#love those paths

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Have you seen my little lad?

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[cheesenchalk]

i never know how to phrase it but something about the way beatles biographers and people in general view paul's reflexive placating persona and determination to smooth things over as manipulative or duplicitous and john's reflexive barbed persona and habit of lashing out as brave and subversive despite both being equally defensive mechanisms to shield themselves from the world that resulted in them saying things that weren't true says more about how we culturally view kindness or friendliness as inherently untrustworthy or flimsy and anger and carelessness as more believable as someone's true nature than it says about either of them in actuality

[54625]

"Have you no more memories?"

I am made of memories.

"Speak, then."

[kalicocal]

Let's talk about that CaitVi Scene

For me, what made this scene impactful has to do more with the fact that the prison cell is the physical representation of Vi's mind more than the fact that it's where they first met. (Although the latter does add merit to Fortiche's capacity for telling circular narratives.)

We know this because we see Fortiche use this same motif in S108, where we see half of Vi behind bars and the other half unobstructed, which signifies how Vi is torn between going back to help her sister and helping Caitlyn take the gemstone back.

In this context, though, Vi is shackled by the mantra, “Whatever happens, it’s on you,” and we know this because Vi admits it herself, “I choose wrong every time. And because of it, I’ve lost everyone.” 

And the implication of Caitlyn unlocking this cell and entering this space—this space filled with emotional and physical scars, this space haunted by phantom pains and memories with teeth—was just like an “I got you” moment, the perfect affirmation that finally releases Vi from the shackles of this inherited responsibility. 

Caitlyn not only predicted it, but she actively took measures that enabled Vi to free Jinx safely. By doing this, Caitlyn implicitly confirmed that Vi didn't choose wrong this time and that she wasn't alone in the decision to offer Jinx a second chance.

I know some people have their own opinions about them doing it in a jail cell without explicitly talking about what happened between them in Act 1, but as much as I appreciate the idea of open communication, romance, and making love in a bed, I understand why they saved the talking for later. After all, facing imminent doom and Armageddon can influence people to rush into things. 

All jokes aside, there is one thing about this scene that makes my heart ache with joy: that Vi finally has one memory that outshines all that was made in the prison cell. And that memory is of warmth, a gentle touch, and soft eyes—the only memory that matters.

And for me, that's enough.

[seaquestions]

dunmeshi things. i've finally fully accepted that i can't be regular abt laios on main. also, mau! my oc! everybody make dunmeshi ocs naow!! <- my royal decree. (id in alts)

[serennes-art]

the branded

redraw of this 2018 set of pieces, with old versions under the cut:

as well as older versions of micaiah and zelgius, from 2020:

gotta say im pretty happy with how the redraw came out! thanks for watching

[justaz]

i don't like putting homophobia in my fictional worlds so like when i think of bbc merlin i like to imagine uther as a classist anti-magic bigot but a hashtag ally. anyways i thought of a way to make homophobia make sense in canon without it being like. serious?

we know that true love is a force powerful enough to overpower any love spell so i think it's safe to say that love is the most powerful force in albion, above even magic. and this is smth i maybe made up but sex is a sacred thing in magic and to the druids. sex rituals happen all the time and the power from sex fuels spells to make them more powerful.

how would uther weaken the magical community? outlaw wlw and mlm relationships to that love and sex can't be used in magic. he couldn't outlaw love and sex entirely as men and women needed to have children to continue on the population. he uses the new religion to push that it's immoral to engage in mlm/wlw relationships and that's what arthur grew up hearing but he's known since he was a kid that he's gay so he has his own super deadly secret he can't let anyone know.

the druids never bend to uther's laws and continue their free love and that's why arthur is always sympathetic to their plight and hates when his father sends him to raid their camps because part of him feels like he's hurting his own people. it's also why uther is able to get away with attacking peaceful people without anybody bashing him for it - they have magic and they're immoral.

so uther has his anti-magic laws but also his anti-love laws

[galedekarios]

Gale's Hidden Dialogue, Epilogues (And Bugs) Explained by SlimX

[xxplastic-cubexx]

I had the absolute dumbest idea:

X-men dating sim where you can date like any adult in the mansion

And like Charles’ route seems normal but if you get too far you get killed by Magneto and get a secret bad ending.

anon you cant say this not when i have an infatuation with imagining my faves in DATING SIMS

[legogender]

how it feels knowing we r gonna get morro and evil jay and arin corruption arc in the same season

[spider-pete-man]

I've seen a lot of posts about the new episode revolving around Rio's reveal or a joke in the show that was incredibly funny, but I haven't seen a lot about Lilia herself, whose episode it was. This is by far my favorite episode of the show, and not just because Lilia is my favorite character. It was an episode about life and accepting death and a character out of time who just wanted to forget her visions and forget her past and all the tragedy she's witnessed from both her life and her visions. It also gave context to those, at the time, funny moments of Lilia randomly blurting something out, which was just incredible to see. Then the scene where she reads her own past and future, that was just so powerful. Each of the coven members played a part, and it makes me want to watch the whole series again with this context. All of this leading up to her beautiful and well-earned sacrifice. The cinematography of that scene was just incredible and tastefully done where we don't have to see Lilia's end. We just get to see her a girl again, happy, and with her coven. This episode really was a knock out of the park for me with Lilia and her character arc and a real standout in any Marvel show too. I loved it.

