#literally the exact same except different people. the same line on the hand and all

[huesofvioletandpurple]

[ID: two screenshots. The first is taken from Danganronpa Despair Time's 13th episode, where Arei smiles and takes David's hand. It is shown from David's perspective. The second is from the Literature Girl Insane MV, where the shot is framed exactly the same way except with a different person in Arei's place. end ID]

hey David what does this mean. hey. hey David. hey Da

[elswing]

i hate posting discourse it's pointless and doesn't do anything for me except prolong my annoyance but i'm Tired™ and feel like shouting into the void. apologies to my beautiful feanorian mutuals please look away i love u

i neeeeeeed everyone to stop claiming they like elwing if their characterisation of her is completely made-up biased bullshit that paints her as an immature and disdained ruler (?????) who couldn't balance her responsibilities with the husband she married too young (at 22. practically a child bride honestly) and the children she never wanted (where. where does it say this). she's clearly such a bad mother that she abandoned them at first opportunity (she knew the feanorians were more than capable of killing a pair of twin boys because they literally already did that. that's very much a thing that already happened. to her brothers) and it was her selfish nature that made her soooo eager to flee (she had no reason to think ulmo would save her it was literally a suicide attempt. she wanted to make sure the deaths of her people and presumed deaths of her sons weren't in vain by ensuring they never obtained the silmaril)

like i'm gonna touch your hand as i say this. it's okay if you hate her! just don't pretend that you weren't thriving in the 2016 era of silm fandom where everyone pushed all their male fave's negative traits onto any other woman in a 5 mile radius to grab Poor Little Meow Meow status for war criminal #1 #2 and #3 to then turn around and spout the exact same (factually untrue) sexist rhetoric concealed under seven layers of buzzwords just because it's the year of "unlikable and complicated female characters" like buddy who are we talking about here. have you perhaps considered making an oc?

and i'm NOT saying i want the whole fandom to mimic my exact opinions and thoughts about elwing i realise that one of the best parts of the silm is how divisive it is and how you have so much wiggle room to come to your own interpretations because of how VAGUE the source material is but i'm genuinely convinced everyone's just parroting shit they saw in ao3 fanfics where maglor is secretly lindir and the premise is elrond sneaking him into valinor and elwing yells at him for slaughtering her people. TWICE. and this is framed as a category 5 Woman Moment so elrond disowns her and calls maglor his real dad

(eärendil misses this entire ordeal because he went on a voyage to save the world that one time and no one's let him live it down since because the whole fandom as a collective decided he did this because he's a terrible dad and not because the whole continent was at war and about to be wiped out and maybe he came to the unfortunate but reasonable conclusion that leaving is the best thing he could do for his family if it meant there was a chance his sons could grow up safe in a world that wasn't ruled by Fucking Satan so now his whole Beloved Sacrificial Lion: The Thin Line Between Doomed and Prophesized Hero™ shtick is tossed out in favour of.... *checks notes* Guy Who Forgot To Pay Child Support? oh and they're a lot louder about this because he's a man so no one can call it misogyny that's why no one ever goes the #girlflop #ILoveMyBlorbosNastyAndComplicated route with him and he gets dubbed as that one asshole who just wanted fame and glory even though that goes against the general themes for tolkien's hero characters. and tolkien loved that dude to bits that was his specialist little guy so you can't seriously tell me you think that's what he was trying to portray???????? is that seriously what you think he was trying to portray????????? babe????????????

also there's a BIG difference when it's a character that's only named in one draft and doesn't exist in the rest or gil-galad who has like three and a half possible fathers but ELWING??????? the only possible way you could be coming to these conclusions is if you read the damn book with your eyes closed. FUCK.

[egg-emperor]

WHAT DID I FUCKING SAY Y'ALL????

Eggman isn't the overly physically affectionate gushing and throwing arms around people type, it doesn't suit his demeanor and behavior and I'm glad to see that hasn't been suddenly forced with Sage. And that's even aside the way she's still actually not a physical being in the way she's a digital program so he'd surely just phase through her anyway since I'm pretty sure there isn't a solid physical sense of touch actually going on here between them, but again that's besides the point anyway-

This isn't over the top and uncomfortable OOC like in fanon. I like how it's a subtle and small gesture, with him extending his arm with hand out to her but looking away and forward. He's quiet, solemn, and reserved. His demeanor and body language is very important. He takes a breath that seems like a "sigh well, here goes" kind of way then mumbles it, not much, just small words of praise towards her doing the very things he created and praised her for before- doing what he wants her to and serving her purpose as his protector like she protected him in the fight, and calling her his daughter also has the same effect in encouraging her and he knows it, as well as how it's appealing to him for his pride as he said in the memo.

Also wow his bear paws are so fucking big do you see what I'm saying god damn lol I wanna hold them so bad too ahhgufdbkgshj 🥰 Speaking of, this is literally exactly how I imagine such gestures with him in my self sh!pp!ng too and I think anything different would be OOC, this is the way that works in any form I think

It's very important to acknowledge that he's not shy at all, that's the last word to describe him. He has the highest self esteem, self love, and confidence and it's all genuine. It's just that hyper affectionate super warm and mushy gushy-ness, be it through feelings, words, or actions isn't his thing. The most he's ever going to hype someone up close to it is in a performative manipulative way to urge them to continue doing what pleases him, and he forces it in some cases more than others, you get varying degrees.

But I like how it's on the more subtle side here a lot because it's even more telling of his true character. When he's acting like this it aligns with that reasoning again but with a new look at his style of showing it in a physical subtle manner, with his behavior being similar to the scene where she saved him in Cyber Space and said he was proud of her for it- only it was only through words then. We've now seen how he can show this verbally and physically and I like it a lot, it's the only way this can work and they did it. This is the best outcome.

Let me elaborate further; I truly believe that he doesn't know how to feel the typical conventional idea of "love" for anyone but himself because he is the biggest egotist and narcissist in all of existence and is extremely selfish and y'all seem to be forgetting what that entails for his behavior and personality feelings, and mindset with his self absorption and low empathy. There are no sudden exceptions to this, Sage is literally just another perfect example of it, nothing has changed with him.

The only way he can value anyone that isn't himself is in what they can do for him, what's in it for him is always his mindset, so it's the same thing of self praising, self serving, and self-centered, just being served through another person appealing to that through serving him, agreeing with his outlook, and having a willingness to serve and good use to him. And guess what? That's still the exact reasoning behind it with Sage. This is known and true in the prequel comic, memos, and Flynn's words and hasn't changed.

And why wouldn't he be pleased with her for this and praise her for it when it goes along the exact lines of that?

It's in character because Sage is the one giving some thing to him, protecting him, serving him, and showing loyalty, support, and respect for his desires. She does exactly what he wants as she's created for and is genuinely willing and enthusiastic about it unlike a lot of other creations of his. Eggman still hasn't done shit for Sage except praise her when she does what he wants but then becomes grumpy and snaps at her every time she does something he doesn't.

In fact he does it again in this scene too where he's seemingly really jealous and pissed when he notices her looking at Super Sonic with admiration lol

It's selfish on Eggman's side and selfless on Sage's side, so it works.

That's why I still wouldn't put the word "love" to Eggman's side of the dynamic because I feel it has connotations that don't accurately define his feelings. Though you could at least say he "loves" and "cares" for her "in his… own way" as Sonic put it, because there's actually selfish and unsettling reasons behind it as Flynn himself put it too. But it's not hyper affectionate, unconditional, or genuinely selfless like people are acting like it is. And it's so much more interesting that way and fun to analyze.

Eggman commending Sage for her work and for serving her purpose makes sense and is in character. It's nothing different to the reasons I said the standard base game ending was. The only difference is a hand hold presented in the best way. He finally has a creation genuinely enthusiastic and willing to serve him and being her creator and father gives him a lot of pride for being the one to create her and make her that way and his success and pride in doing so with the ways she benefits him and values his selfish desires are what his value is factually rooted in in the game.

So overall yeah, I really like how Eggman and Sage and their dynamic were handled in this update. They'll probably be a lot more in depth thoughts to come because I'm short on time right now, this is a mini essay in itself but l have tons more like always lol. But for now, since nobody seems to understand my take on their dynamic despite me just relaying what the game itself showed and repeating what Ian Flynn says, let me just remind you of my actual summarized take on how I see it is and how I cleared up misconceptions people have about my take on it here.

And everything we saw in this update aligns with and doesn't contradict any of what I've perceived and analyzed and discussed throughout my Sonic Frontiers tag on my blog! Very pleased. 👏

[stormofbats4224]

Gonna be a grumpy old man for a minute, ignore if you want and take everything I say with a grain of salt, but DP&W has reminded me of my least favorite thing ab my boy Timber:

Why The Fuck Does He Look Like That.

When I say this, I’m talking mostly about his stupid copycat relationship with Wolverine, partly about his ever changing appearance compared to some of the other Legionnaires (not to say they don’t change, but most of the others feel like more subtle shifts then, idk, YOINKING HIS EARS, CROOKED NOSE, AND HAIR STRIPES ALL IN ONE FELL SWOOP), and the disappointing blankness of humanizing a character who’s backstory is one of being experimented on.

I mean this with all the love in my heart when I say that we don’t need another fucking Wolverine clone. Timber never should’ve been associated as one to begin with, especially considering he’s technically the original of the two (and by roughly 10 years, no less). Their stories are both exceptional in their own rights, and there was absolutely room to make characters that both filled the niche of “grumpy, animal-themed science experiment with claws” for their universes while still allowing them to flourish. And for Wolverine, that’s exactly what we’ve seen happen, a character set up to rise above his base and become this figurehead of franchise.

And then there’s Timber.

It genuinely feels like they have no fucking clue what to do with this man, and it kinda feels like he just flip flops around like an emo fish in the background sometimes. He gets his moments (The show comes to mind first, as does his and Phantom’s side plot in The Legion, and what I’ve seen out of Legion Lost so far) in the limelight, but other then that…where tf is he? Half the cast line ups, he’s near the back (fuck, he exists for half a second as a statue in both JLU and JL V. FF, and has, like, three lines in The Movie I Want To Burn) or off to the side, and every time it takes longer and longer to find him bc HE ALWAYS LOOKS DIFFERENT.

It’s like Where’s Waldo, but Waldo is bright orange and can shapeshift. Fucks sake, the man changes so often that I drew him with 9 canon versions and one of mine, and I STILL left out at MINIMUM 4 other iterations for one reason or another, not counting the newest version of him (the one that looks like pouty-lipped Hugh Jackman) bc it didn’t exist.

On one level, I get it, different stories and authors can warrant different appearances, and the Legion is kinda just one of those random IPs that most probably don’t care ab, but that argument falls apart when so many other secondary and tertiary DC characters don’t get fucking overhauled every three years on the whims of new writers and artists. Keeping something recognizable is a way to bring people back, and that doesn’t just go for emblems (which are also horribly inconsistent for the Legion and it Makes Me Want To Scream).

