#its just enrichment in their enclosure

[neatnete]

they're bonding

[moeblob]

Deviates to wear colorful shirts.

[bogkeep]

saw some lego dinosaurs today :3

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

hold on wait im unable to Scribble rn but i had this Lights Out interaction in my head and i need to put it somewhere before i forget. Okay so the scene is Howdy, Poppy, Frank, and Wally are all having quiet time in the post office. just vibing.

Howdy: i'm going to say something harsh

Poppy: that's alright. we understand <3

Frank: go ahead, it's better than bottling it up

Howdy:

Howdy, near tears: you're all so boring i think it's actually killing me

Poppy / Frank / Wally: ...

[endlessfuckup]

i think they put some random noise at the end just to keep everyone occupied for a little while lmao

[holedyke]

going to the dentist tmr for the first time in 5 years. and at 8am no less

[kaseyno]

shout out to everyone who kept asking me if i was gonna draw swtor again

[random-lil-illing]

player appreciation week day 3: homeschool!!

okay so i know it was said in the last post that player doesnt get homework, but that was not what i meant to say haha. i wanted to say they didnt have homework that week, but usually their mom does give them (very little) homework. also player is bad at maths and hates triangles bc i hate triangles too and its MY comfort caharcter so i get to project my struggles onto them

[tangledinink]

"owning reptiles is so fun and easy!" i say, waking up at two in the morning coz there's a bigass black solider fly buzzing around my room.

[finnstansonly]

my sw sideblog is so funny bc i type like i'm talking to ppl who follow me and the followers in question are nina and someone whose notes i cannot see so really its just a diary for talking abt jannah and sana and the prince!finn au and kor!jannah au asjdklgsajdk

[here-there-be-drag0ns]

me, giving my dog a bowl of ice with treats frozen inside it that will occupy him for a While: haha silly dog with your silly enrichment toy. surely we have nothing in common!

me, not even ten minutes later: oh boy genloss!!

[sirspeep]

filling my hand with enchanted rings and saying "here boy".

gale comes eating from my palm like a pony.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

a little Welcome Home theory that's probably me looking entirely too much into a single line <3

-

so i was clicking through the site for the thousandth time and this line caught my eye. maybe its 4 am and i haven't slept, maybe i'm onto something. who knows!

but this little thing... "and lively sets unlike anything seen before!". yeah, it could just be them propping up the show. OR maybe the puppets have been alive the whole time, fully autonomous but entirely unaware that they are puppets on a show. maybe to them, the neighborhood is real, and they simply cannot comprehend the presence of humans so their puppet minds don't register them. this could make for a "cosmic horror but for puppets" spin, which would be sick as fuck

their daytime is when the studio lights are on and people are around. idk how the people would teach them the scripts - maybe they did it at "night"? or maybe there was no script, and the puppets would automatically come up with their own shenanigans, dialogue, and segments that aligned with the show, bc that's what they were made for.

bc its not like the whrp team have physical puppets, or much other than art & reports, right? any information on the puppets - like Howdy being rotated between live-hand and walk-around - could've easily been a lie by the creators of the Welcome Home show. i mean, i don't think it would've gone down well if they came out and said "yeah the puppets are alive"

and now that i'm wondering how they could have living puppets, weren't the 60s/70s chock full of cults? could the WH creators have dipped into the occult to create living puppets for a ground breaking, popular, lucrative show, using minimal effort because "the show writes itself"? all they have to do is film and maybe change the puppets' costumes. if that - they could have set up hidden cameras or something.

and this is gonna sound even more far-fetched, but what if creating the puppets required human souls to power them? im not suggesting that the puppets have locked away memories from a "human life", bc that would be uh... a lot. but it's enough that given time and the right prompts, they could gain awareness, and maybe the soul does influence them in minor ways - in likes and dislikes etc.

and Wally being aware means that he fully saw the humans running the show. and maybe the occult thing is what's under Home - the source of black magic that brought the puppets to life seeping out. and he's aware because he looked into that source and it flipped a switch in his lil cotton brain

maybex2 this is what caused the show to not only shut down, but be wiped from existence. the magic seeped into Home, maybe killing someone in the process, and Wally was revealed as aware. maybe on live television. so the creators panicked and shut it all down, tried to destroy everything and gaslight the country into forgetting it ever existed. maybe in the hopes that once no one remembers the puppets, the magic will leech out of them and leave them lifeless

and that loops back into Wally being the only one referred to in present tense in the neighborhood bios. he's still aware, maybe trapped in the studio, alone. i mean, i sure hope he's not alone - i hope he has his friends with him. unless they're all decommissioned (dead)... maybe Wally is trying to bring them all back or "fix" them?

