the points made in this essay as i tried to keep it as unbiased as possible). c!penis kept c!shitty grounded when necessary and showed him the importance of sacrificing things for those you care about, while c!shitty helped c!penis be ambitious and stand his ground when necessary, showed him that he didn’t have to settle for anything less than what he deserved. if they hadn’t had each other, they wouldn’t have been able to survive the cockberg war and dethrone c!admiral_anal. and that was what made their love (whether you interpret it as platonic or otherwise) so special. it was about survival and growth, whereas so many others on the smp (eg c!hairballs and c!gargle) were about power, about one of them wanting something from the other. it was refreshing, the only reason cockberg won the war (c!pisskink69′s betrayal would have decimated them otherwise, since they had little to no resources or morale left afterwards), and the driving force between season 1.

but during season 2, we saw c!shitty slowly distance himself from c!penis. props to cc!shitty for this, because it was really fucking subtle. he showed up to the bridge where they would hang out less and less, didn’t help c!penis during the confrontation with c!milfboss that ended up taking one of his canon lives (which directly paralleled the fight with c!pisskink69 at balltown from season 1, but thats for another essay), among other things. 

but it all culminated when he destroyed the bridge. the one they had built together at the start of season 1, the one they started a war for. and it was such a heartbreaking scene. cc!penis’s voice acting really does not get enough recognition. but im getting off topic. the point is, c!shitty did all this for one thing and one thing only: power.

 after freeing cockberg and becoming vice chairman of the cabinet, he was in a vulnerable position: the war, especially c!admiral_anal’s threats towards c!penis, put him in a really bad mental state, one that made him doubt every decision he made and made him desperate for some kind of security. that combined with the amount power that being vice chairman held, just enough for him to see what it was like to have power but also leaving him hungry for more (if you still don’t believe this, rewatch the scene where he imposed taxes on c!glorp’s neighborhood, shitbitch, from the beginning of the season, it foreshadows the conflict super well), made him unable to resist c!bigfuckingboobs’s offer. 

c!bigfuckingboobs is arguably one of the most, if not the most, powerful people on the server: she’s the richest member with the best pvp skills. if they teamed up, there was no amount of power he couldn’t have, no height he couldn’t reach. even if it meant cutting of his friends, it could guarantee them safety in the long run. it could be worth it. it was extremely risky, but then again, c!shitty was never one to shy away from risk. so he took it. c!bigfuckingboobs used this to manipulated him into craving more and more power, until she could use his position in the government and the distance he had placed between him and his friends to take over cockberg and either make it hers or destroy it. 

that’s why c!penis killed c!clitoris on the ruins of the bridge. he saw what power was doing to his friend, and that was his ultimatum, his way of letting him know that he had gone too far. that was the reason c!shitty felt the need to distance himself from c!penis in the first place: the second c!shitty started craving more power, c!penis was wary, if not outright critical of it (dont forget that after the shitbitch dispute, c!penis went to c!hairball behind c!shitty’s back to try and take him out of office). however, he now had what season 1 c!shitty probably would’ve viewed as a valid concern, since the way he was acting directly paralleled c!admiral_anus. hence c!clitoris’s murder, which i personally don’t agree with, but i will say that many c!penis antis ignore the fact that, since its minecraft, pets arent regarded in the same way as they are irl, so while still bad, its not as harsh as many of them are making it out to be imo.

but anyway, c!shitty knew that c!penis was warning him. he knew. but the way c!bigfuckingboobs had twisted his worldview, he saw it not as c!penis trying to keep him safe, but as him dragging him down, trying to keep him from achieving what he wanted, which had originally been safety for c!penis and the others, but was now power for him and c!bigfuckingboobs. the meaning behind c!clitoris’s death, not the death itself, was what prompted the electric chair execution, which so many people seem to not understand. 

and that was what was so sad about it: c!bigfuckingboobs was using the very things they had learned from and taught one another to turn them against each other. c!shitty’s ambition and what c!penis had taught him about sacrifice had caused him to take her deal and distance himself from c!penis in exchange for what he thought would guarantee them safety in the first place, while c!penis’s careful nature and the things he had learned from c!shitty about standing up for himself caused him to directly oppose him. this all led up to c!penis’s execution, directly paralleling c!hairball’s in the cockberg war arc.

c!bigfuckingboobs let them drive one another into ruins, because with that, the very foundation cockburg had been built upon would crumble, and she could take power without ever having to lift a finger. the war left c!shittypenis with different desires, and c!shitty’s desire for power and c!penis’s outright aversion to it due to his trauma with c!admiral_anal clashed and ruined everything they had once had. that is why c!shittypenis is the most heartbreaking dynamic on the penissmp, and why they are some of the best written narrative foils i have ever seen. 

TL;DR: c!shittypenis contrast each other perfectly, and these differences ended up pulling them apart after the war for cockberg

[rosemary-is-in-pesterquest]

I'm still mind boggled over how ppl to this day comain about Rosemary being bland with no conflict pre post canon then. Drain davekat of conflict when that ship was literally considered a pitch ship for years

The homestuck fandom claiming rosemary is bland and had zero conflicts and was too happy so hs2 was a welcomed change is still such a frozen take.

Rose and Kanaya have had conflicts tracing back to Act 4-5. The grimdark arc was especially something their early relationship was heavily involved in and carried along and also interfered with their dynamic a lot. Like, even Rose was trying to comfort Kanaya about them not knowing what exactly happens when her screen goes dark in the future.

And then of course we have Rose’s problem with alcohol later on the meteor, which people stapled a “abusive/unhealthy!!” label on it since rosemary wasn’t free of conflicts, and yet when post-retcon still carried over the alcohol issue but took care of it offscreen, all of a sudden rosemary is bland??? Hs fandom literally just can’t make up its mind on whether rosemary is unhealthy for not being 100% perfect OR rosemary is way too 100% perfect and happy to the point it’s boring.

And then in post retcon davekat, like you said, is completely drained of conflict and its flavor because suddenly they’re buddy-buddy and penis ouija is a game they equally wanted to play (which imo makes it less funny). Don’t even get me started on post-canon davekat, where the conflicts that happen to them is just by people around them and not towards each other, because they have to be these perfect soft boys apparently. It’s gotten so bad, there was once this argument someone tried to make of why davekat was a lot popular than rosemary was because Dave and Karkat are pretty codependent and they tried romanticizing how that’s a good thing and what everybody wants to see?? Man even said Rose and Kanaya weren’t actually that important to each other’s characters and wouldn’t make a difference if they didn’t end up with each other, but somehow davekat is ackshually very 100% required for Dave and Karkat’s narratives compared to Rose and Kanaya’s.

Like, I’m sorry, but Rose and Kanaya’s relationship is way more exceedingly important to understand each other’s characters. Dave and Karkat literally have only had around 2 solo conversations together, with 2 others being with John, and their characters are mainly woven together because of their connections with Terezi and Jade. I just seriously can’t process of how someone could think Davekat is somehow more important than Rosemary narrative-wise when Rose and Kanaya literally had two whole arcs together.

[thelordofgifs]

There are absolutely many different ways to interpret a text – especially one like the silm with its pseudo-historical style – but all the same, it’s worth acknowledging when your own headcanons and assumptions are being used to back up an argument and when it’s founded on canonical details.

Anyway, looking at the examples you give: Míriel is very clearly noted to be a special and unusual case, so her attitude towards death can’t be taken as indicative as any sort of elven norm. Similarly, Fëanor and Fingolfin – and especially Maedhros, who committed suicide in “anguish and despair” – are hard to use to build a case that Elves in general don’t care about death! The text certainly treats these deaths (particularly Fingolfin’s, which canonically causes his people so much sorrow they don’t even sing of it) and others such as Finrod’s and Beleg’s as tragic and filled with pathos, not non-events.

As for Fingon, might I link you to this excellent meta on his moral greyness? I definitely think he’s treated more ambiguously by the text than simply as a war hero. In any case, claiming that he “gives zero fucks about dying in battle” seems harsh – he was cut off and surrounded by multiple Balrogs, unable to make a retreat (UNLIKE Turgon, who was far enough away from Fingon that he could make a retreat) and fought valiantly even so. There’s nothing in the text to suggest that Fingon didn’t care whether or not he lived.

By the time we meet Glorfindel in LoTR, he’s been back in Middle-earth for many thousands of years; I don’t think his brief interactions with the hobbits, who don’t know anything of his history, are conclusive enough to claim that he was never affected by his death at all. And again, he’s very much an exceptional case – no other elves were ever sent back to Middle-earth from Valinor, after all.