Back to the topic at hand though, squinting at a successful character and approximating their likeness a little to the left is not the way to do shit. The first time, you could argue it might’ve been the other way around, bc Timber’s first “Wolverine”-esque look debuted before Wolvy existed, and it stuck for a bit. And then they diverged from it, and things were beautiful. And then they went back. And split again. And now they’re back to basics with a man that is literally Hugh Jackman and Mark Wahlberg fused.

And Wolverine has stayed almost the exact same through that stretch, maybe with minor things like costume changes or aging.

It feels like the only times Timber gets something creative or sensical to his appearance is when he steps into the hot seat, and when he’s in the background, they just need a space filler that says “hey, I’m basically this guy, that’s all you need to know”.

Again, not something you would “need” if you kept everything at least semi-consistent.

Wrapping around to my least favorite part of all this shit, STOP MAKING TIMBER SO HUMANOID. Fuck’s sake, would it kill people to give him back his teef? Or his white streak (tho, looking at Jason, even that might be too much to ask)? Let this man’s past affect his design, I BEG of you. Show that he went through some fucked up shit instead of randomly blaming his asshole personality on said fucked up shit and la-Dee-da’ing away like you did something. Slap some not-so-human features on him besides easily hidden shit; fangs, ears, literally ANYTHING that makes someone think twice about assuming he’s just some dude.

If it sounds like I’m describing some specific versions, good, bc I am, and it’s Reboot Timber from the early 2000’s and Show Timber from later 2000’s.

These bitches had it ALL, the appearance, the act, everything was instantly recognizable, and almost entirely unconnected from his Marvel counterpart. You can glance at them and never once think ab Wolverine, while also piecing together why they’re called Timberwolf. They’re beautiful, just the right amount of scruffiness and non-humanity to convey backstory and general character, while still maintaining strong human aspects to help it all along (and make him consistently redrawable without needing to learn a whole other skeleton).

Anywhozzles, that’s my midnight brain spit from being hyped up on the high of DP&W, this is all the conclusion paragraph you get for reading through all that. Thanks and feel free to let me know your thoughts, I’m probably wrong about several things 🤷‍♂️

[rayclubs]

Ever since watching Live Action One Piece, I can't stop thinking about how good the writing is in the actual show, so I'm going to seriously analyze it for my own fun and pleasure.

OP is kind of notorious for being nonsensical, whimsical, goofy and not particularly loaded with themes and heavy-to-grasp concepts, so a lot of people think of its arcs as mere sequences of events without an underlying thematic structure. This is what the Live Action gets wrong, but to the original show's credit, the formula is so intricately woven that you can't easily define it like in other serialized media. It's also a bit more... Nebulous? Okay, I can explain.

At least four of the earliest arcs follow the same formula. I'm sure it applies to later arcs too but they get longer and things become muddled down the line - not in a bad way, the core concepts still apply, just differently, so I'm only going to talk about the first four important ones. The formula is this:

The main character, Luffy, is introduced to another character who, in one way or another, displays a character flaw that prevents them from achieving their goals and dreams.

They encounter a foe who displays the exact same flaw in a different way.

Luffy confronts the foe on moral grounds and demonstrates a virtue that overcomes and overpowers the villain, leasing him to victory.

The newly introduced character, inspired by Luffy's example, experiences a change of perspective, which helps them overcome their own flaw and take a step towards their goal.

If you're thinking that sounds about right, then holy shit, our wavelengths. If, more likely, you're thinking "this is kinda far-fetched", then oh boy do I got proof of concept for you.

It's incredible how clear and well-executed the parallels between heroes and villains are. Like, okay, listen, here's Zoro's arc.

The villain, Axe-Hand Morgan, is a self-assured, self-centered tyrant who treats his comrades and subordinates as expendable tools and has no loyalties except to his own greatness.

Zoro isn't a tyrant, he's kind-hearted and has a strong moral compass, but he is still flawed: like Morgan, he doesn't have any loyalties except to himself. He's self-assured as hell. We learn later that he used to have mercenary friends but they went their own separate way at some point, and when they meet again, Zoro shows no clear loyalty to them - he's kind-hearted, so, of course, he cares, but he was never bound by their alliance and obviously considered the three of them to be drawn together by coincidence.

And to be clear, in the world of One Piece that is a flaw. Most characters swear allegiance to factions - pirate crews, marines, revolutionaries, other groups - and draw strength from them. Villages and towns are shown to survive hardships through unity and companionship.

Even Zoro's ultimate goal, the person he swore to defeat in mortal combat - Mihawk - although he appears solitary and not "bound" to a crew or a cause, we learn later that he is affiliated with the government. But that's a bit off-track.

While trying to save Zoro from execusion by Morgan, Luffy demonstrates a stubborn determination to work together. As soon as he recognizes that an injustice has been done to Zoro, he works not to solve the problem by himself, but to help Zoro deal with it. While another character tries to free Zoro from captivity directly - literally untie the ropes that are holding him - Luffy hands him his swords first.

Notably, Zoro is the only main character who defeats the main villain of his arc, all others are defeated by Luffy. I say "notably" because Zoro specifically is ony able to achieve this through cooperation with Luffy.

As the show goes on, Zoro's loyalty quickly becomes one of his core traits.

That's just one of them, so let's do Usopp's arc next.

The villain, Kuro, is a pirate captain who gave up his name and title. He is trying to turn away from who he is, remake himself into someone new through deception and trickery.

Usopp is doing the exact same thing, albeit in a decidedly more innocent way. He lies about his heroic feats and achivements, about his strength and the size of his crew, about practically everything. His lies aren't a flaw per se, as he never stops lying in the future. It's not his cowardice, that doesn't change much either. It's his conflict with himself. He's a pirate but he isn't. Pirates are coming but they aren't. He's proud of his heritage but he doesn't really get to be proud all that much until Luffy comes along.

Luffy defeats Kuro by being a better pirate, or by being better at being a pirate, or by being a pirate at all. Luffy has simple, clear-cut views and ambitions, he knows what kind of person he is and what kind of person he's trying to be, and he lives by it. That's the virtue.

As Usopp says his goodbyes before leaving his village, he gathers his little "crew" of kids together and makes them state their ambitions - one wants to be a writer, another dreams of owning a bar, etcetera - this is him imparting a lesson he just learned himself, on knowing who you want to become and living to be that person.

Usopp's best friend Kaya, inspired by him, resolves to become a doctor.

All this is also a showcase of Usopp's legacy, but don't get me started on legacy in One Piece, we'll be here for an hour.

So there we go. Let's do Sanji's arc next, it's way easier than Usopp's 3D chess pirate-gender.

The villain of the arc, Don Krieg, engages in malicious dishonesty to secure advantage in battles because he doesn't believe himself to be prepared enough for the journey he's undertaking.

Sanji is exactly the same but without the trickery. He justifies his inaction with the vague concept of being indebted to his mentor, even though his mentor considers the debt fully paid and sincerely wants him to live his own life.

Luffy defeats Don Krieg via stubbornness, bravery, endurance and ingenuity. It's similar to his other fights and not emphasized enough, which is probably why it's always been one of the more boring parts to me personally, though it's still wonderfully executed.

More importantly, Luffy reduses Sanji's mentor's journal, stating he wants to have his own adventure, not follow in someone else's footsteps. This is almost word-for-word the lesson Sanji needs to learn. Get out of there and do your best, you're ready, you'll never be more ready than you already are.

And finally, Nami's arc.

The villain, Arlong, believes himself to be inherently superior to those around him. If he recruits help, it's out of convenience, not necessity. If he forms bonds, they're business, not camaraderie. He does care for his fellow fishmen but that has more to do with the extended fishmen backstory and politics than anything so I won't touch on it.

Nami is equally flawed by hubris. She thinks she's better, more competent, more capable than the people around her, she has that complex you get when you don't have any friends in high school and end up doing all the group projects by yourself.

While fighting Arlong, Luffy makes a point out of stating and showing his own reliance on his own crew, and even lists off the skills they excel at that he himself doesn't possess. It's very on the nose but still awesome to watch.

He then absolutely fucking wrecks Nami's old prison-slash-workshop, demonstrating symbolically that, while her skill is great and important, it's not the main reason he values her as a crewmate and friend.

Nami gets over her hubris, begins to rely on others as allies more than assets, and relaxes a little about her paranoid hypercompetence. Good for her.

Okay so hopefully this convinced you. This was also going to be the part where I go on a long tangent about why Live Action One Piece fails on so many levels but then I realized I'd need a whole separate post for that, so I'm just gonna state the main point and leave it at that.

Netflix screenwriters seemed to have watched One Piece (roughly up to episode 130) and decided the arcs did not have any thematic uniting element even though they clearly did, as per above. They proceeded to rework the plot to introduce what they thought would work as unifying elements (introducing Baroque Works early, having Coby in every episode, cutting out Don Krieg and replacing him with Arlong) which inadvertently undermined the story structure and ruined the show.

Anyway, there's more. One of the earlier arcs is Buggy's arc which follows a different format. It doesn't see any new additions to the crew but it does see Luffy's worldview challenged by an outside force. This is an early example of a Luffy arc. Other examples include Loguetown, Jaya/Skypiea, and Foxy's arc (regrettably). Also Marinford and the events prior but that's, like, self-evident, I think. This story format borrows from classic romance literature and is way more straightforward. Buggy being an early example of it in the show, while being a comedic element himself, also introduces a lot of these story concepts. His journey could also be considered somewhat parallel to Luffy's, but that's a bit of a stretch, to be honest.

I completely forgot how I was going to end this analysis but hopefully reading it was worthwhile anyway. Live Action One Piece sucks. Cheers!

[youmissedone]

{out of smokes} Okay, time for a rant because I haven't complained about this in a long time, haha. L.J. bugs me so much as a person. Let's discuss, heh.

In Apocalypse, he gave Carlos shit for getting bitten and not saying anything. "Shoulda told me you got bit, motherfucker, I'm hangin' wit' you 'n shit." It's a very funny line, we all laughed. But what he's really saying there is... "if you had told me, I would've abandoned you." Or maybe worse, he might've just shot Carlos. I think the former, but even so, he's admitting that he wouldn't be hanging with him if he knew he was bitten. Not... "you should've told me so I can help you," or "so that we can try to find a cure." Nope, he just wanted nothing to do with infected for his own personal safety.

And then in Extinction, he does the exact same thing... gets bitten and doesn't tell anybody. Except there's a few big differences. Nobody really knew what the hell was going on in Raccoon City. Not much was known about the virus, everything was chaos, it was an immediate survival situation. It was also a few hours. Carlos didn't know if he would become crazed like other people, he probably didn't even realize those people were dying and being reanimated. He could've just thought it was something like rabies but with an accelerated incubation time and symptom progression. He was also focused on helping/saving people and wasn't a complainer by nature. So for him to complain about being injured when he had a job to do just wasn't like him. He did make one complaint to Nikolai that the bite wouldn't stop bleeding, but that was in private to a comrade, not around easily frightened civilians. He might not have realized he was contagious either. He was more focused on doing his job and helping people than he was on himself.