but then there's the case of all of this currently going down online. have the puppets' consciousness somehow been transferred to the internet? or has Wally gotten his little felt mittens on a computer? something else? and then there's the whrp team... could they be fake, and its really just Wally trying to cobble together the remains of his life/friends? i mean, the Question-Answerer sounds like a title a kid or naive puppet would come up with. people would've called them the Curator or somethin?

i have too many thoughts

[notmoreflippingelves]

@saemi-the-dreamer asked: Esteban: 2, 7, 18, 19 and 21? :D

As I mentioned in my initial reply to the ask, I made a separate post for Esteban, since--as will surprise no one--I really rambled on A LOT about him. And it wasn't fair to shove all my EsteRamblings into the same, much shorter post with Gabe.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

Honestly, pretty much everything about Esteban's character journey in S3 makes me absolutely INSANE (in the best way). But I think the thing that makes me most feral of all is the moment when he falls into the crystal well. His sparkly new outfit and stupid hairdo. The fact that the narrative has visibly and thematically linked him via this shared experience with Elena for the entire rest of the show. The symbolism of him being given the power to run away (literally and metaphorically) from the problems that he has caused. The fact that the show will ultimately end with him not running away but instead running towards something (Elena, specifically to save her from the problem Esteban himself caused). It's just... they did all this to me, an English major, and expected me to be normal about it. The audacity.

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

I like it when Esteban is *included* in things. While I wouldn't say he gets as much focus as the four amigos or Isabel, he still does get a good bit of art and a reasonable amount of fic. And its honestly nice to have a blorbo who isn't just shamelessly ignored (*cough Jean Innocent *cough) or vilified to the point of OOC-ness (*cough Kristoph Gavin cough*) , or used almost exclusively as a plot device to facilitate the fandom preferred ship of which they are not part of (both of the others).

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

"Admire" is a weird way to put it as it makes it sound as though the dynamic is or should be aspirational/healthy. And I'm honestly having trouble coming up with one that fits that particularly description. I guess either Isabel or Francisco would be closest to meeting that description. But I don't really have too much to say about them right now.

So I am just going to go ahead and treat this question as "relationship that I find interesting and enjoy watching." And honestly, there is a LOT of them. Obviously his relationship with Elena is arguably the building block of the entire show and naturally, I love and cherish it with my entire heart. But I already ramble too much about it so I won't do so here.

I also find his history and complicated relationship with Victor fascinating. The two are clear foils of each other and very shippable ones too, and so my little English major brain/rare pair loving self gets a lot of mileage over the little that we see of them together. But we really only get a single episode of the two of them interacting. (Apart from a few moments in "The Magic Within" and Esteban being mentioned a few times in "The Lightning Warrior") so there's really only so much that I can say about them. And a lot of what I love about them is really just head canons/parts of my fic, so it could be totally ooc.)

Similarly, I think his dynamic with Dona Paloma is fun to watch and has a lot of interesting potential, but we really only scratch the surface of it. The narrative lets them be temporary allies or business rivals for the sake of a given episode's plot, but its rarely done in a way that adds something new or interesting to their relationship. (When Esteban + Paloma political shenanigans happen, its rarely used to advance either of their character developments and when it is, it's usually just Paloma's..as Esteban gets most of his development in other episodes).

So, I feel like I have to say that the most-interesting-and engaging Esteban relationship (apart from Elena) has to be Naomi. The two of them have a really interesting dynamic to watch and their relationship specifically (as opposed to just the two of them as individual characters) gets a good amount of direct focus. Whether Esteban is sniping at Naomi from across the Grand Council table, begrudgingly accepting her as a capable colleague by the end of "Finders Leapers," teaching her to waltz (in order to show up Paloma) in "My Fair Naomi" or clinging to her when Valentina's carriage goes out of control, the two of them don't just steal the scene but positively abscond with it in the most delightful way. Plus, I love the parallels of Naomi ending the show in Esteban's former position as Chancellor. (I like to headcanon that she's gonna end up seeking a lot of advice from him for her new role and may even recruit him as her number two. He has 41 years of valuable experience that it would be shame to waste).