On Lúthien and Elros – well, I don’t think it’s fair to use two people who made the very unusual choice of having a mortal death as examples of elvish views on death! I believe Lúthien’s Choice is, thematically, about release from bondage – and the final, strongest bonds she breaks are those of immortality – and reducing that down to “she must not care about her parents” is pretty harsh imo. Her Choice is meant to resonate symbolically with her earlier escape from Thingol’s treehouse prison, the fact that she has grown past being only her parents’ daughter. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about how her parents will react to her death. I also think you’re being rather unfair to poor Elros! He never even appears on-screen in any of the texts, so we really don’t know anything of the reasoning behind his Choice, and it’s a bit of a stretch to claim he “gives zero fucks” about his brother and parents.

None of these examples, in my opinion, really support your point that elves treat death flippantly and it isn’t a big deal for them.

Anyway, moving on to Dior! My personal thoughts on this are that Dior could have averted the Second Kinslaying by returning the Silmaril – I do believe the sons of Fëanor still had a moral claim to it at that stage in the story – but, importantly, he was under no obligation to be nice to the people who had abducted his mother and attempted to kill both of his parents. As for his duty to his people, there’s a reason why modern-day nations don’t negotiate with terrorists! The blame for the Second Kinslaying lies entirely with the sons of Fëanor, who made the choice to kill innocent civilians for a shiny; and while I do believe Dior could have stood to be less proud, that doesn’t mean he deserved to be murdered for it.

As much as I love Celegorm, I can’t excuse sexual assault. (I really hope you weren’t expecting me to). Well he’s in the Eternal Darkness so that should be comeuppance enough for you.

I mean… no? Firstly, I’m not thirsting for vengeance on Celegorm, he’s a fictional character (and one I personally find fascinating). Secondly, I don’t actually believe an eternity in the void beyond the world is a just and proportionate punishment for attempted sexual assault! Which actually brings me to another point quite nicely: the Everlasting Darkness fanon is such a bleak and hopeless interpretation of a text whose ultimate message is about mercy and redemption – one of the reasons I’m rather uncertain about it. But I’ll come back to that, we’re talking about Celegorm and Lúthien.

Although, Luthien is half Maiar, If she can put Morgoth to sleep, why couldn’t she do the same to Celegorm? Fluctuating power levels seems like a plot hole to me. (Also someone made a post the other day that if Celegorm was a little smarter he could have simply returned Luthien to Thingol, both an honourable and hilarious turn of events).

This is a rather strange argument to me. Why didn’t Lúthien put Celegorm to sleep?—Well, because she couldn’t. To be less flippant, Lúthien’s power levels don’t fluctuate over the course of her story so much as they grow; her encounters with Sauron, Morgoth and Mandos all show her increased self-confidence and also desperation. When Celegorm takes her captive he takes away the magic cloak she was using at that stage to put people to sleep – there’s no indication that she could have sung him to sleep without it at that time, even if she does sing Morgoth to sleep some months later. While I’m sure it wasn’t your intention, this does sound rather like victim-blaming to me: “if Lúthien hadn’t wanted Celegorm to attempt to sexually assault her she should have fought harder”.

(This isn’t the post about Celegorm returning Lúthien to Thingol, so I’ll keep it brief here, but: considering that Lúthien had literally just escaped from Thingol when Celegorm encountered her, I don’t think it would be particularly honourable to “return her” against her will. Lúthien isn’t an object to be sent where others please.)

Back to the Everlasting Darkness! Again, this is a very popular fan interpretation, and there’s nothing particularly fallacious about it; but I do think it’s important to acknowledge that at the end of the day it’s just one valid interpretation. Although I would like to just quote this one line from the silm:

Then [Fëanor] died; but he had neither burial nor tomb, for so fiery was his spirit that as it sped his body fell to ash, and was borne away like smoke; and his likeness has never again appeared in Arda, neither has his spirit left the halls of Mandos.

The text itself does imply pretty strongly that Fëanor’s spirit goes to Mandos and not the Void – of course there are caveats about in-universe unreliable narrators and so on, but all the same there is a foundation to the argument that on death the Fëanorians go to the halls of Mandos, just like any other elves.

This got rather long – to sum up, I should say that I love the Fëanorians! They’re my favourite characters by far (especially Maedhros and Maglor my darling tragic blorbos), but I think fans of these characters are doing them a disservice by attempting to justify their awful deeds. Let them be terrible people! That’s what makes them fascinating.

"elves should just get over the kinslayings 🙄🙄 feänorians aren't bloodthirsty murderers they have ✨motive✨😌😌 and besides why not just give up the silmaril and not get kinslayed 🤔🤔 ever think about that??" biting maiming murdering

[anti-dazai-blog]

this most recent chapter was so strange because what happened was obviously shocking, but also, i wasnt shocked?? I mean this is very incharacter for him the only reason so many people are surpised is because they've convinced themselves Dazais someone he's not/the double black relationship is something its not- imo- like whats new? I don't hate Dazai any more than I did before because nothings changed djdjdjsjd

OOH YEAH AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ME TO TALK ABOUT THE NEW CHAPTER

Alright. Listen.

You’re very Right, anon, And I agree with you very much. Yes, it was surprising and I definitely wouldn’t have expected it to go that way. No, it wasn’t out of character at all. Dazai is just Like That. We all should know this by now.

It feels like people keep mixing up what’s fanon and what’s canon. I personally have nothing against people making their own fanon version of the existing characters. But when it comes to the point where people complain about a character acting “out of character” when he does something that goes against their headcanons or a fanon interpretation. It’s like. Go write your own story then if you don’t like this one.

Also regarding people hating on the author because they don’t like the direction he’s taking the story: it’s as if they aren’t aware that they could stop reading it at any time they want. No one’s holding you at gunpoint forcing you to read BSD (or any other book for that matter), and if someone is you should probably call the cops I guess?

Dazai drowning Chuuya isn’t something he ever gave any indication of being against doing. The very first time we see them team up Dazai has Chuuya use Corruption longer than necessary, just for fun. He definitely doesn’t care much about causing or allowing Chuuya to experience any level of physical pain. I don’t believe that he particularly wants Chuuya dead, but if he decides that it’s necessary, I believe it’s a sacrifice he’d be willing to make.

Now, do I believe Chuuya will die? No, I’m positive he won’t. Whether he’ll live because Dazai planned something to save him, or he’ll live because of some other factor, I don’t know.

And in terms of Dazai’s current morality— killing definitely doesn’t bother him. At all. So the question then becomes who he’s willing to kill. I’d say all agency members are people who he’d absolutely never kill, and he’d do his best to make sure they don’t die. But mafia members are his pawns. He knows them and knows their abilities, and will make use of them in any way he deems fit. It would be too much of a compliment to him to call him morally grey— the mafia is morally grey*, Dazai leans a lot more towards the black. 

*excluding Mori, who also uses people as his pawns. Except for him, it feels a lot less random. He uses people for a purpose, not just ‘cause he can and finds it entertaining. 

Anyway I’m not sure where I’m going with this—TL;DR Dazai just really likes using people- Dazai doesn’t care if people die in the process so long as they’re not agency members- Dazai never made any indication of caring about Chuuya’s physical well-being so I’m not sure why we’re all so surprised now- Dazai’s an Asshole and none of this is out of character for him. 

[raviposting]

Okay so I’ve seen a lot of conflicting responses to Buddie this episode, from it being clear to people that they’re getting together, to thinking the writers have unintentionally messed things up to thinking it’s purely queerbait.

And I get the different responses, I do - tbh I’m somehow in two camps, where I simultaneously believe it’s a slowburn but I also think it’s bait. And those are two very different opinions to have and it got me thinking about why we have these different responses as fans to the possibility of a queer ship (namely two men who would presumably be bi/pan) being canon. 

While people talk about how it’s just people wanting two characters to kiss or entitled fans - sure, that’s existent in every fandom, but I think there’s also a very real fear from queer fans who don’t want to get their hopes up and I d on’t love how the conversation has shifted to calling queer fans stupid for having hope, so I kind of wanted to break it down into 3 aspects that I’ve noticed: 

How writers portray bi characters and why that makes fans hesitant to have hope

What queerbait actually means as a concept

How much “slowburn” has changed in procedurals

1. How writers portray bi characters

Something I’ve thought about a lot are the bi characters I’ve seen on TV - Darryl (CEG), Sara Lance (Arrow), Lucifer (Lucifer), just to name a few. These are great characters imo and I think you’d have a fun time watching but a thing to note is that all these characters were established as bi within the first season of their respective shows and they all fairly quickly fell into a clear romantic ship as well (with the exception of Sara as she spanned multiple shows). It may have taken time for them to say the word bisexual, but it was still clear these characters were queer fairly quickly on. You could maybe argue that Lucifer was a slowburn, but then (while it does not take away from him being bi/pan so do not use this as an excuse to be shitty about him) it’s a m/f ship which is still not the point of my post, to find a m/m or f/f ship that has that same treatment.

