#let them be flawed

[broareweabouttoviberightnow]

I'm gonna say somethin n yall have to promise not to kill me. ok. so. I think most of the fandom largely agrees that ponys interpretation of Darry was WAY off. blinded by greif n remorse n years n responsibility. pony who thought Darry hated him. who couldn't see how scared Darry was. how much he truly loved him. now. if we can agree that pony misinterpreted Darry. can we not believe the same for soda? pony who would forgive soda anythin. would forget when sodas' sudden anger was aimed at him. would forgive when Soda became impulsive to the point of harmin. soda. his golden. perfect brother. n of course he would. cause when you're convinced one brother hates you would you not be desperate to glorify the other?

[wild-karrde]

Since I’ve already got one iron in the fire today…

Those that cannot look at their favorite characters through a critical lens are boring and INSUFFERABLE.

[rainybraindays]

Hate sharing charactes with "They're my favorite character and they've never done anything wrong" types. They ade also my favorite character, and not only do they do so much wrong, I'm writing an essay about it to try and break through that fog of yours.

[zenruu]

if you're still boiling a character as complex as alistair down to anything along the lines of: himbo, idiot, soft baby without an idea of his own, haha funny cheese man i'm straight up burning your house down with lasers and sending you directly to hell.

if you genuinely believe that man is stupid, all you're doing is admitting that you yourself cannot see beyond the incredibly transparent veil he wants to put over your eyes.

what he is is insecure, and he wants you to think he's stupid so that he doesn't have to live up to expectations he fears he won't meet. shortly after meeting him you can call him out on using humor to deflect and make himself smaller and he ADMITS IT.

he repeatedly shows you just how intelligent he is and how aware of the ways of the world he is. his history knowledge, his understanding of the chantry and its control of templars and mages that goes far beyond nearly anyone else we as the player speak with, his emotional intelligence when it comes to understanding others' intentions and needs... and this is just a thoughtless little post with quick examples i conjured up in five minutes! i'm not even doing a deep dive here! how do so many people miss all of this?

this is not advanced reading of subtext, it's incredibly simple and i'm completely unsure how people don't understand this about him.

he's such a great character for so many reasons - his flaws being some of those reasons - but a lack of intelligence is simply not one of those flaws no matter how you spin it.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bonus 12: Beware the Grapes of Wrath.

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[turtleblogatlast]

I love Raph and haven’t said that enough so to be more specific I love that Raph is a soft boy who loves bear plushies, a gross boy who eats an assortment of things that are definitely better left alone, a smart boy who is more than capable of taking down villains through planning and fortitude alike, a strong boy who is dedicated to training his muscles and fighting prowess, a teenage boy who loves his brothers but is more than happy to tease and roughhouse with them, an angry boy who sometimes lets his anger take a hold of him to cover the fear, a gentle boy who is generous with hugs and affirmations to those he loves, a capable boy who takes on more than should ever be expected of a teenager, a good boy who just wants to be a hero and slowly comes to realize the cost of that duty, a good boy who has no reservations about putting himself in the way of harm coming to his family, a good boy who’s a great brother and son and person and deserves only the best the world has to offer.

[welcometogrouchland]

ANOTHER SKETCH DUMP! Featuring more of me playing with lineless art. Batman reborn era trio (dick, damian and steph) I miss you...when will you return from war. Also featuring Steph designs bc I've seen ppl dissatisfied w/ her current look, some good mom Talia, and Jason Todd poetry club. Duke is confused not that Jason would start a poetry club but that he'd have such mid poetry opinions. (ID in Alt)

[chamerionwrites]

One of the more fascinating examples of fandom’s faves-based morality I’ve personally encountered recently was the number of people in the Mon Mothma tag who were absolutely BURNING with righteous fury at her 13-year-old daughter in Andor, when the worst things we have actually seen said character do are (1) be kind of a little shit to her mom (again, she’s thirteen) and (2) fall victim to a space tradwife cult. You know, because she’s thirteen. And has a pretty self-evidently lonely and unpleasant home life. And lives directly in the rotten beating ideological heart of space fascism.

