#is it an understandable extension of his character based off of what was presented to us in the original + lawrence's

[shootingmorningstar]

Was inspired by bambygourl’s fanart and a TikTok I saw. Dressing up as Roger and Jessica Rabbit for a costume party with Lucifer. I think he’d be all pouty and grumpy about dressing up as such a silly character and not a suave charming character. Especially since he’d take a look at the white button up, red trousers with suspenders, and blue bow tie with yellow polka-dots and see it as a fashion nightmare XD. And don’t get him started on the bunny ears and tail. Tho his mood is sufficiently uplifted when he sees the reader dressed up as Jessica Rabbit. Low cut red dress with a slit and all. Just imagine pulling on his suspenders or bow tie for a kiss, getting lipstick on his mouth and face, and cooing over how adorable and handsome her honey-bunny is.

I've been meaning to get to this request ever since I saw it because it is just so good. I'm definitely biased for anything Lucifer related but god this is just so cute. Anon, your brain is outstanding. I love pouty Lucifer. If you still have that tiktok on hand or ever come across it again, do you think you could send it my way .ᐣ

You didn't include what kind of request you wanted though, and my default is HCs -- but I couldn't help but throw in a little drabble based on them, too. Or, at least I intended it to be a drabble .ᐣ It got away from me, haha.

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀Lucifer and Female Reader Dressing

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ Up As Roger and Jessica Rabbit ~

Lucifer is initially thrilled when you bring up wanting to attend a famous yearly costume party in Pride with him. A chance to show you off sounds amazing, and he's great with costumes. Just the thought of you two matching is enough to get him excited.

You seemed just as excited as he was -- in fact, he was even more excited when you told him you'd already had something in mind .ᐟ He's pestering you to tell him just what the costumes were as soon as the plan leaves your lips, but much to his displeasure, you refuse, saying you want to keep it a surprise.

You'd even managed to resist the very strongest puppy-dog eyes and pout. Impressive. He usually succeeds in getting his way with that one -- who could ever say no to that face .ᐣ Having exhausted his options, he sighs his defeat.

Well, nearly exhausted his options. He was entirely too ready to pretend that you'd won and snoop through your closet the second you walked away. Apparently his quick glance at said closet had given him away though, and with a quick deadpan stare alongside a scary sounding ❛ don't you dare. ❜ has his feet rooted to the floor.

Did his poker face really suck so bad .ᐣ He's definitely practicing it in the mirror later.

Ultimately, though, he trusts you completely and your choice in matching outfits is no exception, so he allows it to drop for now. There's still a few more days until the party, but that time could be spent much more productively by your side rather than whining about clothing.

That is, until the day of the party comes around and you bring out his outfit. You'd never seen Lucifer's jaw drop quite like that before and it takes iron will to stop yourself from giggling at his present state.

He doesn't understand the reference. Lucifer regrets his past decision to give humanity free will. It's obvious, even if he never seems to say it outright. He had given out such a precious gift and so much of humanity chose to abuse it, to be nothing but cruel. Looking at sinners and by extension humanity is just a terrible reminder of what he'd done, so he prefers to avoid it whenever possible. This quite often includes the media of the living realm -- he's never even heard about the movie, forget seeing it.

So without the full context, all he knows is that you've just handed him an absolutely atrocious outfit -- and to make it worse, you expect him to go out in it .ᐣ Seriously, he whinges, red overalls with a blue bow .ᐣ Rabbit ears .ᐣ And to make it worse, you won't even show him your outfit until he gets dressed .ᐟ He can't believe you're laughing.

He sounds completely and totally ridiculous, in your defense. Seriously, has he seen his regular outfit .ᐣ He looks absolutely stunning, sure -- but he also looks like he walked right out of a circus.

It says a lot, though, that despite the complete and total pity party he's currently throwing himself, he's beginning to shuffle into the costume anyway. He's grumbling the whole way, but the fact that he just doesn't have it in him to say no to you warms your heart.

You had been so, so eager about this party, and the way your eyes had shined like stars when you told him had long since burned itself into his heart.

wc ; 1.2k

His seemingly endless complaints had tapered off ever so slightly when you shimmied his grasp off of the ruby red suspenders sagging unbuttoned over his chest. By the time you take the fabric into your own hands his protests faded to little more than a mumble under his breath, and with the very first snap of a button in place under your gentle touch he'd quieted completely. Where a look of exasperation had reflected off his face seconds prior, in its place now is that of silent awe, his gaze trained on your every action. The gesture of intimacy is enough to leave Lucifer somewhat choked up, his heart still not used to receiving such acts of adoration and kindness. You tie the cornflower blue fabric adorned with tiny yellow spots into a bow to accentuate the costume and cover his hands briefly with your own as you slip the gloves onto his fingers.

Not twenty minutes had passed, and he finds his attitude regarding the ensemble shifting with every second you take to assist him into it. Each and every part of it looks ridiculous at best, but the thought of you picking it out solely for him has him warming up to the idea.

Declaring your work complete, you raise your grasp ever so slightly, palms holding each of his cheeks close, your thumbs rubbing soft little circles below his eyes. Your affections are sufficient only when finished with a kiss placed on his forehead. ❛ I'm going to go get dressed, okay .ᐣ No peeking. I promise I'll be right back. ❜

The way his wrists on instinct dart out to catch yours to bring you close to him again as you pull back nearly got you. He's extended his lips in a pout once more. You hate to leave him quite so sad looking but you know he'll appreciate what you have planned enough for it to be worth it.

Bathroom door shutting closed behind you, there's the smallest bit of lingering regret that he can't help you to get dressed like you had for him. The outfit itself takes you barely a few moments to slip into -- it's the makeup that requires precision, time and effort. His pacing around the bedroom is audible, impatient steps sounding into stomps, the sounds causing you to choke on a laugh. You need a steady hand for your eyeshadow and that's hard to maintain during an act quite as cute as this.

Nonetheless, your look is finished within half an hour and therefore Lucifer is put out of his misery. It's not a second after the door clicks open that his attention is caught, snapped to the light peaking out of the doorway. Stepping into the small hallway, your eyes are met with his own -- and the way his pupils widen as soon as he gets a glance of your dress makes both your efforts and his complaining worthwhile. His gaze takes you in from top to bottom, each detail enchanting him further. The dress so perfectly hugging your curves is crimson to match him and absolutely breathtaking -- and are you walking towards him .ᐣ Your strut does well to accentuate the slit stitched into the leg, your thigh tantalizing in its display.

Finally reclaiming your place beside him, one of your fingers reaches out, finding purchase under his chin -- and when you tilt his head up you swear you saw his eyes flash red. ❛ Hello, my darling husband, ❜ you coo, sending his already overloaded brain into a frenzy. Husband . . .ᐣ You wanted . . .ᐣ With him, really . . .ᐣ And although he's beginning to put the pieces together and clue in that such a term of endearment was part of your match, you seemed so happy to say it. He snaps his focus back onto just how stunning you look tonight, but the idea has firmly implanted itself into the depths of his mind.

Back into the present time, his hands have begun to roam -- he wants to commit every detail of you to memory, and that includes the feeling of your dresses fabric under his fingertips. His grasp is met with your own, for it's not long before you're pulling the straps of his suspenders, tugging him forward into a kiss. By the time he's recovered from his surprise enough to reciprocate, though, you're already beginning to pull away. He chases your lips with a whine but you've already moved on, pressing a kiss first to his cheek and then to his forehead. It's only when you offer him a small compact mirror does he understand -- each of your kisses has left behind a little bit of the lipstick you oh so painstakingly applied. Your marks on his face have left him entranced, desperately craving more.

A gasp rips itself from those same cherry red lips in surprise -- you weren't expecting him to summon forth his tail, much less wrap it around your midsection and use it to bring you closer. ❛ Kiss me again, ❜ He pleads, desperate and breathy. ❛ Anything for my honey bunny, ❜ you chime, matching the mark on his left cheek with one on the right. ❛ You just look so cute, ❜ between each kiss is another offering of praise and compliments, the blush left in your wake matching excellently. ❛ Who's my handsome bunny .ᐣ ❜

Your multitude of kisses has left Lucifer stunned and looking nothing short of angelic -- even more so than usual. You're fully intending on giving him several more, leaning in to do just that when the wall mounted clock besides you chimes a new hours arrival, alerting you to the time. ❛ Oh, dear. I'm very sorry, Mr. Rabbit, but I'm afraid we simply must be going. We don't want to be late, do we .ᐣ ❜

Fixing your lipstick takes all of a few seconds, leaving you free to grab a makeup wipe off the pouch resting atop your vanity and wipe all of the stains you'd adorned his face with away. A snap of his wrist catches yours just inches from his face, however, halting your plans in their tracks. Confused, you look to him for an explanation, a soft ❛ leave them. please .ᐣ ❜ being all he offers you. ❛ You're going to go to the party like this, love .ᐣ ❜ to which he nods sagely. He can't bear to part with them -- not when the lipstick marks are yours, not when they declare proudly that he is yours.

❛ If you say so, honey. ❜ You can't deny that the prospect leaves your heart fluttering. A grand, golden portal appears with a simple snap of his fingers and he takes your arm, now linked with his own in an attempt to usher you forward. He can't wait to show you off, to watch as other demons eyes glow green as they stare his way. You stay still, though, prompting him to look back at you with an air of confusion. It's then that you lean close, whispering ❛ be a good bunny and there will be more where that came from. too bad we'll have to wait until we come home, hmm .ᐣ ❜

Suddenly Lucifer can't wait for this party to be over.

I still can't believe I'd originally intended this to be 100 words and it ended up over a thousand. I can't help it, I'm so weak for anything Lucifer related. I'm half tempted to write an absolutely filthy post party part 2. If there's enough demand for it .ᐣ I just might.

As always, let me know what you think .ᐣ Hearing back from you guys keeps me motivated ~

[dalishious]

Reclaiming Independence of the Dales

Before anything else, I’d just like to clarify that that vast majority of this is made of my own ideas, based on interpretation from the little canonical information provided, and a little inspired by my own people’s history and governing structure. Additionally, what I am presenting here is an ideal situation, not necessarily what I think is an immediately realistic outcome in the world-state established. So, please keep that in mind.

The Dales were established as a homeland for elves—a small piece of a continent that was once called their home in its entirety, before the humans colonized it—by Maferath in -165 Ancient. This was in reward for the eleven people’s participation in the fight against Ancient Tevinter. But in 2:10 Glory, Divine Renata I broke this treaty and declared an Exalted March against the Dales, ending in its annexation by Orlais.

[Related Post: All You Need to Know about the Exalted March of the Dales]

If Solas has very low approval with Inquisitor Lavellan, and Lavellan accuses him of not doing enough to help their people, he will say the following: “You could order Halamshiral returned to the Dalish, if you wished. But ultimately, you know that would fail. That even you cannot solve this.” I hate this with a burning passion. The reason I can’t do that, Solas, is because it’s not an option in the game! Why are you as a character angry at me, the player, for not doing something that is not an option for me to do? Why was this written? Just to push the point that it’s not worth it to try and fight back against oppression? Because if I refuse to accept hopelessness in real life, why would I in accept it in a video game where the story is made-up, and therefore anything is possible if the developers so wish it.