Some writers have done it - like for Valencia in CEG, or Petra in JTV - when they saw that fans read them this way, but trying to find those characters were few and far between, and when I looked at popular queerbait ships (whether or not they actually are queerbait) it’s usually ships where the characters are largely viewed as bisexual. A lot of times this also comes with pushback from both straight and to be frank, other queer fans as well. Straight fans don’t always see the signs that queer fans do, so to them a queer character who hasn’t been explicitly clear from the start comes out of nowhere. And what I’ve seen from certain queer fans are concerns that people aren’t appreciating the canon queer characters in a show - and I think there is a conversation to be had about that, but I don’t think the response should also be about then demanding less representation for people either. 

If we go back to 911, people talk a lot about how it has canon queer characters, which it definitely does - Michael, Hen, Josh, Karen, and David are all canonically gay/lesbian and that’s awesome, and we absolutely should talk about fans (white fans in particular) ignoring these characters. It also does not change the fact that none of these characters are bisexual and that is the representation people are looking for. Both of these things are true - these characters are often under appreciated in canon AND people deserve bisexual representation. They don’t contradict each other and to act like one negates the other does a huge disservice.

And even if a character was made bisexual in the canon text we don’t get that slowburn. This may be true for things like Leverage, or LOK, but there’s also a real fact of censorship that affected these shows and the fact that general audiences may not understand the queer text tjat the writers intended. It doesn’t make the writing any less wonderful or the ships any less poignant or beautiful or important, and there’s ofc shows like She Ra that made this more obvious (or the.....mess that was Supernatural that made it. Half true?) but these are still real things that should be acknowledged on why people are so hesitant to call it slowburn - because it’s something most queer fans haven’t SEEN DONE, because m/f ships will get that care for slowburn when it’s done but it’s not done for m/m or f/f ships in that same capacity.

2. What queerbait is

This one’s fun because I don’t think many people understand what it is, but queerbait is very dependent on the intentions of the writers/creators/etc. - which tbh can be hard to gauge, because a genuine intention that ended up not happening or someone baiting fans or someone trying to support all ships and not be rude all have very different intentions but to a fan who only sees bits and pieces of this person on social media, it can be hard to gauge.

Honestly with how much the 4th wall gets broken because of social media now I’d personally say we’ve probably moved into a different definition of queerbait - unintentional vs intentional - because we’re at a point where a show knows what ships are popular and at what level of excitement fans are for it - but that being said, there’s still a clear spectrum of intent. And imo? I don’t think 911 has that intent of queerbait - whether it’s a slowburn or they have a different vision for buddie that I (probably) won’t agree with remains to be seen, but this show usually treats its storylines with care. Are they perfect at it? No, definitely not, I definitely think that they’ve dropped the ball a few times (especially with just how many characters they have lmao), but they also clearly do their storylines with earnest and with genuine care for these characters.

Is 911 getting them together? I want to say yes. I don’t think this was always the plan, just something that they decided along the way, but I also don’t think that changes anything about the ship. A lot of people point to Tim Minear being vague about the ship, or the actors and their interpretations, but 1. We have no idea what they’ve been told about Buddie moving forward and 2. No show runner is going to spoil their show that much. 911 may be keeping quiet because they have a different plan for buddie, sure, but also maybe because they’re still figuring out how exactly they want to do this and/or they want to make this slowburn and don’t want to give it away.

3. Slowburn in procedurals

I feel like this is something that procedurals have started shying away from, but slowburns used to be very common - Bones, Castle, their ships didn’t get together for literal years, but that’s just not something that many shows do nowadays, even for m/f ships. Even things like Deckerstar will have the characters get together after ~3 seasons and explore the relationship onwards, whereas a few years ago, y ou’d pr obably be watching a sh ow and it’d take them 7 seasons to get together. My assumption for this is that shows are afraid  of getting canceled, but there’s been a pretty big shift in getting a couple together after say, 6 seasons to now getting them together about halfway through the show. I don’t think either one is bad or good - in good writers’ hands, either can be amazing - but that shift has made it so that a lot of younger fans in particular, I think, don’t fully recognize slowburn when they see it.

911 as a show tends to run pretty fast - it kind of has to with its depth of characters they have - but when they do have slower running storylines they really do make use of that as well. Bobby’s addiction is something that’s always going to be present in his character, May’s suicide attempt was brought up again front and center after 3 seasons, even Chim’s dynamic with the Lees was brought up again and it was reinforced again that they’re his family. There are certain storylines that have to be continuous and aren’t a one and done type of thing, and that includes Buck and Eddie, especially if you want to establish them as queer to a general audience who doesn’t think about these things.

And honestly, despite my fears, I think they are laying groundwork there. We have Buck learning to be more confident in his relationships, we have Eddie ready to date and learning to follow his own heart, we have Buck and Eddie both establishing that Buck is family and will always be there for Christopher. These are pretty big steps to do for a ship and we’ll obviously have to see how the show goes forward but they’ve already insinuated Eddie and Ana are breaking up, I’m sure Taylor and Buck may last a season and be over, but we do have to see what this next season brings. Do I think they’d say this? No, definitely not.

tl;dr: 

911 is a show with good viewership, but there’s always a possibility they can’t continue with their season and then their promises would feel like a lie. Or they may still be hammering out the details as this season hasn’t been written. Or they may just simply not want to spoil their show,  or they don’t want people criticizing a story before it’s finished, all of these could be reasons. The showrunners, writers, actors, ultimately they owe nothing to us as a fandom to potentially spoil their series, or do something, change it or their schedule for it, and get accused of bait. 

But it also doesn’t change why fans are wary of this storyline either, and I wish people would have more nuance and compassion for fans who are worried about queerbait (whether they think it’s not queerbait and dislike people worrying about it or if they do and are calling people idiots for believing it). There’s a lot of reasons why fans are wary and don’t want to have hope, and it’s not necessarily about 911 specifically as it is a pattern of writing seen in other pieces that have fans worried. These things can all coexist and I wish we as fandom in general could acknowledge that, because pretending that they don’t and criticizing each other/people’s intentions or knowledge when they have certain expectations also doesn’t do much to help.

[jadelotusflower]

It’s Cold in that Fridge: The Case of Nakari Kelen

Since The Case of Mara Jade has been doing the rounds again, I’ve finally gone back to this post that has been sitting in my drafts for literally years. So let’s honour this absolute badass who deserved better:

Once upon a time, the Star Wars universe was but six films (and a tv series) in the story of the Skywalker family. But beyond George Lucas’ story was an absolute boatload of books, comics, games, and other materials that made up the Expanded Universe. When Disney purchased Lucasfilm and the rights to the Star Wars saga, everything in this universe was decanonised and deemed “Legends” - some aspects of this universe were retained or re-purposed, others sit in Disney’s figurative vault and will likely never see the light of day (and seeing how the ST turned out, maybe that’s for the best).

But this transition between Legends canon and Disney canon was not so simple, because the nature of publishing meant that there were novels approved during the time of Legends canon that would be released in the time of Disney canon. In particular, there had been the planned trilogy “Empire and Rebellion”, set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, with each novel from the perspective of one of The Big Three.  

Razor’s Edge (Leia) and Honor Among Thieves (Han) were released prior to the Great Canon Split of 2014.  But while the Luke-centric novel had been planned, it was not due to be released until well after the Split. So Heir to the Jedi (so called as an homage to the Legends progenitor Heir to the Empire) became one of the first books of the Disney canon.

What does this background have to do with Nakari Kelen?  Perhaps nothing, but I do wonder how the writing process was affected by the shift from Legends to Disney - was the novel a relic of the old EU with any reference the LFL storygroup didn’t like excised during editing, or was it a trendsetter for the new EU, a Sign of Things to Come?  

The most salient point being, of course, that Nakari Kelen - like so many love interests before her - was not allowed to go along her merry way at the conclusion of the novel, but was shoved into the fridge.

If there was one constant of the Legends EU, it was that Luke Skywalker’s love interests couldn’t catch a break. Mara Jade naturally lasted the longest relationship-wise, with almost twenty years of marriage to Luke before some bright spark decided she had to go (as per the aforementioned case study). But before Mara there was Jem, Shira Brie, and Gaeriel Captison (who came close to escaping the curse), and in the Legacy of the Force series they brought back sole survivors Akanah and Callista, only to kill them off for good too (and rather brutally, if I may add).

So perhaps when Kevin Hearne began writing HttJ within the confines of the Legends continuity, he was merely sticking to the status quo, or perhaps once subsumed by Disney they needed to make sure Luke's slate was clean (so to speak).  And I can’t put all the blame on Hearne since I don’t know whether it was his idea, or LFL mandated - but regardless it was a poor decision.

The root cause of fridging, imo, is limited imagination.  How best to cause your male protagonist pain if not kill off someone they love, or at least have strong feelings for? The answer is of course, easily. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Luke Skywalker of HttJ is fresh from his victory in ANH, a lieutenant in the Rebellion: young, not dumb, and full of...

