#listen I promise I like this character

[inkblackorchid]

Me, every time Jack’s on screen during the Fortune Cup arc (affectionately): You bastard. You buffoon. You clown. You absolute idiot. Get kicked in the shins.

[fallenclan]

shits gettin REAL!!!! who is pumped. i know i am. enjoy the random ass starclan cat cameos that I crammed in here <3

finished this update JUST in time, but next week I'm gonna be even more busy so I guess we'll see!

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[chalkrub]

art trade w/ thrak800 on twit - love this fella !

[heymacy]

IAN GALLAGHER + his journey with bipolar disorder

╰┈➤ “At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of." - Carrie Fisher

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[ari-continues-to-exist]

Wuh oh he’s gonna get youuu

(Click for better quality)

[shannonsketches]

[ki1ldeer]

Having a discussion in one of 3 environments I know how to draw confidently oh yeah what will they discuss

[serpentface]

WHITECALF SPOTIFY PLAYLIST(S) DROP

^Heres the short, selective and organized playlist for people who can't handle themed playlists with more than 20 songs and no internal order

^Here's the playlist for elite music listeners who love incoherent, lengthy, and wholly unordered playlists dealing with dozens of subject matters at once, most of which is at least Somewhat relevant to the story/characters

^Here's the very, very long playlist consisting of every single song that I even remotely associate with the story (often in the capacity of 'I was listening to this a lot while working on it' or 'this is funny') and at least a dozen songs I slapped in arbitrarily because I wanted to listen to them.

[marblerose-rue]

click for better quality!

the perched king / tigerstar I

[macadam]

Fully of the belief that Miko is only seen as an annoying character because of the dynamic between her and Jack.

Miko in isolation isn’t an annoying character. She’s reckless, and unwise, and has to be bailed out of trouble every five seconds, but this isn’t really an issue for any of the bots because as far as they’re concerned, this is Normal Human Behaviour™. They are constantly having to work with and around humans or bail them out of trouble.

Bulkhead adores Miko. He is exasperated by her like a parent is of their toddler, sure, but I wouldn’t say he is annoyed by her in any way. Her interaction with wheeljack is another example. When she exists with the bots by herself, she doesn’t come across as burdensome. She’s just limited, as every human is, by the curse of being small.

It’s only through her interactions with Jack, and his continuous challenging and calling out on her behaviour, that Miko becomes an annoying character. Frankly, it’s the tension between them which annoys the audience. We can only watch the same cyclical bickering between children before it gets old.

I have noticed that there actually are a lot of people who do like Miko, and find Jack super annoying instead. It seems like people pick one or the other depending on how you interpret which one is causing the tension. When I watched tfp as a kid, I loved Miko and hated Jack. Like, hated hated him. Because I saw Miko as a fun punk rock kid and Jack as the one needlessly calling her out. Upon rewatching tfp as an adult (who works with kids a lot) I related far more to Jack, and so the situation flipped; I saw Miko’s actions as more frustrating to watch.

The writers did eventually try to fix this, with the one heart-to-heart scene between Miko and Jack. But it was kind of rushed, and didn’t leave any lasting change to their dynamic. They went right back to arguing.

Tldr: Miko and Jack are annoying together. Fans usually pick one of em as the cause to be annoyed at but honestly, they are both fine on their own. Children bickering is annoying even in a fictional cartoon lmao

[charliefqirie]

What made you so drawn to Ozzy

you know, i’ve also wondered that myself for a while, but i think i figured it out.

ozzy, at first, did not stand out to me when i first got into the game. ozzy was just, there. my favorite was ted when i started.

ozzy’s a side character that doesn’t have much going for him. literally his only purpose in the game is to be killed. he’s just there to die. and he does not show any likeable traits to the average player, he’s a whiny, annoying, self-centered brat who’s constantly complaining every time you speak to him. he even told madison to take a bath first thing after she escaped (which i really don’t believe makes him a jerk, i mean being covered in unidentifiable slime is kinda gross don’t u think) who would like a character like that? ozzy’s really the most forgettable character in the game. these are thoughts i’ve noticed people always have abt ozzy. i didn’t really share these sentiments and didn’t think of ozzy as annoying but i certainly wasn’t that interested in him before, he was just neutral to me.

