#narratively it made sense to me

[ragnarssons]

i love being chill in my little corner of the internet. like i honestly do not care about how filoni and favreau are gonna re-connect s3 to s2 when they reunited grogu and din on tbobf... i just honestly do not care, i just want to see them again.

[polarsirens]

Blimey.

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[puppyeared]

Wyrm on a string

[anghraine]

jenndoesnotcare replied to this post:

Every time LDS kids come to my neighborhood I am so so nice to them. I hope they remember the blue haired lady who was kind, when people try to convince them the outside world is bad and scary. (Also they are always so young! I want to feed them cookies and give them Diana Wynne Jones books or something)

Thank you! Honestly, this sort of kindness can go a really long way, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.

LDS children and missionaries (and the majority of the latter are barely of age) are often the people who interact the most with non-Mormons on a daily basis, and thus are kind of the "face" of the Church to non-Mormons a lot of the time. As a result, they're frequently the ones who actually experience the brunt of antagonism towards the Church, which only reinforces the distrust they've already been taught to feel towards the rest of the world.

It's not that the Church doesn't deserve this antagonism, but a lot of people seem to take this enormous pride in showing up Mormon teenagers who have spent most of their lives under intense social pressure, instruction, expectation, and close observation from both their peers and from older authorities in the Church (it largely operates on seniority, so young unmarried people in particular tend to have very little power within its hierarchies). Being "owned" for clout by non-Mormons doesn't prove anything to most of them except that their leaders and parents are right and they can't trust people outside the Church.

The fact that the Church usually does provide a tightly-knit community, a distinct and familiar culture, and a well-developed infrastructure for supporting its members' needs as long as they do [xyz] means that there can be very concrete benefits to staying in the Church, staying closeted, whatever. So if, additionally, a Mormon kid has every reason to think that nobody outside the Church is going to extend compassion or kindness towards them, that the rest of the world really is as hostile and dangerous as they've been told, the stakes for leaving are all the higher, despite the costs of staying.

So people from "outside" who disrupt this narrative of a hostile, threatening world that cannot conceivably understand their experiences or perspectives can be really important. It's important for them to know that there are communities and reliable support systems outside the Church, that leaving the Church does not have to mean being a pariah in every context, that there are concrete resources outside the Church, that compassion and decency in ordinary day-to-day life is not the province of any particular religion or sect and can be found anywhere. This kind of information can be really important evidence for people to have when they are deciding how much they're willing to risk losing.

So yeah, all of this is to say that you're doing a good thing that may well provide a lifeline for very vulnerable people, even if you don't personally see results at the time.

[mikimeiko]

The Expanse | Season 5 (2020-21), Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby

[lord-squiggletits]

One of my favorite parts of phase 2 (and indeed one of the few moments I resonated with IDW Prowl) was when the neutrals were coming back to Cybertron and Prowl said that he refused to let Autobots be pushed aside and overruled after they were the ones who fought for freedom for 4 million years (the exact wording escapes me atm).

And I mean, that resentment still holds true even once the colonists come on bc like. As much as it's true that Cybertron's culture is fucked up, and as funny as it can be to paint Cybertronians as a bunch of weirdos who consider trying to kill someone as a common greeting not important enough to hold a grudge over.... The colonists POV kind of pissed me off a lot of times, as did the narrative tone/implications that Cybertronians are forever warlike and doomed to die by their own hands bc it just strikes me as an extremely judgemental and unsympathetic way to deal with a huge group of people with massive war PTSD and political/social tensions that were rampant even before the war?

Like, imagine living in a society rife with bigotry and discrimination where you get locked into certain occupations and social strata based on how you were born. The political tension is so bad there's a string of assassinations of politicians and leaders. The whole planet erupts into an outright war that leads (even unintentionally) to famine and chemical/biological warfare that destroys your planet. Both sides of the war are so entrenched in their pre-war sides and resentment for each other that this war lasts 4 million years and you don't even have a home planet any more. Then your home planet gets restored and a bunch of sheltered fucks come home and go "ewww why are you so violent?? You're a bunch of freaks just go live in the wilderness so that our home can belong to The Pure People Who Weren't Stupid And Evil Enough To Be Trapped In War" and then a bunch of colonists from places that know nothing about your history go "lol you people are so weird?? 🤣🤣 I don't get why y'all are fighting can't you just like, stop??? Oh okay you people are just fucked up and evil and stupid then" ((their planets are based on colonialism where their Primes wiped out the native populations btw whereas the Autobots and OP in particular fought to save organics. But that never gets brought up as a point in their favor)) as if the damage of a lifetime of war and a society that was broken even before the war can just magically go away now that the war is over.

