#like i literally havent played in over a decade but i still respect the part of the community that isnt a pile of shit

[luxwing]

Congrats to the TF2 community for finally getting a cosmetic into the game with the trans pride flag hidden on it. About damn time

[meatriarch]

thinking about the differences in how maria reacts in ch2 era cc & nosy, respectively, to the friends returning twenty years after the house.

cc maria, she's more hesitantly receptive to them to a point. depends on what they do, if they still try going after the family like they originally planned or not, if they try getting her to run off back home. because by that point she's so tethered to johnny who has been her literal only real pillar in the last two decades, and the familiar-but-grown faces of her old friends and sister are at that point basically strangers to her. twenty years is such a long time for people to change and for all she knows, they arent the same people who was close to back then and she knows she isnt the same girl they knew all that time ago, either. but i say she's hesitantly receptive because truly, think she keeps away from them as much as she can until she gets some sort of cue from johnny whether or not he feels its safe to engage really.

nosy maria would have had the same outlook had it not been for that reuniting with donnie about midway into those two decades & the friends never seemingly bothering to look for lee. that entire scenario shuts her off almost completely to nearly any sort of hesitance by the time ch2 rolls in. the hardest ones still are with ana and danny, thats her little sister - of course its going to be difficult and complicated even then. and danny was her longest friend of the group, its equally as difficult facing him, too. but them all coming back around makes her think that donnie likely said something, at some point, and the fact that he does show up again... but, she's angry. at all of them. because them coming back twenty years down the line means that they - to her - just simply never bothered to try coming back at any time in those two decades when they easily could have. they want to show up now instead, midlife-crisis? guilt eating away at them for leaving her and lee to rot back there without even trying to come back? without trying to get officials to come out to look for him at least?

maria just doesnt understand why. why bother coming back at all, now?

in twenty years, her & lee made a new life for themselves among the family, with johnny, moved past their old lives for the most part. why bother coming back all this time later for no other reason but personal revenge, considering they all believed they were just dead to have buried empty caskets for them both? to maria, its just: you all had your "closure", as fake and selfish as it was, it was understandable to a degree, i get it. but then why pretend like you give a shit now when you didnt back then. when you havent all this time. when i doubt we were at the forefront of your minds all these years - because you werent for mine / ours. we moved on. why couldnt you?

and i think like with maria's reunion with donnie -- altho probably not with ana & danny -- but similar to that reply, i think maria develops that hazy-face when looking at them all. makes it easier to disconnect further from their familiarity, makes it easier view them as any other target, any other potential victim.and i think, if shes alone when any of them stumble onto her, she slips into toying with them - plays role of captive all over again, disarms them. lets them get comfortable with her, lets them spill who all tagged along with them, what they planned to do coming back, where they left their cars, etc. depends how it all goes down truly.

[thenukacolachallenge]

some spoiler-y thoughts about tears of the kingdom thus far:

-FUCK GLOOM HANDS. i hate that everyone at nintendo saw our fear of spooky grabby hands and said “fuck yeah lets keep doing this forever”. i’m tired of being groped by very old men goddamnit! and then some of them turn into Phantom Ganon???? holy shit, that is a difficult fight. 80% of my deaths in the game so far have been at the hands(no pun intended) of these fuckers.

-ZELDA TURNED HERSELF INTO A FUCKING DRAGON AND I SOBBED LIKE A BABY. bruh i was not ready. SHE SACRIFICED HERSELF and her personality! but like, i havent finished all the main quests even though i got all the dragon tears/memory things so like, if Zelda IS a dragon, then who the fuck is showing up all around hyrule looking like her? is Mr. Dorf doing an evil magic to look like her like in that one memory? that can’t possibly be the case for all of the Zelda sightings. i’m so confused but so fucking intrigued.

-seriously though, watching Zelda sacrifice herself in order to save Hyrule and support Link is so upsetting. this girl was 16 the day the Calamity hit, and she hasn’t known a moment’s peace since then. give a bitch a break! but hey, at least she’s doing stuff in this one, whereas in most Zelda games, she’s just.... kidnapped.

-SIDON’S ENGAGEMENT STORY IS BULLSHIT. there is ZERO evidence of any other kingdoms existing for Zora outside of the Domain in Lanayru that King Dorephan rules over, it’s JUST to piss off people who ship Sidon with Link and that’s incredibly homophobic and annoying(especially since i had to fucking rewrite an entire part of my OC’s story due to it). and like, i feel bad, bc Yona seems like a lovely character, but she’s going to be HATED in the fanbase bc of the bad writing.