19. How about a relationship they have in canon that you don't like?

This is hardly a surprising answer, but...I do not particularly care for his relationship with Luisa. Esteban was orphaned when he was 9 at most, so he barely remembers his mother. The closest thing to a mother that he does remember is the grandmother who raised him. He needed lots of love and validation and attention, and based on what we see in canon, Luisa didn't give him nearly enough. It took years for her to realize they'd left him out of her "favorite" family painting, the flashbacks in "Dias de las Madres" suggest that she was unaware of just how lonely and vulnerable baby!Esteban was even knowing that he had just lost his parents, she gives a pretty clear impression of Elena being her favorite grandchild ( even before Esteban's secret comes out) which I am sure did *wonders* on baby!Esteban's already fragile self-esteem, and in "Coronation Day," even after she knows that Esteban helped save the kingdom (including both her and Elena), she still side-eyes Elena when Elena says that she has forgiven Esteban. tfw you sacrifice your life for your cousin's (who is also your grandma's fave) and risk it again to banish the evil time spirit, but it's still not enough to earn a long-overdue hug from your granny.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

Give him very specific and sexual Shuriki-related trauma. I mean to be fair, it's not that I enjoy it so much. It's just there in my head and it happens even when I try to make fluffy and silly little plot bunnies. I would say my favorite thing that I actually enjoy doing and make an effort to do is just aggressively validate him and his feelings since he doesn't really get much of that in canon. I like having characters tell him how much he means to them, and I like for them to genuinely mean it. I like to tell him that he is capable of being loved (romantically and/or platonically ) and has the right to be loved. I like for people to recognize that he has been through so damn much and is still living with the scars that the Dark Times have left on his mind, heart, and soul. I like for other characters to come out and tell him that he's important to them, that he's fundamentally a good and worthy person even if a flawed one who lost his way for awhile, I like having characters tells him that they enjoy his company. And perhaps, most of all, I like having characters (especially Elena. but also Victor, Naomi, and probably anyone else) feel protective of him. To have them promise to take care of him and make sure that he never has to feel alone, forgotten, unloved, or helpless ever again. So basically, my favorite thing to do is aggressively project onto him and give him all the sorts of things I would want for myself as wish-fulfillment.

My least favorite thing that I sometimes see done in fic is when past (or present) Shuriki/Esteban is genuinely romanticized (as opposed to treated as inherently abusive/dubiously consensual). When their feelings are assumed to be mutual, genuine, healthy (if admittedly unconventional/unexpected), and redemptive. Particularly when Esteban tries to "save" Shuriki from Elena and/or "redeem" her from her prison cell, because he loves Shuriki/knows that she isn't really "all bad." Because no, in my view, Shuriki is far beyond any hope of redemption, and no one in Avalor would know that more than Esteban, who was forced to stay by her side and serve her for 41 years.

Now, I do think it's possible that Esteban may have developed a little bit of Stockholm syndrome towards Shuriki, based on the length of time they worked closely together, how utterly dependent on her that he had to be just in order to survive, and how desperate he's always been for just a little bit of attention/affection. But again this wouldn't be real, genuine love. At most, it would be physical attraction, and a conditioned learned dependency on her as a survival mechanism. And given the huge power imbalance between them, there's also this inevitable question of any physical and/or emotional relationship being built on a foundation of dubious consent and sexual harassment (at best).

Given that Shuriki does seem shocked and genuinely hurt when Esteban finally stands up to her in "Secret of Avalor," I think it's also possible that she did grow to care for him as much as she could possibly care for anyone. But I also think that the closest to "love" that it's possible for her to feel is casual affection (similar to what one might feel for a favorite toy) or possessive lust.

And um... so no, I do not think Shuriki is capable of love and even if she was, I don't think it would be possible for her to be rehabilitated by/through love. And even if she was, Esteban is the absolute last person I would want to do said rehabilitation work.

Shuriki personally murdered multiple members of Esteban's family, conquered and terrorized his country, and then made him do all the work of managing Avalor while giving him none of the credit. He was a stupid teenager when they met (and from what we can tell, she seems to have been at least 5-10 years older than him...possibly a lot more if she'd already started magically de-aging herself), . As such, she easily manipulated him by preying on his youth, insecurity, and naivety. (Honestly, they give me BIG "Edmund Pevensie and Jadis the White Witch" energy. Baby!Esteban was a bit older and presumably *a bit* smarter than Edmund, but still very naive and very vulnerable and therefore very susceptible to the corruptive powers of someone significantly older, crueler, and more powerful than he. )

So, it makes me super sad and uncomfy to think about Esteban wanting to be and being responsible for personally saving the life/ soul of the person who has corrupted and controlled every aspect of his life since he was 17-18. He deserves better than that. Even if I still like giving him extra trauma and having him wrestle with it.

[treevore]

i'm allowing myself one hater ass post as a treat so here we go:

i'm begging people to listen to and relate other music to the other medias they enjoy i'm fuckin starving for edits that don't feature ethel cain, mitski, or hozier

there are other musicians out there with evocative and emotionally resonant lyrics and i'm bored

[faggotflint]

I know this is just the autism, but I feel like this show would have a great texture to chew on, like, it hits in just the right way to make my neurons fire and release dopamine, ya know?