#jrwi rant

[rozaalright]

jrwi Riptide - general spoilers

a part of me will always wonder how extreme the training Gillion had to endure was. Like we got brief stuff like the Elders forcing him to train physically every day until he was stable enough to stop failing

or when hes older having him kill camps full of people on land

okay im sure we'll probably get an Undersea arc (which i will never be emotionally ready for that) but its just, the implications of everything is so terrifying

like that one dying triton telling Gil "youve abandoned us" meaning that there PROBABLY has been lies spread throughout the Undersea hiding the truth behind Gillions banishment, have the Elders told everyone that he has deliberately left the waters by himself and betrayed them? like what is going on

or that moment after finding out about the original Prophecy, Gillion has said that in the undersea they dont often show their emotions and yeah he hasnt often really broke down crying, maybe twice or thrice throughout the entire series

but theres something so heartbreaking about how his genuine response to finding out hes been lied to for years is to silently zone out and come back to reality repeatedly. Is that how he is naturally? or have the elders forced him to suppress his feelings?

they raised him as a weapon and that is clear, but it is scary how even his own grandfather was not aware of his upbringing

I DONT KNOW IM JUST YAPPING the hiatus is making me go insans

[edeadinside]

soooo… gamers. can we talk abt chip jrwi in E115 for a sec…? And yeah, I know we could all talk about all the angst and black rose lore and welcome home and all that… but i haven’t seen anybody talking about how the Bizler made a conscious choice to have Chip rp forgetting about the nightmares from Kuba Kenta. And i kinda doubt it was just for the bit about chip having a lot of trauma. Maybe it isn’t stated explicitly, but I think chip is starting to forget who he is. it isn’t in character for chip to just forget shit, especially something that was as important to his character as that. I mean.. i thought he passed all his saves, but who knows. But Chip losing his memories, especially something like his nightmares, which shaped his character…Just food for thought, and maybe I’m just overanalyzing it. Bye gamers!!!

[doggogills-but-worse]

okay listen. i love jrwi, i really do. i love riptide and prime defenders, and the community has been pretty good, i have a lot of mutuals that are super cool. but the attitude and ferocity in which people defend the lgbt rep in the show? mh. not it.

podcasts as a medium have been incredibly full of queer creators making wonderful stories, including ttrpgs. especially ttrpgs!!! most of jrwi’s lgbt rep has been behind a paywall (and that was a joke for 90% of the series), or a joke (i’m looking at you fnc canon kiss), and the rest is vaguely implied. correct me if i’m wrong on this, i’m not caught up. i don’t really care about what the folks say off mic about characters, to be quite honest. there has been little indication of the actual queerness of characters in any form beside an npc who wasn’t even fully created by the showrunners. and that is my point. the lgbt stuff that people latch onto are things that have either been questions answered off mic, or things that the fan community has expanded upon that were only hinted at in canon, or just headcanoned.

im not saying that this is wrong, or the series is bad because of it, but the attitude that the fandom has towards it is... a lot for what is actually there on screen in earnest. it’s not the most lgbt podcast with fantastic rep that you say it is. there are so many podcasts with the kind of representation and characters that you are looking for. again, it’s not a bad podcast because of this, but we’ve gotta stop acting like it’s queer as hell.

so here are some podcasts with fully fleshed out, explicitly queer characters (with their corresponding vibe):

Dungeons & Daddies (s1: riptide, s2: pd)

The Broadswords (apotheosis)

All My Hexes (admittedly unfinished but still good)

A Horror Borealis (bitb)

Bombarded (riptide)

Fantasy High (of course) (pd)

Wildbranch High (pd)

Kollok 1991 (pd, bitb)

Monster Hour (s1: pd, kinda apotheosis)

$2 Creature Feature (pd)

Dice Crisis (riptide)

Hope’s Hearth (i haven’t started this one yet, but it’s on my list)

The Storyteller Squad (pd)

Dangerous Times at Chillhaven High (soooo much pd vibes)

Shrimp and Crits (bitb)

Pest Control (s1: riptide but modern, s2: early pd)

The Unexplored Places (they have many seasons, i can rant about them for hours tbh)

The Monster’s Playbook (pd, kinda bitb)

and that’s just the actual plays

again, i love jrwi, but we have got to stop hailing it as an exemplar of lgbt actual play podcasts because it just isn’t.

[bexyarts]

I want to say as a JRWI fan people who give Gillion a fish tail are GODSENDS LIKE AAAAAAA

[urlocalwormtoday]

Living contradiction, burden of burdens

Gillion radiates holy, golden light. He heals the wounded and sick, helps those who've gone astray, he is a literal savior. Born of moonlight and ocean water and salty foam, he is the opposite of himself, contrasting his own light.