Regardless, according to Solas, the Inquisition has enough power to support the reclamation of an independent Dales. I imagine this would require a lot of political maneuvering within the Orlesian governance, and therefore I think the best opportunity to do this would be with Briala ruling through Gaspard. This would then later open the door for Briala to be the leader of the newly independent Dales, too. I would like to see Briala as ruler of the Dales not just because she is a favourite of mine, but because I genuinely believe she is the best established character fit for the job. She was trained in everything Celene was trained in, has first-hand experience in court, has extensive connections, and has demonstrated her ability and desire to utilize these skills and assets for the benefit of elven kind.

Briala’s blackmail on Gaspard may help prevent Orlais from invading again while under his rule, but to last longer, the Dales would need to establish itself as a strong, independent Nation with allies. This is why I believe it would also be important to have Leliana as Divine Victoria in such a world-state where this could happen. Leliana re-canonizes the Canticle of Shartan, and in making it available for the common person to understand, would ideally help sway the minds of the average Andrastian into supporting the Dales’s independence. The nobility would of course be much trickier, because they and the Chantry are the ones who actually benefitted from its annexation—but there is little they would be able to actually accomplish if they did not have the power of the people behind them.

As far as allies go, Ferelden could only gain from Orlais losing control of the Dales, because it would mean cutting Orlais off from a lot of Ferelden’s border, therefore reducing the threat of another invasion. Additionally, a leader with just plain good morals like say, Alistair, would easily accept the elven kingdom’s return. But even Anora is willing to grant part of the Korcari Wilds to the Dalish if Mahariel requests it, and while this sadly doesn’t last, it does show a positive sign into her potentially being open to the idea of an independent Dales as well.

I sincerely doubt that all Dalish clans would return to the Dales and re-settle down. After all, they have developed differentiating cultures over the years of wandering in separated groups, with different ideals and different ways of life that they might not want to give up. But many would return, and that would likely create conflict between the elves coming from the Dalish clans and the elves coming from the cities. We know that some prejudice exists against “flat-ears” as some Dalish call those from the city, and we know that city elves have adopted a lot of misinformation from humans into their views of the Dalish. It would take time and positive leadership to reconnect the people, without risking falling into some sort of hierarchy based on origin. This is why I do not believe one group or the other should single-handedly rule alone. Rather, I think there should be a Grand Council of High Keepers made up of those voted into the position each to represent a single district of the Dales. (I like the idea of there being seven High Keepers, not just because there are seven traditional districts of Mi’kma’ki, but because it works out that there seven of the Creators. So it makes sense that there would be seven High Keepers.) The Grand Council would meet and make decisions together, with one appointed leader at the head to act as the Council’s chair.

In terms of protection and order, the Emerald Knights should be reformed. This would include the Fade Hunters, to protect the people against demons and maleficarum, with there being no Circles or Templars.

Restoring the independence of the Dales would lead to a revival of elven culture in ways that could never happen before, because they would actually be free to pursue re-learning the language, re-discovering the history and culture, and sharing it all amongst each other. They would not have to fear arrest the crime of simply being an elf.  

But what of the other races presently living in the Dales? I see no reason why they would have to leave, so long as they would be willing to follow the Grand Council’s leadership. I imagine many nobility would flee to Orlais, simply because they would not stand for it. But for the average human or surface dwarf, their life wouldn’t really even change much; they’d still be managing their farms the same as always. Hell, it might even improve things for them, assuming the Grand Council gives fairer treatment than the nobility previously.

[wild-blue-wanderlust]

‘Her Sweet Kiss’ Analysis

(AKA: how Jaskier sees Yennefer.)

I’m going to make my way through this bard’s whole discography.

This analysis is a lot longer than my Burn Butcher Burn analysis, and a lot more is discussed than just the lyrics, so I’ve split it into three sections.

The first section is context, which delves into what inspired the song, and why his view of Yennefer is so negative. This section covers the events of episode 5 and explains why those events are important to Her Sweet Kiss.

The second section is the lyrics, which is the main body of the analysis, and delves into the song itself, the language and methods used in its writing, and what my interpretation is of Jaskier’s opinions based on how he portrays himself, Yennefer, and Geralt through the story he tells in the song.

The third section is the placement, which focuses on how the song is used by the writers to foreshadow events, fill in some blanks, develop Jaskier’s character, and frame Yenralt.

The Context: What Jaskier Knows About Yennefer

In Episode 5, it’s heavily implied that Jaskier has amnesia in relation to the Djinn, and by extension, Yennefer.

While his throat is cursed from Geralt’s first wish — “I just want some damn peace!” — Jaskier isn’t unresponsive. He talks to the healer, attempts to talk to Geralt, makes facial expressions that are clear reactions to things happening around him, and waves at Yennefer.

But afterwards, he doesn’t seem to remember any of it. He asks Geralt if he knows Yennefer, despite having been present when the two met. He asks Yennefer if he slept with her when he wakes up healed and she’s at the end of the bed, and describes the orgy as if it were simply a dream.

He never mentions the Djinn or his cursed throat. Geralt does tell him that he can’t let Yennefer die because she saved Jaskier’s life, and he doesn’t protest that, but he also doesn’t look like he fully believes or understands it.

On another note, He says to Geralt “please don’t tell me this is the moment you’ve finally decided to care about someone other than yourself”, and after having been travelling on-and-off with Geralt for a decade now, as stated earlier in the episode, it’s clear that he doesn’t understand how Geralt can care about this woman so quickly when, as far as Jaskier can tell, Geralt doesn’t care about him at all, even after so long. (Jaskier being unaware of the lengths Geralt went to in order to save his life, the way Yennefer has to keep asking Geralt if Jaskier is ‘just a friend’, or the conversation where Geralt states that he doesn’t want the last thing Jaskier remembers to be the horrible things Geralt said to him).

Jaskier then proceeds to stand around waiting until the house collapses, which makes him believe that Geralt is dead. He’s left questioning why he went after a ‘mad witch’, before then seeing the two of them having sex through a window. After that, we know that Geralt repeatedly sees Yennefer, and that they keep having sex, and Jaskier attempts to steer Geralt away from her with little success.

Something else in relation to the timeline that strikes me as important is that I think there’s a pretty big jump between episode 5 and episode 6. In episode 5, Jaskier says that he and Geralt have known each other for a decade. Ciri, who is thirteen in season one, would only have recently been born at that point. But the mountain breakup happens in episode 6 and when Jaskier is being tortured by Rience in the second season, he says he hasn’t seen Geralt “in months” rather than ‘in years’. Meaning this third wheeling for Yenralt would’ve been going on for the best part of another decade.

So, to recap:

He wakes up in bed with Yennefer, covered in blood, and she starts a ritual

He escapes and sees Geralt, is relieved, tells him about the crazy witch

Geralt goes into the house to save said crazy witch

The house collapses and Jaskier laments Geralt, thinking he’s dead

He sees Geralt and Yennefer having sex through a window and is dragged away

Geralt and Yennefer run into each other multiple times since, Jaskier is third wheeling, this goes on for a decade

Jaskier tries to stop Geralt from going to hunt the dragon when they find out Yennefer is going, but this is what makes Geralt agree to it

After the dragon hunt, the mountain breakup happens

You can imagine why he wouldn’t be her biggest fan. I think this is important for understanding his views on her and on Geralt’s relationship with her, because I think there’s a lot of jealousy there as well as some feelings of betrayal, and there’s also definitely a lot of reason for Jaskier to be afraid of Yennefer, based on the things he remembers versus what he’s forgotten.

I want to make it clear that Yennefer is one of my favourite characters, and I do not hate her or think that Jaskier’s view of her is correct. I actually love the way their relationship develops in season 2 and 3. But I’m analysing things from Jaskier’s point of view here, and at this point he (understandably) hates her.

The Lyrics: Jaskier’s View on Geralt’s Relationship with Yennefer

The fairer sex, they often call it / But her love's as unfair as a crook

The term “fairer sex” is referring to females, and means that females are ‘pleasing to the eye’. Jaskier could be saying that yes, Yennefer is attractive, but she’s dangerous. But I don’t think that’s actually the definition of ‘fair’ that Jaskier means. He also uses the word “unfair”, and that doesn’t mean unattractive. He’s using the ‘fairer sex’ term to equate to moral fairness. It’s fun wordplay, because that isn’t commonly the use of the phrase.

It steals all my reason / Commits every treason / Of logic, with naught but a look

This line mirrors a conversation between Yennefer and Geralt, but I’ll get to that in the placement section.

I want to touch on the “my” pronoun here, because Jaskiee isn’t the one being ‘seduced’ in the song, nor the one who feels that way with Yennefer (Geralt states that she makes him “say more than [he’s] said in weeks” and that he always regrets it). It’s possible that Jaskier is saying that Yennefer’s love for Geralt affects him personally by making him jealous and therefore stealing his reason.

A storm’s raging on the horizon / Of longing and heartache and lust

The storm idea is self-explanatory I think — the storm represents something negative. The first few times I listened to Her Sweet Kiss, I thought that all three of the adjectives used were supposed to represent Yennefer, but upon closer inspection I like to think of longing, heartache, and lust each representing a different character in the song (therefore, one is Jaskier, one is Yennefer, and one is Geralt).

I think he’d see “longing” as himself; he longs for Geralt, for the love that he gives to Yennefer. Geralt would be “heartache”; anguish and sadness, negative emotions that Jaskier is used to seeing Geralt feel, and since it particularly relates to sadness caused by the absence of a loved one, it’s the heartache Geralt feels when he isn’t with Yennefer. Finally, that leaves Yennefer as “lust”; I don’t think that’s what her character truly is but it fits with Jaskier’s interpretation of her at this time, and is the most shallow of the three emotions, which would fit with Jaskier’s negative view of her.

The reason I believe viewing them each separately fits better than seeing them all as Yennefer is because I don’t think Jaskier would ascribe her so much emotional depth in a song that is clearly meant to portray her as a negative force. It would show a lot of empathy and that would fit his character, but I don’t think that’s how he’s trying to portray her.

Though I also would personally attribute the adjectives to different characters if I were talking about my own view. I’d make Yennefer “longing”; she is desperate for a child and something to make her feel less emptiness at this part of the story. For Jaskier, I’d make him “heartache”; while Geralt isn’t absent physically, he is emotionally, and he is absent when he’s with Yennefer. Finally, I’d say that Geralt is “lust”; I can’t personally see a lot of chemistry between him and Yennefer in episodes 5 and 6, and the way he talks to her so mockingly (in the bathing scene and when Yennefer tells him she wants to be a mother) aggravates me. Plus, he bound her to him with a Djinn wish while barely knowing her.

To be clear, I love Geralt. But I have very negative feelings about Yenralt as a ship. Especially in season one. It feels very out of character for Geralt.