L.J., on the other hand, knew exactly what was going to happen to him and why. He knew he was contagious. He knew he'd turn and then endanger his friends. And he didn't care. I don't know what he thought was going to happen, like there was no way to cure him, so... he knew he was going to die. So he literally just put everyone around him at risk because he wanted a few more hours to live himself. I guess he thought they would just shoot him on the spot, which might tell you something about what he thought about his friends. But regardless, he knew full well what would happen to him, and then potentially to whoever he's around when he turns. Also, he kept it a secret for what, an entire day? The rest of a day, all night, and into the next day. A note on inconsistency of incubation times for the T-virus is warranted here, but... I'll let it slide for now, heh.

Maybe I can understand hiding the bite for a little while, none of us knows what we’d do in that situation and people legit get scared if they think they've contracted something fatal, I get it. But after that little while, L.J. should have disclosed it to the convoy because 1) he knows he’ll turn and put people in danger eventually, 2) he’s massively contagious even before that occurs, and 3) he's interacting with other people in close quarters. He was having dinner with Betty the same night he got bit. Did they share drinks or utensils or anything? Because now she’s infected too. Did they hook up at all? She’s even more infected. Like. Did he stop to consider this? He seemed to genuinely care for Betty but then at times he also seemed to not really give her safety a second thought.

And that’s not even the worst of it. He had the chance to be a hero and save lives during the raven attack. He could have at that point been like look, I’m already infected, you guys go and be safe, I'll hold 'em off. But nope, he lets Betty and others take the fall while he’s whisked away with the others and kept safe. Really? You’re gonna let other people die for your safety when you know you’re as good as dead anyway? That's a special kind of selfishness, right there.

Contrast this with Carlos, who never hid the bite he got from L.J. from anyone, and who almost immediately came up with a plan to use his death for something good that would benefit everyone. That was the first thing on his mind… not his own safety, not denial, not dishonesty, not himself over others… but how can I use this moment to everyone’s advantage? What the best outcome of this situation? How can I go out on my own terms? And he doesn’t even hesitate to take one for the team to help everyone else possibly reach their goal of getting to Alaska. Like. Hero material doesn’t even cover this, it makes my heart hurt.

But what hurts even more is… Carlos never once badmouths L.J. for what he did. There’s no… "what the hell" or "thanks a lot." Nothing. Okay, he calls him a "sneaky sonvabitch" when he finds that extra joint in the truck, but I think we'll all agree that was a term of endearment, heh. But... side note... we can add liar to L.J.'s list of character flaws, because how many people asked him if he had any smokes or "alternate" and he said no? Again, L.J. was only thinking of himself. Getting back to Carlos, he bears L.J. no ill will whatsoever for infecting him. If I know Carlos, he was really sorry to lose who he considered a dear friend, and that was it. Even right after L.J. bit him, he didn’t react with… "you asshole!" or something, he just says… “L.J.” And you can hear in his tone that he’s already mourning him. There’s no animosity, no blame, nothing. That’s a serious indication of character right there.

No point to this rant other than that every now and then my feelings bubble over on this subject, heh. I wanted to like L.J. so much, I really did. I found him to be funny, entertaining, and interesting. But I just will never forgive him for what he did in Extinction. Regardless of how pissed off I was to lose Carlos and how sad it was for Alice, Claire, K-Mart, etc. to watch him die that… explosively… what L.J. did is still by itself just such a glaring indication of cowardice, selfishness, and disregard for the lives of others, and it makes me so annoyed I could angry-eat a whole cheesecake myself, heh.

[pa-pa-plasma]

okay, I didn't see this until now (& op turned reblogs off apparently) but I'll address some stuff under a readmore just to clear stuff up.

"one piece has multiple queer characters" One Piece literally has a gay club that hands out free transitions to transgender people. I am not making this shit up. Also, Luffy is asexual & aromantic. "multiple" doesn't really do it justice

"the whole "tumblr crossing the picket line" thing in promoting it (i think? i've heard people talking about it at least)" tumblr didn't cross a picket line. tumblr is allowed to advertise, as they (as in the website & the people who run it) are not planning to be part of the writer or actor unions. this is just regular advertising that other movies & shows have done & are doing.

"the strangeness of what things tumblr decides to promote and in what intensities they do for which things" again, tumblr was paid to promote One Piece. yes, there are problems with what tumblr pushes & what it hides, but it was paid to do this. it isn't favouring One Piece for no reason. it is favouring One Piece because it was paid to. if Our Flag Means Death wanted to advertise on tumblr, they could.

"the fact that what little i know about the original one piece is sexism" the series started in the 90's in Japan, so yes, there is a lot that isn't great, but for a lot of us it was our first experience of seeing openly queer characters & women who can beat the shit out of you. for the bad stuff (basically just out of date shit) the live action series does fix this, but I think it would be good to consider that it was 90's Japan when Oda wrote it with queer & strong (as in, power level type shit) women in mind. this isn't fucking Harry Potter we're talking about, where all the bad shit is a fundamental part of the creator's worldview & personality. this is like, some old shit that didn't age good like everything else that exists ever. his art style is kinda fucky & I won't defend it but like. we're talking about the live action which negates all that. also, as someone else pointed out, the women are drawn sexy, but so are the men. have you seen Zoro's massive tits?

"and the fact that netflix remakes in the past usually aren't well received." the One Piece Live Action series not only has fans involved, but the creator of the original series working on it. they also made the physical sets (most of which are ships on the water) & only used CGI when they literally couldn't use practical FX (Luffy stretching, for instance). if you looked into it at all, you would've seen that this is not the same as, say, The Lion King. people tend to forget that it isn't the "live action" itself that is bad, but the execution. One Piece Live Action was executed very, very well with what it had to work with, & we could see this ahead of time, not just when the show came out. I literally teared up at parts because I felt like I was watching One Piece again for the first time. All the important scenes were 1:1 with the original, & they even played the original theme song We Are (instrumental version). That is how good it is. It was made with love & you can clearly see it.

I appreciate the apology, but the fact that you didn't know anything about it (you're allowed to look stuff up) before putting this post in the main tags is like. why. people (not just the op in the screenshots, as I've seen this multiple times in different fandoms) need to learn that if you hate something, block the tag, don't go into tag complaining about what you think the series is. this is how you ruin the experience for fans--& yourself. you are doing the exact thing you are complaining about tumblr doing, except worse, because you're just ignorantly shitting on it, & not even in a funny way.

anyway, go experience some childlike wonder & watch OPLA, or don't. I literally don't care.

[wander-wren]

let me go through this one line by line rq. i did talk more about wolfwood and rollo in a different branch of this post, but it was less well-written/thought out bc i did it more on the fly so let’s not worry too much about it. also, disclaimer, i love all of these guys, especially vash, and that’s why i’m being a little mean to him right now. dude’s complicated. ALSO this is only based on stampede, i do not know enough about the original story yet to comment.

i will also acknowledge that this steps pretty close to some real-world issues/debates/etc that are very important to me, so i care perhaps more than i should.

anyway! let’s break this down.

“rollo didnt want to die though. yeah i know wolfwood says it was mercy. wolfwood is projecting”

maybe, and also yes. crucially, we don’t KNOW what rollo wants. wolfwood IS projecting onto him, but equally vash is imposing what he wants, not what rollo wants, because rollo literally does not speak except to say vash’s name and once, his own. his younger self seems pretty attached to the idea of living, yes, but it’s been more than a decade since then (i’m not sure how old rollo is meant to be, but i wouldn’t say more than 8).

he has been modified and turned into a monster, he apparently drove out or killed his entire town, and it’s unclear if he’s been isolated in the village for a while or if he only arrived recently—my headcanon is the former, especially since the success of wolfwood, livio, and elendira would’ve rendered him an outdated model, but they could have still used him. regardless, he’s hardly living a normal or happy life. given his limited speech, it’s not even clear if he has the same level of cognitive function he used to—he definitely doesn’t have the education or socialization of you average 20-year-old.

i’m not advocating for killing rollo at all. i’m just saying we don’t KNOW what he wants. in an ideal world he would have been taken somewhere safe, treated like a person, and made as comfortable as possible while they worked out how to communicate with him and figure out what he actually wants. but they do not have the resources or the time for that, wolfwood and vash are both very biased, and rollo is semi-invulnerable and trying really hard to kill them.

i’m not really sure there’s another way for that story to end, honestly. and that’s the tragedy of it.

“i do agree vash does impose his will on other people, to a degree that’s not a million miles off from knives’s bullshit. and yes vash is also a hypocrite - he can forgive anyone but himself.”

cool! 👍 again, i’m not saying vash is bad and evil, or even that he’s not good. he’s just a guy with 150 years of trauma doing his best, but the thing about unresolved trauma is you don’t always make the best decisions.

“but vash does not want to use people. he wants them to have autonomy so they can choose for the better. and death is a denial of autonomy.”

okay, this is the one where i’m a little less nice. i agree that vash doesn’t consciously want to use people, objectify them, put his needs above theirs—that’s his brother’s deal. i do, however, think he’s so desperate to not have anymore blood on his hands that he is willing to “use” people to get to that end, and he isn’t even aware of that. hurt people do this all the time, when their pain and fear and suffering is so great that all they can focus on is trying to mitigate it, and they completely steamroll “the right thing to do.”

we haven’t seen vash do this yet, really, at least in stampede. i’m being purely hypothetical. i’m saying i see this instinct in him, in his actions, and it only hasn’t happened yet because this is a fictional story and he’s the protagonist and there isn’t really time to explore this yet. vash is also very willing to use himself, his health, and his wellbeing in the exact same way, which also separates him from knives.

i agree that vash wants people to have autonomy. sort of. he never says this that i remember, he’s a lot more focused on their right to be alive (also very necessary), but it’s in line with his belief system so yeah, for sure.

here’s the thing, though: so they can choose for the better? where is this coming from? the only thing i can think of is luida and the “flora” project, but it’s meryl and roberto who learn about that. vash presumably knows, but i don’t think he ever mentions it. meryl is the one who argues (with zazie and conrad) that humanity can be better, with time.

vash doesn’t want people to be free and safe so they can choose to be better. he wants people to be free and safe because they are people. and also because he can’t stand the idea of having more blood on his hands. he also does want them to be better, true (see: nebraska, rollo, nai, wolfwood), but that’s not his primary motive.

because really, “better?” who is vash, who are any of us, to decide what’s “better,” or that the only people who deserve to live are those who are working towards it? vash’s whole fuckin’ deal is that he doesn’t kill anyone, no matter how bad they are. he’s not out here weighing their goddamn ability to redeem themselves. ironically, this is a deeply (culturally) christian way of thinking, in a story where vash is allegory jesus, one of the most misinterpreted guys of all time.

finally, death as a denial of autonomy? mm, no. here’s the thing about autonomy: it allows people to do “bad things” to themselves. assisted suicide, regular suicide—that is autonomy at work. keeping someone alive against their will is a denial of autonomy. that’s not to say you shouldn’t try to help a suicidal person, because damn, please do that, but also: people have just as much a right to die as a right to live.