He's loud and boisterous, yet quiet and kind. He rips and tears, yet mends and heals. He's holy and divine, yet chaotic and destructive. He's pure, yellow light, and dangerous, red lightning. Simultaneously, he's everything he wants to be and hates himself for being.

He somehow manages to balance divine and destructive and everything else, all at once, resisting the cracks and strain and refusing to fall under the weight of it. He is a living, walking, contradiction.

And he carries every burden so gently, as if it's an injured bird or newborn child, protecting it until he can pass it on or rid of it entirely, but refusing to let anyone else hold it. Keeping each one close to his chest.

And each one, every day, strains him a little more. The cracks grow a little wider, his facade just a little dimmer. And yet, as much as he wants to, he can't curse anyone else to this. He can't bear the dreadfully, infinitely heavier weight of the guilt, if he were to.

Secretly, he hopes he can. Secretly, he hopes he can allow himself, to maybe, just a little, let another set of hands hold up the boulder chained to his back. He wants to, but won't let himself. Both unwilling and willing in his participation, in his burden of burdens.

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

i need to make like. the opposite of the jurgen leitner rant and make it about tide

EDIT: I ALREADY MADE THIS JOKE IN THE NOTES . THIS WAS A 2 PART POST GO REBLOG THIS VERSION

[somegurl8]

It feels so weird seeing my Tumblr and Twitter tls going crazy over the Riptide hiatus update and PD being on break still meanwhile I’m here like “the last thing Apotheosis related we’ve gotten has been the Thanny Nation shirt. While back they said they would do an Apotheosis bad ending What If but it has yet to exist. Omg Total Monster Kill soundtrack I still need to listen to that.”

[mossy-crow0]

runt yapping abt her silly little machines :3

[blurmf]

i've slept, had breakfast, showered, and now i feel ready to give my two cents on this debacle in the jrwiener community.

I'm going to go through some of the arguments i've seen but this is NOT a callout post or anything like that, i just need to give my opinion so it's not bouncing around in my brain like a child on coffee.

First off, just about the oneshot being paywalled. I feel like this is not only unsurprising, but expected? Like, this is basically a what if (non-canon oneshot) which is 5$ tier. And i get that they did just sell a bunch of merch, but keep in mind that the production value is going up, with them commissioning a ton of art, music, having sound design, having an entire site now and all that. Plus, with all that aside, unless you're paying to be a member, they don't owe you anything! They already have almost 150 FREE episodes! Which is a lot that you don't even have to pay for.

Next the argument that they aren't doing anything. So this is just straight up not true. They have been releasing Wonderlust and Judgement, they did TMK, they just released a ton of merch and got a whole site running. And it takes a lot of work to run campaigns, even small ones, and especially when it's for a show. Not only that but each member has their own lives and stuff outside of JRWI.

People being upset over them taking winter break??? Like, this has not only been a consistent thing, but, again, they have lives! They don't just live in your screen to produce content, they have families and friends that they likely go see for the holidays! And so do all the other people working on the show! It's just a couple weeks as well!

Also, just a me thing, but i really don't like when people's first reaction is aggression. If i see a post that's just shitting on someone or attacking someone, i instinctively don't take their side. (This obviously doesn't apply to situations where someone did something diabolical, more just to situations with more nuance)

tl;dr: It makes sense that it's paywalled, the show has higher production value, they already have a bunch of free stuff, they have been doing plenty, breaks are good.

[monstrousparalysis]

So anyways, Arthur is not either of the twins' parental figure, and to say so weakens a lot of themes with both the twins and Arthur, to me.

He gives Emizel too much free reign. Few good parents worry about their child this little, and few bad parents know that their child deserves this much autonomy.

He gives Shilo the grace of being seen as an equal despite his inexperience, very important for Shilo when he has never been anybody's equal.

Both of the twins are impacted by the way their respective parent treated them, which were styles of parenting that are widely socially acceptable regardless of the harm they cause, and it is important that Arthur doesn't treat them the same way.

Emizel has problems with authority because Jeffrey used that authority to treat him like an employee. He rejects the idea of Arthur having authority over him, so Arthur doesn't try to.

Shilo has been struggling his whole life with his mother seeing him as too fragile to make any decisions for himself or learn anything about the outside world. The very first thing Arthur does for Shilo directly is respect his decision to run away while giving him advice he may need due to his sheltered upbringing.

He still gives them guidance in a society they're unfamiliar with, but that alone does not make a parental figure. Guidance can come from any number of sources. Emizel and Shilo have more experience than him with some things anyways, like technology or social grace.

Even if one did want to adhere to a traditional family structure despite the twins both having suffered as a result of the power traditional family gave their parents over them, it's pointed out far more times in canon that Arthur sees them much more like his younger siblings. Grizzly even says so outright at times.