She's always bad news / It's always lose, lose

These lyrics interest me purely from the standpoint of knowing it’s been a decade since Geralt and Yennefer met in episode five, and clearly a lot must have happened for Jaskier to take the perspective that interacting with Yennefer always brings negativity. There’s a possibility that Jaskier sees how obsessive Geralt is over her and that’s what he’s referring to, as he clearly thinks that Geralt is looking at Yennefer with rose-tinted glasses.

So tell me, love, tell me, love / How is that just?

The love in question he is referring to is Geralt, of course. Depending on when he decided on this lyric, he could be asking a few different questions here. Either, ‘how are Yennefer’s actions just?’, ’how is it just that you love her more than me?’ or, if this part was written after the mountain breakup, ‘how is it just that you blamed me for what happened between you and her, when she’s clearly the problematic one?’.

But the story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss / Her sweet kiss / But the story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss

The repetition of this emphasises this point that Jaskier is trying to make and shows his desperation for Geralt to listen to him. He’s not letting it go, he really wants Geralt to hear this.

Her current is pulling you closer / And charging the hot, humid night / The red sky at dawn is giving a warning, you fool / Better stay out of sight

Seeing Yennefer as a current pulling Geralt in implies that he doesn’t have any autonomy in the situation and it puts the blame of the relationship onto Yennefer. Which I find ironic considering Yennefer is the one bound by a wish that Geralt made. If Jaskier knew about that wish I’d say this reeks of misogyny, but luckily for my favourite bard, it’s actually more likely he has no idea about the wishes at all, least of all that one.

The idea of her controlling the humid (therefore uncomfortable) weather plays into the idea of her being a bad influence. The use of weather metaphors is actually quite intriguing because weather is a natural and inescapable phenomenon, but in contrast Jaskier sees all of this as preventable if Geralt just stays away. It also speaks to the idea of Yennefer being dangerous, as a force of nature.

Jaskier doesn’t understand how Geralt can ignore the signs that seem so obvious to him. The red sky at dawn lyric references an ancient rhyme: “red sky at night, sailors’ delight / red sky at morning, sailors take warning”, because it alludes to a storm coming, which refers back to the previous lyric of a storm on the horizon.

Because of the original rhyme referencing red sky at night being a good thing, I’d suggest that Jaskier is saying that Geralt’s relationship with Yennefer is toxic because they have sex and then, as we know from one of their conversations in episode 6, one of them always leaves in the morning before the other wakes up. So yeah, the relationship is great during the night, but by morning it isn’t. So it’s better to “stay out of sight” altogether.

I like how Jaskier calls Geralt a fool here. This song isn’t as angry as Burn Butcher Burn or Whoreson Prison Blues, but it definitely sets up those later songs well with establishing the clear hurt that causes Jaskier’s shift in worldview, just expressed in a sassy and far more concerned way than after the mountain breakup.

I'm weak, my love, and I am wanting

Once again calling Geralt “my love”, and this constantly shifting term of address between loving Geralt and calling him a fool really foreshadows how Jaskier’s character is going to develop while also portraying this inner conflict he has.

Jaskier admits that part of the reason he dislikes Geralt being with Yennefer is because he wants what she has with Geralt for himself. He recognises his own apparent weakness, perhaps believing this is why he doesn’t have the relationship with Geralt that he desires.

This also mirrors one of his later songs, Extraordinary Things, in which Jaskier states that “it’s not a want, it’s a need”.

If this is the path I must trudge / I welcome my sentence / Give to you my penance / Garrotter, jury and judge

I’ll talk more about this part in the placement section of the analysis. It’s my favourite bit of the song and I have a lot to say about it.

The literal path that Jaskier is trudging is Geralt’s, following ‘The Path’ he takes as a Witcher hunting monsters, which Jaskier decided to follow him on for two decades. What I find interesting here is the idea that he ‘must’ take it, that he doesn’t have a choice — because he does. Nothing and nobody is forcing him. In fact, Geralt actively discourages him being there rather than forcing him to stay. But it’s more dramatic to assign this finality to his situation. What's significant is that there’s also a sense of determination here. He isn’t helpless to his situation, he welcomes it and he’s firm in his position.

A “penance” is a self-inflicted punishment to make up for wrongdoings. Jaskier giving Geralt his penance is saying that, for one thing, he knows that continuing down Geralt’s path while he’s with Yennefer is only going to hurt Jaskier himself more. He’s also saying that, for the wrongdoings he has committed (which I think are probably him being ‘unworthy’ as a travelling companion, since this is a sentiment that comes up often throughout episode 6) he’s going to let Geralt decide his fate. And, ironically, Geralt does, in the end of this episode. And the things he says to Jaskier on the mountain lead to Jaskier no longer trudging the same path as he stated he would.

Notably, the act of giving Geralt his penance kind of stops it from being a penance at all, since penance is self-inflicted. Unless Jaskier views himself and Geralt as two halves of a whole, or the very act itself of leaving his fate in Geralt’s hand is his punishment, because Jaskier already is sure that Geralt doesn’t want him around and knows that he will be abandoned, in which case the punishment is willingly subjecting himself to that heartbreak.

A “garroter” is someone who kills someone else by strangling them. It comes from ‘garrote’, which can refer to any handheld weapon used to strangle another. The jury are a group of randomly-chosen people who have to attend a court hearing and decide whether or not an accused person is guilty. A judge is the person who decides the punishment/sentence after someone is found guilty.

If Geralt is the jury, he’s given the power to make decisions about who Jaskier is without having the qualifications to do so, only based on the evidence presented to him, which isn’t always easy to understand. Such as deciding that Jaskier is an unworthy travelling companion, that he’s “just a bard” and that they are decidedly not friends.

If he is the judge, he gets to decide what happens to Jaskier in the future. Such as by abandoning him on a mountain, but also by having saved his life more than once prior to this.

And if he’s a garrotter, then he violently ends Jaskier’s life by preventing him access to something he needs to live. Which, literally, is oxygen. But metaphorically, it’s love. Connection. Inspiration. Even just acknowledgement, a lot of the time.

If he’s all three, then he has a very large amount of power over Jaskier’s life, his image, and his actions.

There’s also something to be said about the order in which Jaskier presents these three ideas. If we go based on order being equal to importance, his life being the least important is quite tragic but also does align with his values. Jaskier’s image is important because he’s a bard and he has to present himself and others in specific ways to ensure that they are treated somewhat decently. It’s not a shallow value to have — Jaskier’s image, his music, is how he survives in a society trying to oppress him and his loved ones (but I’ll probably talk more about that whenever I analyse Toss A Coin to Your Witcher, Extraordinary Things, and Song of the Seven). His actions are the most important of the three because personal freedom is very important to Jaskier, along with his ability to always do the morally right thing. Doing that is more important to Jaskier than anything else, including living or living safely.

But the story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss / Her sweet kiss / The story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss

I find it interesting that these lyrics don’t change here, because in Jaskier’s music he usually changes the chorus, but this time he doesn’t. Which further cements the idea of him trying to get this through to Geralt and repeating it again and again and again until he listens.

But the story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss / Her sweet kiss / But the story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss / The story is this: / She'll destroy with her sweet kiss

The Placement: How Her Sweet Kiss is Utilised

So, this song plays three times in episode 6.

The first takes place at the very start of the episode. It literally fades in from the intro screen to the sound of Jaskier singing and then he’s the first thing you see on screen. The episode both starts and ends with this song.

In this scene, Jaskier is staying out of Geralt’s way while he’s killing a monster in a cave, and he’s interrupted in his playing when he notices that the men who asked Geralt to kill this monster are trying to steal Roach, and Geralt’s things. He tries to stop them, but isn’t successful on his own. This sparks the comment from Geralt that Jaskier isn’t worthy as a travel companion.

And that was almost foreshadowed while Jaskier was playing, as the part of the song he’s singing is, in my opinion, the darkest part of it. I touched heavily on these lines in the lyric analysis section but I do have more to say on them here:

I’m weak, my love, and I am wanting / if this is the path I must trudge / I welcome my sentence / give to you my penance / gorgeous garrotter, jury, and judge

I’ll get to the slight change in the lyrics in a second but, like, starting with this? You know you’re in for a wild ride.

These lyrics being written and sung before they’re really given as deep a meaning as the episode gives to them. It’s foreshadowing. And maybe at that current moment the weight of them isn’t as much as it is by the end, it’s just dramatic flair on Jaskier’s part. Here it represents an intense amount of loyalty and devotion in spite of pain caused by Geralt wanting Yennefer over him. That is something that Jaskier can cope with, even if it is undeniably painful. But it grows into something a lot worse and by the end those dramatic ideas have come to fruition.

It’s also significant that the song is in the process of being written, composed, and edited as the episode progresses, because as I mentioned in the context section, it has been years since the Djinn incident. There’s something about this song that Jaskier is really struggling with. We’ve seen him compose songs in less than an hour, with Toss a Coin to Your Witcher, but writing one about Yennefer and Geralt took him years.

One thing we see him struggling with is the lyrics. When he sings it here, he says “gorgeous garroter” before pausing and trying “lovely garroter” instead. He goes back and forth for a bit until he’s distracted by the guys trying to rob Geralt.

Now, that’s the biggest oxymoron I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Someone who ends your life via strangulation, and you’re describing them as lovely and gorgeous. Jaskier, you are down terribly.

But isn’t it also fun how he ultimately decides to drop a positive adjective there altogether, after everything that happened in the episode?

The second time that Her Sweet Kiss plays, it’s just the instrumental. It follows a particularly tender scene involving Jaskier and Geralt, the “do what pleases you” scene on the cliff, but Jaskier is not actually present in the scene where his song plays. To me this could imply two things. Either this is the moment in which he’s finishing the song, and that’s what he’s doing while the scene is occurring, or he’s eavesdropping on the two of them and the song is supposed to represent his presence.

I think the second is more likely purely because I think it makes sense that the song is only finished after the breakup. I also think the second is more likely because, as I mentioned in the lyric section, there are lines in the song that directly reference a part of this conversation between Yennefer and Geralt, which Jaskier should have no way of knowing.

The dialogue is:

Yennefer: I was afraid that mountain would take you from me. Now I’m afraid it took your senses instead.

Geralt: Only my nonsense.

Yennefer: I quite like your nonsense.

The lyrics that directly relate to this are

“It steals all my reason / commits every treason / of logic, with naught but a look”

A detail that I really appreciate about this scene is that the chorus, the part where Jaskier would be singing “she’ll destroy with her sweet kiss” if the lyrics had been included, plays at the exact moment that Yennefer and Geralt do kiss, and that’s just a detail that makes me happy.

But it’s a little weird to me that they decide to play this song at all here. The writers of the show want the audience to root for Yenralt, but with this song in the background I honestly find that really difficult. I don’t like them together anyway but having this song play in what is supposed to be a moment of closeness and harmony just falls flat, because that’s not what the song portrays.

However, it is useful for symbolising Jaskier potentially listening in, and I think it also serves to show the audience just how different Yennefer truly is from Jaskier’s portrayal of her.