Prowl fucking sucks but he was basically the only person that pointed out the injustice of that.

And then from then on out most of the characters from other colonies like Caminus and wherever else are going "i fucking hate you and your conflicts" w/ people like literal-nobody Slide and various Camiens getting to just sit there lecturing Optimus about how Cybertronians are too violent for their own good and how their conflicts are stupid, with only brief sympathetic moments where the Cybertronians get to be recognized as their own ppl who deserve sympathy before going right back to being lambasted.

Like I literally struggled to enjoy the story at multiple points because there was only so much I could take of the characters I knew and loved being raked over coals constantly while barely getting to defend themselves or be defended by the narrative so like. It was just fucking depressing and a little infuriating to read exRID/OP

[reineyday]

the way both touya and enji have moments in canon where they say "look at me" but it's like,

touya who gets neglected and burns alive bc he wants his father's love and ackmowledgement and he has to fight for every little scrap of attention until the very end where he's in a glass tube getting gawked at by his entire family like the narrative is doing malicious compliance to him, desperate for attention to the point that he was intent on burning himself to death again just to get some

versus

enji who just gets given all the attention easily both in-universe and from the narrative as the todofam story slowly just becomes about his atonement, even tho he was ruining his family bc of that greed and jealousy, and other characters look at him to the point that it feels like they've strayed from their own characters in order to lift up endeavor's (i'm thinking about hawks, inasa and natsuo to a lesser extent)

--this parallel will always make me ill. 🙃

[hopeswriting]

daily life arc miura haru. does anyone know who i'm talking about. do you guys remember her. i still can't believe what happened to her 😔

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Asunder

slow-paced high fantasy

a woman who has a contract with an eldritch entity allowing her to see the dead & survives by taking various jobs

when a job searching for stranded smugglers in a cave goes wrong, she ends up with the soul of a dying stranger bound to her shadow

along with a scholar and her old childhood friend, they travel to his home country to find a way to unbind him and save them both

dark fantasy world with gods, demonic entities, arcane magic, and semi-sentient beasts used as transport

[pigglepiephi]

Maybe if they had had an Inception-style end to the last ep of 4 Minutes, where you didn’t know for sure if Tyme & Great were still in the ‘4 minutes experience’ or not, then maybe, just maybe, some part of that last episode would have made sense…

[scoliosisgoblin]

Which version of Rick is your fav?

it's so hard for me to choose tbh. HOWEVER, I'd say Evil Rick

then I'd say it's C-137 and Memory Rick

I love how pathetic™ Evil Rick really is tbh. love that he's being controlled by his Morty. can you guess who my favorite Morty is?

[radicalhoodie]

figured i'd give this a proper post on the main blog since i updated it

i made a game!! play it here for free!! put edgeworth as your name!!! or nothing at all!!!!!

it's a pretty silly and short story i worked on (with a little help from my friends for some stuff<3) for velox fabula's game jam!! it was made in ten days (sans the update... which i forgot to do until recently) and with the theme of unreliable narrator :)

"after much wait, your old friend from high school finally replies to your letter and agrees to meet you for coffee at the local bar! reconnect with him [in a very specific italian experience] and be besties again!! or don't!!!"

featuring:

3 cgs!!!!!!!! (my favourite is on the route for the bad ends lol)

around 5k words

namable protagonist

no pronouns!!! do not be percieved!!!!!!

partial voice acting

an original soundtrack!!

4 endings

and marcello/marzo ig (the only romance/friendship option)

i go a bit more in detail about the stuff in the update in this devlog!

anyway, here's marzo (left) and giò (right) with a vespa :)

[kacievvbbbb]

I'm not sure they were necessarily trying to imply Klaus and Allison always had that relationship. They've been living together for 5 years by the time we catch up with them, only three of which he was sober. That leaves him with two years of getting into trouble and asking Allison for help. For all we know that's exactly how he came to live in her basement in the first place.

It would have really helped if s4 hadn't wasted so much time on useless storylines and focused on the character relationships instead... The Klaus/Allison/Claire dynamic was so interesting, I wanted to see more of them.

