#in order of their involvement with the series

[alsmediadissection]

˗ˏˋperception of good and evil in Wicked analysis ´ˎ˗

!! i want to preface this by saying i'm not a professional critic, and this is not a 100% guide to anything either. do not take anything i type online to absolute heart, this is simply my personal interpretation of this piece of media !! (i also want to mention that i did not read the Wicked novel/series by Gregory Maguire)

! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ACT 2 IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE WHOLE MUSICAL !

In Wicked, the dichotomy of good and evil is a central theme, but it is deliberately deconstructed and redefined throughout the story. Rather than adhering to a simplistic binary, Wicked portrays morality as subjective, fluid, and deeply influenced by societal narratives and power structures. By examining the characters, their choices, and the propaganda of Oz, Wicked challenges audiences to reconsider what it truly means to be "good" or "evil."

Wicked explores the subjectivity of morality though out the entire musical. In the world of Oz, the labels of "good" and "wicked" are not inherent truths but are assigned based on perspective and propaganda. Elphaba, labeled as the "Wicked Witch of the West," is far from the villain her title suggests. Her actions—defending the oppressed, resisting corrupt authority, and seeking justice—align more closely with traditional notions of heroism. However, because her resistance threatens the established order, she is vilified.

Conversely, Glinda, known as "Glinda the Good," gains her title not necessarily through moral superiority but through aligning with the dominant powers of Oz. While she performs acts of kindness and ultimately grows into a more compassionate figure, her initial rise to prominence is steeped in self-interest and complicity in the Wizard's regime. This contrast between public perception and personal morality highlights the constructed nature of good and evil.

As well as the role of propaganda can warp the perception of good and evil. The Wizard’s regime uses propaganda to manipulate public perception and maintain control. Elphaba’s defiance is framed as wickedness, and her physical difference—her green skin—is used to other her further. The Wizard and Madame Morrible craft a narrative in which Elphaba becomes the scapegoat for the problems in Oz, distracting from their own oppressive policies, such as the silencing of Animals and exploitation of the populace.

This use of propaganda mirrors real-world historical and political strategies, where those in power vilify dissenters to solidify their authority. The portrayal of Elphaba as "wicked" becomes a convenient tool to suppress her revolutionary ideals and maintain the Wizard’s façade of benevolence.

The characters in Wicked embody the blurred lines between good and evil, challenging the audience’s preconceptions and signifying the complexity of people : beyond black and white.

Elphaba: Elphaba’s moral compass is unwavering—she fights for justice, protects the marginalized, and prioritizes truth over personal gain. However, her means of resistance sometimes involve morally ambiguous actions, such as using forbidden spells. These complexities humanize her, making her a symbol of how "good" people can be demonized for challenging systemic injustice

Glinda: Glinda’s journey from superficiality to wisdom reflects the complexities of moral growth. While she initially prioritizes her image and societal approval, her experiences with Elphaba force her to confront her complicity in the injustices of Oz. Her eventual choice to stand up for what is right, even within the constraints of her role, illustrates how goodness is a process, not a fixed state.

The Wizard: The Wizard’s charm and charisma mask his true nature as a manipulative and self-serving leader. He embodies the archetype of a "benevolent dictator," someone who uses the guise of good to justify exploitative policies. His character underscores how power can corrupt and how evil can hide behind a veneer of kindness.

Wicked also explores how context and intention influence moral judgment, , the fluidity of good and evil. For example, Elphaba’s use of magic to save others is seen as dangerous and unnatural, while the Wizard’s far more destructive actions are normalized as necessary governance. This discrepancy reveals how morality is often judged not by actions but by who performs them and the narrative constructed around those actions.

The relationship between Elphaba and Glinda further illustrates this fluidity. Their bond transcends societal labels, showing that goodness is often found in personal connections and shared humanity rather than grand gestures or public titles. Both women make mistakes, but their ability to learn and grow from them highlights the dynamic nature of morality.