Nakari Kalen is an absolute Queen a civilian volunteer and crack-shot sniper who loans her ship Desert Jewel to the Alliance. Luke is immediately attracted to her, they bond over a mutual love of fast ships and leaving behind desert home planets, and engage in the inexpert flirting of two nineteen year olds while also risking their lives several times over.

I want to make it clear: I actually really like this book. It's a breezy read, almost serialised as The Early Adventures of Luke Skywalker, and is ofttimes genuinely funny. And credit where it’s due to Hearne, many of of the supporting roles in the novel are female. Other than Nakari, there's Soonta, the Rodian who gives Luke her uncle’s lightsaber, Sakhet the Kupohan spy, and the Givin cryptographer/math genius Drusil Bephorin. In a genre where male characters are often the default for these kind of roles, it was nice to see, but makes the regressive fridging of Nakari even more egregious.

Luke and Nakari make a good team fighting brain-sucking monsters and Imperials, but more importantly they have fun together - she encourages him to work on his Force skills, and he successfully moves objects with his mind for the first time (leading to Nakari adorably dub him "a little noddle scooter"). It's a very sweet, if brief, relationship, and a respite from the danger of the mission. They spend the night together (leaving the reader to decide exactly what happened behind closed doors), and share a kiss before splitting up to try and escape bounty hunters. No prizes for guessing what happens to Nakari immediately after she received the Skywalker Kiss of Death.

I assume there were two motivating factors for why Hearne and/or LFL couldn't let Nakari live:

1. If she survived, fans would wonder why she doesn't appear in ESB/subsequent material.

I recall this bandied about on forums back at the time of the book's release, and to that I say - so what? Fans are always going to wonder, and try to paper over the gaps in canon, to make up their own headcanons to explain any any perceived inconsistencies. It's certainly no reason to kill someone off.

It is in fact possible for two young people to have a romance that just fizzles, or doesn’t work out for whatever reason - it should not require great maneuvering or explanation. If Nakari doesn’t show up in the next book in the timeline, what about it? The reader is smart enough to assume she and Luke broke up, decided to just remain friends, whatever. But it seems that the only way for a female character to exit stage left is for her to die, which is bullshit.

And actually, there's no reason why she couldn't have shown up again. ESB and RoTJ cover a month and a few days, respectively, of Luke's life - just because there was no mention of Nakari doesn't mean she didn't exist at that time, whether or not she and Luke were an item. She could have made an appearance in a subsequent novel, or Rebels, or the comics - she could have become a recurring character, showing up when the Rebellion needed her, or - heaven forbid - even have her own comic/book/show! Her existence in Star Wars canon didn't need to begin and end with Luke Skywalker, merely to service his plotline and backstory and abandoning the richness of her own.

No, the only reason Nakari had to die was to facilitate this:

It was a blow to the gut, realizing what that sudden absence meant. I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but I had felt Nakari's life snuffed out through the Force, and into that void where she had shone anger rushed in - anger, and a cold sense of raw power and invincibility...I took a step to join in the hunt but stopped, breathing heavily, unaccountably sweating even though I felt so cold inside and the power of the Force roiled within me... I shook with emotion and power, and none of it felt the way the Force had before...I saw what kind of space it was , a black hole that would always be hungry no matter how much I fed it. I might never feel warm again if I didn't get myself under control.

Luke feels the dark side and is tempted by the boost of power it offers him, but immediately identifies it as dangerous and unnatural. I can understand why Hearne wanted to include this - it is a book of firsts after all: Luke's first solo mission, his first time using telekenisis, and ending with story with his first experience of the dark side makes sense. But it wasn't necessary, which leads to:

2. How to push Luke to touch the dark side without killing someone he has romantic feelings for?

Also, obviously, shite of the bull (or nerf, if you prefer). Even if this brush with the dark side was absolutely necessary for the novel's climax, there's any number of ways it could be achieved. At this point, Luke is fresh from losing important people in his life - Owen and Beru, Ben, and Biggs - lumping another death on top of that a narrative trick for Luke to react not only to losing Nakari, but the others as well. But it's cheap, the first card in the deck, and why not show a bit of imagination? Luke is young and inexperienced enough at this point that any number of things could be the catalyst - the whole book he's struggling with his growing powers, why not try and reach too far in the firefight with the bounty hunters, his anger and frustration with himself in not doing enough trigger the dark side temptation? It would work thematically and doesn't involve a fridging that ultimately has very little payoff.

Because Nakari is killed less than ten pages from the end of the book - afterwards Luke grieves, but ultimately chooses to honour her memory and be grateful for what he learned with her, recommitting to becoming a Jedi. It's all very surface level, and once again a female character's death facilitates a male character's development. Was it so imperative that Luke lost someone he cared about as part of this story? Sure, this was a time of galactic civil war, and it's far from unrealistic that these stories have a high body count, but who to make collateral damage remains an authorial choice, and in this case Nakari Kelen was (a) a female character of color, (b) a love interest of the protagonist - not just of this book, but the entire Original Trilogy.

I don't know to what extent (if any) race had to play in the decision. I'm sure there was a segment of the fandom absolutely livid that Luke Skywalker kissed (and maybe had sex with) a black woman. Was her death LFL hedging its bets, or demonstrative of the general lack of attention/respect they show their characters of colour?

In any case this was a chance to stand out from the old EU and it's fridge full of Luke's dead girlfriends, but instead they chose to introduce and kill off Nakari for the sole purpose of Luke's manpain and character development, and that's gross.

And then there's this:

A grisly yet reliable fact about custom bounty hunter ships is that you can always count on them to have body bags stashed somewhere for the easy transport of their kills. They often have built-in refrigerated storage, too.

NAKARI IS KILLED AND LITERALLY STORED IN THE FUCKING FRIDGE I COULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT I WAS READING.

I really hope this was unintentional on Hearne's part, because yikes. He was halfway there, this book was full of interesting female characters who had agency - Drusil in particular was a delight with her super math and inability to understand human interaction. Nakari was full of life and fun - capable but relatable, showing a different side of the Rebellion and those that suffered under the Empire's rule. Fridging her in her first appearance is considerably more vile, because it reduces her to a footnote of Luke's story, a plot device to Help Him Grow, rather than a springboard to tell more of her own story.

Because Nakari was a compelling character ripe for spinoff potential. I would absolutely have read or watched her continued adventures, juggling missions for her father's Biolabs company and trying to aid the Rebellion, shooting her slug rifle and cracking wise, maybe even finding a way to amplify her mother's song Vader's Many Prosthetic Parts to really stick it to the Empire, or try and free the political prisoners on Kessel.

The old EU was made great by allies and enemies of Our Heroes showing up again to help or hinder them, and/or branching out into their own material. We fell in love with them, and followed their stories even as they diverged from the main saga, eager to read more about their lives.

Nakari Kelen never got that chance. In many ways, she exemplified what Disney Star Wars was to become: an exercise in wasted potential.

[alloftheblackwidowfeelings]

Almost every reviewer on YouTube wasn’t satisfied with this movie IMO they said it was just Marvel combined some elements from other marvel movies so they could throw fans a BW movie so we could stfu, it didn’t do justice to the the character ,what do you think, is it really that bad.

To be honest, I've been working on this one for a while but I keep writing and deleting my response. Because all the things I want to say sound gatekeeper-y, in one of several ways.

I think you can be a Nat fan and not read the comics. I think you can be a Nat fan and never talk about her. I don't think you need to know everything about canon and be an "expert" to be a fan. I'm not interested in a locked-gate version of fandom. I don't think this movie should just be for die-hard Nat fans. And I don't think that all Nat fans will like this movie, for a variety of reasons.

Despite all of that, a lot of the comic book/movie expert reviews I've seen feel, to me, like they were evaluating a movie that isn't the one this movie was ever trying to be, and missing some of what the movie explicitly says it is because that doesn't fit what they want from it.

A bit more spoilery and a lot longer under the cut. I am so sorry I'm like this.

This movie felt tailor-made for me. Not because I loved every answer they gave, but because the questions they asked are ones I've been waiting to hear since 2012, when I first saw Avengers and then immediately went back to see the rest of phase 1. I think people disliking the answers is a legitimate opinion, and I'm looking forward to detangling that with people. What surprised me in reviews was not reviewers disliking the answers, which is legit, but not even seeming to realize the questions had been asked.

Most prominently, what felt like the huge thematic arc of the movie to me has been nonexistent in so many reviews that I've started to feel like I made it up, even though I took notes of exact quotes so I could reference them. The movie isn't a Nat origin story, and it's not about her as a cool edgy villain, so not seeing either of those didn't bother me. It's a movie about Natasha's trauma and how that manifests, and how her attempts to break free of it have harmed others in the past, and how she can move forward from that. We never get the key that unlocks the history of Natasha's past, so if you approach this as a puzzle box, it's going to fail.