buggs and cindy are less liked than the rest of the characters but they’re still more liked than ozzy because they are fun and hilarious characters, with interesting dynamics to explore. i feel like the SLIME GANG, the characters who have like 3 lines of dialog at most get more love than ozzy. gives people a lot of room to explore the potential of what their characters could be. and ozzy? ozzy’s just there.

but maybe, that’s the reason why i started to like him?

i’m not much for genuinely hating characters without reason, the very idea makes me sad and pitiful. i never hated ozzy, he’s just five, of course he’s going to act like that. but i wasn’t that drawn to him back then either. (i also dont like it when people hate on cindy to a concerning extent. like yeah she’s a little brat i can understand why people would dislike her, i don’t like it when that happens but i still understand why people would, but to the point of genuine burning hatred is when it’s concerning and disturbing. she’s still just five. ah, but that topic is for another day. i’ll continue abt ozzy.)

back then in the old fandom, i had a friend who loved loved ozzy a lot, ozzy was their favorite and they cherished him. they shared their thoughts on why they loved ozzy and the potential his character has. it was their love that made me start to appreciate ozzy a bit more. but ozzy was still not my favorite still. i appreciated him a bit more but he was still kind of put to the side with me.

then kg3 got announced.

with the new game coming out, i found myself returning back to my old roots, with new people to share the interest. i didn’t even realize there was still a fandom after all this time. a small one, sure, but it’s still just as lively. it was around this time when ozzy started to shine to me.

i looked back at previous memories, looked back at old kg convo’s with friends, and one person stood out to me. this person, very obviously, hated ozzy. it was upsetting to me to see, especially since i had a friend who loved ozzy. they cut ozzy out of his own canon friend group a lot, made jokes of “who cares abt ozzy” and made his character quite unlikeable in their au’s. made madison break up with ozzy even, and made ozzy into this pathetic mess of an unlikeable character. essentially made him even more unlikeable than canon. all of this, genuinely upsetted me. i hate seeing characters treated like this. maybe they had a valid reason for disliking ozzy, maybe ozzy reminded them of a toxic friend they used to know or smthn, but looking back at old convos and seeing all that ozzy hate really perturbed me. i couldn’t stand seeing characters treated like this. and it was all that hate that made me realized really just how underappreciated and exaggerated ozzy was in the fandom.

seriously, ozzy really wasn’t as bad people thought. and he’s NOTHING like tweek from south park?? he’s not spazzy and nervous at all? he’s really more angry and uptight! (AND BY THE WAY MADISON DID NOT ASK FOR A HUG AND I DONT KNOW WHERE PEOPLE CAME TO BELIEVE THAT SHE ASKED FOR ONE WHEN SHE DIIDDNNNNTTTTTTTTT ITS A COMMON MISCONCEPTION IN THE FANDOM AND IT MAKES ME ANGRYYYYY. LITERALLY LOOK UP A CREATURE FEATURE PLAYTHROUGH, SKIP TO THE END AND YOU CAN SEE SHE DID. NOT. ASK. FOR A HUG. Anyways,) and, he was even willing to make friends with kidd after an act of kindness (which, tragically, ended in ozzy’s demise.) he was just sad. he was just sad and miserable that his friends were gone suddenly, and he lashed out. but people focused on his tantrums, they didn’t focus on why. all they say was a whiny brat who constantly complained and it was all of that that made the fandom turn their backs on him. people didn’t even remember ozzy CANONICALLY HAS FRIENDS. HAS A GIRLFRIEND. madison and ron. barely did i ever see them all in one post. BARELY. i was an avid member of the fandom and saw lots of fanarts and i saw almost NOTHING of ozzy and his friends. ozzy was always by himself. madison and ron were always paired with alice. ozzy was literally REPLACED with alice to make the slime gang. ozzy’s friends were paired with alice instead. ozzy was fucking replaced and it made me genuinely upset to see. did no one fucking pay attention to that? did everyone really fucking forget when ozzy literally complained about missing his friends all the time? why was ozzy replaced?