By deconstructing the good/evil binary, Wicked warns against the dangers of oversimplified moral frameworks and the dangers of binary thinking. Binary thinking fosters division, scapegoating, and dehumanization, as seen in the treatment of Elphaba and the Animals. The musical advocates for empathy, critical thinking, and understanding as tools to navigate the complexities of morality.

In Wicked, good and evil are not fixed categories but constructs shaped by perception, power, and context. Through its characters and narrative, the musical invites audiences to question societal narratives and recognize the humanity in those who are labeled as "other." By rejecting simplistic moral binaries, Wicked delivers a profound message about the complexities of justice, the power of resistance, and the transformative potential of compassion.

this does not mean that right and wrong is not real, but it does mean that the ideology of thinking that things are only either GOOD or EVIL is extremely dangerous.

[anim-ttrpgs]

is there a book series or other piece of fiction you’d recommend for someone who really enjoys the way Eureka specifically does its vampires (and werewolves and other monsters)? both when it comes to themes and when it comes to specific powers/mechanics

I’ll tell ya, pickings are going to be really really slim on that front. You’re likely to find stories that have one of those elements, but not all of them. That’s one of the reasons I write what I do, because it’s what I want to see and I gotta do it myself.

The original Dracula is my favorite novel, and it features vampires that have about a 90% overlap in the way that Eureka's folkloric vampires work. It’s also just a really good novel. I recommend reading it in chronological order through Daily Dracula, they have a novel version for that if you don’t want to follow the emails for like 6 months.

If I was good at being a consistent writer on the side, maybe you’d have the novel which inspired Eureka’s lore, but right now that just sits in a rough outline form.

You can, however, read some short stories from this same canon by subscribing to our patreon. All together, they’re about 130 pages cumulatively. I’ll warn you though, they haven’t been copy-edited, so they’re a bit rough, but I think they’re really good regardless.

I can provide a condensed summary of the outline of the larger novel here under the cut.

The story takes place in the late 1800s and is told from the perspective of two vampires, Annie Mayfield and Yvette Preux, switching between their PoVs each chapter, though after starting to write out this summary, I’m questioning if that PoV-switching actually adds anything to the story, so I may scrap that. I didn’t incorporate the PoV switching in this outline.

>Comtesse Yvette Preux, who has been a vampire since her original death in Brittany in the 1200s, resides in New Orleans.

>Becoming a vampire wasn’t a conscious decision on her part, and no other vampire was involved(she hasn’t even ever met another vampire), it just sort of happened after her slow gradual death from wasting sickness. She considers the possibility that a return to the life she so desperately wanted to live may be a miracle from God.

>She comes from a prestigious noble family that she has been a regular part of for centuries, but they’re gone now. None of them were vampires, just her descendants from the children she had when she was alive.

>She has always tried to minimize her harm on the living, mostly taking blood by needle from paid subjects. Her money, however, is running out after decades spent in the Louisiana Territory. She was in a state of dormancy for decades and learned of the French Revolution decades after it happened, and since has spend most of her time paying people to travel to France and make any possible contact with her family. There has been no word.

>With no income from her family, her fortune gradually dwindles until she is essentially homeless, and has to lower herself to attempting to take a job. She is hired as a governess(caretaker of the children, not a political position), by a rich plantation family.

>She is beloved by the family and vice versa, raising and tutoring their children diligently. She is essentially part of the family, accompanying them everywhere and living in a smaller house on their grounds. They teach her to shoot, which she really takes a liking to. She loves loud noises, complex machinery, and learning difficult skills, but older guns were always a bit too much for her sensitive nose and eyes. Smokeless power has since been invented, fixing that issue.

>She spends most of her free time practicing shooting.

>The plantation family is not aware she is a vampire, and she is careful about hiding this fact, even though vampires are not really a common knowledge thing, just like in the Eureka setting. She sneaks out at night to take blood by needle from whoever she can pay.