[zielaraaa]

jrwi the suckening spoilers

the fact that arthur gets to do the thing hes been working towards ever since he got turned and actually has a lead that he can track makes him maybe not happier but definitely more whimsical because you can literally see it in some of his actions. like in the london chase scenes where he runs away from cops on a stolen kids bike, or when he used his shadow play to tie the london grimslayers shoes together to prevent them from following, you can see him let go of the misery he subjected himself to. i think the fact that he was back where he started but revigorated and had faced his regrets really let the “human” arthur out of him. but its sooooo heartbreaking when he meets the midnight circle.

like grizz said in the rolled, all of the progress that arthur goes through gets reversed when he sacrifices his humanity. he was literally face to face with his past and had finally accepted himself as who he was and that was taken away from him. arthur has always been “for the greater good” but i dont think he ever realized that throwing away the last bit of his humanity would be so detrimental for his well being.

literally in the end of the season, he is unrecognizable, and back to his rage induced hunt, if not worse. and all that work and development is gone.

[edeadinside]

public service announcement

Hello, gamers. It is I, the number one fan of random JRWI npcs that show up for ten minutes and then fuck off into the void forever! And today’s underappreciated jrwi character is: Rebecca! No. No, not the blood in the bayou character. That would be far too correct of me. I’m talkin’ Riptide, babes! Episode 66! A Grimm Murder Mystery. Comb through your brain, dear reader. Past all the hot topic fashion (yeah) and sapphic vampire romance (HELL YEAH) and absolutely bangin’ ambience to that one girl. Remember her? She was a lil’ merchant gal with big round glasses and a general swagless aura. Did she have some rock bottom standards to dance with Chip of all people? Of course. Did she get murdered brutally about 5 minutes into her existence? Absolutely. BUT! guys she was so damn nice i really really liked a whole bunch i don’t know where this is going

Anyways! When she wakes back up after Chip makes his wish? Holy shit. That right there, is some tasty slop. Her ass got resurrected. And good on Grizzly for not making her be all like “Oh fuck cool thanks man” and making her rightfully mortally terrified. She went to the first fancy party of her goddamn life and danced with the 19-time-winner of the ‘Least likely to take a goddamn shower’ award and got fucking murdered. And then basically got told that the one guy she danced with at this party was just a bitch ass liar. And then she was like all “Hey! Can I talk to you after this?” And Chip, who is so goddamn allergic to women, fucking forgot to talk to her. No closure, no peace for my main girl. Is this a dumb post? Yes. Is this an ultimately unimportant NPC? Yes. But please, go out into the world and give my girl some love. Watch the episodes. Write a fanfiction or something. Hell, even just occasionally think about her and tell me about it. Noctius was a damn good arc. And I think it shows that even one of its less popular characters was able to stick in my mind that much. So yeah! rewatch the Noctius arc and shout out to rebecca for being the greatest. peace and love

[g3msk1]

Wait a sec I think I cooked with a headcanon/ theory.

Ok so this kind of relates to the "Troy is a clockwork soldier" theory, but could also be seen as seperate. What if his obsession with people chanting his name is his way of further distancing himself from Tramilton, or who he used to be. Like what if in the past he was seen as such a disappointment to his father to the point of him maybe or maybe not being made into a literal robot by him, and getting people to chant his name and see him as Troy is how he proves to himself and others that he's not the disappointment he used to be. This can also relate to his obsession with winning and being seen as only the best, even when he's not. He's trying to prove that he's someone worth celebrating, but can only recognize his value through his tangible achievements, like winning races. It's gotten to the point where it's his whole identity, and without winning and people chanting his name, he's Tramilton, who is nothing. He hopes that if he lies and tells everyone that he's good enough, mabye he finally can see himself as good enough. And in his mind, one step towards that is getting rid of Tramilton (his past) and replacing it with Troy.

[reddsl1mer]

THIS PLUS THE FREAKING SCHLATT CHRISTMAS SONG THANGY ALL ON MY BIRTHDAY YYIPPPE YIPPEE YIPPPEEE

[urlocalwormtoday]

with each passing wonderlust episode I become more convinced Troy met Aeon (or at least the vixens) before Blink

"I'm supposed to stick with you, so I guess, uh.. lead the way, birdo."

"-I'm not supposed to tell you, dude!"

[alttheloco]

Why don’t more people talk about how In Case I Make It songs are SO William Wisp coded??

Specifically these 6 songs—

Vampire Reference in a Minor Key — Against the Kitchen Floor — Becoming the Lastnames — That’s Enough, Let’s Get You Home. — Cicada Days — White Noise