we’re not even talking about vash anymore, i got sidetracked. my point here is that we never actually see vash in this situation, due to the nature of the story. we never see him forcing someone to be alive that no longer wants to, etc (except himself, potentially). what i’m saying is, based on what we are shown, i think there’s a good chance he would in the right circumstances.

vash is a good guy. he’s not out here running around thinking that other people’s wants and needs are less than his own. but he’s got a big gaping hole in him and he’s very good at justifying the ways he tries to fill it. just because it hasn’t gone badly so far doesn’t mean it can’t in the future.

was talking last night about nai’s obsessive tendencies and the way he views everyone, even vash and tesla, as an object. he keeps tesla alive, in pieces, immediately after the fall and presumably for the next 150 years given all the technology he has, despite the fact that killing her would be kinder, just because he wants her. he nearly leaves vash a hollow shell of a creature just because he would rather that than a vash he can’t keep close.

he’s selfish and cruel and so isolated from the world that what he wants is more important than what anyone else wants.

but also…

vash has a little bit of that tendency in him, too. we saw it with rollo especially, and a bit with livio and the sand steamer—though those ones worked out for him in the end. vash is so full of guilt over the idea of killing anyone, even indirectly, that he will keep them alive to spare himself the grief.

and that’s a nobler pursuit, and i think a lot of people also instinctively don’t want to think about death being a mercy sometimes, but it’s still going to get vash in trouble if it hasn’t already in the last century.

i think it’s interesting, too, in light of the fact that vash himself is sort of passively suicidal at times. he’s pretty close to immortal, but he has no sense of care for his own wellbeing. vash doesn’t believe he deserves to live, but i don’t think he believes he deserves to die yet, either. which implies a double standard in his belief system—death is too good for him, but a tragedy for other people.

“an independent must fix what an independent has done. this is my atonement.”

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Forced/Suggested Behavior

So there’s a suggestion channel on Idle Champions’ discord and I dislike one of the folks there. Throughout the Winter Season event they popped in and said something like, “STOP letting rerolls of ‘Do a new quest in xyz campaign’ land on another of the same kind of quest! You are forcing me to HALT ALL FORWARD PROGRESSION WHEN YOU DO THIS!!”

There’s a lot to dislike - from the “equivalent-of-shouting” caps, to the posting of demands on a suggestion forum, to the fact that they are objectively incorrect.

As little as I like them, they’re close to right on a few things and one of the things they’re wrong about is...complicated. Because of this I expect I wouldn’t dislike them at all if they didn’t come off as rude. Lemme talk a second about those complications:

First of all, there is something nonperformant if you have a button that grants a reroll from a big list of quests and it allows you to reroll to literally the same quest. From a mechanical perspective it’s fair, sure. It’s a reroll, and the quest you’re currently on is one of the possible rolls. And if we were doing a d20 roll for a saving throw and got a second nat 1 in a row, that’s just how it goes sometimes. BUT. When you’re rerolling from a quest list the whole reason you added a button for a reroll was to let people do dailies even if something simply wasn’t possible for them in the time they had. It’s functionally an accessibility feature for people with different amounts of time to spend. From that angle, the new result has to be different from the old result or you have made a button that, x% of the time, literally does nothing. Also, when you have a button that sometimes does nothing it feels bugged.

I think this person was asking for the ability to dodge the entire category of quests (that is, they’d still be mad if they clicked reroll on “Do an Icewind Dale quest” and got “Do a Baldur’s Gate quest” as their result. I don’t agree with that at all. On the other hand - again because of the idea of it as a pseudo accessibility feature - I think because they have a pretty wide variety of dailies on their list of dailies they should have your original roll each day be recorded and off the list for that day on all 3 quests. That is, if I roll off of Icewind Dale on quest 1 and then reroll quest 2 and get the quest I just rolled off of I’ll feel robbed.

Second of all, the whole “forcing me to halt all forward progression” thing. Their premise is that they’re not sure they can complete the higher-level quests, and therefore they save the lower-level quests to have as fodder for these dailies. Do you see the problem? They’ve made a prediction based on limited data and they’ve altered their behavior to try and compensate and that is what’s halting their progress. To most players, the presence of “do a quest from your main-line quest list” in the dailies recommends and incentivizes progression. It does the exact opposite of “halting” progression.

I do sympathize with the idea of feeling “forced,” even if I recognize that they’re objectively incorrect about it. There are a lot of behaviors in the same game that I only take because they feel optimal to me. Nothing in the game is critical, even within its own context. All the things in it can be repeated, returned to, or picked up later (I guess there’s an exception or two in the skins you can purchase for real money, but I never touch that). But once I start a quest with difficult parameters to match - maybe I only have exactly 9 champions who fit its requirements, and there are 9 slots in the formation - I don’t ever quit out of it to use those champions on other quests. I always see it through, even if it means putting off the other quest (also, for a bunch of these quests I could get away with starting one three hours after another and not filling its whole roster, and finishing the harder part of the quest later with the people freed up from the earlier quest finishing. But I don’t generally do that either. I only start if I think I can finish with the resources I have when I start). I’m not required to, but I feel like I’m required to. It’s a weird feeling, especially when I’m able to back up and look at it objectively from outside!

[alyjojo]

Past Life ☯️ Karmic Spread February 2023 - Gemini

Gender I’m Picking Up On (in the past life): Male

Who You Were: 5 Pentacles, 3 Cups, The High Priestess, 9 Wands

What You Did: King of Swords, 9 Swords, 9 Cups, The Magician, Ace of Cups rev

How It Ended: 3 Wands, Death, The Devil, Judgement

What Karma Was Brought With You: Queen of Cups, 4 Cups, The Lovers rev

Who You Brought With You: King of Cups, 4 Wands, 6 Swords, 4 Pentacles rev

Additional energy: 3 Pentacles, Page of Pentacles rev, 10 Pentacles, Strength

Past Life Oracle: Galactic & Greco/Roman

Dreaming Way: Stork, Ring, Sun

Charm:

Fractal Moon 🌙 on The Devil

Crab 🦀 on Queen of Cups

Youth Butterfly 🦋 on 3 Pentacles

Grapes 🍇 on Stork

Broken Heart 💔 on Ring

I am having a slight internal giggle fit over this one, not at you, or the difficulties and sadness you endured. I can just see myself clearly in this reading, as can the rest of us astrology, philosophy & religious fanatics. It’s a very fine line between philosophical and radical, genius and madness, and much of that is often determined by public opinion, at least when you’re trying to gain public approval, or spread the word, which seems like what you tried to do. You were an ancient astrologer, I get Greek specifically, which is amazing btw 🫡 I don’t get “astronomer” by trade, more along the lines of mathematician, facts and figures were your trade initially. Astronomy was involved in some way, and with research…all three titles were combined when describing an astrologer at the time, it was “the” thing then, but your method of working was numbers, and the stars were just the part of that you worked on. A very logical & facts driven person, in a philosophical way.

I don’t get you being very popular or well known, I tried to research a bit, because this was the most popular thing back then, fairly common, but details of these people, their lives and actual characters or personalities are lacking from what little I could find. More like…this person wrote a book, or a pamphlet, and there’s no more than that, just the facts. There’s a rabbit hole for you if you get more curious, maybe one will call out to you 🐇 You were an extremely intelligent man that ended up becoming so fanatically involved in negative astrology, beliefs, and doomsday type of predictions, that you kind of lost yourself. You lost friends & supporters too. The public did not favor your “secrets of the universe”, and you may have even faced some level of public shame, based on something I guess was either too far fetched for even them or a doomsday type of thing that didn’t come true. When you died, you were still waiting for literal stars to align into some exact ultimate & universal Judgement. Probably had some religious implications as well, though I’m not sure of what who how when exactly, etc. Fractal Moon shows the many different layers to your astrology/practicality/beliefs, and The Devil is showing you were so obsessed and caught up on things like mathematical details & calculations, alignments, doomsday, that the whole of the picture was lost to you. Your exacting and precise method of calculating xyz kept you stuck. It’s like you were too smart. Hand a genius philosophy and they’ll lose their mind trying to fact and figure what can’t be fact or figured. You believed it could 💯

You lived in a frame of mind where negative destinies or exactly timed events signaled doom. You eventually avoided doing everything, anything, ever, except obsessing over topics like death, the second coming of Christ (if that even applies here idk, but same vibe), a great plague, a flood, etc. It kept you from things you could and should have done, dreams of yours even, and finding love. You were a recluse and spent most of your time thinking during the night, obsessively trying to understand the world and exactly pinpoint its’ destruction. These events terrified and excited you, you probably had some heavy Sco/8th House energy, because the questions that plagued you were not “When will I find love?”, more like “When will the Earth be sucked into The Sun?” Which I also find fascinating, so lemme just subscribe to this guy’s fan club 😆

In the past, friends and the public and general turned away from you, you didn’t have many supporters. They saw you as the half naked guy screaming about the end of the world, which…yeah, but a brilliant one, possibly with some level of mathematical or scientific achievements too, and probably pants, you were not at all “dumb”. Fanatical…to everyone else, yes, not initially but eventually. In this life, it’s your family that’s not very supportive of you, you don’t have many deep connections in that sphere and you can’t really relate to each other more than superficially or politely. You’re the black sheep. You’ve brought someone with you, probably a Cancer being Queen of Cups with The Crab 🦀 even. Either they leave you or you leave them, there’s no genuine “choosing” each other, it’s just blah, apathy, you’re together and then you’re not. It could be a case of unrequited love, or one person loving the other one more. This is most likely a spouse or lover with Broken Heart on Ring. They may have broken your heart. You may have children with them or they have them, children are involved. This was all karmic and meant to happen.

You’ve also brought a King of Cups, could be a Scorpio or water sign, likely a family member with 4 Wands, could be someone you’ve lived with. They had to leave, move away, travel in some way, and you had no choice but to release them. That connection was deeper than the average person, possibly one of the few family members you did deeply bond with, and it feels more like you followed them here than them following you, someone older. This may also be the person your ex married, or their soulmate, maybe who they hurt you with, and there’s a karmic tie between you all. After separating from the Queen, you may not have been or be much involved with your child/ren, if they’re yours. I don’t get how many, definitely one and if there are more apply them too, it’s children that are specified.

Perhaps it’s when they grow up, with this particular Butterfly 🦋 showing more of a “growing up” and youthful sort of transformation, but they’ll be very successful, maybe not initially but eventually, and they’ll want to be around you. I don’t get ties are completely severed, maybe just difficult to maintain because of the ex, I don’t know. When they’re grown, they’ll make you very happy, and you’ll bond with them more than anyone you’ve ever known whether family, friend, or lover, it’s a kind of love that transcends everything else. Like the family you never really had or bonded with, it’s them. They are the ones that will change your life, and every way is for the better, it just takes some time to get there.