>Living on a plantation, this rich family were formerly slave owners, and are now scalawags and run their plantation as a sharecrop. Even having grown up a feudal noblewoman, Yvette has a personal and religious opposition to slavery, as was the zeitgeist of her time. (They considered serfdom to be completely different, obviously.) Residing on this plantation, Yvette slowly comes to see that the lives of former slaves under the sharecropping system are not much better than under slavery. In some cases, the conditions can be even worse. She keeps her objections about this to herself, not wanting to rock the boat or seem ungrateful for the generosity the family has given her. She’s never had the social skills to broach complaints without angering those around her, and really never had much in the way of social skills of friends at all, never having more than a small handful of people truly close to her in any given lifetime.

>Eventually, some of the family meet over something important, they have a shocking secret to reveal. They tell her that vampires are real, and for generations this family has made it their duty to identify and eliminate them. They are so rare of course that they find one only about once in a generation, but they are certain that there is one active in the region. Someone has been paying for blood from the poor and desperate. They tell her to be extraordinarily careful, and present her with a gift: a small two-barrel derringer, and two silver bullets.

>I’m skipping ahead a bit because exactly how the family find out she is a vampire is something I haven’t figured out yet, but of course they find out she’s the vampire. The fact that she doesn’t seem to have aged at all in ten years probably helps.

>Because she has been a friend of the family for so long, and demonstrated the capacity to care for human life, they decide she does not necessarily need to be killed. She’s one of the good ones. Conditionally.

>She has to stop buying blood from the poor and desperate, further minimize her blood consumption to only a small drawing from one of the family members every month or so, never leave the family’s sight, never touch a weapon again, and she is to have no contact with the children she raised for the family.

>Even as one of the good ones, she is still a selfish monster, unnatural and anathema to the will of God, whose existence is prolonged only by the suffering of the living, and the family’s mercy.

>Under the family’s constant scrutiny, and wasting away into depression and delirium from a bare minimum intake of blood, she loses her ability to argue, and gradually comes to understand this herself.

>She stares into an empty mirror, desperate to see herself in it, trying to be normal instead of a selfish parasite. All she can get the mirror to reflect of herself is her sense of self worth and what she contributes to the world. That is, nothing.

>In the prose, the absence of a reflection is always written as a failure by Yvette to be reflected in the mirror.

>Her undeath can’t be a miracle, God would not allow something like her into the world for her own sake. The only logical conclusion is that it is a punishment from God for refusing to be satisfied with the short life He did give her or accept its natural conclusion, that she would have to take that life from the rest of the world that she loves and never reunite with her closest friend, her husband, who has been dead for centuries. Each century that passes brings her farther from the life she had with him and so selfishly coveted, and now, after the French Revolution, there are not even descendants of him in her life. Her selfish insatiable desire for experience, relationships, and the world is an anchor weighing her soul to the earth, and it’s everyone’s problem.

>She can hardly bear to take even what little blood the family offers her from themselves. They housed her, and she continues to just take and take and take.

>They’re afraid of her, even. No matter how nonthreatening she tries to make herself, she can’t be allowed out of their sight. No matter how good she is, it’ll never be good enough for them, and it’s callous of her to expect otherwise, considering their situation, mortality, and how they’ve suffered at the hands of vampires like her.

>One evening in the sitting room, Yvette is present while the family discusses their finances, and their plan to legally back out of paying the sharecrop workers their promised yearly payment. That is too cruel for Yvette, and she stands up, raising her voice and interrupting, only for those closest to flinch back and several to draw pistols from their pockets. Stuttering an apology, she retires to her room, and sits in front of the empty mirror. How can she, being what she is, take issue with them?

>She considers setting things right by ending her own existence, but she isn’t sure how, and a part of her is still too afraid to find out. She couldn’t accept death before, and she still can’t now. She’s still just as wretched as she was then, even after over six-hundred years. She’s really unworthy of God’s light, a spot of black mold eating through the canvas of His Creation, because even knowing this, she can’t help herself.

>Ironically, her name, Preux, means “courage.” It isn’t something she’s ever really thought much about before, but now that it comes time to overcome her fear and do what has to be done for the greater good, she doesn’t feel like she lives up to the name. Even the name “Yvette”, after the long-lived yew tree, feels like a hole in her chest. For some time now, whenever anyone has said Yvette, it has only been with disgust, rightfully, at her undeservedly long life. She renounces the name Yvette Preux.