it was all this mistreatment that made me pity ozzy. perhaps this was why i started liking him. perhaps it was out of pity and anger at how much his character was mistreated. and with all this pity, all this anger, it made me pay attention to him more, it made me see his potential as a character.

it opened my eyes.

i started to think abt him more, thought about his good sides and moments, thought abt how fun his character could be and the potential dynamics he could have. and with his little quirks and traits, i even started to headcanon reasons for it. why’s he so germaphobic? haha, perhaps it was dr danner’s fault and he traumatized him. why does he like destructotron so much? perhaps his friends introduced him to it, and now that toy is his favorite, as it is the only memory he has of them now. and, i think ozzy’s more kinder than people think, he opened up to kidd after a single gift, ozzy’s really just mad at the new kids that they took his beloved friends away, but with that single act of kindness made him realize, ah, maybe they aren’t so bad. really, he’s just lonely, you know? my pity for him opened my eyes to how much potential his character has, especially since he wasn’t as developed as the other characters, so i did it myself. i developed him myself, gave him lots of headcanons, as i am passionate about him and i believed in him, all this pity was the stepping stone in me starting to enjoy him a lot, lot more. he has a lot of potential and i want to use it. i believe he’s an underappreciated lovely, lonely child who’s angry at the world. and i like to believe he’s genuinely kinder than people think, and that he cares. (i believe he felt a heart dropping amount of guilt when he told madison to take a bath. how could he say that after seeing her again? his germaphobia is somethign he cannot control and he hates it, it inconveniences him and now it’s inconveniencing his loved ones and he hates it. i believe the next day, he gave madison (knowing that she already took a bath ofc) a hug and a gift because he truly missed her and felt guilty he couldn’t hug her before.) he loves and cares and he laughs and cries. he loves his friends and he loves his toy and he loves his games. and i cherish him, and i want to give him something to be happy about. i want to be part of the tiny tiny club that truly enjoys ozzy as a character because he deserves it. he deserves some people who genuinely like him in this cruel fandom who only saw him and ignored him because of his whiny tantrums.

I believe he’s a good character and I like him.

perhaps it is pathetic to be so passionate about a fictional character, but does it really matter? i am still passionate. i am passionate and it gives me a drive.

[harmonysanreads]

NEXT GOAL... Sunday long-fic ☠️

[eatmy-customjorts]

i wonder what he's listening to

[kiwikiswia]

I'll keep walking on,

even if we never come to understand each other

for the rest of our lives.

[sparring-spirals]

From like. a character analysis perspective. i LOVE Ashton's tendency to have some very good instincts when it comes to like human nature and fuckery that are also very clearly swayed by their own experiences and biases, because the combination of correct gut instincts with strong confidence makes it. Easy to buy in. Or easy to bristle.

Ashton tells F.C.G "This is what happens when you start externalizing every fucking problem that you have-" and, with affection towards F.C.G- well. Yeah. And then he starts breaking down the issue- how its about people with power fucking with others, how the end goal and the aim doesn't matter, their methods are clearly AWFUL and going to harm tons of people, and besides, if they had such a clear and proper image about what they're going to achieve they could just tell people. They're going to hurt people, they're killing, people, fuck that, fuck them.

"It's easy to make a nice world by killing everyone who disagrees with you. If you get down to five it'll be amazing. Fucking utopia."

Its- beautiful. And correct, in more ways than one, and probably what everyone needed to hear, and also has so much of their own experiences and resentment threaded into it, reductive to an almost dangerous point. Dangerous because he's right, in so many ways, and confident and righteous with it. Dangerous because of how the life lessons and the rage and the loss have left them with base tenets about human nature and motivations that are clear cut and resigned and simple. Because simplicity is powerful, and reassuring, and keeps them going, and is also not infallible.

I just feel like. Ashton is so, so fucking right, often and especially here, is confident in his stances and judgement in a way that has been tested by flame and resigned itself to pessimism. Ashton is so right, and the reasoning is often so sound and tempting, and there's also so much of them, their own losses and shortcomings that bleeds into their confident readings of the world and its overall nature, in ways they maybe don't even realize.

ashton is- full of solid instincts, and also flawed by having lived their life firsthand, and also confident in a way that is reassuring until you find yourself in a blindspot, up against an immovable rockface.