-speaking of questionable writing, there’s still so much i’m very fucking confused about. TotK obviously takes place several years after BotW, but they don’t specify how many and it creates a lot of confusion. why have some characters obviously aged up but some are still basically the same age? like, Hudson and Rhondson have a child who’s old enough to be sent back to Gerudo town, but Finley never hit her growth spurt(even though she clearly stated last game she was old enough to have supposed to hit it by botw)? what the fuck is that about?

-also, WHERE THE FUCK DID THE DIVINE BEASTS GO????? you can’t re-bury four fucking giant robot constructs in the span of maybe a decade, especially with Ganondorf reviving and creating a massive earthquake that unearths a fuckton of other shit. like, not having the Sheikah Slate i get(which is why the Purah Pad exists), and all the shrines and towers probably went back underground, but that part makes no goddamn sense and i don’t like it.

-i’m kinda sad Teba wasn’t the Sage of Wind and instead it was his son, Tulin. he really only got to shine in Age of Calamity, and most Zelda fans didn’t even play it bc it’s non-canon. the disrespect on my poor mans.

-i do love that so many of the towns are under new leadership now. it really feels like the world is evolving in that aspect. Teba and Paya being in charge of their respective towns is lovely to me.

-i love the idea that Link gave Zelda the house he dumped literally thousands of rupees into in Hateno, but like. where did he live? did they sleep together in the same bed? it’s implied Link no longer has a house bc you can make your “dream home” in Tarrey Town or w/e but like, ????? what’s that all about? Zelda just kicked Link’s ass out and made a secret room in the home HE invested in lmao, typical royal colonizer behavior(joking)

-i love that Grante, Robbie and Jerrin’s son, changed his name to Granteson so he could work for Bolson Construction. that’s genuinely adorable. he was already one of my fav tertiary characters just bc he’s Robbie’s son but this makes me like him even more. i also love that Jerrin is involved with stuff at the Lookout Landing! let Robbie’s wifey take care of stuff. even if it’s just cleaning. give her something to do besides glower at a machine her husband built lol.

-Kohga being still alive is hysterical, and the Yiga clan evolving to live partially underground is a lovely touch. them taking over old abandoned areas in the game is great as well. i also love that they flat-out do the “leave Mighty Bananas on the ground as bait to lure in unsuspecting victims” bit bc that’s EXACTLY how i imagined my OC fought them in BotW. i totally headcanon they stole that idea from her.

-tbh i’m kind of enjoying exploring the depths more than i am the sky islands. maybe it’s the fear of heights, or maybe it’s just that i really like that it wasn’t advertised at all. i thought it was just gonna be land and sky, but no! we’re going underground too babey~

-i love the addition of caves, wells, and other underground spaces. it makes a lot of sense for a game like this to have these things, and it makes me kinda sad they weren’t really a thing in the last one.

-the fusing thing is just okay. they didn’t really fix the issue people had with durability in the last game, so that’s annoying, but it is fun to make new weapons out of things at least.

-overall i really like the game so far. even though it’s a world most people have explored through already, there’s enough change and new content to make it fresh and engaging, and even though there’s another crisis, it’s heartwarming to see how people are finally being able to rebuild after the century-long crisis that was the Calamity. i’ve beaten one boss character so far(the Rito one) and i’m looking very forward to the rest!

[qqueenofhades]

The photo set you reblogged of Yusuf and Niccolo helping throughout time just filled me with so many happy feels and it made me realize that it seems so common in media with immortal couples that they take breaks from each other and reconnect after a few decades. Which is a great trope but seeing these two that seems to have been attached at the hip since the day they met just fills me with all the heart eyes.