>There’s no good way to really portray this in a summarized outline format, but this whole time, a fringe religious movement has been slowly taking the stage in the background. It doesn’t have any kind of mass following, but what few there are are devoted. The family is suspicious of them, and concludes that they are worshipers of demons. (If I get fully into it here then this post will become a whole different thing but “biblically accurate” demons are a whole different thing from pop culture demons like from Doom and stuff. The most “biblically accurate” pop culture portrayal is probably The Exorcist(1973), and maybe the game Faith: The Unholy Trinity, where the point isn’t really to go rawr rawr rawr and kill everyone, the point is to make humans suffer, despair, and abandon the belief that God could possibly love us. You can't really shoot them with a shotgun, the only way to repel them is to have faith that things can get better.)

>This group argues that the world is an evil place, and that humans are its evil denizens which can only suffer and beget more suffering, as is evidenced all around them. They advocate for the end of humanity, and are suspected of several violent crimes, as well as election interference.

>The family disrupts one of their gatherings by shooting up the place. They don’t spare anyone, because dangerous people ought to be killed before they can do any more harm.

>Some time later, late at night, the family’s plantation house comes under attack by a gang of armed men, and it’s a slaughter. Yvette goes to hide in the back with the other women.

>A stick of dynamite crashes through the window.

>Yvette opens her eyes an indeterminate amount of time later, in the smoldering remains of the plantation house, still strewn in the remains of everyone else who was in the room. There’s no one left alive.

>Her family is gone again, but she doesn’t really feel anything. It’s obvious what she has to do now, now that the family is gone, she has to set things right by discontinuing her own existence. There’s no one else to keep her in check, and she’ll just cause more suffering to more innocent people if she stays alive.

>There’s just one thing she wants to do first, and that is avenge the deaths of her new family. If she can do anything for them now, it’s that, and then to properly die as is natural.

>When she can walk, she rounds up the hired gunmen formerly employed by the family, and sets out to hunt down every last man responsible for the attack. Few of them are willing to trust a vampire, but they go along with her. (Her actual relationship to these men, why they decide to go along with her, and what this adds to the story is another thing I haven’t really fully worked out yet. It may make for a better story for her to just do it alone, though her reaction to some of their deaths later on does serve to highlight a few things about her that may be a hint as to why she is the type of person to come back as a vampire in the first place.)

>She deliberately doesn’t answer to Yvette anymore, instead randomly coming up with the name Annie Mayfield when asked her name soon after. It doesn’t mean anything to her, she doesn’t really think about it, it just needs to be a placeholder until she can finish this and then end her life.

>(So yeah the twist is that all the stuff you’re about to read beyond this point from the PoV of Annie Mayfield would be interspersed throughout the Yvette Preux chapters until it turns out they’re the same person.)

>The remainder of the story is a blur of violence and shame as the shock wears off and she starts to feel things again. Obviously, the men who attacked the plantation house are from the cult, and after tracking down and killing the first one she instantly regrets trying to go through with this, and laments that it represents her still not having learned her lesson, and going on to extend her life through the suffering of others even though she had resolved to end it. One of her own is also killed in the shootout, and tangled up in the regret is the desire to have known the man longer.

>After grounding herself, she resolves to not let the family down, and continues the manhunt.

>A lot of these scenes are portrayed primarily through dialogue between Annie and the cult members she is confronting, either before, during, or after some kind of shootout. The cult members argue that the material world only exists for humanity to suffer and harm each other in, as is human nature, as is self-evident from the state of the mid-late-1800s world. Also, there’s a vampire. Would a loving God actually allow a vampire to exist? The only way to end this suffering is the extinction of humanity itself. And Annie arguing back from her perspective all the kind people she’s met, beautiful things she’s seen, and enjoyable things she’s done in centuries of consciousness. And once she’s gone, there will be one less source of suffering in the world. (she really always has to have the last word, it’s a really abrasive thing about her.) Both parties are well versed in Abrahamic scripture and use it to support their arguments.