[egophiliac]

Can you give like, a "style guideline" for how you do the unique magic posters? It can be as rough or developed as you want, I'm just curious about your thought process

I'm not sure if I can explain it very well, but I'll try! there's definitely a skill to being able to explain The Process in a way that makes sense to other people, so apologies in advance if this just ends up a confusing mess of words!

since these are about each character's unique magic -- though some of them are. looser. than others -- that's a pretty obvious starting point. I try to stay away from a literal "here's a picture of them using their magic" and go for more of the tone and feeling of it. like...the ones I did for the twins don't really have anything to do their magic at all, because I decided it was more interesting to make it about their twinny-ness and their eyes, and having them bookend Azul. so...their magic got relegated to the background as the teeth/tails from the kanji, rather than anything relevant. :') but they look nice and creepy, which was more important to me!

I always start by doing a bunch of thumbnails to get the idea down and figure out what exactly I want to do. for these I go to colors straight off the final thumb instead of doing a tighter sketch; things tend to change a lot and get moved around and shapes and silhouettes get refined as I go, so I just try to get the idea and the important shapes down and worry about fixing my wonky anatomy later. the style is so flat and minimal that it's fun to lean into that, use a lot of symmetry and lack of depth to push the shapes a lot further than with lines! my only rules for it are that 1) the character should be prominent, and 2) facial features are in limited supply and only to be handed out when necessary (both eyes? don't be greedy). other than that it's anything goes!

here are the final thumbs I went with for each if you're interested! some of them stayed pretty close, and some of them still ended up changing a lot during painting:

once I feel good about that, I come up with two or three main colors + an accent color + a "black" and a "white". (I don't use pure black or white for these, I use dark and light shades of other colors. like for the poms, the "white" is a super pale green and the "black" is a super dark blue. it looks richer and blends better with the rest of the palette that way!) I try to use the same colors within the dorm groups (except for the scaras) to keep some internal consistency, but they don't have to be exact or anything.

color is something I tend to really struggle with so I like to have a palette to start with, even if I end up getting away from it. :x I don't restrict myself from adding more shades and colors as necessary, but I try to be mindful about it -- pops of contrasting color immediately become a focal point, so I don't want to overuse those and make it distracting. the little rimlighting highlights are in the "white" color, and just there for fun and to make things a little less 100% symmetrical for some of them! they're easy to overdo though so I try to use them sparingly.

the actual process of painting is mostly thinking about shapes and silhouettes. because there's no lines and no real depth, clarity is really important; a lot of it is making sure the shapes all look satisfying and there aren't any weird little messy areas or anything. and pretty much all of the fonts I go over to add bits too or change slightly, to make it less stock-looking and integrate it more! there's just a lot of trying different stuff and havin' fun, seeing what happy accidents happen. (like...the heart shape in the milk on Trey's was not planned, it came out kind of heart-shaped by accident and I went YESSSS PERFECT and cleaned it up to make it look more intentional. stuff like that!)

uhhh what else. I do everything with one brush (except for some of the little grungy font touchups on the twins), constantly check my values with an adjustment layer on top at 0% saturation, and horizontally flop the canvas to make sure it isn't looking weird or skewed. the paper textures are a final thing, they're a couple of paper layers on top set to soft light and are mostly the same across the board (just slightly adjusting for each) so they don't take a lot of thinking about. the nice thing about doing a series like this is I only have to figure out sizing/borders/etc once. >:)

so...yeah! I don't know if that all made sense or was satisfying, but that's the way I can think to express it! and if nothing else you can enjoy my stupid doodle of Rook making a weird clown face. 👍

[comics-autism]

God yes. 100%. I hate how much Inquistion reduced mages from an absoulte boon in a fight where they could be doing any number of things to support you or harm your allies to... a guy with a flashy weapon. I will never forgive them for removing healing. Mages have been nerfed mechanically each progressive game and like. Listen from origins to 2 it was... kind of fair those bitches were completely broken in Origins. But from Inquistion they just did not feel strong at all unless you deliberately went for a broken build (Hello knight enchanter), which like the other games did have broken builds (Hello arcane warrior) you didn't need to go with them to feel powerful.

Being a support mage in Inquistion is Hard because they removed all the support skills. You really are just as a mage to look pretty. The lack of hexs and of Healing kills me. Also the removal of Spirit Healer and blood mage? Why the best two things your mage can be? Why do you hate fun inquistion?

I do also feel like the difference in game power effects warriors and rogues in Origins to 2, idk about inquistion I've never bother to playthrough as anything other than a mage. Which is again probably because of how big the skill trees where in Origins, and how many like. Weapon choice spesific skills there were? If that makes sense. Like in 2 and inqusiton there's a single branching tree for two handed and for sword and shield while Origins had four seperate lines.

But! On that! The change from two specialisations (or three in awakening) to just one. Definetly effects how powerful you feel. Specialisations Fuck. It's great being able to choose a spesific skill set and it getting to be more powerful because you can only choose two of them. But inquistion made it so you could only choose one and... didn't double what came with that choice. Specialisations across the three games feel pretty equal in how much they have and how powerful they have and inquistion just. Halfed it. By only letting you have one.

BUT ON THE MENTION OF COMPANIONS. I have been given free lease to go nuts. Yes the fact that they're all specialists in Inquistion drives me Nuts. All of your companions excel in their field and most of them have literal formal training and accreditation. Vivenne is court enchanter! Cassandra is a Seeker! Solas is a fucking god!

They are the best of the best literally chosen out of the inquistions hundreds of soldiers to support you and as such can 100% pick up and slack from the inquisitor.

In Origins and 2 your companions were like. Just some guys. Which is funny because I definetly think most of them could destroy the inquisition crew. (Almost like it feels like they grow stronger through the journey and through knowing you while Inq feels like they just. Stay the same.)

Like the da2 crew is literally just. Your friends. The dudes you happened to stumble on and befriend and they're all powerful but in a different vibe to inquistion where like, it's not formal and it's certainly not respected. They're as skilled as they are because they had to be to survive.

Same with Origins. None of your companions have Any standing or respect when you start the game. Oghren and Sten are disgraced warriors. Alistair is a newer recruit. Lelianna is in hiding, Zeveran is on run from the crows. They're all people desperate enough to join your suicide mission. And if you get to know them and finish their quests they grow and become stronger and continue to follow you because they trust and respect you.

Origins and 2 you're desperatly searching for any ally you can find, anyone willing to help you and fight beside you. In inquistion you're shopping around for the best of the best. And they join the Inquistion. They don't join YOU. They see the Apocalypse is happening so they join the powerful army working to stop it. Hell out of memory like... every single companion approaches you first in Inquistion (I think Blackwall is the sole exception to this?) where it's almost the exact opposite in the previous 2.

Like several companions offer their help before you ask in Origins and 2 but you have to like. Come across them first. Like yes Oghren will approach you but he doesn't send a letter to your advisors telling you he'd like an alliance. You have to be in Ozamar where people are loudly talking about the surfacer warden and the fact that they're being sent on a fools errand to find Oghrens ex-wife.

It's just an Incredibly different vibe.

Inquistion companions are professionals. Origins and 2 are desperate people doing their best.

So like how powerful the Inquistor is doesn't matter because they've got their buddies covering for them. All THEY'VE got to do is wave their hand at the rifts. Hawke and the Warden ARE the desperate people doing their best just like their friends.

Also brief note because this is getting too long. Nethier the Warden or Hawke get peaceful retirements. Like it does depend on how you headcannon it but like the Warden generally goes on to be the Warden Comander where they'd only get more powerful in the like? Ten years since we left them. And Hawke becomes a fugitive where they're still having to fight so still gaining more experience between 2 and inquistion.

Literally like Everything in the games. The gameplay, the plot, the companions, to how their story ends are ALL telling you it goes Warden -> Hawke -> Inquistor. Which is really interesting and is kind of fun sometimes but like. Shame about the Inquistor and their game lol.

It really does seem to be regardless of the play origins and backgrounds and classes chosen, the most common ranking for dragon age players is like

1. The Warden, undefeatable. They are missing because they're so powerful they'd ruin the plot of the other games. Essentially a banned trading card.

2. Hawke, a prodigy. Street smart, as in learned "on the job", plus being a natural talent. Champion. But the Warden could still curb stomp them.

3. The Inquisitor, a competent individual with an unfortunate ghost rash. Could get curb stomped by both previous protags.

This is not hate this is genuinely wonderful. This probably has a mechanical explanation, like the skill trees being SUPER CONDENSED and cookie cutter in inquisition, but I love that Stand Alone the Quizzy is a Worthy Opponent but compared to the other two protagonists theyre a big baby.

[tittyblade]

tumblr etiquette 101

a list that is nowhere near exhaustive, from yours truly.

First off, welcome! Whether you’re a twitter veteran looking for anything but whatever twitter is, or a new user just done signing up, glad to see you in our ranks beloveds! Welcome home. Refer to this quick tour to make sure your fandom experience (or tumblr experience in general) is a positive one!

Disclaimer: I know it’s long, but please try to read or skim through til the end if you’re new here! This is by no means meant to be a rule book (for the most part lol), only a guide to help you get settled easier!

1) Your blog

This is where people will see and interact with you, so put some effort into it!

Try to choose a name (url) that’s simple. You can see it as your brand, it’s how people will perceive you and remember you. If you’d like to interact with other users here (and not use the site just for the content) it’s better to have something short and sweet, preferably without spaces. (Of course, these are only suggestions.) Rest assured, you can change it literally any time you want.

Have a theme. Utilize the tool that lets you edit your blog’s color or the font of your bio! You can make it match your profile picture, or your blog if it has a theme of its own. Make it feel homey :]

Fill in your bio. People will be checking out your profile probably more often than you think. Don’t leave it empty! Put in any information you’re comfortable with sharing and isn’t too personal (like your age if you’re a minor, or other TMI that can be found on other people’s carrds). It’s always better to add a name/nickname people can use to refer to you by, but feel free to use your blog description to shitpost still.

You can have an intro post. More often than not, you’ll see a blog have a pinned post, a post permanently appearing at the top of a blog until you pin another post or unpin it. You can make one of those, if you’d like to introduce yourself in more length, link any other socials or a carrd, and show others visiting your blog how you tag things so it’ll be easy for them to navigate. Not an obligation.

Keep your anonymity and your safety. It should go without saying, but there’s no harm in repeating it just in case. Your comfort, privacy and safety has the utmost importance. Don’t share any information you don’t want to. Don’t share your age if you’re a minor, or any other incredibly personal info. I’d encourage you to go by a nickname that’s not your real name, (blog name, your brand, remember?) since there’s safety in anonymity, and that’s lowkey one of the big deals of tumblr, but that’s up to you still.

Choose what you want to be visible. Your liked posts and who you follow are all things you can set to keep to yourself and hide from the publics eye, how handy! You should go through all the setting while you’re at it, set it to your comfort.

Side blogs are a thing. You can have multiple blogs that you can use for different things (see: different fandoms, art blog, etc) to keep them organized or away from your followers. Just remember that the replies and off-anon asks you send will be from your main blog, as well as where you follow other blogs from.

2) Interacting with others

You’ve set up your account, now comes the fun part!