The number of people vocally wishing punishment on a fictional tween was WILD. I unfollowed that tag after ~48 hours lol

[gaywineauntsstuff]

I just saw someone say that Tim was the only member of the batfamily who didn’t suck at math.

With the exception of Dick (acrobatics) and Cass (body language) none of the Batkids are THAT much better than the others at a certain skill

Yes Jason is a better shot

Yes Tim is a better detective

And on a technical level they’re much better

Sure

But that means that if they have a 0.001% chance of cracking a case or making a shot. There will be a noticeable difference between Tim being the character or say Damian.

Otherwise

Not particularly.

Think of each skill like a normally distributed curve okay with the mean being your average hero/olympian/hacker/genius

Right

The Batkids will be at the 96th percentile in the skill

With the exception of 1 of them being at the 99th percentile range

Unless you are writing something you can comfortably say is complex/difficult enough to warrant drawing attention to the 3% difference. It’s annoying to bring it up

I exclude Dick and Cass

Because Dicks introduction is the fact he can do something the rest of the kids can’t to the point where it’s an identifier within his own story. It’s how Tim found him, a signature only he can do.

And Cass because she is genuinely cartoonishly cracked in her own storyline and in batfamily stuff she’s borderline a mind reader

(Could also argue Jason for supernatural stuff and the all blades)

These are exceptions because yeah

If you told me Jason, Dick or Steph cracked a difficult case in a run I wouldn’t treat it as shocking information

If you told me Tim, Dick or Damian managed a tricky shot with a firearm in a dire situation (like what happens in the Grayson run) it would be interesting, surprising but like not? Shocking?

If you told me that Jason did a quadruple summersault off a building and landed on his feet I’d be confused as shit

And even WITH Dick and Cass the other kids are still FREAKISHLY good at D&Cs special skills but they both have unignorable signatures

This is a very long winded way of saying when an author simplifies a character down to

“Oh look nice flippy one”

“Smart one”

“Angry gun one”

“Pet collector”

It’s annoying because you basically ignore all the interesting overlap

Like guess what Dick literally has a habit of collecting strays (see the rabbit and 3 legged dog he lives with in his apartment in the new run)

Tim is fucking badass and is very good at dealing with explosives

Damian is canonically currently thinking of leaving the family business and no longer being a hero to maybe focus on helping people in other ways

Jason occasionally works with magic and demon bullshit

And every single one of them is a genius okay literally every single one of them could get a masters in physics, chem, bio and history in like 2 weeks flat.

Their stats are stacked

All of them know enough info to be able to do 99% of a task and yeah someone might call Tim or Dick in for detective help or Jason for muscle and restraining backup but in 99% of cases THE OTHER CHARACTERS SHOULD BE EQUALLY competent

[howlonomy]

imigane clover ever letting slip how fucked they family life was and ceroba just being mortified

the gang ends up on the local news

[epicfirestormer]

Will never get over how Starscream and Skyfire's relationship is always doomed. There's never an iteration of them where they both stay on the same side at the end. They always end up being against each other, tearing each other apart (whether intentionally or not). They always end up losing each other, be it by a snowstorm, by the war, or by death itself. They never receive a happy ending together, one if not both of them is doomed to suffer.

Skyfire is doomed to be an Autobot, by forces out of his control. Starscream is doomed to be an Decepticon, by his own self destructive tendencies. They are both doomed, because of who they are. They always try to save the other, in their own way. But it never works. They are doomed to fail, whether they stay together or not.