>Annie is an incredible shot after around a decade of practicing every day, but she isn’t exactly a great gunfighter, and it’s only due to the fact that she’s literally immortal that she survives most of these early confrontations. She’s getting holes blown in her a lot, and expending a lot of energy to keep going and regenerating. It’s too much for a vampire that has been limiting her blood consumption since her original death, and recently surviving on a bare minimum amount of blood. She comes to realize she can’t keep up this pace, and it’ll all be for nothing, if she doesn’t drink some blood. She doesn’t have any money, she has to take it at gunpoint, and it takes a lot of it to keep her going at this pace. She drinks a lot of it.

>The shame, falling back on what a depraved, selfish wretch she is, it’s a knot in her throat. But she’s recovering from gunshots faster, moving faster, her vision is clearer. She’s not sure if she’s ever felt this good before. After centuries minimizing how much she takes, she wasn’t really aware one could feel this good.

>All of the gunmen she brought with her have either died or abandoned the cause at this point(if they were there in the first place, like I said I haven’t figured that out), the law is after her, and she’s killed more people than the cult can ignore. They figure out who she is and her relationship to the family, and retaliate both physically and intellectually.

>Their arguments get more personal. The family, the societal forces that put them in power over so many suffering destitute laborers, and how they treated her, are the perfect example. They’re not worth her avenging, if she wants to actually accomplish something, she could join their cause.

>This cause involves attaining political power through intimidation, blackmail, and just plain electorialism, following a precise set of instructions passed down by the demons they consort with to worsen condition of daily life and the world overall. (The exact details of this I won’t get into, this post is already so long.)

>Not only will this just overall reduce the population, but the plan is to advocate for suicide as an answer to this despair, and use worsening conditions as evidence for their message that it would be better for humanity to end.

>The shootouts are becoming more disproportionate, with her targets hiding out together, always armed, hiring bodyguards, assembling militias. Annie is getting better at this, though. She’s moving in ways she didn’t know she could, and doing things she felt she might be able to do but felt it would be shameful and unnatural to try. Vampire things. There would be no other way she could overcome 5:1, 10:1, 20:1 odds. She’s learning to cycle a lever-action with one hand so she can keep shooting in the relatively frequent event that one of her arms gets shot off.

>Annie has come to agree, largely through her own scriptural arguments, that the suspicion, scrutiny, judgement, and deprivation she experienced from the family was unjustifiable both morally and spiritually. She had a right to exist, no matter what that means.

>She has fangs now. She doesn’t know when they came in, because it isn’t like mirrors can reflect her. (Roughly from this point on, when reflections are brought up in prose, it is written that the surface fails to reflect her, not that she fails to be reflected in the surface.)

>The family didn’t love her like she loved them, and she, like the other monsters they hunted, was just another vessel for them to justify themselves and their own harmful lifestyle by comparison, and embolden their own egos, rather than any genuine desire to protect anyone. She doesn’t owe them this violence, but she’s doing it anyway, not for revenge, not because they’re “evil,” but because she’s set her mind to it, and she’s having fun.

>Really embracing her vampirism and what it can allow her to do is a whole new world to her, one she wants to keep exploring and experiencing, even if it’s at cost to other people, and they’re not going to ruin that for her.

>You can see where this is going. The movement is crippled beyond recovery, if any of them survive at all. The world is saved because someone selfishly wanted to go on living even if at the expense of others, and that that life is richer for it.

>Epilogue.

>Despite embracing her vampirism and finally drinking a healthy amount of blood, Annie has really over-exerted herself, and fades away into another dormant period. A little less than one-hundred years later, she comes back to consciousness. It’s the year 1992, and the first thing she sees is something like this.

[picture of cellphone towers against the night sky with glowing red lights]

>She can barely comprehend what she’s seeing, it’s terrifying and amazing. She doesn’t know what they are, but the radio towers, enormous glowing steel monoliths to human connection and communication, being the first thing she sees represent that she really is in a new world, one that is going to love her back this time.

>How she actually manages to integrate into this new world is its own whole story, one that is a lot funnier and more light-hearted. She doesn’t even speak English.