THIS INDENTED PARAGRAPH IS THE CLOSEST I GET TO DIRECT PLOT POINTS, FEEL FREE TO SKIP

Specifically most of the reviews seem to view Nat's motivating guilt as over how she escaped the Red Room, particularly one casualty she deemed an acceptable sacrifice. But as I interpreted it, Nat's guilt in this movie came from a much closer place: the other Widows were all she'd had, and Nat being able to escape the Red Room made the Red Room hold on to the other Widows that much tighter. She thought she'd taken it down, but she was wrong. So her freedom, essentially, came at their expense. Natasha working to take down the Red Room this time is personal both to avenge her own trauma and to make up for her guilt in the Red Room still existing and creating more trauma for her peers. Without this context (and to be clear, I have gone back over the quotes several times to see if I'm misinterpreting and I really don't think I am), the idea that all of her guilt is over what she did to a single person makes more sense, but it also makes the movie a lot less interesting. If Natasha is justified in blaming Alexei and Melina for condemning her back to the Red Room, how could the other Widows not blame Nat? To me the entire story swings from that, and by not acknowledging Nat's (inadvertent but still very real) responsibility for continuing the cycle, the movie would feel hollow.

PLOT POINTS OVER.

Many critics they seem to feel like the potential this movie introduced was wasted because Nat's dead, so what's the point. First of all, the point is she's Nat and we care. It's not like we went in to Iron Man expecting that we'd have a decade of a franchise; we cared in the moment, and this movie is asking for the same thing. It delivers for over two hours of NOT murdering Natasha, which is more than I can say for Endgame.

To be clear, BW does set up other things for the MCU, and it's but if you're only watching it for what it's going to tell you about the future of the MCU (and I get it, because that's how I'm watching Loki, and it's a very different type of watching than I did for FATWS), this probably IS going to be a disappointment, because this isn't a big crossover event movie; I mean, none of Sam's "Big Three" show up at all. But again, that's about the movie someone wanted it to be, not the movie this was aiming to be.

Is this like a lot of other Marvel movies? Kinda. It's definitely taking a lot from Civil War for its set-up. Its arc felt like a close mirror of to Winter Soldier to me, to the extent that I'm planning to rewatch that on Thursday so I can see how much that's just me projecting my fave onto it. The third act is very Marvel-third-act-y, as adapted to Nat's character; the adapting to Nat's character are the parts I like and the rest is kind of what I consider the MCU price of admission.

I also kind of hate that it feels like the last few movies- Black Panther, Captain Marvel, now this and some rumblings about Shang-Chi- have all been kind of dismissed with "it's just the Marvel formula." It is, but that doesn't change the fact that different protagonists make it different. Dr Strange is pretty much just "Iron Man 1 with cool magic" and people didn't mind, but "how does this formula change when the protagonist is fundamentally different than the archetype to this point?" is apparently not different enough. I get Marvel fatigue, I really do, but for me it's tempered by how, in this case, Nat doesn't have the moral clarity Steve or Thor or even Tony or Scott has. No one in this movie lets her forget that she's a trained killer who little kids look up to.

Again: there are parts of this movie that don't work. I also don't ever ever EVER want to seem like I'm saying that if someone didn't like this movie they're not a real Nat fan or they're wrong. I know there are reasons to not love this movie, and I'm sure I'll figure out more the more I watch- it may not make me not love it, but it will at least complicate it for me, and i think we all know I live for that shit. Moreover, I intimately know how much it sucks when something you've been enthusiastic about and anticipating for ages doesn't pay off and everyone else seems to like it- it's isolating and upsetting and you just sit there wondering why no one else understands, and that's bullshit and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. People who don't like this movie are valid!

But if someone has a history of seeing Nat as just background, or considering her as a T&A deliver system more than as a character, or caring about hot women with guns but not care about the trauma that turned them into that, or saying they like movies about women but just not THIS woman for every comic book movie about a woman not there for them to ogle, or claiming to be experts in all things comics while doubling down on their theory that Yelena wouldn't appear because she was in Agent Carter (YES THAT HAPPENED, MORE THAN ONCE, THE NORTH. FUCKING. REMEMBERS. AND WISHES THEY KNEW WHERE THEY SAVED THOSE SCREENSHOTS), I don't need to weight their reviews heavier than the adrenaline rush I felt watching this movie.

So in answer to your question, I don't think the movie was really "that bad." I think this movie delivers in very specific ways, which definitely are not the flashy ones or the "every Marvel movie builds to the next great EVENT" ones or the male power fantasy ones, and if those ways aren't the ways you care about, it's going to be a disappointment. Even if those AREN'T the ones you care about, it could be a disappointment for any number of reasons, some of which I noticed during the movie and some of which I'm sure I'll be surprised to read about Friday morning.

But it wasn't one to me. For whatever it's worth, despite the movie's flaws, I loved it, I haven't stopped thinking about it in five days, I can't wait to see it again, and I hope that whether other people do or don't like it, they want to roll around in it as much as I do to pick out every single shred of canon worth overanalyzing.

If this is all we ever get for Natasha- and it is a CRIME if this is all we ever get for Natasha but that doesn't mean it's not so- I am grateful that this is what we got.

[ooc-but-stylish]

freezedive:

I think I said it in one of your other beautiful posts, but I thought I’d mention it again. All of the ridiculous cutscenes did give us a golden nugget of information on Luna that most of us who are brutally critical of her (like you and me), suspected all along: Luna openly admits to Gentiana that she doesn’t think she has anything to offer Noctis outside of being an oracle. And Gentiana makes it worse by speaking in fancy words by saying some bullshit about her being the oracle is her being human or something and that she is fulfilling her true calling and that is what Noctis needs? Idk but it reeked of emotional manipulation. 

I hold little to no regard for Ravus because there’s evidence Luna was being brutally beaten right under his own nose while he was busy being the Emperor’s lapdog thinking it could maybe give him the power to save his sister? The man should have opened his eyes and defended her against the men that kept them jailed

I happened on this reply to roxainn’s post while trying to recapitulate all my other FFXV critical posts and reblogs on the way to making new ones. 

Crawling back to find anything about this point, I find that it was posted 3 years ago. But at least I reblogged the reply to it.... and missed that it was literally @ ME. Goddamn did I slack.

But here’s my reply, 3 years late, which should elaborate on where I stand on this.

Yes, the flashback that gets triggered by a random creepy little girl in Tenebrae is about Luna and Gentiana. Somehow the little girl knew about that conversation even though she wasn’t there to witness it first-hand? Or maybe Noctis was imagining what the conversation would be like between Gentiana and Luna off of the vague suggestion from the girl, and it’s just him telling on himself that his imagination of Luna says all that? Otherwise the not-altogether-tinfoil-hat theory says it’s Gentiana in the form of a little girl, telling Noctis something that IMO should piss him off but just makes him sad and guilty because Luna loved him so much, don’t you see. She loved him so much that after wrapping her entire life around him, she’d just want to keep that going for the rest of their lives!

Gentiana opens the conversation with, “At first, the father had mourned the fate of his chosen son. Yet in Tenebrae, the two found solace. It was not the Oracle who assuaged their fears. But the girl…she holds…the true power.”

Then Luna replies, “I have little to offer a king, other than the voice afforded the Oracle. Nevertheless…” She turns to look at the wedding dress. “And—I’m afraid he might find this foolish… But…to be together with Noctis again, even if only for a short while… It…would mean the world to me. I do not seek to guide him, merely to stand beside him.”

The exchange is all types of fucky.

First off, she was twelve. What comfort could she have offered Regis and Noctis? What comfort was she capable of when Sylva was right there, an adult with experience of an Oracle and a personality thanks to a presumable full life not hampered by grooming of the gods? 

Second, every other scene of Luna as a child is of her telling Noctis his duty, and that it was her duty to see it through. Did that assuage his fears-- the fears he didn’t have at the time since he never knew the entire meaning of his fate and was being told a saccharine, embellished version of it by Luna right there? Did that comfort Regis, knowing a little girl would also die to protect his son if the gods wanted it, but that she wouldn’t have the will to avert their fates whatsoever? 

Third, even she thinks Noctis would think her desire to be with him is foolish. So... was she expecting that Noctis himself didn’t have feelings for her or want to spend time with her of his own volition for reasons outside of her job? She was looking forward to a marriage with no emotional security, where her desires are one-sided and unreciprocated, and the man she cares for think she’s worthless outside of her powers? She would’ve been willing to put herself through that, given a choice?

We know what we know and think what we think, but the fact that this was placed right in the vanilla game and no one thought that was wrong, and instead they doubled down on it in patches, is pathetic on their part.