The last scene where the song plays is actually the end credits, after the famous mountain breakup scene, where Geralt is abandoned by Yennefer and subsequently abandons Jaskier too. It’s definitely painful for Jaskier, who I think expected this for a while, and would probably think that if Geralt had just listened to him about Yennefer, then he wouldn’t have lost him.

Whatever you do, don’t imagine Jaskier singing the full finished version of Her Sweet Kiss for the first time as he makes his way back down the mountain alone.

Rewatching the mountain breakup I also want to point out that Geralt compares Yennefer to a tornado there, and considering the weather metaphors throughout the song I find that to be a cool detail.

Anyway, the song plays in its full glory during the end credits — bringing the episode full circle, as it both started and ended with Jaskier singing. He is the lense through which the audience is told the story of The Witcher. By now, it has a lot more depth and meaning to it than it did at the beginning of the episode, and it is finally finished after the years it took to write it, mirroring how Jaskier’s time with Geralt is also over.

For now.

[maybe-boys-do-love]

“Why is dialogue so emotionally exaggerated in Japanese film?” one reddit user asked.

The response HarryMcFann gave is an incredible primer to understanding Japanese performance style and the media influenced by it (I’m looking at you, BLs and Kdramas).

“Not claiming to be an expert or have a definitive answer here, but these are my two cents based off of what I know about Japan and Japanese film. This is a very general overview. It’s important to note that culture is complex and full of nuances, but this should give a general understanding as to why Japanese films are somewhat exaggerated.

As u/scytheavatar pointed out, Japanese film is influenced by Japanese theater, but that doesn't fully answer your question. For example, you may ask about Western theater as it relates to Western films, and so on (Western theater is exagerated, but films today aren’t). So let’s look at Japanese theater.

The three main forms of Japanese theater are Kabuki, Noh, and Bunraku, and each of these forms influenced Japanese films in different ways. Now what is important to note here is that back in the early years of cinema, those in France and the rest of the West saw film as a new form of photography, while the Japanese viewed film as a new form of theater. Just think about that for a second, and what the implications are. Back in the late 19th and early 20th century the big thing about photography was it’s ability to capture realism, and that realism was a huge concern for many Western filmmakers. The famous French film critic, André Bazin, wrote extensively about how he believed the essence of cinema is its ability to reproduce reality (there were, of course, Western filmmakers who rejected this notion, such as the Soviet formalists and German expressionists, but going into that would require a lot more words). In Japan this was not the case, and from its inception, the Japanese rejected the Western idea of cinematic “realism.”

How did this manifest itself in early Japanese cinema? One thing the Japanese directly took from theater was the presence of a narrator. Japanese silent films were always accompanied by someone called a Benshi (fun fact, Kurosawa’s brother was a benshi), who would narrate the film. Japanese silent films would then have few intertitles, because the benshi would be there to explain the plot, and so on. What’s more, audiences would often attend a film based off of which benshi was performing. The benshi where local celebrities in many ways, and they would try to one-up one another. So naturally, to give a good show, the benshi would have to exaggerate in order to give more life to the performance (these guys would voice characters and play all the different roles). Directors would make their films knowing that there was going to a benshi present. So popular was the benshi, that much of the resistance to transitioning into talking films was from those lamenting the loss of the benshi narrators. Japan actually finally made the transition into talking films much later than the rest of the world.

It is also important to understand that “realism” is a relative term (cue some 15-year-old calling me pretentious). Yes, Western theater is also exaggerated and not particularly realistic, but traditional Western theater really doesn’t compare to Japanese theater. In fact, the famous German playwright, Bertolt Brecht, based many of his ideas of modernism in theater on traditional Japanese theater. This is why Ozu is seen as the most “traditional” of Japanese filmmakers while also being viewed as an early “modernist.” (It’s all really confusing and requires a bunch of quotation marks). Anyway, the Japanese don’t really have the 4th wall in theater the same way we do here in the West. In Japanese theater, audience interaction is huge, and stagehands (albeit often wearing black) walk freely on stage and move props and scenery around the actors, and so on. The key difference here between Japanese theater and Western theater is that while the West try to disguise and mask the artifice of the stage, the Japanese embraced it. A quick example of the way a Japanese actor performs in theater would be the Mie. The Mie is a powerful and emotional pose struck by an actor, who then freezes for a moment. This pose is more for the audience than the drama of the play, and often times reveals important information about that character. This idea of the artificiality of the performance in theater can also be seen in Japanese film.

Finally, it is worth noting how the Japanese view nature vs how the West does. In the West, we look at the natural as being something untouched by people. Interestingly, this isn’t really the case in Japan. In Japan there’s a belief that something only becomes “natural” when it has been in some way shaped by a person. Weird, right? To quote Donald Richie:

“To most Japanese, the Western idea of “realism,” particularly in its naturalistic phase, was something truly new. All early Japanese dramatic forms had assumed the necessity of a structure created through mediation. The same was true of Japanese culture in general: the wilderness was natural only after it had been shaped and presented in a palpable form, as in the Japanese garden, or flowers were considered living (ikebana) only after having been cut and arranged for viewing. Life was thus dramatically lifelike only after having been explained and commented on. Art and entertainment alike were presentational, that is they rendered a particular reality by way of an authoritative voice (be it the noh chorus or the benshi). This approach stood in marked contrast to the representational style of the West in which one assumed the reality of what was being shown.”

I want to make it clear that not all Japanese films are like this. If you watch films by a director like Hirokazu Koreeda, you will not see the same sort of exaggeration.”

[felixcloud6288]

Dungeon Meshi Chapter 42

The title image this chapter is wonderful and creepy. Young Marcille is trying to hide in light from her window as the shadows creep toward her. And the way the darkness is drawn creates a sort of grainy static effect.

I had to read the first part twice to understand what was happening in the cold open. We're starting with the beginning of Laios's nightmare before we see the events leading up to it.

The dragon Laios killed is not the red dragon, but it might be based on it.

So Laios doesn't have the best relation with his parents afterall. I guess his monster obsession was one of those things his parents indulged in when he was little because they thought it was just a phase all children go through and became more hostile to him when he didn't stop.

And some little tidbits of Laios's past that get brought up is he's a school dropout and was once in the army. The things Kabru mentioned in chapter 32 get addressed here too. Turns out he didn't know anything they were doing and he was conned into giving them his earnings. Another thing we can add to the list of Kabru not actually knowing anything about Laios.

The story begins in earnest with a shot of Marcille with a grim shadow cast over her face. In the next panel, we see that the shadow is because she's holding a candle. What a drama queen.

The monster of the chapter is nightmares which possess you while you sleep and give you bad dreams. Marcille was exhausted so it was probably easy to fall asleep, but I wonder if nightmares can also induce sleep in their victims.

I like hearing stories about Shuro and Namari getting into trouble on their adventures. Flashbacks with Namari tend to present her as reckless. Meanwhile, the little bits of Shuro getting into trouble seem to imply he's not good at taking precautions. Namari learned her lesson after the red dragon; Shuro was still acting the same when he showed back up.

Also in chapter 22, I thought that was Laios who got petrified and shattered, but now I realize that was Shuro.

Of course Laios counts Fauns instead of sheep when he sleeps.

Laios is a lucid dreamer it seems. Maybe it's an extension of his general attitude that makes him willing and excited to eat monsters or be okay with Marcille using ancient magic. He doesn't accept and go along with things unless it makes sense to him.

Laios's "strongest servant" is the monster Laios thought up in chapter 3, although the left hindleg was a horse hoof rather than the clawed foot shown this chapter.

I had to go back to chapter 3 to compare that monster to the one Laios imagined, and I'm amazed how much Ryoko Kui's art style changed over this series. This chapter was released March 15, 2018. Chapter 3 came out April 14, 2014. So I've gone through nearly four years of development so far.

The earlier chapters were less detailed and the characters were more cartoonishly proportioned. In particular, Senshi's proportions seemed a bit closer to the fake Senshi in chapter 39 that Marcille conjured.

However, the monsters seemed to have more attention and detail on them than the humans did.

I think I should watch this episode. There are so many silly bits from the afformentioned Marcille drama queen moment, to her complaining that she doesn't need to sleep only to immediately pass out, to Laios ripping off his face to turn into a dog. Then the horrors happen.

Sadly, the dog is not one of the ones he had as a kid.

I think the portrait little Marcille was hiding behind was a portrait of her mother. We can see her at the start of chapter 3.

Laios sucks at therapy and understanding abstract concepts. I said he's a lucid dreamer and that seems to be detrimental to his efforts to help Marcille because he is able to realize he's dreaming and can pull real details to reason away things happening in the dream. But Marcille isn't able to do that.

And he thinks Marcille's nightmares are from recent events like the stress from fighting monsters and being afraid she'll get killed, and that the monster must just be any other monster that can be killed. He doesn't get that the monster is a form Marcille's mind is creating to represent a deep rooted fear she has that is nothing physical.

The biggest difference between Laios and Falin is Falin has a greater compassion for people that Laios lacks.

Even Marcille thinks she's the reason Falin turned into a chimera.

One of the paintings in the hallway is Pipi. Maybe the man next to it is Marcille's father.

Laios eventually gets what's happening, but I think he was still slightly off. I'll get into my own ideas about Marcille's dreams but I want to talk about Laios's first since he mentioned there being nothing in his dream.

Laios's dream was him in a viod sitting over a dead dragon with various scattered items around him. Then his parents, the villagers, the gold-peelers, and Shuro all appeared to berate him.

I think Laios's nightmares revolve around him feeling like he cannot accomplish anything. One item on the ground was an empty coin purse because Laios has struggled with finances. There are destroyed papers around because he's not an academic. Falin's staff is embedded in the ground because he couldn't save her.

The nightmare presentation of his life is he is someone who killed a dragon but is otherwise a failure.

And what do all the people in his dream have in common? They're all people he trusted and thought of as friends and family only to discover they hated him.

When he realized he was dreaming, Laios crushed all his nightmares under his beloved fantasy monster. His love of monsters is genuine, but maybe Laios is slightly driven by the fact that his understanding about them is something he feels he is actually accomplished at.

Now onto Marcille. Laios got that she's afraid of how everyone around her will die before she does, but the main thing he didn't quite catch is the monster they're facing represents the passage of time. They are in a hallway with no branching paths and the monster is approaching from one direction. All they can do is run it the other direction, but the monster will always catch up eventually. And it always catches everyone else first.

As an elf, Marcille will live long past the others. She said elves can live to around 500. Assuming elves age proportinally to Tallmen, I'd guess Marcille is 150 at most. She will outlive the rest of the party by a wide margin and she's terrified.

I get the feeling that part of why she's studying ancient magic is related to that. When Laios told her to fight the monster, she said she tried but her magic turned Falin into a doll. Converting that from abstract to concrete, it might mean that Marcille is trying to find a way to use the dungeon to alter people's lifespans, but the first time she ever actually tried using ancient magic for real was a disaster. So now she doesn't know what to do.