>She isn’t ready to go back to the name Yvette Preux, when she eventually has to give a name, she picks it out deliberately this time. Alys Cessna. Though comtesse_yvette does become her screen name on Quake 1 deathmatch by 1998.

>picture of Yvette Preux circa 2024 by team artist @chaospyromancy

[Yvette Preux, a petite white woman with long orange hair, dressed in kind of a 90s skater style. She has a skateboard with a picture of bats silhouetted against the moon on the underside, mirrored sunglasses on her forehead, and a handgun in a front hip holster. She is smiling and has very prominent fangs.]

And there it is. I left out a few subplots and other themes but this was already long as fuck.

Support A.N.I.M. and maybe in the future I’ll be financially stable enough to work on this novel even though it won’t make a lot of money.

Also in case it didn’t come across fully in the summary, the suicide cult and Yvette are the same, and through fighting them, intellectually and literally, she also ends up fighting her own overwhelming guilt and shame she feels for existing as a harmful person, and makes an argument of all the reasons she wants to keep living. She’s saving herself.

[tremendouskoalachild]

happy pride month to queer high republic authors!!

Cavan Scott (he/him/they/them) - author of The Rising Storm, Path of Vengeance, The High Republic comic, The Monster of Temple Peak, Saber for Hire, Tempest Runner

Justina Ireland (she/they) - author of A Test of Courage, Out of the Shadows, Mission to Disaster, co-author of The Edge of Balance Vol. 1, Path of Deceit and Defy the Storm

Tessa Gratton (she/he/they) - author of Quest for Planet X, Temptation of the Force, co-author of Path of Deceit and Defy the Storm

Alyssa Wong (they/them) - co-author of Escape from Valo, author of short story Rogue Element

Vita Ayala (they/them) - co-author of Galactic Bake-Off Spectacular

[ty-bayonet-betteridge]

i just HAD to say "worm life series au" and now my brain is spinning

this is gonna distract me from current ongoing fics i just KNOW IT

[secriden]

Dear THK viewers who understand Thai:

I was wondering if anyone has/would be willing to translate the bits we can see of the page that was attached to the pictures of Fadel and Bison's parents? Does it give us any added insight?

[mumblesplash]

season 9 has been amazing but i’m kinda excited to be around for the beginning of a hermitcraft season, they were well into the empires crossover arc when i started watching double life (which was pretty much my introduction to mcyt in general) so this is gonna be my first time actually being around for the early game

[randomnameless]

tbh, I stopped caring about houses that much when I found out that it's an otome/dating sim game with srpg gameplay sprinkled on top. In other FE games, you either gather supports by pair ups or by having units standing against one another. And mechanics like cooking in Fates were done to get some more stat boosts. And even if the avatarization of the game started with New Mystery, Robin and Corrin feel more like customizable characters than an avatar for the player.

In houses, Byleth is like every typical dating sim protag, that does not speak and the few times they do is by having the player choose options that may raise heart points with a character or lower them, you have to find lost items and when you give them back you gain heart points, you have to give them gifts to gain heart points and cooking now doesn't give you any beneficts in battle and only works for, you've guessed it, getting heart points. And let's not kid ourselves, tea time is like the "dates" in otome games, in which you can spam gifts till you raise the affection to the max. The only thing that distincts those points from the otome ones, is that those are necessary for proficency and for unit classes.

Heck, we even have a ring to give to the chosen blorbo in order to get a special custom made cutscene, when in pasts games getting an S support gave you a broken unit to deploy and a little blurb of text during the credits. And of course, calendar/day systems are also common in these tipes of games too.

People complained about awakening and fates for turning the franchise into a dating sim, but 3Houses is literally one in and of itself, and yet is praised as peack FE experience and as peack srpg.

(I could also argue that is because of this otome nature why the characters are "tell don't show" with their given trauma, unlike in pasts games when it was "show don't tell" (Nino, Reison, Camilla, Leif, Soren...))