Moreover, what does The Girl have, that was separate from The Princess and The Oracle? Every facet of her being wrapped around Noctis since age 4. She was nothing but her duty by the time Noctis met her; they had no scenes where they acted as children would. Even supplemental/promotional art for other XV media and related locales cement that. Little Luna serves Little Noctis pastries, she’s not seen eating with him. Luna teaches Noctis how to play piano, she’s not playing with him. Dawn of the Future came out with its own art, and Noctis is afforded the liberty to sit in a chair, and his son(?) sits on his lap, while Luna and her spitting image child(?) are both on their knees, looking up at the dudes. 

In most of their art together, Luna and Noctis are either not meeting each other's gazes, she's bending or kneeling to him, or he's supposed to be holding her close but he hover-hands her, or there’s that one time where they took a selfie and the picture was of their Pocket Edition versions. They’re still not looking at each other in that one. And it’s not canon.

Anyway yeah, any conversation Gentiana has with Luna about Noctis is emotional manipulation on Gentiana’s part, but the writers manage just enough to make everyone involved seem creepy and reprehensible in their own way. 

In DOTF, Luna has a death soliloquy that confirms she sunk into the water at the end of the game’s Chapter 9, but the soliloquy is about how she was prepared to die even at the age of 12, and she put on a smile and resolved to be strong for Noctis’s sake, so that he wouldn’t remember her having a look of despair. There’s a line there about how she would cry herself to sleep but Gentiana would wipe her tears. Gentiana does nothing else except allow her to cry and wipe her tears afterward, and makes no effort to save her from her fate or at least take her out of terrible situations so that she would cry fewer tears. But there is cut dialogue from the game, and used in the novel, where Gentiana revealed herself as Shiva when Luna was <16 (probably still 12 at the time), when she thought she was being held back from forming the covenants, so there’s that. And Luna still somehow ignored that this meant Shiva allowed Sylva to die, and thanked this useless goddess for her nonexistent generosity. 

For whatever reason they had to add a passage where Luna superimposes the image of an eight-year-old Noctis onto the adult version-- quote, "the image of him as a child, burned into my eyelids, overlaps with his now-grown face"-- even though Noctis has canonically sent her photos of him as a teenager (15-16, around the time he met Prompto in high school, see: Brotherhood). Granted, that's a translation from Luna's voice actress reading an excerpt as if it were first person POV. The English version says she sees the child image first, then the adult version is superimposed. Then not much after that there's a passage where Noctis smiles as his child self and it was "that smile she loved that had been in her heart all these years, giving her strength, always and forever".

So she was groomed and turned into a shell since age 4, believes she has no value outside of her job and turned her grooming on a similarly vulnerable child, and her strongest image of him, the one she fell in love with and kept in her heart, is of the helpless boy that promised her the world without knowing the cost. The smile of the carefree boy that didn't know his journey would end with his soul annihilated. It couldn’t have been that hard to have her see an image of him as the 30 year old True King of Light that he would become. At least she'd sound a little less like a weirdo who continually places herself (and is placed by the narrative) as below him, unworthy of him, etc. but also has strong feelings and memories toward a goddamn child.

Re: Ravus: you already got a reply to that, but for real? Ravus was also shafted by the plot and beaten down by terrible, amateur writing. The narrative shits on him as if it’s written by a high schooler or otherwise emotionally arrested adult trying to push a Mary Sue Protagonist. The modus operandi for those stories is that everyone who disagrees with the protagonist in any way has to suffer tremendous humiliation including but not limited to death, because the Protagonist Is Just So Good And Perfect And Always Right. 

Nothing Ravus does justifies his treatment in-game or in-fandom like he’s a one-note out-and-out villain who wanted nothing but to kill Noctis and disrespect his sister, to the point where his corpse is defiled multiple times in Chapter 13 and he’s twisted into a perversion of himself that begs to die.

Chapter 13 has Noctis land next to Ravus’s corpse and all his letters to Luna, and Noctis has piss all to say about it, either out loud or to anyone. He looks at the Sword of the Father, glances at Ravus, and without a word takes the Royal Arm and lets the Magitek arm-- still dripping, still gross-- fall onto Ravus’s body and doesn’t even move it.  

He had no way of knowing beforehand that Ignis and Gladio knew of Ravus being killed. WE didn't even know they saw security footage until Ch13V2 was added in. Noctis happening on his late fiancée's dead bro sounds, I don’t fucking know, like something you’d want to tell everyone else about later. Along with the letters he wrote evidencing that he intended to return the Sword of the Father to Noctis!

An aside: The Letters from Ravus are just weird to behold; it isn't 100% clear whether Luna ever received all of those letters. She had to have received the first one, at least. But the idea that Ardyn intercepted even one other letter so that Luna never heard from her brother between Tenebrae and Altissia is farfetched. He shouldn’t be able to intercept those messages as if they were delivered conventionally. Luna has a pair of magic space-bending Shiba Inu that send letters instantly across continents. If she’s sparing their use to send Noctis one-liners and stickers but can’t afford that for Ravus to send her discrete updates on Noctis’s status, she’s a piece of shit. 

They do meet in Tenebrae as Ravus wanted her to, and they have the conversation where he gets on her case about her “throwing [her] life away” for Noctis. So chances are higher that Ardyn only got a hold of all three letters after Luna received them and no sooner, but then he shouldn’t be tossing letters from Ravus at the dude’s body when it makes more sense for him to toss down letters to Ravus, since the writers wanted to make a point of Ardyn having a vicious streak. It makes way more sense for Ardyn to deprive Ravus of Luna’s writing, then insult him with them post-mortem, unless Ravus’s notes were really all he could acquire, meaning Luna never once wrote back to her brother. 

The Doylist explanation is that the writing team sucks and couldn't be assed to think of anything for Luna to say because they didn't think of her at all. The Watsonian explanation is that Luna’s a piece of shit and that tracks with her in Kingsglaive watching her brother burn alive in response to the Ring, but ignoring him and running to Regis’s aid instead, but then the rest of the plot presents her as morally pure through her white clothing and “unconditional, self-abnegating love” for Noctis.

Back to the topic: I don’t know, maybe I’m being old fashioned, but Noctis should’ve given more of a shit that his dropping the Magitek Arm on Ravus’s body was probably what turned him into a mutated abomination begging to die, and he thought so little of Ravus that the dude isn’t even in the glimpse of "people who helped me get this far" in the Beyond. Ravus doesn’t even get a spot to wish Noctis and Luna well on their afterlife wedding, not that it makes any sense for any of them to have words to say since Noctis is already dead, no one was there with them, and none of the bros expressed any sign that they knew that Noctis was bound to get married after his sacrifice (he sure doesn’t mention it in the final campfire scene and that’d be a better place than any). But anyway, Regis is in the Beyond at Noctis’s side even though he never told Noctis a damn thing and still never spoke to him from within the Ring, but Ravus? Nah, he’s the real asshole somehow and doesn’t deserve any recognition whatsoever.

The only other characters I know of that have a remotely similar dynamic to Noctis, Luna, and Ravus (lovers, but the girl has a straight-edge protective brother working for the bad guys) is Nero, Kyrie, and Credo (see: Devil May Cry), but as much as I think the writing in that series is hokey as fuck, at least the writer(s) for DMCs 4 and 5 had enough sense to make the love story simple and based it from a line from Amagasaki City-- “I love you, so I love the city that you love.”-- and opted against portraying Credo as an outright villain because if Nero killed him, Kyrie would resent him for it even though she knew Credo was working for the same Order that threatened her life. 

Shouldn’t Noctis care about the shit Luna cares about even if he has no personal investment in it or it’s inconvenient to him? Shouldn’t he care about Tenebrae and its prosperity? or about Ravus? Nah, it’s okay, Noctis doesn’t have to respect Luna’s love for her brother or her kingdom because for all intents and purposes, she doesn’t care for Ravus or for Tenebrae as much as she loves Noctis. Her love for Noctis and her looking forward to the wedding is what matters here.

The yaaaas queen vicious clapback from Kingsglaive!Luna about how Ravus is the Empire’s dog is especially rich coming from her when she’s fellating the gods all through the game even though Eos’s equivalent of The Holy Bible says the Hexatheon’s Revelations destroy cities and that undoubtedly means people are killed by the gods, and their summoner is complicit, because there’s no such thing as a perfect evacuation. See: "Revelations left great devastation in their wake, with entire cities being laid to ruin," noted in the Cosmogony long before the True King even exists. 

Luna herself didn’t see a problem with this and helped in the effort, with no regard to the collateral damage she would cause with the summoning: bonus points for the part where Leviathan is hostile to humanity and threatens to eat every living being if Noctis fails! She had even less regard to the damage Niflheim would cause in their attempt to kill the gods even though she was first-hand witness to them sacking Insomnia. Waking and defeating Titan deprived Lestallum of the meteor they derived power from. Waking Leviathan destroyed Altissia. Luna’s refusal to leave Insomnia when told to by Regis led to her being used as bait and taking the whole of the Kingsglaive out of Insomnia in time for their Face Heel Turn and Insomnia being destroyed. Everything else leads to the eventual World of Ruin where people also die. 