This may be a dream, but this moment feels like a bad omen.

The dungeon binds people's souls to their bodies and prevents them from dying. With some modification, that might potentially be converted into a power that forces people to live far longer than they are supposed to. Marcille wanted to meet the Magician and it probably has to do with this.

Another little thing I'm curious about. The monster represents the passage of time, and it caused Laios to become old when it touched him. So Marcille's fear is specifically that everyone else will grow old and die long before her. So if her father was taken, that means he didn't die young like Laios speculated. He died old. So either Marcille's father was already a fairly old person, or he wasn't an elf.

Wait. If Nightmares hide in your pillow, couldn't they have skipped this entire thing by just removing them from Marcille's pillow in the first place?

Laios said the nightmares must have been in Marcille's pillow for a while. Maybe it's coincidence but chapter 2 ended with a note saying Marcille had some bad dreams. However, that might have been because Laios strung up a corpse that was visible from where they were sleeping.

This was the first chapter where we got to have hijniks with Izutsumi and she did NOTHING.

It's dustrag!

Marcille's happy dream is going on adventures with Laios and Falin.

Even though the chapter ends on a cute and happy note, I do not like how the magician's tome is there. The magician was aware that Laios was going through the living pictures and I wouldn't be surprised if he can also be aware when nightmares are infesting people's dreams.

I feel like the tome wasn't just Marcille's recollection of it, but might have been the actual power behind the dungeon taking notice of her. And it being included in the last shot has a sort of vibe of whatever it is saying it can grant this to Marcille.

back

[rattys-prinxiety-countdown]

HE'S FINALLY DONE! This would have been posted hours ago but the day got away from me and I needed to catch up. Presenting the one, the only, Intruality fusion Cox! (Thank you to @frogsandsquids for the name recommendation, I hope you like it!)

Intruality is admittedly not a ship I know a lot about, or initially one I liked very much. At the start of creating this fusion, I had no idea how to mesh a character I adore (Remus) with one I don't really care for (Patton). I gave it my all to figure out what worked, and what didnt 😩. I started with trying to do a something that leaned into a creepy/cute aesthetic (Sort of like Melanie Martinez if you know her vibe??) but then my friends thought I should try to lean more into a "Sexy Dad" aesthetic, so it got scrapped, and I restarted. Two more times. (HUGE thanks to my friend Miles, who let me bounce ideas off them for hours before I settled on what became the final product.)

Beyond the designing nightmare, this took way longer than it should have (9 hours) but I have a good excuse. I was testing new skills and trying new things during this process. This was the first time I tried giving my art a thicker outline to make it pop. Also, this was the first time I made a piece where I had to add "layers of clothing" to the base layer. Click more to see what I mean

BOOM! Hes a jester!

This is Cox (He/They). This fusion has a love for jokes, pranks, and above all, baking (who cares if only 10 percent of the time the recipe goes according to plan, we're measuring with our HEARTS, and NOT with the recipe cards!)

Thanks again to my friend Miles, I got some ideas for how this fusion behaves. One may think the fusion would be a little sexual or even flirtatious, but anything Cox comes up with goes through the Patton-Pending Dad™ filter. He's very affectionate, and unfortunately, can be little overbearing/annoying without realizing it. He constantly deflects with humor, and is a little self deprecating, but they're working on it and doing a hell of a job.

Lets talk about the mask. (This gets a little heavy and I do apologize for that)

It was initially going to stay bunny ears until Miles+CO. talked me out of it. The mask is literal. Cox uses it to mask himself, and put out a very bubbly "Patton-like" persona. He choses to keep the "less happy, family friendly" part of himself away from view while Patton and Remus work on it from the inside. They enjoy the quiet time they get while baking, and it gives the Remus inside Cox to experiment with some less than ideal recipes.

There's so much I still want to say I'm just forgetting. I will point out that Miles hasn't even seen Sanders Sides, all the information they got (and by extension, the ideas they passed onto me) were given from the Sanders Sides Wikis 😭 he took the time out of his day to research Sanders Sides lore and I'm so appreciative of it. They also sketched an idea for their own Intruality fusion, but admittedly its got an incredibly angsty, dark theme and I dunno if he's ok with me sharing it.

I'll be working on the analogical fusion next! It will be here soon-ish!

Ps: I went digging for some intruality fusions to gain ANY sort of inspiration for this, and instead found tons and tons of fanart. I came out of this understanding the appeal of the ship a lot more and *dramatic sigh* woe is me,,,, i ship them now 🤭

[corellianhounds]

top 5 headcanons? Your own or just faves!

GREAT question so these are just the ones off the top of my head:

1. This headcanon for Mando teaching the kid sign language, and the kid communicating back

2. Not something I came up with, but I like the idea of Luke having permanent Force-lightning scars as a result of Palpatine using it on him in RotJ

3. Personal headcanon: I think Han Solo would have taken Leia’s last name when they got married: Han (at least in the movies) had no family ties to the name ‘Solo,’ it was the name the Imperial officer gave him when he enlisted in the military to escape Corellia. It’s the perfect description for a smuggler on his own who only thinks of himself and his ship (though eventually Chewie becomes a part of The Only Things Han Solo Cares About).

The most important thing about Han Solo’s character that I think many audiences and even official creators (INCLUDING GEORGE LUCAS SOMEHOW) seem to forget is that Han’s whole character arc is that he was NOT a good guy— He BECOMES a good guy. All of the tension surrounding him in the original trilogy is based on the fact Han Solo looks out for himself. His return at the end of A New Hope is predicated on the audience being surprised that he came back.

Each movie, there was no guarantee that he would stay or stick around when the going got tough. By the end of the trilogy, Han’s character arc has ended with him choosing to be a part of something bigger and caring for people beyond himself and beyond his circle of friends. Choosing to marry Leia means choosing to remain relatively sedentary and present for her (and by extension their family, friends, and the New Republic), and besides, what better way to throw people off the scent and protect yourself from your criminal past than by marrying into the royal and political-leading family?

TLDR: Han takes Leia’s last name after they’re married because he finally has a family he chooses to tie himself to.

4. Personal headcanon: Leia does not forgive Vader for what he became, regardless of whether Luke says he redeemed himself in the end.

Leia not only saw the war he led and the atrocities he committed her entire life, he enabled/directed the destruction of her entire home planet before her very eyes. Leia loves her brother, but she cannot reconcile what Luke says about Vader being a good person with the war criminal she knew him to be.

Bonus headcanon: I think in the sequel trilogy Leia should have been the one to see a vision of her son’s future and she should have been either the catalyst for Ben Solo leaving, or she should have been the one who said she saw too much of Vader in him as an adult and he had to be killed in order to be defeated, while Luke and Han should have been the ones trying to bring him back. Luke’s character in the original trilogy was defined by compassion and mercy even towards one of the worst people the galaxy had to offer, and Han’s character was defined by the people who didn’t give up on him and whose encouragement and support and willingness to see the good in him were the reasons he was able to become a good person.

5. Personal headcanon: I’ve had the idea since 2020 that Mando’s family on Aq Vetina were part of the Disciples of the Whills. I’ve liked the idea of Mando being connected in a non-Force-sensitive way to other lore surrounding the Force, and I’ve based it on the similarities in costume design and because I think thematically, the idea of exploring the Force through a different lens than the Jedi would have made a much more interesting and compelling story in what was originally a relatively independent TV show with new characters on a much smaller scale, exploring different parts of the galaxy.

How I understand the doctrine of the Whills is that it’s more trying to understand the direction of the Force as it tries to find balance in the world, and the result of those teachings means seeing how the Force working in others is what benefits people— In Rogue One Chirrut says “May the Force of others be with you,” which I’ve interpreted as “Yes the Force exists and has an impact on life and death, but because it is the connection binding every living thing together, it’s our choices and the actions we take and the connections we form that exhibit the Force, which are what will ultimately save us in the end.” Chirrut says “The Force protected me,” and Baze Malbus says “I protected you,” and they are both right.

In the context of The Mandalorian, I wanted to see what could have happened if the show diverged from the Jedi, who to be clear were a specific order of Force sensitive followers whose primary purpose was as protectors of the galaxy— The Jedi teachings weren’t just a belief system, they were combined with a martial art and specific learned abilities that were intended to be used to protect people. That doesn’t mean their way was the only way Force-sensitives interacted with the Force.

Long story short, I wanted Mando’s potential ties to a different part of Star Wars lore to be the gateway to exploring more of the galaxy that these stories were set in. I think it would have been a lot more interesting and would have freed up the story to go whatever direction it needed without being confined to the Jedi and prior source material

[descendant-of-truth]

The data characters in Coded are endlessly fascinating to me because like... they're so much like the originals. But everything is shifted just enough to the left that they feel different, and a little off if you think about it long enough.

Probably the main thing that stands out is that they all start out with different "base memories" from each other, if you will. The only thing Data Sora knows is that he grew up on the islands with his friends, but Data Riku has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything that happened in KH1. Data Namine knows what happened in CoM, and Data Roxas remembers up to the end of the KH2 prologue.

None of them are caught up to the present. The events of KH2 don't exist to them, because those events are written in a different journal.

But you can't even say that Data Sora is "just" Sora from before he started his journey, because almost as soon as the game starts, there's something wrong with that picture.

It's a little hard to explain, but Sora seems... remarkably unconcerned with his surroundings. He accepts whatever Mickey tells him without a second thought, even if he admits (still much too casually) that he doesn't understand what's going on.

(Not to mention that the giant, eye-catching blocks around him are things he doesn't even acknowledge until prompted by Mickey to "look for anything odd.")

But probably the biggest difference between the two Soras when they're starting out is that the journey isn't personal for Data Sora. He doesn't dwell on the islands being lost, and more importantly, he isn't looking for his friends. He doesn't even think about his friends. The first time Riku's name comes out of his mouth is when he literally shows up in front of him.

The early parts of Coded really make the "data" part of Data Sora apparent, I think. He's kind and brave like Sora, he has his mannerisms down, but he feels a bit hollow. There's nothing that's really important to him yet; he just goes along with things as they happen to him.

And then he loses the Keyblade and Riku at the same time, which is the first event to prompt genuine distress from him that he doesn't quickly bounce back from.

This is when Data Sora goes from a passive protagonist to more of an active one - something that the original Sora was from the start. He finally disobeys a request from Mickey, going to Hollow Bastion by himself in order to save Riku.

It's only there that he finally starts to process what having friends means, though, courtesy of Donald and Goofy's guidance... which the original Sora had ever since Traverse Town, by the way. Mickey wasn't a bad mentor to Data Sora, necessarily, but he was a lot more objective-focused, and thus didn't do a lot to help foster a deeper understanding of certain things in him.

Another thing I find interesting - the original Sora lost his Keyblade before going through Hollow Bastion, too, but the way they each get them back is different. Sora makes a rousing speech about how his friends are his power, and his conviction in that summons it back:

While Data Sora summons his back in a moment of fear, and a desire to protect his friends from being crushed:

He even fights a possessed Riku like Sora did, but the dynamic between them is much different on both ends. Originally, Sora was really fed up with Riku, and didn't know the full extent that he was being manipulated. (Also Riku stole the Keyblade and his friends by extension from him, so he's understandably kind of mad about that)

Meanwhile, Riku's villainous sass was on full display, mocking Sora for having a weak heart and saying he would get destroyed by the darkness. This was probably the worst terms they've been on with each other.