[somegurl8]

The Octopath Traveler II extra fights experience:

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I wouldn't really agree that boys are just arm candy in magical girl shows and only there to look cute. Yeah, sure the girls' friendships are the focus, but the boys are usually very much involved in the plot and most shows do explore their feelings about the odd things that happen due to magical shenanigans even if they aren't in the know (It's why ML baffles me even more with how they screwed up Adren's arc when he's the deuteragonist, when all these boys are supporting cast and get well rounded arcs)

I'm not much of a winx fan, but the specialists were very much not arm candy. Did the girls talk about them being cute? Yes, it's what teenage girls do. Did the narrative suggest they were good looking? Yes, but that's standard for most love interests in any genre. But we still got scenes with them talking amongst themselves about how they themselves feel and they got a fair share of badass fight scenes even if they wield no magic. A large amount of episodes actually included the boys and girls working as a team solving a mystery or fighting a villain. The girls might deal the finishing blow but the boys were still integral to the plot.

I hope this doesn't come across as hate, it definitely wasn't my intention. I'm just a bit too passionate about the magical girl genre.

I do think you have a good point with ML having a problem choosing a genre or blending two genres successfully.

For the CCS fans, I will add though that Cardcaptor Sakura had both Tomoyo and Syaoran serve as sources of motivation for Sakura. And both Sakura and Syaoran collecting cards even if Sakura is the only one who could seal them and yet never made you question whether Syaoran was even necessary for the job the way ml does with Chat.

I wasn't trying to say that boys have no part to play in magical girl team shows or that they're always treated as having no lives beyond the girls, that's why I mentioned that the Winx Club boys - aka, the Specialists - have their own (mostly off screen) lives and occasionally show up help the girls:

the boys are usually off doing their own thing and only occasionally show up for a date or to give the girls a ride on their cool bikes or magical spaceship

Even then, this is certainly a simplification of the roles that they play in the story, but I kind of had to simplify their roles down to their base components for the original post's discussion as I was talking in broad strokes of how these stories are written.

In terms of those broad strokes, the Specialists are absolutely only there for shipping fodder. That's why each one is assigned to a girl from the start and why their main role in the narrative is supporting their assigned love interest or causing relationship-based drama for their assigned love interest. If it weren't for shipping, then the Specialists would not exist.

While the Specialists do have fleshed out characters and may even effect the plot, the execution of those elements is designed around the girls. A really obvious example of this is the character Timmy, who has character development as the boy's tech guy. Why is he into technology? Because he's the designated love interest for the fairy of Technology and we have to show why they're a good match. Along similar lines, the boys don't really get plots that are removed from the girls because this is the girl's show. Every episode features one or more of the Winx, but the boys are optional and often don't appear.

This is because, narratively speaking, the boys are just love interests and that brings us back to Miraculous' big problem. You can't have a show where Adrien is written like a Specialist while also being part of the Winx Club and where Alya is written like she's part of the Winx Club while technically being more of a Specialist in terms of power set and actual narrative role.

I'm was thinking back to my memories of various Winx Club plots to find one that really highlighted what I mean here and I remembered that one of the big dramas in season one was the reveal that Bloom's love interest - Sky - was in an arranged marriage and had just never told her. As it turns out, that's a great example of what I'm talking about re Adrien!

Is that plot line technically based around Sky and letting his life effect the plot? Sure, but the fallout of that reveal revolves around Bloom, not Sky. The story doesn't really care how Sky's feeling as the conflict progresses. Instead, it focuses on how it affects Bloom and her friends because of course it does! She's the main character. It would be really weird if that plot suddenly focused on her side character love interest and his friends during one of her darkest hours/biggest moments.

Think of that and then consider how the ending of season five is written. Notice any similarities? Sure, this is Adrien's family drama, but because he's just a Specialist, the focus isn't on him. It's on Winx Club member Marinette and Adrien only shows up at the end for a kiss. That is the problem. That is what I'm talking about when I say that Miraculous will randomly write him as if we're watching a magical girl team show where Adrien is just the love interest.

In fact, let's really dig into this example because it's a good one.

You can have a look at the transcript for the finale episode of Miraculous season five here and see for yourself that Adrien doesn't even show up on screen until the final scenes when the big drama is over. The Winx Club wiki also has episode transcripts, so I took a look to see what happened in Winx land during the arranged marriage reveal plot (I love that this is a thing. It's so useful for fact checking myself!) This is the script for the episode after Bloom learns the truth. Sky does not appear even though his lies and family drama are the fuel for this episode's events, which are a major part of the season's arc. Note how perfectly that matches Adrien's writing?