(I haven't read your fanfics for them yet. I know I'm a bad fan but if it helps I havent been able to read anything since all this started but while writing this ask I got the feeling that all this rambling I spewed out is a big theme)

Hush. Bad fan nothing. We all are coping with this stupid, awful year in different ways, some of us by escaping into fandom and some of us being unable to engage with it and some of us doing both or anything else. You certainly don’t owe me or anyone any obligation to interact with our content, fic or otherwise. So just to have that there on the top. You’re good, hun. :)

ANYWAY, thank you for giving me a chance to meta a bit on the boys and their relationship and to have a window into what my brain looks like pretty much 24/7 these days. (I blame them.) I keep thinking about all the ways this couple is depicted in the TOG film and how lovely it was and how unusual it is for me to have an OTP where I actually love them in canon and don’t need to violently disavow it in order to create AU fan content with just the characters. (See: Timeless, Game of Thrones, pretty much any show I’ve hyperfixated on at some point.) I love AUs anyway, because that’s the way my brain works, but the fact that I can also enjoy canon just as much is rare for me and for a lot of us. I saw a post somewhere remarking on how the fanfic for Joe/Nicky isn’t fixing anything, which is usually the point of transformative fanworks: we take something that canon atrociously fucked up and fix it. But in this case, all our interpretations are based on actually appreciating the way they’re presented in canon and wanting to enjoy that and uphold it, and that -- especially with a couple like this one -- is shocking??

Like. Despite my historian gripes about the occasionally incongruous details for their graphic-novel backstories (which are the only things I HAVE fixed in my fics), I’m just... deeply appreciative of the care which everyone, writers and actors and all else, put into depicting Joe and Nicky and their relationship. And god YES, one of the things I love the absolute MOST is that they’re a loving, faithful, committed, happy married queer couple over centuries, and that seems to be the case for as long as they’ve known each other/ever since they got together. (See Booker’s “you and Nicky always had each other.”) These fools can’t sleep apart from each other even when they’re stuck on a freight train in the middle of nowhere, they flirt like teenagers at dinnertime and even when they’re strapped to gurneys in a mad-scientist laboratory, they make out to enrage bad guys and also because they’re just still that goddamn into each other after all this time.

I think it was Marwan Kenzari who pointed out that there’s simply no way to truly state the depth of their knowledge and devotion and commitment to each other. They’re 950 years old. They have known each other since they were in their thirties; they’ve been husbands for literal centuries. There is no way anyone else in the world could possibly come close to replicating the kind of bond they have with each other, and neither of them have ever had any inclination to look, because why would they? Especially with the fact that queer couples in media, even otherwise sympathetically portrayed ones, often have Drama and Third Parties and Promiscuity and whatever else (because of the tiresome old canard that Gays Equal Hypersexualized!), and Joe and Nicky don’t need or want ANY of that. There’s no urge to make their relationship a cheap source of soap-opera conflict. It’s the rock and the center and the core of both of their lives, and everything they do stems from that.

There have been some great metas/comments on how neither Joe and Nicky are sexualized, they dress like stay-at-home dads during quarantine (Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli are both objectively gorgeous men, and they’re out there looking like that, god bless), and the viewer is never invited to goggle at or fetishize their relationship. There are no leering or exploitative camera angles on anyone, and their expressions of love aren’t posed or intended to titillate the audience, they’re just solidly embodied and natural and lived in. It’s never bothered to be stated clunkily in dialogue that they’re a couple; we just see them exchanging looks and smiles in the early part of the film, and then we see them spooning on the train after the mission in Sudan, which confirms it.

At every turn, the narrative celebrates the kindness and love shared by the Immortal Family, the individual characters, and Joe and Nicky, especially and explicitly in queer form. The villains of the film are also defined by how they react negatively to that love. @viridianpanther​ had a great meta on how Keane as a villain is especially set up to menace Joe and Nicky as the narrative representation of toxic masculinity, aggressive heterosexuality, and the usual “Kill Your Gays” trope that we’ve all come to wearily expect. But instead, after that scene where Joe and Nicky fight Keane, Nicky is shot and comes back to life in Joe’s arms rather than dying permanently like we probably all momentarily expected, and then Joe gets to FUCKIN’ BREAK THE NECK of the guy who enacted that violence.... good GOD. The first time I watched it, I almost couldn’t believe it was happening. (This goes for the whole film, but especially that scene.) Like... when do we get that?? When do we EVER get that???

Obviously, there are so many stereotypes, whether visually or in behavior or character traits, that could have been assigned to a gay Italian character (excessively dramatic, effeminate, fashionable, etc) or a gay Arabic/Muslim character (explicitly announcing He’s Not Like Those Muslims, having to actively reject his heritage to make him more palatable to westerners, being tormented over being gay, etc) and Joe and Nicky subscribe to none of those. I get very emotional about Joe referring to Nicky as the moon when he is lost during the truck scene partly because it’s SUCH a common motif in Arabic love poetry. To call someone your “moon” is a beautiful way to say they’re the light of your life, and since the Islamic calendar is obviously lunar and the holidays, months, and observances, are set by the phases of the moon, this also has a deeper religious significance.