Follow to your heart’s desire. If you care about others seeing who you follow, fear not! In tumblr, usually only two types of blogs keep their following visible to others: newbies, and big blogs using it to point people on other good blogs’ direction. Just turn it off, and go ham following people.

Customize your dashboard. Gonna mention just two things here: this is another reason why it’s really important that you follow blogs without sparing, your dash will collect dust otherwise; and you should turn off “best stuff first” in your dashboard settings, to have a better community here and all.

Follow tags. You can set it in your settings that posts with your followed tags appear on your dashboard.

You can check the og post for edits and context. When you see a reblogged post you don’t understand the context of (or don’t recognize the character in case of fanarts), click on the profile so it will take you to the original post. From there you can check the original poster’s tags to get the context, or see if there have been any edits made to the post, since when you edit a post it doesn’t update any past reblogs.

Send people asks... This is how you make mutuals, people! Do it off-anon if you’d like them to know your blog, or anon if you’d rather not! (You can still end your messages with a signature to show you’re the same person, -[name] is one example.) Send them nice messages, ask their opinion on something, discuss things, or just straight up shitpost lol. Go wild. The sky’s your limit and it’s definitely more than 280 characters.

...and let them ask you! You can set your preference in the settings, do it on desktop tumblr to access more settings tho! What you can customize on mobile is limited (like letting people ask you things anonymously, that’s only on desktop settings). In my personal opinion, it’s always better to tag their username (or a nickname you give them, if they’re a friend) on that post, since you wouldn’t want your interactions with your friends to get buried in your blog forever.

Comment on posts. If you have something to say but don’t want the post to appear on your blog you can add a comment. The owner of the post will get a notif for it, but for anyone else you need to tag them.

For the love of god, reblog. People will only see your liked posts if you have it visible to public and they specifically go on your blog to look at them. You like something? You reblog. It’s already hard for posts to circulate properly, if you don’t reblog them literally no one will see them. If not for anything do it for the artists. Just hold and drag on mobile to fast rb.

3) Your Posts

Finally here! Don’t be a lurker, post and engage!

Make use of “read more”. If your post is long, add it. That’s what you clicked on earlier to expand this post. On desktop leave an empty line and you’ll see three dots appear, and on mobile type :readmore: on that empty line.

Draft a post to come back to it later. Pretty self explanatory.

Queue your post. Whether it’s your own post or you’re reblogging, make use of the queue feature to a) not spam reblog and fill up the dashboard of people following you and b) keep your blog active while you’re gone. Mess around in the settings, it’s fairly easy to set up.

Schedule your post. Same as queueing, the only difference is you get to choose the exact time your post will go up. Handy if you want to schedule a post for certain dates like april fools, or 5 years in the future for some reason. 

Format your texts. You can do all kinds of fancy stuff here (that’s a link, try pressing on it). Twitter doesn’t have this, make use of it. Changes depending on whether you’re on mobile or desktop. (Desktop has less features.)

Check your stats. If you’re trying to understand the algorithm better or want to look at some pretty graphs you can get your data on that on desktop tumblr.

@ people in comments. You’ll get all the notifs when people comment on your posts but they won’t see your reply unless you tag them in your message.

4) Tags, and tagging a post

This is where my earlier statement “this isn’t a rule book” stops being applicable. It’s not a war crime to go against these, I won’t come chasing you (don’t take my word for this) but you’ll work up a bad rep. Just saying lol.

Do NOT crosstag posts. It’s really tempting to add unrelated tags to increase your posts’ interaction, I know, but that’s not what tumblr is about. Don’t be a dick and make other communities’ experience worse for them.

Always tag your posts with “crit/critical/discourse/etc” if it calls for it. There’s no exceptions to it. This is the reason you see people migrating to tumblr. Let people enjoy things.

Don’t main tag a critical/negative post. If your crit post is about “Thing”, you add the “Thing critical” tag, but not the “Thing” tag. People block crit tags if they don’t want to see it, don’t shove it in their faces by main tagging it. 

If you don’t want to see something, just block it. Another reason why people are able to survive on tumblr. You don’t start discourse, you don’t make call-outs, you block. You can find something for every community you can think of if you go looking for it. The worst of the worst probably won’t ever appear on your dash, but if you’re worried or feel the need for it, you know where the block button is.

Feel free to shitpost or ramble. More often than not you’ll see people rb a post with a comment, and their elaboration will be in the tags. The tags are only visible on your profile and the notifications of the owner of the og blog. Just a thing people do.

Reblog artists’ posts with nice comments in the tags! Commenting on a drawing is usually done through the tags (Not an obligation, again, just a thing people do. Feel free to add your comment on the rb itself if you’d want other people to see it tho!) and leave nice messages for the artists! It’s a win-win for everyone involved. 

If you have more than a single follower, always use the common tw warning tags. You don’t need to tw everything, but tw’ing some common things is the bare minimum human decency. Keep it safe for others. 

Tag a post “long post” if it’s really long. Pretty self explanatory. Don’t make people scroll through all that please lol. 

You can use them to organize your blog. This is more of a pro tip, if you’d like to not miss a post in your blog, cause they will start pilin’ up soon enough.

#Liveblogging is pretty fun. If you’d like to talk to people during streams, don’t forget to add the relevant tags still! Again, you won’t show up on people’s dash otherwise.

Whew! That got out of hand. Hopefully I didn’t bore you too much. Check out blogs like @heritageposts and @hellsite-hall-of-fame to honor our past o7. @mcytblr-hall-of-fame too maybe :eyes:. Anyways, don’t forget the most important rule of them all:

Enjoy your stay! You’re meant to have fun on here while also making friends (if that’s your thing). Just be kind and respectful of others, you’ll get the hang of the rest! <3

[singsongraptor]

A Rant As A Visual Artist

AI art is not art. It cannot, and will never, be art. It is powered by the theft of millions of hours of hard work by thousands of artists, not including the time they spent to learn and polish their skills to the level they're at. AI art is a travesty, nothing more than a glorified copy-paste-transform tool.

Using AI art actively contributes to the continued theft of people's labor and skills. You are actively facilitating the derision of the arts and the belittling of artists. You are contributing to their continued, widespread poverty, labor rights violations against them, and the overall decline of respect and appreciation of art and artists. How? Well, if they are not valued as the skilled labor they are, then they will not be protected like skilled labor. In much the same way that, despite the fact that custodial, retail and other service work is integral to the functioning of society and which society would collapse without, they are not valued and their rights and safety are constantly stepped on and they are forced into poverty in many places.

You cannot get genuinely get real art out of an AI anyway. It knows nothing about it, it is simply twisting actual art into something somewhat passable. Just look at the hands on anything and AI generates.

I saw an especially insulting comment on Twitter today, basically insulting the entire field of photography as an art form in order to try and justify that AI art is "Fine Actually" and I'm going to break down why it's bullshit.

First of all, photography is not merely "selecting optical components and settings". Any jackass with a smartphone can take pictures, that doesn't make it art. That's like saying painting or drawing are merely choosing colors and making lines. Both are simplistic to the point of absurdity and vastly insulting to the education and practice needed to cultivate these skills. The *camera* is not what's producing art just because it captures an image. An AI stealing art to create an image isn't making art either. Example time! The first two images below are pictures my six year old took (in an ironic twist, one captures me taking a photo). The one of the family cat, my husband took. Using my camera, which is not a walmart point-and-shoot but a mirrorless DSLR. None of these is art, much as I love my husband.

Obviously the photo my husband took is better than what my child did, because he's a graphic designer and a grown ass man and can manage a camera better than a six year old. However, he is not a photographer and his lack of skill with a camera shows. Now, my actual art.

As you can see, there is a huge difference between the first four images and my *actual* art. The flowers my child took pictures of are the same flowers as example 3 and 4 of my most recent art, to really hammer home the difference. All of these pictures were taken with the exact same camera. The first two on the camera's automatic settings, while I use manual mode for all of my photography (since I actually know how to use that). The camera is not generating art. And I, as a photographer, am not merely making some decision about camera settings and what to take photos of. My kid took pictures of the exact same flowers that I did and mimicked the way I framed the shots. I even set the camera settings up for her. Yet, she is not making art. I'm literally making the decisions *for her* with the exception of letting her hit the actual shutter button. She still isn't making art! She's being a cute kid who will one day *become* an artist. The difference between my skill and hers is obvious to the point of absurdity.

The same is true for AI art. It is not creating art. It is mimicry, and unethical mimicry at that. That you would insult photographers to try and push that AI can create art and that it shouldn't be criticized as the theft and bullshit it is is infuriating.

I work hard at my craft. I work hard to learn new things about photography and cameras and post processing every single day. I work hard to learn how to make the mundane and tiny beautiful, especially because I am Black, and I live in an urban area and those places are belittled as ugly and incapable of producing art or artists.

I don't want some machine that understands *nothing* about art stealing from my peers in any visual art genre. I don't want my work and theirs mocked and derided and devalued by lazy, stingy, thieving pissants who think it's just a jpg, just a drawing, just a photo. (I mean the AI creators and those trying to justify its use for the most part.)

My *camera* is not creating shit. My camera is doing what I told it to do, within it's hardware and software capabilities, but it is *I* that does the work. The camera's back doesn't hurt at the end of a shoot. It isn't cold or hot or sore by the time it gets home. It didn't hike anywhere, fly anywhere. It didn't climb a tree or wait days in the snow.

My camera is not where the art is coming from. It is the medium through which I create art, in the same way that a paper and pencil cannot make art, even though it's the medium through which the art takes form. The AI is not creating art. It is warping & pasting already made art.

Neither you nor anyone else is entitled to art or the labor that goes into it just because you want it. I'm sorry you can't afford it, but artists also need to eat, and demeaning and trashing their trade, a trade *you cannot do and yet still want the results of* makes you a terrible person that doesn't deserve their work.

You are literally going to contribute to the worsening of movies, music, video games and other media, because you refuse to value artists and that allows their exploitation and eventual burn out. AI art not only actively steals from their hands but further contributes to taking food from their mouths, because "why pay for a truly original work when I can just starve thousands of people for 8 dollars for a soulless amalgamation of art components."

Stop feeding the AI.

[miraculouscontent]

“Sentibubbler” summary? “Sentibubbler” salt?

Why not both at the same time?

Something a little experimental, though also somewhat reminiscent of some of my past videos. Calling it “summasalt” for now, based on the word “somersault” because this episode was an exercise of my patience.

It’s basically just me going through the episode with my usual episode summary, but salting along the way instead of making you guys read a wall of text without any images or clips or me making snarky comments.

(By the way, yes, I did in fact have caffeine before recording.)

script below for anyone who wants/needs it:

"Sentibubbler" begins with Marinette having food with the Cesaires and I already know this isn't real because Marinette is actually getting to interact with her best friend's family. That's only happened, like--when, two episodes of Season 2? [”Sapotis” and “Anansi”]

Marinette sees Trixx and points out how they're supposed to be a secret, and Alya asks why while calling Marinette "Ladybug." Marinette plays dumb but is told by Nino that everyone already knows her secret. Chloe is also there, chiding Marinette for her identity rule - it's not Marinette's rule but after "Reflekdoll" I've just gotten used to Marinette being blamed for things she didn't do - and Marinette goes to question Chloe's apperance when there's a knock on the balcony door. Alya invites Shadow Moth in and--[Shadow Moth has to duck to come inside]--huh, I thought Sole Crusher was seven episodes ago.