Similarly, Sky's dialogue in the reveal episode is all about Bloom. He's worried about her learning the truth and thinking less of him. To match that, here's Adrien's only real dialogue in the penultimate episode of season five (full transcript):

Adrien:(Covers his ears.) I cannot transform... (Looks at his ring and tries taking it off.) Plagg: What are you doing?! Adrien: I'm not in my right mind. I'm too angry — at myself for falling short of Marinette's love, at my father for sending me here in London, at this stupid app and these rings that use my image... it makes me sick! This nightmare is giving me the horrible feeling that, if I transform, I'll get akumatized and destroy everything with my Cataclysm — Marinette, Ladybug... (Takes off the ring and hands it to Plagg.)

Switching back to Winx. After Bloom learns the truth about Sky, bad things happen because she's depressed. This results in her and the Winx going off on a journey to learn the truth of who Bloom is. After the girls share this big plot moment and Bloom gets her mojo back, the boys show up to be their ride home and to give Bloom her romance moment where Sky wins her back by declaring that he broke off the arranged married because he loves her.

Sky notably doesn't get an arc about choosing between his arranged marriage and his true love. We don't even know that the marriage is broken off until he tells Bloom because that was never really a conflict as far as the narrative was concerned. Of course he's going to pick Bloom! He's her designated side character love interest! He only exists to be with her. We don't need to treat this as a serious thing for him. The arranged marriage plot was never about him anyway. It was about giving Bloom a reason to have a darkest hour moment that moves the plot forward. Similarly, Sky calling off the marriage is nowhere near as important as him telling Bloom that he's called off the marriage to be with her in a grand romantic gesture.

This perfectly mirrors Miraculous' season five ending where Adrien doesn't appear until after Marinette is done fighting her big girl power fight against his father. As far as the writing is concerned, that fight isn't about him. His connection to the villain only really matters in terms of how it affects Marinette's actions during the final battle. Then, when the battle is over, Adrien shows up to give Marinette her big romance moment because, while the plot may be driven by Adrien's family, he is not a Winx club member. He's just a Specialist. Or, in the words of the head writer:

[image text: She's Barbie, he's Ken. You don't like it. I get it. It won't change. Anything else?] (The full, even more damning context of this tweet can be found here.)

What else can I say other than, "I rest my case."

Oh, and also that I didn't take this as an attack. I just thought it was a good opportunity to really dig into the nuances of this and what I was talking about in that original post as I never know how obvious this stuff is if you don't closely study story telling. As this case study hopefully shows, if a show is about a group of girl friends using the power of friendship, then their love interests may have important roles, but the boys are never going to be more important than the girls and most of the boy's screen time will be focused on romance and how their existence effects the girls because it's ultimately the girls' world. Without them, the show wouldn't exist. Without the boys? Well, then we just wouldn't have a romance plot.

[allpromarlo]

i’m actually really glad that yuji empathized with megumi’s depressive state instead of just outright telling him to live tbh. it lets megumi keep his agency as opposed to the damsel in distress narrative that some people were pushing, and subverts expectations on the whole 'start by saving me itadori' thing in general

[selenadem]

Day 6 of FE Siblings Week

“Return” ! Reyson and Leanne are happy to see Rafiel again!

[oswaldthatendswald]

This is not a new observation, but I think One Piece handles Doflamingo's backstory-- how it continues to affect his behavior and choices, as well as how it fits into the overall story-- exceptionally well. The villain who is evil due to a tragic past is a very well-established trope, but it is increasingly done quite poorly. Attempts to flesh out a villain and garner sympathy for them can become misguided justifications for their actions or goals, muddying the themes and tone of a story. My point isn't that morally complex characters can't be interesting when done competently and purpose; it's that when the villain with a tragic past is meant to be evil but his past becomes a justification, the writers' intended dynamics of the story are damaged.

Doflamingo's story never has that problem. His backstory makes it perfectly clear why he does the things he does, but it never implies that he is right to do them. It is a reason, not an excuse. The reader gets the sense that Doflamingo is very much the product of his childhood: first the golden excess of a Celestial Dragon, then the abrupt fall from grace into hatred and pain. It's the perfect storm to set a person down the worst paths possible.

But I think the reader might also feel (or at least I did) that this wasn't a fate set in stone. Doflamingo could have unlearned the ideology of a Noble and perhaps that the harm done to him doesn't justify further harm-- except that the only guidance he ever got was worship by Trebol and the other Executives, who were the nail in the coffin for any redemption Doflamingo might have had. Their appearance only validated and affirmed the beliefs Doflamingo already held regarding his place in the world.

Instead of ham-handed sympathy bait, Doflamingo's backstory is a beautifully executed extension of the worldbuilding and themes already present in the story. It is another tragedy in a world of tragedies, another story where children are put through hell. But without the external guidance and support the heroes get, Doflamingo takes the other path, becoming another perpetrator of tragedies, and a reminder that our heroes are the people they are as much (or more) because of the love and mentorship they had than due to innate goodness. It's the road less traveled, but they still might have traveled it.