In Coded, there's no bad blood between them, and Data Sora knows exactly how much Riku isn't acting of his own accord. So his tone becomes one of unambiguous concern, while Riku wants so much to not fight Sora that he asks to be destroyed instead.

And because Ansem just... doesn't seem to exist in the datascape, Sora is able to bring Riku back with him much faster than the original could, so the motivation that made CoM and KH2 possible in the first place is gone entirely.

Data Sora's journey leads him to the same places as Sora's, and the story beats are similar, but his experiences are unmistakably different. Which is what makes the way Data Riku talks about things especially fascinating.

He makes a lot of references to the original events of KH1, and talks like he and Data Sora are inextricable from it. "I always seem to give in," "you once turned into a Heartless," "you would have saved us." He never completely separates the events of the datascape from those in the real world, treating Riku's failings as his own, saying that Data Sora lost his heart and doesn't remember it.

Data Roxas and Namine are the same way - it's actually Sora who's the odd one out, who doesn't give his original a second thought most of the time. It's only when other people attribute Sora's experiences to him that he, somewhat mistakenly, adopts that information into his worldview.

(No, Sora, that's not your Heartless. No, you weren't on a journey to find Riku and Kairi. That was a different guy. You don't even know Kairi for some reason. Add him to the list of people that live in Sora's shadow along with Roxas and Xion)

I don't know what the conclusion is here exactly, just that there's something about the way the data characters are so different but similar at the same time to the people they're based on that's really engaging to me.

I mean, one of Sora's biggest fears seems to be turning into someone else, or just being a copy of another person, as we saw in DDD. Data Sora is a Sora who's a copy, and he's kind of just... fine with that. He's content with what he has. Even when his memories are a complete mess by the end of the game, he accepts the situation as it is and keeps moving forward.

Anyway I could keep going but for now I'll leave it at "and that's why the data characters should show up again in future games"

[sarcasticgaypotato]

thoughts on Caroline?

What to say about Caroline?

She's a massively important character to the franchise, but she barely speaks. She's constantly present in the story, but she's only acknowledged a handful of times. She's everywhere and nowhere, she's everything and nothing at all.

She's GLaDOS, but she isn't, or is she?

Depending on your perspective of Caroline, we either know a lot about her personality or next to nothing.

I think my initial impression of Caroline as a character was much more negative because it was shaped by fanon interpretation.

It's probably not a huge secret that I don't enjoy c/aveline, and that WAS the majority of Caroline content for a long time. I honestly kind of resented that ship, partially because it practically became a given that where there's Old Aperture, there's this ship. These two who barely interacted were EVERYWHERE, and I always got the feeling that the only reason they were popular as a couple was because it's a m/f ship, and the Portal fandom was practically beside itself with excitement to focus on any male character.

I'm not here to ship-bash, if that's your cup of tea, good for you. But personally? Not for me, and it negatively colored my perception of her for a while. It felt a bit like she was a character defined by fanon more than anything else, just there to be in a relationship with Cave (healthy or otherwise) just so it can end in tragedy when he puts her into the robot. I understand why people might enjoy that, but I've always felt like it cheapens GLaDOS's (and by extension, Caroline's) story to make it all amount to just 'being the girlfriend of a mad scientist and tragically paying the price.'

Cave's a creep! He, in my opinion, probably thought his relationship with Caroline was much more friendly than it was. She responds to him like a secretary who knows how to please her boss— "Yes sir Mr. Johnson!"— but nothing personal. She was probably nice and polite because she was a secretary, and look at the era she lived in. If she wasn't all sweet and cheery, Cave probably would've told her to smile more.

So does that mean I think she's the opposite of what we hear? Is she sadistic and cruel like GLaDOS is? No, I'm not saying that either. I'll get into who and what I think Caroline is in a second, but above all else I wanted to point out my frustration with how she's portrayed in connection to Cave. Making her Cave's love interest is boring and bland to me, basing their connection off of the same level of friendliness from her that I've shown to people working in customer service. It's just part of the job.

For Caroline herself? I'm also not a fan of 'evil Caroline' takes. I mean I love a girlboss, but it sort of misses the point here. If Caroline was always evil, sadistic, and scheming, it waters down GLaDOS and her development. If Caroline is too similar to GLaDOS, it takes away from the weight of who and what GLaDOS is. If they’re too dissimilar, it’s difficult to imagine the connection between them.

The fandom was so obsessed with the incorrect— and stupid— idea that Caroline is Chell’s mother that it missed the much more obvious metaphor under their noses. Caroline is GLaDOS’s mother.

Cut from the same cloth, GLaDOS is born of her, but she isn’t her. Without Caroline, GLaDOS would never exist, but it would be absurd to say that GLaDOS is the same person that Caroline is. GLaDOS grew, changed, and became who we saw at the end of Portal 2 much in the same way that anyone grows into being their own person, not a copy of their parents.

Here I go talking about GLaDOS in this ask about Caroline— it’s impossible not to.

If you want my personal take on Caroline?

I think she was a smart woman, keeping up with the actions of a madman and holding her head above the flood of insanity. I think she was able to look the other way when she had to, anyone who worked at Aperture needed that dubious morality. That being said, I think she had a heart. We can all debate until we die whether or not GLaDOS was remotely truthful at the end of Portal 2 about deleting her, but I think there’s a reason she attributed her act of compassion to Caroline— it wasn’t Caroline forcing her hand (claw?) via possession, but rather, she is the only framework GLaDOS has to reference that feeling. That scene is definitely GLaDOS projecting her own emotions onto someone else to avoid confronting them, but I don’t think she would make that comparison for no reason, Caroline might have been how she learned that emotion, even if the feeling is all her own.

Ultimately, Caroline is a character we will only really ever understand through the lens of other characters. We can only try to extrapolate who she is from what we see and hear, but she will likely always be a bit of a mystery. She’s the ghost haunting this franchise, and I kind of love her for it.

[allbuthuman]

Covered eyes in BSD

I've seen a few people mention that covered eyes mean the person doesn't see the world clearly or lacks perspective. But I wanna take this one step further and say that these characters put effort into limiting their own perception of the world and themselves. Let me explain:

Firstly, we have mafia Dazai keeping one eye bandaged, even though, for all we know, he didn't need to because of a wound. Something I noticed as a cosplayer is that the longer I do that, the more I'm forced to turn inward towards myself, and I usually and up feeling quite dissociated from my surroundings - there's an obstacle that doesn't let me move beyond what's already there.

Mafia Dazai was described as a child trapped in an inescapable darkness beyond what anyone could see. He's cut off from the world, because no one can reach him. But he's also cut off from the world because he's cutting himself off even further. He joined the mafia thinking that getting closer to violence, surrounding himself with darkness even outside of that of his own mind, would maybe solve his desperation. For all we know, he's making himself live among toxic waste, in a bare container that no one would approach. Even there, Verlaine finds him sitting in utter darkness.

Oda also mentioned that, for anything he could be told, Dazai would have already prepared a counterargument to disprove it. Mafia Dazai is not susceptible to hope, to anything that might challenge his darkness, and he doesn't allow himself to be. He can't afford it - he thinks that the moment he dares want something, he will lose it. The thinks that being given a new perspective would only cause pain: darkness existing in the dark is more understandable, more congruent, than darkness seeing the light and being unable to reach it, unable to understand how those around him can. If those around him see him as the Demon Prodigy, and if trying to be something else will only highlight his emptiness and bring forth emotions he's never learned how to process, he's gonna commit to being the Demon Prodigy. So, he gives up trying to escape the darkness, and tries instead to make himself at home there.

There is also Kouyou, who, albeit in very different circumstances, chooses to keep herself in the dark as well. In contrary to Dazai, she did attempt to escape and failed, and it hurt. She's not being forced to stay in the mafia anymore, but does so anyway, because the pain of being there seems to her more bearable than the pain of seeing the light and then losing it. There is active participation on her part, and we can see that from how she tries to apply the same to Kyouka: there is urgency in how she tries to convince her to stay, because if Kyouka left and was happy, that would challenge her worldview, which she was not ready to challenge herself - she had to keep it intact.

Another character is Verlaine, whose right eye we don't see. The fact that he isn't human, that he will be lonely forever and that he should hate the world as an extension of the people who created him, is all he let guide his actions. No matter how much Rimbaud cared for him, he couldn't allow that to change how he thought of himself: as someone whose existence will never be understood, and as someone who should never have existed. Realising that he can't change his own nature, he perpetuates its consequences, rather than try to find companionship despite it.

Let's contrast Kouyou and Verlaine, for example, with Chuuya, who was also at one point forced to be in the mafia, and now chooses to himself. A difference between him and Kouyou is that, in his case, it's not a choice that he made by denying a part of himself. Even after Dazai essentially blackmailed him, he was ready to question his own skills as a leader and be open to learning from that "choice". Both of them choose to be there, but Chuuya's choice, at least in the present, seems to be less defensive, in the sense that it's based less on cognitive biases. That's not to say there aren't parts of himself that he doesn't want to look at, but being a mafia member isn't a result of those. And, contrary to Verlaine, his uncertainty about his nature made him do essentially the opposite: try to be among people instead of closing himself off in his suspected inhumanity.

Of course, I don't mean that these characters created their own pain. What brought them there does, in fact, exist. Verlaine really isn't human. Dazai was actually incomprehensible by others and trapped in his own mind. Kouyou did have a person she loved taken from her. All those things are true and it only makes sense for them to affect what someone can or can't let themselves see - it's what they thought they had to hang onto to keep going. I just wanted to comment on how I think there is effort on their part to keep their perspective limited, to maintain their constricted view of themselves and of the world and not let anything else in.

[m--rtyr]

Any gender and pronoun headcanons you care to share?

i have not gotten so many hc asks in one day before its making me very happy. (i have not answered some of them sorry :( )

whether characters are trans or cis is usually up to interpretation. but those where i think their AGAb does factor into their identity/how i write them, i will say so

also, this is just vibes and whatever. like. im explaining their gender how i understand it. i know like two terms for gender. yes and no.

anyways

Avra/Aphmau. Gender = whatever you perceive. typically that's she/her, due to her being very feminine presenting, but sometimes someone'll smell the gender-fluidity and say something else. based off of me bc its fun. Any pronouns. Skinchanger, which may impact it.

Garroth. Gender = a man but only bc he was told so. What would he identify as if he felt confident enough to explore his identity? Who knows. but he was told he was a dude, so that's what he's sticking with. May be confused if you refer to him with she/her pronouns, but he's not uncomfortable with it. He/him, maybe he/She, AMAB.

Laurence. Gender = if a woman was a man. He's a dude, but in the way a woman would be. He/she/they.