[utilitycaster]

Ok so I have to admit. I get like...structurally, why the staff would have soulbinding, because it does add a slight sense of urgency (although between the destruction of the Bloody Bridge and however much time it takes for a resurrection, should there be one, unless Ludinus stashed a clone on Ruidus or the spell takes effect there, I think there's a decent amount of time before he returns). But it is kind of annoying, especially given that Matt notably made resurrection more difficult than it is rules as written and that the games Critical Role/Darrington have put out have both had significantly reduced resurrection abilities, that these evil wizards just keep fucking coming back. The best way to put it is that it makes perfect sense, doesn't compel me though; I think it's pretty widely agreed that Delilah has long since worn out her welcome and Ludinus is pretty much at that point as well. Trent was actually quite interesting in that immortality really didn't seem to be on his radar; Halas is fun because his prolonged existence is the result of someone fucking with him; and the Kryn dynasty is a refreshingly neutral approach to arcane immortality. And more generally I think that while there's a benefit to having villains appear, absolutely wreck the heroes, and for the heroes to learn about them and pursue them and ultimately defeat them, it really is a case of diminishing returns. My potentially unpopular opinion is that I do not in fact find the Iron Shepherds arc to be abrupt or cut short: this group kidnapped three members of the party, killed another, and then the party destroyed them. Three beats. Absolutely perfect. Another would have drawn it out too much. And yeah now that we've heard Ludinus's backstory and the party doesn't seem inclined to dig into any details that would be interesting anyway, and they're either doing what he wanted to do anyway or else will presumably destroy or drive away Predathos, it's like this bitch is still out there? what's the fucking point.

[the-crooked-library]

opened tiktok (mistake number one, i know) and immediately saw someone saying that Thomas Hutter subverts the "disbelieving husband" trope which... listen i love a thoroughly pathetic mess of a man myself and i get that Ellen's other option is a 400yo evil corpse, but can we please not give him credit for things he didn't do?..

the literal inciting incident of the story is that Thomas DOESN'T listen to Ellen. he doesn't believe her. she tells him that she's got a bad feeling about this trip, begs him not to go, tells him about her nightmare - and what does he do? he calls it a childish fantasy, tells her to stop worrying, and implies that she would benefit from talking to a doctor. saying shit softly doesn't make it any less dismissive or insulting, like i'm sorry but this is peak Disbelieving Husband in a Horror Movie behaviour. he only changed his mind once Orlok put him through the horrors himself, which is also a perfectly standard thing for a Disbelieving Husband to do in the second act. furthermore, from the beginning of the film, he neglects Ellen's emotional needs, is uncomfortable with her abnormalities, and doesn't even really know what sort of gifts she likes - and again, these are all standard flaws for a Disbelieving Husband to exhibit. they're indicative of a disconnect between him and his wife that he continuously refuses to bridge.

caring for someone doesn't mean you can't neglect or harm them, and that applies to everyone - including Normal People like Thomas, like Harding, like Sievers, like the viewer; and that's the point of the film

[soraya-snape]

I don't know how many times I have heard a Marauders Stan tell me and other Snape Fans that we only like him because of Alan Rickman. Which is funny because they are the exact same people who only like the Marauders and also death eaters like Regulus because of their hot fancasts. And I don't even have a problem with it because yes Alan Rickman did play a part in me liking Snape and I believe you can like pretty much every fictional character because they are fictional. The difference is that I don't excuse Sev's behaviour because I think he looks good unlike these Marauders Stans.

[ewwww-what]

It probably won’t (it will)

[turtleblogatlast]

No but like every time I think about Splinter and what he had to go through just to keep the boys alive, my heart hurts for him so badly. Is he perfect? No not at all, but none of them are and by god does he love his sons.

The fact that all of them are alive, and grew to thrive despite the circumstances surrounding them is a testament of how much Splinter loves his boys. He raised four babies following the most traumatic time of his life, all alone with nothing but the sewers to house them (to hide them.) I feel like he’s not given the credit he deserves for all he’s done.

And I get that it’s easy to hold up his flaws and faults when it comes to parenting, I myself like looking into them because flawed characters are super interesting and said flaws make them more realistic and engaging, but he tries, and again, so many others would have given up on the boys or failed along the way but Splinter didn’t.

He’s their father, for all his faults he did his damndest to make sure they survived.