All because she killed herself prematurely from the covenants and didn’t hold back the longer nights as she promised to the public’s face and on her honor as Oracle she would do. Her dying words in Chapter 9 were her being completely satisfied with her fate because “[her] prayers were answered, [her] calling fulfilled”, even though the calling requires that she dies and she should’ve known better than anyone that her death, even if it was for Noctis’s ascension, would endanger the rest of the world for 10 years and helped the Starscourge spread. But instead of fighting for her own life to stem the plague for as long as possible, she let herself die under the belief that "Noct can handle this" to give him the chance to be the revered King of Light. She also didn’t make a single appearance on the world of the living in her spirit form during those ten years until Noctis needed help with a piddly imitation of the Magic Wall, only then does she come down in her ghost form with seemingly all of her power intact, and summons five of The Six as if Noctis can’t easily do it himself.

But Ravus is the lapdog? Luna’s the one with her “ends justify the means” behavior and what looks like general neglect for actual human beings.

Anyway, Ravus stabs Caligo in the back and kills him, and that move only makes sense in light of the idea that Caligo was manhandling Luna as seen in the Dawn trailer. Ravus was 16 when Tenebrae was overrun, and there’s no reason to believe he was magically immune to institutional abuse, so there’s a high chance that he was abused by the Empire too, held resentment of that, and waited for the time he’d be able to retaliate with no repercussions. Gentiana as a goddess is 1000000% more on the hook about letting Luna be beaten than Ravus is, since he saw his mother die in front of him while Regis ran away. Regis had the power of the Ring and could have used elemancy to put out that fire, or void magic to banish Glauca and his MT army, didn’t do that, but he totally spares enough magic during the treaty signing to toss around Thunder spells straight from his hand, cast barriers, and summon some Royal Arms straight at Iedolas, and that’s bad enough. Gentiana who’s been the Fleuret family attendant since Luna was born and also is Shiva who can freeze people with her fingertip had even less excuse to let that fire rage, to let Sylva die protecting her son, and to stand by and allow her ward(s) to get thrown around by some random Imperial soldier.

[animatedminds]

Star Wars: Visions - Episode 7: The Elder

Onward into the last trio of Visions episodes! This has been nothing but enjoyable thus far, and I’ve heard good things about these last three. Episode 7: The Elder Produced By: Trigger Inc. Directed By: Masahiko Otsuka After six episodes, we finally have one that definitively takes place in the Republic era. I’ve been regarding these shorts’ indeterminate time periods as I see them, but with a bit of misfiring: the one I thought worked perfectly in the post-ROTJ era turned out to take place far in the past (and in an alternate take on the series), and the one I thought would have worked well as an Old Republic piece turned out to be intended as a far-flung sequel. But this time, we’ve got a relatively solid timeframe established in the short itself. Some time during the time of the Galactic Republic, two Jedi - a master and his padawan - patrol the Outer Rim when they are suddenly distracted by a sudden flare-up in the Force: a call to something dark and unknown. Arriving on a backwater planet, they track this disturbance to a mysterious old man who traveled into the mountains recently. But something seems wrong, and the more they investigate the more it they find ties from this old man to the thought long-dead Sith, as well as hints that the whole encounter might just be a trap...

This is another “Jedi arrives at a simple village, and is forced into a battle with a darksider“ story - unsurprising, when narratives like that are so popular, and each of the short films were made independently of one another. This time, much more attention is placed on the darksider themselves. The setting of this one illustrates its tension: this is a time period before The Phantom Menace where the Sith were believed extinct, so sudden clues to imply they may still be around are unbelievable and deeply unnerving to the main characters - and this slow unsettled atmosphere composes the center of the short. In the end, the heroes defeat the villain, but obtain no answers - as they must not, for the Sith won’t reveal themselves for some time - and the story ends with them moving on, unsure.

The master and apprentice are fun characters. Not quite as developed as some of the other characters we’ve seen thus far, but they do have a fairly fun banter to them. It’s a trend that masters and apprentices end up countering each other in personality to a degree in Star Wars - wilder masters beget more serious padawans, and vice versa - and it continues here: the master being a dour, cautious and somewhat paranoid sort, whereas the padawan is emotionally expressive, lacking in worry and ever-direct in his words and actions. You can tell that they are wildly unprepared for what they are about to walk into - even the master, who is knowledgeable and powerful enough to face it regardless - and that endears them to the audience as the story goes on.

The antagonist is is the biggest draw, however. A murderous swordsman type: obsessed with nothing but the fight and proving his skills in battle by luring hapless opponents into battles to the death. It’s a character type that’s fairly common in samurai narratives, and thus one which I’ve always been surprised to see so little off in Star Wars media. Eschewing most of the Sith ideology, the Elder only cares about bigger and bigger challenges, deadlier and deadlier stakes. He is introduced having massacred a giant monster, and ends gleefully throwing himself into a fight with someone he knows may be his better, murdering and manipulating all the way to ensure that the fight happens. And the fight itself reminded me somewhat of the fights from the Filoni series, particularly the Obi-Wan and Maul fight in Rebels where the visual direction was all about getting more out of less. The motions are less elaborate, but are instead quick and deadly, which ups the impact. The Sith having a pair of light-shortswords made espeiclaly for an interesting fight - digressing again, but I’ve always felt branching out into different kinds of lightsaber weaponry would allow the series to evolve the swordsmanship aspect of the Jedi and other force users a bit more. The idea of giving Rey a light-pike, for instance, was one that got a lot of traction for a while and one I wish the films had adopted. There’s a degree of baby steps in regards to how versatile the Jedi can be that the main series tends to adhere to whereas these short films in general have not felt constrained by - whereas the light-weedwhacker of The Duel is obviously a bit excessive, the idea of shortswords or longswords for Jedi, or other varieties of bladed weapons, is something imo the series could well look into. If there was one thing that felt off about his one, on the other hand, it was the animation as a whole. It isn’t something I’m unfamiliar with, watching anime as much as I do you’re sure to find a few series that do the same thing, but it may be a bit jarring to go from the previous short films - which were very fluid and expressive in animation - to this one, which is a lot more stiff. Everything is very intricately and elaborately drawn - with deeply etched character designs and vivid backgrounds - but very limited in animation, with less physical emotion and range. A curious choice, given how Trigger’s other film - The Twins - in this set was the complete opposite: extremely animated in all respects. Characters mostly just move their lips and incline their heads, until the fight starts - and the fight itself is, again, an example of getting more out of less. There are thus times in the short where the shot almost appears to be static for long periods of time. This is, once more, a stylistic choice which I am not unfamiliar with, but I’m not as sure that it affords well to the film’s story. But it does have the effect of also drawing attention to the antagonist - The Elder himself is by far the most vividly animated character in the story, and it makes him and his menace fly off the screen in comparison. All in all, a good episode. But that’s not the only thing we’re here to look at. As you’ve probably cottoned onto by now if you’ve been reading all of these, the Visions shorts are all currently non-canon. However, in a franchise like Star Wars it is not uncommon for installments like this to get examined for official continuance if they have a lot of support from us, the fans, and - importantly - if they fit well into the universe. So here, we’re also looking at whether each short fits into the universe, and how well. And what are the chances of this one fitting into the universe? Pretty Good Odds. This short was careful to design itself such that it could easily fit into the time period it takes place in: another backwater planet with a sheltered culture, making it unlikely to contradict anything, two remote Jedi with a far flung assignment also unlikely to contradict anything, and the characteristics of the setting are actually baked into the plot: the Jedi of this time have no idea extant Sith still exist, and thus are left stymied by the mystery this Elder presents. In the end, they obtain no answers, either: only smoke and ambiguity of a lost lead. So I could easily see this being popped right into the continuity with no hassle to anyone. And it would definitely be interesting to see: did the Elder really leave the Sith to pursue his own bloodlust. If so... that was his history? If this short accomplishes one thing, it’s delivering on the mystique surrounding the SIth. Not to mention giving the world a few more nightmare faces to dream about - nobody in the Star Wars universe is scarier than a Sith on the prowl...

[og-danny-dorito]

{ Some SFW Tamaki Headcanons For Your Daily Dose Of Somft™}

OKAY hi hello, I know I've been gone for a while but I'm kinda back now since ive had a burst of inspiration lately for no reason in particular. This is partially cause I actually just finished watching BNHA and good lord, let me tell you bro- I have WAY too many thoughts about this dude for it to be a normal infatuation so here we go! -w-;

- FIRST of all, I'm like 90% sure this dude listens to like really soft cute music like Lofi remixes or those rlly cute anime openings that give off Soft Boy vibes???