I don’t know for sure if they did that on purpose, but it it’s a lovely and subtle way of showing us how Joe clearly doesn’t have an issue with being both queer AND Muslim, and is able to draw on both facets of that identity in a way that a lesser narrative would have denied him. And that is just really wonderful. Yes, we’re seeing these characters when they’ve had centuries to settle into themselves, but there are plenty of writers who would have forced those conflicts artificially to the surface, rather than letting them be long in the past. It’s the same way when you watch a film set in the medieval era, it wants you to know that it Is Set In The Medieval Era. Cue the filth, misogyny, racism, violence, etc! Rather than it being a lived-in reality, it has to be jarringly drawn attention to, and I’m just so glad they didn’t do that with Joe and Nicky. And for them to have met in the crusades and fallen in love??! Come on. That’s just rude. Rude to me, personally.

Anyway, this was a rather long-winded and feelsy way of saying that these characters are constructed, acted, and written organically in such a way that you hate to even THINK of them being separated, and it’s not because they can’t function without each other, but because they are two halves of a whole. We also see that the characters themselves can’t stand being forced apart: Joe’s freakout in the truck scene when Nicky briefly won’t wake up, Nicky making sure to tell Joe that he’s glad he’s awake in the lab, the whole post-Keane fight scene that I talked about above, the way Nicky fights ferociously to get to Joe when Merrick’s stabbing him, etc. For that to be given to the queer couple, where the strength of their love and devotion is reinforced as one of the emotional goals of the story, and for that queer couple to be written in the way that Joe and Nicky are, both individually and as a unit, is just so very rare.

Because yes, there’s plenty of drama and angst and pain in their lives, but there’s none at all in their relationship, and that’s what fans keep telling TV writers the whole time: they WANT to see the couple confront things as a unit, rather than being kept on tenterhooks the whole time and forced to go through manufactured or artificial drama. It would feel especially wrong for Joe and Nicky, who have known and loved each other for 900 years. The fact that their respective actors also put so much care and love into them is very obvious, and makes me feel even luckier that they’re played by people who clearly get them and honor them and know what they’re doing.

Basically: of course Joe and Nicky have been with each other the whole time, and of course we’re all drowning in feelings over it, and I feel very blessed that this ship exists, and I very much need the sequel ASAP. Thanks.

[spelviin]

endgame thoughts, not because i think i have anything valuable to say abt it, more just bc i want to get my initial unsullied opinions out before various overly nitpicky or overly praisy internet thinkpieces come around

okay so. first of all, i’m tired to death of the way folks talk about the mcu. like, it’s either a godly feat of everything and the most important thing ever or the literal devil incarnate and the source of all evil in this world. i am literally so fucking bored of both these perspectives and have zero time for either of them. 

yes, the mcu is emblematic of a lot of problems in the current state of the film medium as a whole. yes, it is also a really cool feat of storytelling that a whole bunch of movies spanning a whole bunch of years could all come together and culminate in a big huge blowout finale. yes, it could have been far better, but yes, it also could have been far worse. 

i wasn’t a fan of thor being a punchline in this film. like, the whole “lol thor fat” thing was like, really tired and not cool. and the fact that his genuine moments of expressing grief and the significant trauma he’s been through were played off for laughs more often than not bc “lol thor supposed to be big many man but he’s crying like a wimpyboy instread.” like, fucking please. it’s 2019 and other male characters were allowed to be shown crying and processing their trauma but thor’s??? not allowed for some reason??? anyway they did him dirty in this movie and i’m not super pleased abt that. 

i didn’t like that they fridged natasha. i’m not a fan of scarjo so much these days, but i did like natasha. 2012 me adored her and was 100000% behind her as the Only Woman (despite being miffed that she was the Only Woman) and i really liked her character and redemption arc through the films that she appeared in. and like, i get the justification for fridging her. like i get that she was this assassin who killed a bunch of folks and in the end, not only wiped out the red in her ledger, but saved the whole damn universe in doing so. i get that. i’m just annoyed that they literally went and fridged the Only Woman to give the boys manpain before the third act. 

speaking of the ladies.... the One Scene Where Women Get To Do Things. my god. the critical feminist part of my mind greatly resented the obvious lip service of that scene, and the fact that the ladies only got the one shining moment before we got back to the sausage fest. but lord, the lesbian part of my mind hella enjoyed it. like i was legit bouncing in my seat like YESSSS FUCK EM UP LADIES i was just completely stoked. 