Aaron. Gender = He is babygirl. His pronouns are she/her (reference). his gfs will refer to him using solely feminine terminology. his actual identity? no one knows. he doesnt. and it shouldn't matter bc you shouldn't be talking about him anyways. He feels very she/her to me, but i instinctively refer to him as he/him. Settling on She/he but it feels inaccurate.

Katelyn. Gender = girl? maybe? she's not sure. She/her but maybe She/they? Mostly feminine terminology, but does enjoy masc honourifics more (sir, dad, husband, etc.)

Travis. Gender = the manliest man. he/him, AFAB. Shapeshifter, doesn't impact his gender at all.

Lucinda. Gender = tits. She/her, refers to her tits as 'the girls'. Whether or not she is a girl by extension is not the point.

Nicole. Gender = i refer to him as Nico(le) on discord. Afab, He/Him, mega fucking buff. Was pretending to be a twink as of s1, then had to come out as a girl, and then showed up as a bear in s2, because he's a big strong man. Dmitri still calls him mom, though, which was Nico's idea in the first place, just because it felt more fitting.

there are more characters, i just am gonna settle here bc this is long enough already. if there's any specific characters you want gender or sexuality hcs for, just ask :)

[iridescentscarecrow]

self indulgent semi critical stream of consciousness thoughts on p2 & csm's writing style --

re: the comedy point: i do say this a lot but fujimoto uses the same tension for both comedy & horror -- the punchline of a Joke disrupts just as a rupture of tension -> horror occurs. & this is why i appreciate the writing last chapter, personally. the crassness/hilarity to it almost contributes to how i'm reading it. he hates his body/the body becomes a point of comedic objection. this kind of relies on being able to see how this meshing of telling & character overlap: which i find q. compelling re: how sexual trauma works, the way it kind of deprecates, lessens your sense of self. it's a story very lived in & deeply Felt wrt how all its characters are written (the butt of the joke refuses to simply Be that, if it makes sense. kobeni's distress in the family burger chs is hilarious but its also a haunting, empathetic, portrait of corporate/family violence; comedy further built on the hollowness of what the CSM being there/going through This Motion means.)

this for sure won't work for every reader, tbh, & i understand this because it's a fine line to tread between portraying this effectively & it just coming off as insensitive. i'm personally very interested in genres & working within genres|how horror/comedy/character presentations conflict, intersect so i'm enjoying it... but it's true that p2 often feels hollower of a story than p1 & this isn't Bad, per se: i think what fjmt is trying to say is a lot more ambitious, a lot more immersed in technique - that it often takes away from some of the contemplative rawness (which does, by contrast, feature in some of p2's more widely loved chapters) that fills p1. p2's ruptures of tension are more at the forefront, a lot of the frame behind it is *so* based on minimal technical nuance that it doesn't really nestle onto you in the same way, if that makes sense? i'm mostly positive about plot elements on main but i've been eyeing the asa erasure with skepticism for a while. it's really a much weaker story without her, no matter what thematic point that i think is being made here. i mean, perhaps because when you deplete the asa to the story you're left with denji - who is mostly *passive*, doesn't produce narrative (unlike asa/makima) which writes the story for you. denji's brilliance is in spurts, contrasted/set against other character's selves - often in refutation of them - in a desperate kind of <proof of life>, of having been imbued with thus written experience, of this being so deeply felt - & this is what gets to fans too, i feel. his life as visible through <written> form/against, caught within structure & other's wants. this is also why i think those nayuta chapters (as an extension of mkm) were so great because of what it did for nayuta & denji. you see him through her eyes, & then you see *him.* i think the issue with asa is that a large amt of her character also has like a (similar to denji) self hate, a repression which makes itself known very well when we're inside her head but atp rn we can't see that at all, because she's modelled herself (& i think this is rlly cool narratively) around the idea of the CSM she's meant to work as an extension of. & this self modelling paired w. being Out of her head makes her feel (to me) awfully flat. & this is upsetting, because i really like asa!

but at some levels i appreciate the ambition to p2's greater story that i can forgive individual characters being diluted in the fray. but this isn't true for everyone | shouldn't even be because csm is a story *felt* through its characters, within its absurdity... the reason most people like it is because aspects of it resonate with them. & this kind of jarr is pretty much fjmt's biggest writing issue - it's what i've personally criticised / seen others criticise w. p1 (power's character's writing towards the end) & it's why i see people rightfully criticise p2.

this is already a very self indulgent thread so i'm also going to bring up *why* i like characters such as reze, makima, togata: their character presentation compels enough to really intertwine with the flesh of them in ways that are... kind of hard to ignore to fully receive the story. if that makes sense: their surface is so much condensed trope.. in fact, this is true of even aki who i think i'd argue is the best written character in p1 functioning outside the (makima-denji) centre w. the revenge trope.

anyway: it's kind of also because of these reasons that i feel that p2 will just *work* better when read as a whole,, because of the frame fjmt has himself set up it becomes a little difficult to resonate w. it in individual moment, chapter to chapter, because atp you have to either be (a) incredibly aware of this larger structure which is... difficult to do for a weekly release at least to sustain a good amt of immersion or (b) recognise the narrative that emanates from trauma reltd. mechanism & since this is more personal: it's harder to find yourself here & it becomes.. disconnected, frustrating moment after moment where it becomes not just a <character work> but a <one character work>. & i find this hits in these instances w. people who empathise w. denji as do i! but i find little discussion of this as Implication rippling into story structure (although fjmt's story is built on/into his main character as it was in p1)... it's Hard without a writing force like mkm to make denji cohere into a largely invisible narrative.

honestly could talk more about this for ages:: even wrt. my issues with like... a large amount of the back half of Fire Punch which don't come from a place of thematic incoherency at all. i legit feel fujimoto needs a frame for his story to work <within instance> & i see him trying to bring in katana etc. here (& other male characters) in order to deploy what he's saying but their framings don't.. linger enough to really grip into you as Story imo. the single family callback into p1 makima shook me far more.

wishful thought but i think asa's head would be interesting to get into because we *have* yuko there as meaningful setup in order to really direction... i loved the yuko dialogue use in 165 but her ghost feels. Almost too subtle rn, imo. this is just like,,, a small portion of my thoughts regarding p2 & its criticisms rn;; bear in mind, i really like/hold bias towards the themes p2 is playing with [concurrs a lot w. my interests] but i also really enjoy going on & on about storytelling technique LMAO. i'm looking forward to seeing how this arc concludes.

[ordinaryschmuck]

Season One of Percy Jackson and the Olympians is FINE

All and all, I'd say it's a fine adaptation of the first book.

The spirit is very much in place. The story's sense of humor and light drama is present and well balanced through the show. One moment you have a gripping discussion of Sally explaining she fell in love with a god, and it's followed by Percy asking if she found Jesus. It's a funny line that doesn't undercut the drama because that's exactly what a kid like Percy would ask. Even some bits that WEREN'T in the book that very well could have been, like Mr. D lying to Percy about being his father for some cheap booze or the gosh dang Consensus Song. Moments like that show me that the people behind this show are HUGE FANS of the books and wanted to make something that's faithful but still provides something new to enjoy.

And there are SOME changes to the story, a lot of them I don't really mind. I like that they made Sally more sassy and Grover more proactive. I like that Medusa's made more as a tragic villain instead of a monstrous one. I REALLY like that we got to see Poseidon early. That last one takes the punch out of the dramatic weight of seeing him in Book Four, but seeing him now really helps cement the idea that this version DOES love Percy and Sally, something that I didn't really get in the books. Which might have been the intention, but the show is trying to be something different, and I respect it for it.

When it comes to the action, it's pretty good. Stuff like the Minotaur fight and the battle with Ares wasn't as long or epic as it was mapped out in my head, but I can understand it. These are big fights involving little kids and CGI is expensive (Even though you wouldn't have this problem if the show was ANIMATED, but I digress). Despite the limitations, the show did will and provided some kickass moments.

As for the actors, frickin' round of applause across the board. Nearly everyone they got does GREAT in their role, fitting the changes the show is going for and the spirit of the book everything is based on. Some particular standouts for me are Adam Copeland as the perfect D-Bag that is Ares and Walter Scobell who IS Percy Jackson. It's the kid especially that impressed me the most, as he nails the sarcastic, angry, endearing, idiotic, and loyal to a fault hero that makes Percy the best. If there's any actor who I think is struggling it's probably Leah Jeffries as Annabeth, who seems a bit too standoffish and closed off, as if she's holding back a lot of personality that the character has. However, to be fair...

A. Annabeth was more or less the same in the first book, so I'll allow it. Just as long as she has more of a wit to match Percy's. It's what made Percabeth amazing.

B. This is a child actor we're talking about. Even Walter, who is PITCH PERFECT casting, manages to have some awkwardness and stiffness to his performance at times too. I'm sure that as more time goes on, these kids will get better and better each season.

And, yeah, I'd say that this is enough to make Percy Jackson and the Olympians a FINE TV show...But there's some things that hold it back from being good or even GREAT.

Firstly, there's the pacing. The pacing in this show is off a lot of the time, and this is mainly a problem with most straight to streaming shows nowadays. We can have long, extensive TV shows anymore as networks and services are demanding shorter and shorter seasons, to the point where its less of a season of television and more of a long movie. It's no different here as we're forced to fly by past plot point after plot point, all while trying to be more episodic AND while setting up future stuff. It makes you appreciate the moments when the show DOES slow down and let moments settle, but there's not enough of that.

Then there's the way moments are told out of order or are condensed. Like how Percy and Annabeth have their heart-to-heart on the train instead of on the animal truck. Or how Annabeth starts calling Percy Seaweed Brain when the journey's almost over instead of doing it right away. Or how Luke sparred with Percy near the END of the season, not the beginning. I'm not exactly an accuracy purist. I find changes are fine as long as the spirit is in tact, which it very much is. And if I wanted the story told exactly as it was, I would have just read the book. But changes like that make me feel like they're missing the point. Like, that zoo truck wasn't great, but it will be a happy memory between Percy and Annabeth as a time when they REALLY talked. Annabeth calling Percy Seaweed Brain was a straight up insult that Percy hated but grew to accept as something only SHE can call him as it later turns into a sort of petname for him. And interrupting Percy's battle with Ares with Percy sparring with Luke spoonfeeds us information, when showing them do that in the beginning would have benefited in making that scene act as a set up with a pay off. Besides, we spend so little time with Luke anyway that when we get to that BIG REVEAL, it's not as impactful because he was barely a character. Again, I don't mind changes, but if you're going to do them, make sure the story doesn't suffer.

But while we're on the topic of changes, let's talk about the ones that REALLY bother me.

I don't like that some other gods are introduced too early. It takes the impact out of Ares and Hades being big, intimidating figures when there are other gods that the characters can just chat and reason with.

I don't like that Annabeth's fear of spiders is just glossed over. Not only does it SHOW US (instead of telling us) that a strong-willed character like Annabeth can be emotionally shaken by something as small as a spider, but leads to a sense of tragedy of her past and her being a child of Athena. To gloss over it is a huge disservice to Annabeth as a character and it doesn't feel right.