Well,

When you put it like that, it becomes obvious that the other games (FEH, Engage) mentionning Fodlan are stuck on the uwu monastery part of the part 1 and not the, y'know, events happening that will lead to part 2 because as you said, the SRPG aspect is just "sprinkled on top" lol

However, the "pair up your units and build their relationships!" has been a non gameplay mechanics for decades now (FE4's was a gameplay mechanic, it had no support convos - FE6 added the support convos and gave a small gameplay boost but it didn't commit and we had no endings, FE7/8 had endings, FE9 had convos but FE10 removed them and yet had endings depending on the pairs, etc etc) even without avatars.

Then we entered the avatar era and if it added the "my waifu and my bae" shenanigans, FE13/14 were still more centered on the story aspect that on the "dating sim" aspect, as in, even if you could raise affinity with a character by doing X or Y, it wasn't really coded in a minigame - came FE16 which you analysed perfectly : tea time, gifts, eating, S-support CG, etc etc.

That being said, FE is a RPG, meaning it has characters : you play FE for the solid gameplay but you also build characters, and imo the best way to develop and write characters is to interconnect them with other characters, and/or with the plot/lore.

Sure, Arden functions as a wall/tank. But through the 5 lines he has, you learn that he is part of a group of knights, has friends who often tease him but is relied upon by those people and takes pride in that, he'd also like to find a wife someday and has self-esteem issues.

Is he as developped as, say, Xillia's Alvin? Hell no! But they're characters from two different genres, Arden has those 5 lines that puts him above any "generic" armor.

(I find it interesting how UO and in a way, FE11, gives you the opportunity to play with generics instead of playing with named characters, in UO generics will turn out to be better since you can change their growths, but they're generics. Do you want the RPG of the Tactics/Strategy aspect?)

So, I'd say that support conversations are important, I love Saias and Ralf to bits, but I'm sure I'd love them more if they had more lines. And since support through battle can be a chore (hello FE GBA and trying to get Bartre and Karla's supports when she joins 2 chapters before the end!), I initially welcome any way to grind those supports faster lol.

However, it can quickly spiral in, well, the otome mechanics we have in FE16 - if you want to build support then why not have an entire mini-game for that, and meals and chorals and whatever else?

It's all about finding balance between developping your characters without turning your game in a dating sim or what I'd call "playing the sims and pairing those dolls with those other dolls you like".

Still, let's not kid ourselves, nowadays the "dating sim" aspect of the series is, while decried by some, very popular - and FE is first and foremost, a series that has to sell.

3H is not peak SRPG not peak gaming experience or even in FE gameplay that'd be FE5 but I can't ignore the fact that its dating sim aspects might be part of the reason why it's still very popular.

[bluevelvt]

when people think anakin wouldnt have turned to the dark side if qui-gon trained him im just ?????

YOU THINK THAT WOULD HAVE STOPPED PALPATINE???

i mean qui-gon took anakin to be trained cause he thinks anakin is the chosen one or this is at least a major reason why and like??? PALPATINE WOULD HAVE JUST PIVOTED LIKE

"it's such a shame my boy that the council and even your master only see you as the chosen one and not your own person"

"i hope that they trust you as a jedi and not just part of a prophecy"

"i fear that qui gon only wants you as the chosen one and if you weren't, you would never have left tatooine"

LIKE PALPATINE WOULD HAVE DONE THAT! HE ENGINEERED A WHOLE WAR JUST TO TAKE POWER AND QUI-GON BECOMING ANAKIN'S MASTER WOULD HAVE DESTROYED PALPATINE'S PLANS???

idk just gets on my nerves and feels like a slight against obi-wan who yeah wasn't perfect and the circumstances for becoming anakin's master weren't ideal but i think he was a great master and this idea also makes palpatine seem far less manipulative, cunning, and evil

the man once said he would gladly make vader again given the chance, even knowing how it would eventually end, so he's not stopping just because anakin has a different master

[pabsterrr]

made these alignment charts a while ago on a whim now im posting them to open three cans of worms that are three fandoms ive never interacted with on tumblr before. its an Experiment

whatever. go my sherlocks

[dottores]

crying hysterically i have such a good fic idea for post-cataclysm teyvat but i just dont have enough time for another series rn

[hanzajesthanza]

it's both a really good feeling and a really bad feeling to have the next three videos planned out and drafted, and the next four to six videos planned for after that...

like i'm glad to have a vision and all, but i'm staring down the barrel of a lot of work, and a path which i can't necessarily diverge from now

[the-girl-with-too-many-ideas]

I started getting into Heaven Official's Blessing, and the similarities between Xie Lian and Guda have me sobbing.