Anyway, now obviously, Marinette is just being ridiculous and overemotional as usual, because why would Marinette ever think that Alya would reveal any information to--["Feast"]--oh yeah, that's right.

Tikki doesn't transform Marinette and says that Marinette shouldn't have trusted Alya with her secret. Enter Chat Blanc, who says that they can be together now without any secrets. Not really sure what this episode is aiming for with the mixed message of "your identity rule sucks" but also "your fault for trusting someone instead of having a mental breakdown," but a’ight. Trixx also gets another dig in on Marinette for giving Alya the fox miraculous.

Marinette wakes up from her nightmare and panics, but Tikki reassures her that Alya is loyal. [”Chameleon”] Mm. Also, that kind of support might've been nice from Tikki literal seasons ago when Marinette could've used a confidant.

Wayzz - I swear, they've had eyelashes more often than not in this season - points out that Trixx is mischievous and Xuppu talks about Trixx being the cause of the Loch Ness monster rumors, which worries Marinette further. Marinette runs out in her pajamas and I can already predict that neither Tom nor Sabine are going to check on her later or care.

Marinette finds the Cesaires looking for something, their words vague enough for Marinette to think that they're talking about Trixx. Alya brushes Marinette off and tells her to help with looking instead of lecturing her.

Marlena makes a comment that reminds Marinette of her nightmare, only increasing Marinette's stress. A tarantula crawls up a ladle and Marinette freaks out when she sees it, which Marlena has a laugh at because Marinette's anxiety, fear, and panic is hilarious, guys!

This is my laughing face. [not a laughing face]

Nino exits, having been too afraid of the spider to leave the room, so Nora compares Marinette to him. Nino tries to play it cool, then changes the subject to point out Marinette's pajamas. Alya wonders aloud why Marinette showed up and Marinette tries to act casual, but Alya sees through it and states that she doesn't usually lose things when someone lends them to her.

I presume the exception is Marinette's trust. OH-HOOOOHHH, we'll get there.

Nora takes a jab at Alya for losing the spider and Marinette drags Alya away to talk. Nino tries to join but Alya states that it's between her and Marinette, which makes Nino sad.

Nino, does the phrase "guys' time" ring a bell by any chance?

Marinette is explaining her nightmare and is simply told to calm down by Alya, though Marinette is briefly startled by a phone ringing. Marinette puts together what she knows that Shadow Moth knows, including that Alya is Rena Rouge, adding on that Shadow Moth could steal the fox necklace if he figured out that Alya has it permanently. Alya reassures her that no one will ever know and Marinette states that this must include Chat Noir. Alya agrees and brings attention to the fanny pack around her waist, which Trixx has been hiding in, and Marinette has Trixx promise not to show up at the dining table like in her nightmare. Tikki tells Marinette that everything will be fine and Marinette admits that it was silly of her to worry, which it was! ...If you ignore all the anxiety, mental scarring, and constant pressure to be perfect or risk Paris lighting itself on fire, much like I presume they accidentally did with their original script for this episode.

Alya tells Marinette to trust her and also herself - I'll be sure to keep that in mind, Alya, thank you - then Alya loses her temper at the phone continuing to ring. She leaves to find an empty living room, then answers the phone only to hear Shadow Moth on the other line. Alya turns upon hearing Marinette scream to see that Marinette has been trapped in a bubble. Cue the reveal/return of the Bubbler, who is definitely Nino akumatized and not--like--a sentimonster, because the episode didn't spoil it at all with the title of Sentibub--

show, this is freaking embarrassing. Why even bother akumatizing someone when you can mold a sentimonster with the exact power you want?

At least they reveal it quickly, though that also means I have to live with the knowledge that Shadow Moth wINKED AT ALYA, NO.

Anyway, Shadow Moth tells Alya that he wants her to betray Ladybug. Marinette, meanwhile, is panicking over being unable to transform while in public, whereas Tikki remains calm and reassures her that Alya will figure something out and it's why Marinette gave Alya the fox miraculous in the first place.

Weird, I thought it was for the show to continuously validate Alya as a worthy choice for a confidant despite repeatedly covering up her sINS and so the show can push for more anxiety on Marinette's part while simultaneously not having to make a new hero model for Alya, which they would have to do if the realistic decision had been made to give Alya a different miraculous due to Shadow Moth knowing her identity as Rena Rouge.

Marinette texts Alya to inform her that the Bubbler is a sentimonster and so Rena can tell Chat not to use Cataclysm on him or the bubbles will burst due to the sentimonster's lack of control.

Hate to burst the show's bubble but Alya could literally see Nino up in the sky and they could see her; the bubbles are in viewing range. Did this even go through a quality check?

Alya goes to look at Marinette's text, but the phone is bubbled away by Sentibubbler. Marinette sees the phone floating by and panics, only to be reassured again to trust Alya and at this point I vaguely wondered if I was watching this episode on repeat. Tikki also adds that Alya has never let her down - [”Ladybug”] MMMM - and Marinette agrees, also certain that Chat Noir will show up soon.

Oh yeah, he exists. Oh no.

Cut to the Agreste mansion where Adrien is watching the news - dude, how is there never anything better on when you need to be told that there's an akuma? here, look, I'll show you [”Silencer” Lukabug clip] there, much better, see? - and it's pointed out that the bubbles are identical to the ones Bubbler had, yet Nino is in one of the bubbles. Adrien readies himself while Plagg is - for once - okay with leaving since his cheese isn't "edible" yet.

I feel like he should be a little more concerned about Marinette being in a bubble.

Meanwhile, Shadow Moth is explaining to Alya that Ladybug will come to give her the fox miraculous due to the bubbled people in the sky - plenty of other choices that aren't within breathing range of the obvious danger zone, but a'ight - and SentiBubbler will catch Ladybug. Alya brings up Chat Noir saving her but Shadow Moth states that she'll create an illusion of Ladybug and Rena to lure Chat Noir, who won't see Sentibubbler coming, at which point Rena will hand Shadow Moth her miraculous. He adds that her loved ones will only be returned once all three miraculouses are in his possession, though if she tries to warn the heroes then Sentibubbler will send the bubbles into space, too far for any hero to save them.

[clip of space power-ups] Hm.

Also, I would've just let her keep the miraculous as an extra bribe since he doesn't need the fox and she wouldn't have time to recharge anyway - at least to his knowledge - but that's just me.

Marinette is relieved that Alya still hasn't been captured--TIKKI, I KNOW, YOU'VE BEEN PARROTING THIS ALL EPISODE, I KNOW--but Marinette changes her tune when she sees Alya blindly calling out for Ladybug's help, unaware that Alya is buying time. Marinette laments the idea of transforming there and having using the rabbit to go back in time to reverse, as that's never a good thing (seconded), but gets the idea for Tikki to take her miraculous to someone else. Tikki rejects the idea, as the earrings won't go through the bubble, and Marinette realizes that Chat Noir is their only hope.

I mean, it was nice knowing them. Sure is interesting how Marinette has only been getting herself into these situations where she requires saving when the show needed to present Alya as a valid choice for a confidant.

Meanwhile, Chat Noir is leaving a message for Ladybug about the bubbles in the sky, saying that he'll wait for her; I already see where this is going and I don't like it.

Alya mutters to Trixx about how they need a plan to release Marinette. Through Alya Vision, we're shown Sentibubbler, a bowl of fruit, and the bathroom door. Alya tells Sentibubbler that she needs to go to the bathroom and - wow, we're really doing this, aren't we? - which Shadow Moth rejects. Shadow Moth is also on top of a building holding a coffee cup which honestly makes about as much sense as the rest of the episode, so whatever. Alya claims that she can't wait and that it'll be awkward for Ladybug to find her like that, which gets Shadow Moth to relent but also remind her of what's at stake if she tries anything. Alya states that she can't do anything without a miraculous anyway, then purposefully falls onto the table, concealing her long enough for her to transform and allowing an illusion of herself to go to the bathroom while she escapes. She detransforms in the twins' room and feeds Trixx with some grapes that she'd picked up.

Alya explains her plan to trick Shadow Moth and Sentibubbler since they don't know that she has a miraculous, though she also has to make sure that Chat won't ruin things. Rena then proceeds to call Chat Noir and claim that Ladybug wanted her to call him with her plan, but adds that it's a two-person plan and Chat himself isn't needed, so he needs to wait for further instructions. Chat demands that Ladybug call him to tell him herself, but Rena insists that she can't, as Ladybug is very busy. She warns him not to use Cataclysm if he sees the Bubbler, as he's a sentimonster, then promises to talk to him later before hanging up.

She uses Mirage again, making the Alya illusion reappear as well as creating a Ladybug. Chat Noir, infuriated at being left out, destroys part of a building with his baton. He then dismisses the action because Miraculous Ladybug will fix it.

Spoiler alert, it will, which is a very fascinating detail! I mean, I can't imagine another situation where a hero did something while there was an akuma going around and Miraculous Ladybug decided to help 'em out, but it just goes to show what happens when you're the writers' pet. Just look a little pitiful and they'll give you all the sympathy in the world.

By the way, didn't expect them to actually confirm my theory that Chat Noir does Chat Noir things because he knows that Miraculous Ladybug will fix it anyway, essentially allowing him to earn brownie points from Ladybug via sacrificing himself regardless of how it affects her mentally, yet here we are and I don't know whether to be sad, angry, disappointed, or a mixture of all three.

Chat Noir sees the Ladybug illusion jumping off and gives chase, refuses to stay where he is. Marinette, seeing that Rena Rouge's illusions are active, panics at the sight of Chat Noir, as the illusion will vanish if Chat touches it.

I like to imagine the immediate concern is the idea that Chat Noir will try to take Ladybug's hand while trying to flirt.

Anyway, Marinette flails inside the bubble in an attempt to reach Chat Noir, while illusion Alya and SentiBubbler get into position. Chat Noir watches what he perceives as Ladybug heading into the Cesaire house with Alya, but Marinette gets to him in order to tell him not to go anywhere. Chat complains about everyone telling him to stay put, but Marinette explains Rena's plan to him. Chat is skeptical of how she knows that, to which Marinette insists that she saw it from where she was. Chat Noir relents with a sigh and stays where he is.

SentiBubbler watches as the illusion of Alya and Ladybug talk to each other, Rena making it look like Ladybug is piecing together what happened and refusing to give Alya a miraculous ever again due to Shadow Moth knowing her identity. She claims that she'll find another holder and give them an even more powerful miraculous, which interests Shadow Moth and gets him to follow after the Ladybug illusion. Once Sentibubbler leaves as well, Chat sees this as his chance to stop the sentimonster, as the Ladybug illusion will vanish if it's touched. Marinette strokes his ego for the token love square moment of the episode, and Chat Noir fights SentiBubbler while Shadow Moth goes after the Ladybug illusion.