- he's like a soft person in general already so its kindof a given. he really likes pastel colors a whole lot for that reason cause they're more muted and subtle and aren't completely overbearing

- he actually owns like, 40 oversized pastel sweaters with various prints and designs on them for that reason. that and oversized soft sweaters are year-round

- most of his clothes are kinda oversized though?? like if you've watched the anime and can see how his shirt fits him I'm like 90% sure it's like a size bigger than it should be (his natural size is a medium in men's, I'm assuming, since he's like canonically 5'9" and not really muscular). his hero costume is also a little bigger than it should be in some areas and it fits around him like a big blanket

- there are MULTIPLE reasons for this imo, but the main two are that he's A) self conscious and therefore less confident in things that fit him better, and B) likes feeling like things aren't constricting him like tight shirts do

- on the self-conscious point, he already has issues with about like 500 other things that concern himself, so why not physical???

- let me explain- his form is naturally slim, which means that he hasn't really ever been as physically muscular as the other heroes (mostly cause his quirk burns up most of his calories and he has a naturally fast metabolism), and is consistently reminded of it

- he doesn't want other people to think of him as less or weaker in the general public because he doesn't look as physically strong as the other heroes, so he wears clothes that aren't very form fitting to hide this fact and therefore avoid the possibility of criticism of is physical features

- also, you're on tumblr, the land of people who are or have been physically self conscious for whatever reason, so it's pretty safe to assume that you've worn/wear oversized clothing. do you know how comfy they are??? it's like being wrapped in a formless blanket that makes it feel as if you arent able to be subject to criticism from others. it's literally the BEST

- his closet really just consists of things that are bigger than him really, but he does have some skinny jeans and a few formal outfits that fit him properly. his figure is actually kind of cute in a way since he's more on the slim/muscular side but if you EVER tell him he looks handsome in something that's more fitting than he ususally wears he will have a slightly boosted self confidence but amplified anxiety, no exceptions

- but he doesnt really like receiving compliments to be honest, and there's a few reasons for that

- as a kid not many people talked to him so he would occasionally be subject to being outcast by others. as a child he knew that when the teachers were being too nice to him by complimenting his work or talking too him too much that it was out of pity. he felt like he was being patronized out of personal obligation to be inclusive and not in personal interest, so he still has some remnants of that mentality due to having grow up with that

- being given a serious and genuine compliment isn't something he's used to and quite frankly he might be a little uncomfortable if he doesn't know you very well

- if, however, he knows you well and trusts that your comments aren't out of spite or ill-intent, his face usually turns a bright shade of red as he either A) stutters out a nervous thank you or B) hides his face in his hands and refuses to say anything until it's subsided

- he'll usually try to compliment you back, even though its hard to hear over his incredibly soft voice. it's usually something about how nice you are or how he doesn't understand how someone like you can think that way about him, but he secretly really likes feeling like someone cares and appreciates him

- speaking of soft voices, I'm almost entirely convinced that he can sing. since he doesn't really go out with friends in his spare time since he basically only has two close ones, he usually either trains or, alternatively, sings

- its more of a subconscious thing to him to sing along when his favorite song is on, but he only does it when he's alone. the thing is that he thinks his voice is horrible since he hasn't had any extensive formal education in music and generally doesn't try that much to refine his skills manually but his singing voice is like, literally angelic

- seriously, if you get this man to sing 'Heather' by Conan Grey its like listening to some sort of ethereal being trying to lull you to sleep

- its not like he'd ever do this in public because of his anxiety and insecurities, but asking him nicely and swearing you won't tell anyone about it usually gets him to do it, albeit kinds shyly at first. it takes some working up to really, from him nervously singing gently to a song while his back is turned to you to just starting to hum along to songs by habit while you're around

- the only time he really does it to his own violation can be when you're sick (he cant say no to someone who's injured, it makes him feel terrible), when you're about to fall asleep, or even when he forgets that he's around other people and is doing some sort of chore or task around the house

- mentioning it to others makes him even more embarrassed than physically possible, and he usually covers his ears to mask the sounds of your praise about him. he hates drawing attention to himself and simply cannot Deal™ with the compliments he's receiving

- this is amplified if you're in a romantic relationship with him since, lets be completely honest here, he's literally never been in a relationship before

- I mean like, if that one girl who was with him for a week in 5th grade counts for anything, then I guess he's been in one before but other than that he has no experience

- how does he accept compliments? how do you genuinely love him?? should he dress better when around you???? oh god, do you secretly hate a bunch of things about him and only like him because he's a good hero????

- there's literal pages in his search history dedicated to is panicked questioning about what he should do if you haven't told him you love him in more than a week, what he should do if he accidentally calls you the wrong name while making out/having sex, when it's acceptable to talk about getting a plant together without seeming like he wants to get married in that instant, etc.

- for this it doesn't matter whether or not you're experienced since its good both ways! someone who isn't experienced could help ease his nerves a bit since hey, you might not really know what you're doing ether, so you're both gonna mess up. if you're a little more experienced then you can help show him the ropes and probably might help him improve in future relationships if you ever decide you don't want him anymore. both win-win situations basically

-  it also doesn't really matter if you're male, female, or anything else since he's demisexual panromantic. your personality is basically the most important aspect to him, even though he still thinks you have the face of a god/goddess

- the first few weeks of the relationship are basically him figuring out when its okay to touch you and/or ask for you to touch him since he doesn't want to scare you off with how affectionate he can be

- and when I say affectionate, I mean like a full out cuddle-bug

- Tamaki is straight up touch starved so like jot that down. like high key he really didn't have much physical affection as a child and even now can’t really figure out how to do it since he doesn't have any experience with it. he still craves physical affection though, and consistently

- a good way to tell that he wants affection is that he sticks a little bit closer to you during the day. not exactly under your feet, but still in your space when he knows its appropriate. usually just giving him a long hug or hdoling his hand in private helps to alleviate it a little bit, but his favorite way to get affection is to sit down and either sit in your lap or have you sit in his lap

- the reason I say private though is because PDA makes him nervous. it already kinda draws attention to the two of you since the act of PDA is basically outing a relationship on display and that alone makes him nervous, so he usually avoids it unless its in a barely populated park, a quiet cafe, etc.

- so in public he's probably gonna stick close but not outwardly hold your hand by himself, but behind closed doors he's basically hanging on you wherever and however he can

- can you really blame him for liking you as much as you do? I mean you're patient with him, you genuinely like him, and you're so sweet that he doesn't even know what to do with himself. that, and you're super fascinating to observe

- not,,,- he doesn't mean that in a creepy way I swear. he means it like- he means that he likes watching you work because the way you move around catches his interest. part of his training is observing others and he already does it a lot due to being more of that type of person by default, so he can tell a lot about you just by watching you do simple tasks such as cleaning the floor or doing some work you need to get done

- his observance makes him a great partner when it comes to remembering small things about you like your favorite color, how you do your hair in the mornings, what your favorite band(s) is/are, and more! expect him to bring you small gifts that reminded him of you because of something you said four months ago at a very specific time and a very specific date and a very specific location

- this applies to anyone that he really knows or pays special attention to really, but you're one of those people that he subconsciously has encyclopedic knowledge of because he thinks about you so much all the time

- anyway, we're getting to the end so lets get to my favorite part of the list- miscellaneous headcanons! :

he really likes Conan Grey and Lofi remixes of songs that he likes since they're more on the calming side and less intense and help his nerves go down if he's feeling anxious

when he does get severely anxious he curls into a ball and pulls at his ears and cries. he's unresponsive for this time but usually just letting him calm down after a little bit on his own or telling him softly to listen to you helps

he likes insectariums a while lot, specifically the butterfly rooms where you can walk through and let them fly around you. for some reason they tend to be more prone to lighting on him than anyone else, even though he only really wears dark colors and doesn't make an effort to get them around him

he has some purple fairy lights set up above his bed in his room that look like glowing butterflies cause he thought they were cute

he's incredibly good at cooking complex and simple dishes since he usually has to eat large amounts of certain things for his ability, and almost always cooks for the two of you if you're staying long enough to eat with him. he's arguably one of the best home-taught chefs at UA besides Bakugo even though they specialize i different areas of cooking basically

- well, it looks like thats the end for this list! Tamaki is such a sweet dude, really. being his friend or lover is like having a cheerleader, an endlessly loyal supporter, and an eternally loving partner (and more) all rolled into one. once you've been nice to him like once he's automatically favoring you over others. it may be hard to try to help him get more comfortable with the things he's anxious with, but he's a fast learner and if it makes you happy it makes him happy too

- Be careful with him, and you've got a friend for life!

[ ~Thank You For Reading, and if you think I missed anything please let me know in the notes or in my inbox. Any feedback is heavily appreciated!~ ]