Both were seventeen when their lives were irrevocably changed forever. Kind and naive teens, with hope in their hearts of saving the world. Only to have it all thrown in their faces in the worst ways possible. Forced to become hardened and cruel when all they want to be is kind. Sacrificing so much, even parts of themselves, only for it to mean nothing to ungrateful masses.

Two people who have taught themselves to be overwhelmingly optimistic or be crushed with the absolute horror and trauma of all that they've endured.

All I can imagine is Xie Lian being summoned as a servant towards the beginning of Guda's journey. Seeing this poor kid put in this horrific situation in which they have to save the world or risk extinction, and them accepting it with absolutely resolve and unwavering determination. Looking at them and being reminded so much of himself and the words he once uttered so long ago.

"I wish to save the common people"

Remembering leaves a bitter taste in his mouth and thinks, 'Not this child. I won't let their journey turn out like mine'.

When the singularities are resolved and humanity restored, Xie Lian is desummoned back to his own world. He is left feeling sad having to leave Guda (who he has come to see as his own child), but proud about how it all ended without them losing it all. He is happy that Guda's journey ends in an optimistic note.

Until he is resummoned during the lostbelts, and is met with the broken down shell of who Guda used to be. He is beyond horrified and devastated at the realization that not only did Guda's journey continue, but had gone down a much more horrific path than his own did.

Nothing is worse than thinking you've saved someone, only to realize that you didn't and that their fate was far darker than yours ever was.

[calypsolemon]

consistently torn between "nanami and saionji should just never speak to touga again" and "touga finally recognizing he wants genuine connections and putting in the effort to fix what he's broken and the three of them reaching some sort of catharsis with each other Despite It All"

[6ebe]

does anybody remember when I accurately predicted how game of thrones tv show would end bc I had a basic understanding of how the Tudor dynasty ended. lol.

[intuitive-revelations]

Revisiting The Witch's Familiar and I just realised... it's the same filming location!

Now is it the same location in-universe? Did the Doctor enter the Governors' / Angels' realm before, or has Clara been inside M017 at Coal Hill before and is therefore imagining Twelve as being there?

I guess the new Barbara Wright building might be built at this point, so I suppose the latter is possible... I would question why Clara hadn't noticed something, but perhaps the Governors wanted to interview her and wipe her mind Black Archive style?

On the other hand, Missy does say the Doctor was being chased by "android" assassins, doesn't she?

[minart-was-taken]

Short explanation of what the hell the Luffy tab on top of the dashboard is:

- For some reason the tumblr marketing team decided to make a deal with Netflix to promote the new live action One Piece movie with a site wide tab, instead of like... An ad.

- The Tab started with the name Luffy, the protagonist of the series. It has now changed to Zoro. There's not explanation given but I suspect it's in the order of the One Piece rap

- The tab seems to be very broken, only showing 5-7 posts that were posted months ago. The users who's art and posts have been included were not asked permission to be used in an ad campaign.

- The disclosing of this being an ad has also been suspect, with many only finding out through word of mouth rather than the tab telling it. I'm not a lawyer but I think that's at least skirting a crime.

- The popular reccomendation is to not engage with the tab, because it'll encourage tumblr to pull more stunts like this. Their sponsors will be delighted the more you click, no matter if its out of confusion or not.

This whole thing is a mess and I hate how marketing teams are trying to bypass adblockers by making alternative ads that get people talking. The act of me posting this is what they want and I'm enraged.... Still, uh, I want to spread the info we've gathered as a community. Let me know if you find more or something is incorrect.

Ps. dont attack one piece fans, they didn't know this was gonna happen either. Please dont leave weird comments to the posts in the tab, the OPs are not involved.