I'm noticing a real lack of tension in this episode. Once Alya has her plan, it's kind of a clean sweep from start to finish with no interference or unexpected roadblocks in the way. Even Shadow Moth following the Ladybug illusion goes fine, with Shadow Moth even punching a building thinking that Ladybug actually got away from him.

Dude, it's fine, Miraculous Ladybug will fix it, just put on your best sad face. Maybe Chat Noir gets it from you actually, is treatment from the writers a hereditary thing?

Sentibubbler and Chat Noir are still fighting. Shadow Moth shows up and Marinette tries to warn Chat, but Chat gets caught in a bubble and Marinette apologizes; she doesn't have anything to apologize for but after "Reflekdoll" I--wait I already did this.

Chat Noir uses Cataclysm to escape, only to get caught in another bubble. I'd just like to throw out there that this guy's a hero three seasons going and the love interest for the main character, yet his role in the episode has amounted to complaining about the authority of a hero Ladybug chose, throwing a property-destroying tantrum over being excluded, and wasting his power without a single thought which just got him captured again.

Chat, does the name "Syren" ring any bells by any chance? I'm just sayin', you could always quit. In fact, wasn't it you literally one episode ago saying that you understood if Ladybug couldn't always come get you? Then, after seeing the jump from "Glaciator" to "Frozer," I'm about as shocked as rubber.

Back with the competent one, Alya notes to Trixx that Rena Rouge can no longer be seen by Shadow Moth or else the jig is up. She transforms and texts Marinette to be ready, creating an illusion of Marinette that simultaneously hides the real version, allowing her to transform into Ladybug.

Chat Noir's bubble gets dragged down and Shadow Moth gets SentiBubbler to mute Chat Noir's bubble.

[clip from “Silencer” where Ladybug takes amusement in Chat being muted]

Ladybug uses Lucky Charm and receives a pot, her Lucky Vision spotting Shadow Moth's coffee cup, then SentiBubbler, then the tarantula trapped in a bubble. Ladybug deduces that the cup is the sentimonster's object, then pulls the horse miraculous out of her yoyo and unifies it with the ladybug--oh.

Oh my.

You know, it's times like this where I'm reminded that the show knows nothing about fashion... or girls... or good writing actually--there's just a lot of stuff they don't know.

Sentibubbler does a countdown, then starts sending the civilian bubbles up into the sky. Chat Noir is about to de-transform while PegaBug notices of Shadow Moth's two miraculous, up for grabbin'. She notes that she won't be able to catch everyone, so she forms a portal behind Shadow Moth and goes for the coffee cup first, thus putting her in control of SentiBubbler, who happily brings the bubbles back down at her command.

Shadow Moth erases SentiBubbler from existence though, causing everyone to fall, but Chat and PegaBug manage to catch them. PegaBug de-transforms and presents the Cesaires with the tarantula, which had been trapped inside the lucky charm. Ladybug and Chat Noir watch Shadow Moth escape and Ladybug laments that it could've been the end of Shadow Moth once and for all because it's not a Miraculous episode without Marinette being at fault or feeling guilty in some way! Chat Noir reassures her [*by “reassure,” I mean he might as well have said, “Well, you saved ME, so you did great!”] - wow, that's two token love square moments for the price of one episode, don't I feel spoiled - and Ladybug leaves to retrieve the tarantula's tank.

Rena Rouge is waiting for her and they hug, with Rena repeating that she doesn't lose something that someone gives her. Ladybug states that she never should've doubted the idea of giving Alya a miraculous and Imma just give you guys a counter real quick. [counter that shows that Tikki has complimented Alya four times, Alya has complimented herself/told Marinette to trust her thrice, and Marinette has said that she was wrong thrice]. Miraculous Ladybug is cast and everything returns to normal, with Alya explaining what she did and Marinette being relieved that Shadow Moth won't be going after her anymore. Alya confidently asks if she was smart and Marinette is happy to praise her, confirming it and stating that Alya is a real superhero and honestly? If the narrative wanted to marry Alya this badly, they should've just used some of the budget to buy a ring instead of projecting onto the other characters.

Then again, the apparent budget can't even afford a new hero model nor new akuma to a very noticeable degree, so I guess they're taking what they can get.

Alya praises Marinette as well for her work as PegaBug and they do a fistbump, thus ending the episode. There's also this ever-so-lovely post-episode scene with Gabriel and Nathalie where Gabriel laments the fact that Ladybug never makes mistakes which--I... has he even watched the series at all? Gabe, babe, Babriel Agreste, it's literally part of the show's formula that Marinette makes a mistake in every episode and she felt guilty like a minute ago over not yoinking your miraculouses when she had the chance, where have you been?

But, yeah, anyway, the episode.

Needless to say, not a fan. Like I said, the show seems so intent on immediately validating the choices they make with Alya in order to make her look like a better character. "Gang of Secrets" basically replaced her with someone different at the end of the episode, and the episode immediately afterwards in chronological order, "Mr. Pigeon 72," did everything it could to push Marinette out of her guardian position long enough for Alya to figure out the grimoire despite having zero onscreen experience with it, the episode even trapping Ladybug in a situation that forced Rena Rouge to come into play to validate that decision as well.

And now we have "SentiBubbler" here following immediately after "Optigami," desperate to reassure its audience that Alya is cool, smart, truthworthy, and that not needing to make a new model--sorry, I mean Alya continuing to have the fox--was a good decision. All the while, they continue pushing Alya's flaws under the rug [Note that it’s not even considered that Alya is even remotely at fault for Shadow Moth going after her specifically after her stunt in “Optigami” when no one else but Ladybug and Chat have ever given out a miraculous], hiding them instead of Alya actually acknowledging them, the only reason she did so in "Optigami" being the same as in "Gang of Secrets"; to make her look good while Marinette makes a big decision in their relationship.

The episode tries so hard to drill in this idea that Alya is a good friend who can be trusted, and I'm just not here for how much they try to hammer it in. Marinette's very real anxiety over Shadow Moth's power and ability to plan things is played off as her being silly instead of something to be concerned about, and instead of giving her a hug and trying to help her calm down - [clip from “Heart Hunter” of Luka hugging Marinette] I miss Luka - she's just told to trust and believe and hAVE fAiTh in Alya.

Shadow Moth is an adult; he has abilities that the teenage heroes don't. I'm not even saying that Marinette isn't overreacting [Basically, her concern about Shadow Moth is valid, especially after “Optigami” where her identity was almost found out], but she has anxiety and some obvious trauma over "Chat Blanc." I was already upset that Alya got a free pass to Marinette's identity, but the constant stressing over how much Marinette should trust her just doesn't affect me when I know Alya and I know the kind of stuff she's done that the show blatantly ignored in favor of pushing for her.

But okay, show, I'll give Alya the benefit of the doubt that she doesn't deserve. Let's say that she's turned a new leaf, and has become the reliable, trustworthy, and loyal partner that Marinette deserves. I'm sure that Alya has Marinette's back, and will never go behind said back in order to do something completely unsurprising and wholly indicative of the character I actually know her to be.

Especially not a mere three episodes later...

[thegirlwithataser]

It’s not about the ship at all, actually. At least for me, it’s about the fact that this characterization of Garcia makes absolutely no sense in continuation from the way she was in the original show. There was an entire plotline in OG Criminal Minds where she was upset with Derek for getting involved with the sister of a victim. And she was the one in that episode to detail the ethical concerns, to outline how that is a conflict of interest if it comes down to a criminal trial, how it’s unhealthy for the person connected to the case because it prevents them from coping and healing. She was the one that explicitly talked about her years of experience in grief counseling for victims families. She knows first hand how lost they are, how angry they are, and how easily they can attach themselves because they’re looking for stability and answers. As someone with experience, she should be acutely aware that someone saying “I would have killed myself if it weren’t for you” is not the compliment that CME is trying to play it off as. That is a very dangerous line of thinking and it creates an unhealthy dependency between two people.

The issue isn’t about Luke and Penelope, that’s a whole separate thing. The issue is that this specific plotline makes absolutely no sense for her character. She is doing the exact thing that she literally went off on Derek for doing years ago, except it’s worse. Because on top of being the family member of a victim, Tyler is also their key witness. Several of the breaks they’ve had in the case came from him, and most of their digital evidence (which is incredibly significant to the case) came directly from him. It’s a conflict of interest twice over, and that’s not even touching on the personal ethics of Tyler’s headspace and where she plays into that.

Also, for the sake of consistency, I will say that I was absolutely angry with the characterization of JJ when they pulled the Reid stuff last season. I was absolutely livid at that because again, it made no sense for her character. But to say that this is no different from the individual moments of each of the characters making a mistake, and that the only thing that happened is that Garcia “got her head turned by a hot dude” is completely downplaying what actually happened. If that’s all it was, then Emily wouldn’t be as blatantly pissed off as she is.

The difference between when Luke defied Emily’s direct order to go after the guy that killed Phil and when Rossi did it to conduct a ground search versus Penelope doing it now with Tyler, is the motivations and the repercussions.

Luke was going after a man that had just murdered his best friend in cold blood. Rossi was pursuing a dangerous criminal. Both were personal reasons, yes, and they were both wrong to defy orders, but they also made sense.

Penelope is putting a very very important case in jeopardy and making questionable decisions ethically with someone who is very clearly not okay, for what? Good sex? That is not even remotely the same thing.

Luke’s actions were only risky to him. He risked his life and his career, no one else’s. Rossi’s actions were self serving and obsessive, but didn’t actually risk the BAU’s existence.

Penelope’s actions put the entire BAU in jeopardy. The deputy director of the FBI has already cut their funding. The Attorney General of the United States is already against them, that’s why Emily is so stressed. If they can’t bring this case home, then the BAU could very well be disbanded and transferred, completely replaced, or just straight up fired. That’s what Penelope risked. For a hot guy.

That was a risk she took knowing full well the repercussions as well. Even if she hadn’t said it explicitly herself several seasons earlier, Emily repeated it in no uncertain terms this season, about this specific situation.

That’s why everyone is pissed. Because this characterization of her is not good. Fans aren’t the ones painting her in a bad light, the show is doing that. That’s why Luke and Emily and presumably the others are pissed off at her. This isn’t shippers pissed that there ship isn’t canon, this is people that love Penelope Garcia being angry and hurt that the show has chosen to take her character down a path that makes no sense whatsoever considering her past, and makes her seem like a bad person, something that none of us would ever ordinarily see her as.

So no, no one is saying Garcia is a monster for ‘getting her head turned by a hot dude’, but they are saying that she’s objectively acting extremely selfishly by letting that attraction wildly cloud her judgment and seriously risk an incredibly important investigation.

Are people really just so livid about Garcia having a relationship with someone that’s not Luke that they’re trashing her character in the most extreme ways? She’s acting no worse than the entirety of the cast has acted at multiple points. The JJ/Reid bullshit from last season was the absolute nadir in terms of character behaviour on this show, but Garcia’s a monster for getting her head turned by a hot dude? Eh.