And I REALLY don't like that the movie did the Lotus Casino better than the show. Because if the movie that the author loves to shit on managed to be more faithful than the SHOW...it messed up.

So...the show is a mess at times. I still enjoyed it and I hope we get a season two. But if this series wants to get past The Sea of Monsters, it'll need to focus on what makes it GREAT instead of using more of what holds it back as just FINE.

[askaniritual]

I don't know anything about the locked tomb, but if you feel up to giving enough context I would love to hear about how palamedes is Sollux.

tumblr should implement some kind of feature that cuts off my access to the app after ive had 2 drinks but! its the next morning and i still want to talk about this so let's go:

tamsyn muir, author of the locked tomb series, was what the kids call a BNF (or big name fan) in the homestuck fandom in the early 2010s, publishing fic under the ao3 username "urbanAnchorite (t_ZM)"

people with more historical knowledge of the fandom than myself have written extensively about the many similarities between the world presented in the locked tomb and muir's fic, particularly her novel length story The Serendipity Gospels, the plot and premise of which clearly inspired the second novel in the locked tomb series, Harrow the Ninth*

some other (noncomprehensive) similarities between the world of the locked tomb and homestuck include

the two main characters each have six letters in their first names, much like the trolls in homestuck

one of the main characters is a part of a cult that constantly wears black and white face paint (in the books it's a skull design instead of clown paint)

the all-powerful godking of the universe is named John

much of the plot of the second novel revolves around the existence of mysterious lovecraftian monsters with the power to destroy the universe

so. we have established that a) tamsyn muir was active in the homestuck fandom and that b) she brought elements of her homestuck fic into the locked tomb series. now, i understand that simply being inspired by lore does not mean that every character in the locked tomb series has a 1:1 homestuck character equivalent and that is true! ianthe for example bears some similarities to the way that gamzee is characterized in the serendipity gospels, but i wouldn't say that ianthe is supposed to be a gamzee equivalent.

however, now we will introduce paraTactician. paraTactician was another BNF in the homestuck fandom. we know that ms muir and paraTactician wrote fic together, and that paraTactician was especially focused on Sollux as a character. In the author's notes of The Last Hearing of Gamzee Makara, ms. muir says: "Due gratefulness to paraTactician, who is like Cheat Mode for what Sollux is thinking or doing at any given time". ms. muir also credits paraTactician in the dedication of gideon the ninth, the first book in the series.

palamedes sextus in the locked tomb is introduced as a nerdy, bookish guy who is an extremely smart, powerful necromancer who wears glasses and is said to have striking eyes. also, he's in love with a princess**. based on all this, i posit that his character in the locked tomb is based on the character of sollux captor.

the easiest argument to make against this is that palamedes' characterization in the locked tomb is fairly different from what i would call the popular sollux characterization in homestuck fic from that era. palamedes is kinder, less crude, less emotional overall, and more of an academic than a gamer. so this is the part where maybe i will start losing people because it definitely relies on a subjective reading of the text and trying to provide "evidence" for this would require doing a close reading of palamedes' characterization in the books as well as sollux's characterization in muir and paraTactician's total body of work.

however, i maintain that if you read their fic, you notice a characterization of sollux that trends in exactly that direction: more focus on intelligence, on absolute dedication to intellectual pursuits over physical being, on a kind of razor-edged wit that creates a sharp distinction between people who are smart enough to speak to him and people who aren't, and a kind of iron-clad belief in doing what's right. if this post wasn't already way way way too long i would talk about the pale solrezi of it all but we don't have time to get into all that.

so to conclude, palamedes is sollux in that he was inspired by the character of sollux captor from homestuck, however palamedes is also not sollux because he doesn't actually bear that many similarities to the character from the comic itself, but is instead heavily inspired by the version of sollux that ms muir and paraTactician wrote in the homestuck fanfiction they were publishing at the time.

also. read the vienna game it's very good.

-----

*this is not a criticism or a critique of either the book or the fic, its just like. an obvious fact and also im not implying that the locked tomb is Literally homestuck fanfiction, there is a significant amount of original worldbuilding in the serendipity gospels that in no way makes HtN a derivative work

**i guess princess-coded would be a more accurate description? she’s important within her house but not exactly royalty i guess

[semi-imaginary-place]

ffxiv 4.0 hitting the steppe

the writers were having a field day coming up with all the different xaela tribes.

hmmm

like a mama duck and two baby ducks

Magnai's speech patterns are stranger in english than in japanese. he's just normal in japanese

haurchefant would have loved it here...

I don't think the devs thought through this whole horse Yol thing. What I think happened was that they wanted the aesthetics of central asian horse based nomadic people but they also wanted a cool flying mount and like the logistics of actual people living with both wasn't thought out.

what language is everyone speaking??? I'd assume its the xaela auri language expect you expect me to believe gosetsu, yugiri, and lyse who are all people who have never been to the steppe or had extensive contact with the xaela, understand what is being said. but the other option is equally ridiculous, the xaela are stated to be fairly isolated like foreign trade in reunion is still a new and rare thing, why the hell would they all know and speak hingan.

if the echo has an auto translate function does that mean the party doesn't understand what the wol is saying 90% of the time?

Hien complains of Magnai's arrogance but he's just as arrogant to think he deserves anything here.

wow Hien is condescending af what an asshole. i want to lock hien and magnai in a room together maybe they can tear down each other's overinflated egos.

i wonder if everyone is going to get a heart to heart, yugiri and now gostesu, npcs lining up. i was wondering how the game was or if they were at all going to deal with the parallels between ala mhigo and doma so the lyse hien convo was very important but oof hien needed what gosetsu got in his heart to heart, hien as a character is really suffering for being bereft of that.

still weird magnai is the only one not wearing yellow.

bruh player character was the one that one, hien why the hell are you giving orders you have no authority.

sui-no-sato myth speaks of a great disaster that drove the raen into the sea and as nomads the xaela don't seem big of giant stone constructions. so where did all the ruins and dawn throne come from? my pet headcanon is that there was a proto auri civilization that collapsed due to some disaster and the survivors left. the raen left the steppe entirely fleeing to the coast while the xaela left the immediate area but became nomadic. the sightseeing log also confirms that the xaela were once one tribe.

I can see why people have a problem with hien. he comes off as incredibly arrogant and condescending towards xaela culture. gosetsu just got here and he had a mini arc learning to be open of cultural differences, hien has been here much longer and yet he is still far behind gosetsu's development. Yeah sure xaela society is really violent and at times unjust but for the japanese king to come barging in about how savage the culture is, is a bad look. I'll give the devs the benefit of the doubt but just like how having all the plot important scion ala mhigans be blond haired, blue eyes, light skinned, and use midlander models while the rest of the ala mhigans are mostly dark haired, have medium skin colors, and have highlander models, the japanese prince coming in and talking about how these violent foreign asian savages need to be brought to heel is a bad look, it has unintentional parallels to real life acts of oppression and human rights violations that continue in the present day. at least the japanese invasions never got all that far into central asia. Who is hien to decide what the xaela do.

On that note, to have the more east asian fusion yanxia be dominated by hingan names and culture is another bad idea. as noted in the namazu quests most of the customs in the area are not yanxian, but hingan specifically. And while yanxia is more a fusion of east asian cultures similarly to but to a lesser extent to how eorzea is a fusion of various european cultures, hingashi is specifically japanese. This sadly calls to mind the japanese invasion and occupation throughout east and southeast asia where japanese language and cultural aspects became mandatory under occupation.

the way ffxiv handles all this isn't terrible like i wouldn't say its overtly fascist and I've certainly seen worse, but its not good either it has unfortunate implications and could have been done better.

[ciaossu-imagines]

I really liked your answers to my question on K for day fourteen, I also agree with a decent amount of your points. Could you also do day fourteen prompt five for Bungo Stray Dogs please?

I’m very happy to hear someone enjoyed reading my fandom thoughts, and it’s really cool to hear that people agree or find reasons in some of them! I can definitely do this and hope you’ll enjoy reading my thoughts here as well, my lovely anon!

Send me a show and I’ll tell you…

The first character I fell in love with

It was, like most people in this fandom, Dazai. I still adore his character and think he’s fantastic, but he’s not the reason I continue reading anymore, or at least, not the sole reason.

The character who is my ‘baby’

I honestly don’t have any characters in this particular fandom that trigger that ‘this character is precious, and I will love them and take care of them and never let anything bad happen to them’ response in me.

The character who I do not understand

I find Mori to be really hard for me. I find it difficult to really understand and flesh out his character in my mind, I find him difficult to write, and I find him difficult overall to enjoy even in canon as a character. I’ve even tried reading a translation of Vita Sexualis and researching the author he’s based off of to further try to understand his character and flesh it out, but generally, he’s impossible for me.

The character that I think the show ruined

While not exactly ‘ruined’, I think the manga (and the show, by extension, really could have done so much more with the Guild members, particularly Louisa May Alcott, though I could be very biased there as she is one of my all-time favourite authors, to the point she occupies a large section of the ‘As’ on my bookshelf. I just feel that, in terms of characterization and even character designs, she just fell really, really flat and bland to me.

The most attractive male and female character

I really enjoy androgynous looking characters and Gin is absolutely gorgeous to me, both in her appearance Mafia-wise and in her civilian clothes. I’m going to surprise everyone here by my pick for the most attractive (to me) male characters and admit that both Ango and Tachihara tie for that position! Also admitting fully that I adore Ango and hate how much hate he gets.

The character death that was the worst for me

It’s Odasaku! I feel like, from what we see of him in story and especially after reading Osamu Dazai and the Dark Era, that…well, honestly, I feel like he’s such a compelling, interesting, wonderful character and while I understand that he was never supposed to be a primary character and that the storyline he has and even his death was absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of the story, I feel a little cheated by how many amazing storylines and how many amazing scenes we could have had if only he’d lived. Also, not quite a death, but can we all just admit that Kunikida…that boy is not having a good time lately and while I’m really loving the twists and turns of the story, everything with him is slightly breaking my heart.

The character that is the most like me

I do resonate quite strongly with Kunikida’s character. There’s a lot me I can see in some of his character quirks, beliefs, and mannerisms but I will say that he’s a lot more rigid than I am in some ways.

The character that I just want to be happy

All and none of them, haha. In some way, because I do love every character, I do want them all to reach happy endings or to enjoy good times. But at the same time, while it can come off campy or super silly at times, the world of Bungou Stray Dogs is very noir-ish at times and it’s definitely quite dark and not a world where happy endings are guaranteed and I do also really, really love that aspect to the whole thing and would hate to lose it.

My four favourite characters, past or present

Narrowing it down is so freaking hard!! Ranpo, Lovecraft, Akutagawa, and Chuuya would probably be what I could narrow it down to though.

My four least favourite characters, past or present

Again, this was so hard!! Mori was the only one that popped right into my head, and as for the other three, I guess Alcott, Q, Lucy, and Pushkin rate up there for various reasons.