and my god. MY GOD CAN WE TALK ABOUT CAROL’S HAIRCUT AKA A GIFT TO THE LESBIANS. THIS MOVIE HAS MANY SINS BUT WE CAN ALL THANK IT FOR THAT HAIRCUT. (and again, feminist me is like, hey, dont focus on her appearance, focus on the important shit she did in singlehandedly turning the battle around for everyone, but lesbian lizard brain is hhhhhhhhhhhhh girl hot)

anyways. 2012 me was a month out of a major jaw surgery when i saw the first avengers, puffy faced, on heavy painkillers, and unable to eat any solid foods, and just generally weak and miserable. i dragged myself to the theatre and i smiled the whole way through that movie bc even though i was feeling super shitty, that 360 shot of the team made me so excited and happy. so happy that i watched and rewatched a bootleg download over what was probably the worst summer of my life, and it made me happy and gave me hope, dumb as that may sound. 

i havent watched the first avengers movie in a long time, and i’m not sure if i’d feel the same way seeing it now. remembering how it felt then still makes me happy, but seeing that same 360 shot repeated in endgame didnt stoke much emotion. tumblr fandom took a lot of my avengers joy away. the drama and character hate and constant complaining and cringe culture bullshit exhausted me. and the recent turns of the mcu also contributed to that. a lot of things contributed to it, i guess. but i dont feel as happy as i once did. so a lot of this movie rang a little bit hollow, needless to say. 

that being said, though, i did feel a little flicker of that joy. for all the movie’s and the franchise’s faults, of which there are many, i can say that the moment where all those portals opened up and the revived characters stepped though, i felt that happiness again. i legit almost cried when i saw shuri’s silhouette step out of that circle. that moment when the score came in with that booming version of the avengers theme, i was 2012 me again, just for a moment, and i think that’s worth something. to me, that’s worth something. so for all its sins, i thank the movie for that. 

this is rly rambly and im tired so im just gonna say 2 more things. things i’m not personally super invested in, but other people are, and so i feel i need to have an opinion on em.

first is bucky. i fucking adore him, and i am kinda miffed that he got like, no interactions with steve. i know steve/peggy is the canon ship, i knew it was always endgame (heh) and that stucky is just a fandom thing. but god damn it, even if they were never gonna have their relationship go there (which tbh i literally never even came close to expecting to happen) it still feels a little bit unfair to have steve basically ignore probably the most important person in his life. like, i know he wanted to live his happy straight life with peggy, and passing on the shield and identity of captain america to sam is super important, and i loved that moment and would never begrudge him that bc i adore sam. i was just... really sad that bucky had to get kinda shafted for that. (literally all i was saying in the last half hour was “but where’s bucky? but what about bucky?” our boy deserved better. 

second is tony. tony tony tony. i know folks have a lot of strong feelings about him, both ways. i know of folks who think he’s the scum of the earth for some dumb reason, and i personally know others who think the entire mcu should revolve around him, for equally dumb reasons. i’m more neutral. i think he’s a good character who made questionable decisions in the past. i feel for him and his struggles with PTSD. i respect him as a character in-universe and also for what he and RDJ accomplished. like, if he hadn’t hit it out of the park with that first movie like a fucking decade ago, none of this would have been possible, and i think that’s pretty damn cool, regardless of feelings on the monster juggernaut the mcu has turned into. basically, i know some folks are maliciously rejoicing at his death while complaining that he got a hero’s send-off when he is a Bad And Not Morally Pure Man, which is. boring. and other people (namely one who i know personally in my family) who are mad because he is an Angel and deserved the Best Happy Ending Because No Bad Things Are Allowed To Happen To This Perfect Boy. i’m not here for either opinion. i’m okay that he died (peter crying over him did get to me in a huge way, but i think tom holland just has a power that if he’s crying, i’m crying so idk). i think it’s cool that he got to save everyone and got a heroic and well deserved send off. this isnt a revolutionary opinion i just wanted to throw it out there bc im bored with the polarization. 

and... yeah? i think that’s it? sorry, im really tired and this probs doesn’t make sense but i just felt like i had to get the initial reactions and feelings down before the thinkpieces get to me lmao. 

oh, also nebula deserved better 2kforever i just love her a lot and want her to be happy and not suffer, kthxbye