I thought that was the route they were going down as well and I enjoyed that relationship. The gaslighting I feel was mainly from the argument they had while Klaus was speaking of the last 5 years Allison was saying that she had been dealing with his shit since they were kids and she was always the one dealing with it which is just not substantiated by anything from the previous seasons. Also the flash back to when they were kids with the Jennifer Incident they purposefully add a little scene of teen allison corraling a drunk/high teen Klaus, trying to back up her earlier assertions. Which is just weird. And I would have honestly preferred if they just focused on the 5 years they've spent relying on each other and building a new sibling relationship that would have given the argument more impact on both sides I think.

I agree the Klaus/Allison/Claire dynamic was really fun and I really enjoyed it but it honestly felt like it went nowhere. Klaus became an extreme germaphobe got his powers back blew up at allison they get in a fight and then she saves him that's so surface level of the complex family dynamics we got a glimpse at especially with Ray walking out and Allison's stalled movie career. it was just such a missed opportunity. I'd have liked to have all the siblings interact with the kids more really show that this new life they've built for themselves isn't all bad and that further complicates the decisions characters have to make. the birthday party scene was really great to me and I wish we could have seen more like it.

[spacedlexi]

speaking of fucked up overly hated female twdg characters i find it Super Interesting how people will say carver was the best villain in the whole series, but when lilly is literally just a successful carver (iron fist leader of a community turning children into soldiers) suddenly shes a bad/lame villain for some reason 🤔

[edwinas]

A character study of Lemon

A companion piece to these posts I & II, inspired by @books-are-my-life-stuff gifs

“I was intentionally getting in [Mash’s] way so he wouldn’t reach the goal. Professor Lucci asked me to. He told me he would pass me if I got in his way. My family is poor, and I desperately wanted to be accepted for their sake.” — Lemon, episode 2 “I reached out thinking even scum can be useful, but you bit the hand that fed you. Is your stupidity inherited from your parents? No wonder you have a miserable life.” — Lucci, episode 2

Magic determines one's social status so poor families with average to low magical abilities were seen as sub-human and treated as such (see the views of Wirth Madl, Abel, Carpaccio, Levi etc). "The strong have the right to take from the weak" is a philosophy that many magic users believed in, especially the elite. So Lemon was used to being dismissed and given crumbs. Street-smart out of necessity, she was resigned to cheating and lying for her family because society would never give her a fair chance. The guilt ate at her but survival came first.

Something shifted when she met Mash. He came back for her at the risk of not passing the exam. He put his future in jeopardy for her. For the first time ever, Lemon mattered.

For me that's also why Lemon falls for him. Here is a boy who came back for her. No one had done that. As the eldest daughter, Lemon had to be the responsible and dependable one. She took care of others. Mash was the first one who came back.

Mash's motivation to enter Easton Academy and become a divine visionary struck a chord with Lemon because she also entered Easton Academy for her family. She was willing to cheat to get ahead while Mash, who's very existence challenged the status quo, played by the rules and won. He inspired Lemon to live life on her terms, to allow herself to dream and not settle anymore.

Lemon is also deeply grateful to Walhberg who accepted her into Easton Academy despite her cheating. The strongest wizard saw something in her and gave her the chance she desperately needed. Knowing the immense luck she had, Lemon threw herself into her studies, took extra credit, was part of many clubs. While in canon Lemon has "Mash tunnel vision", for me she is is very much aware of who she is, where she is and the opportunities offered by Easton Academy.

As said in my previous post, Lemon tries her best to give back to Easton Academy by tutoring juniors, volunteering, organising school events etc. Her disposition brings people together, like in the Innocent Zero fight.

A downside to having a jam packed schedule is that Lemon does not take time to rest. She is always pushing herself to make the most of every minute, at the expense of her health. She does not listen to her body and eventually suffers burn outs.

The paraphrased quote from Aera's gifset "Dear young maiden, Fall in love for life is short and time wait for no one" encapsulates who Lemon is to me.

We see how obsessed Lemon is with Mash and that is 100000% for comedic effect. But I also see it as a window into who Lemon is. She is someone who cares so deeply and is fully committed, be it Mash or the welfare of magical creatures. There is no in-between and that is how Lemon approaches life.

In this post I wrote "lemon knew binding magic (chapter 2 & 126) and training animals with kindness (chapter 126) so she settles on care for magical creatures." I still stand by Lemon choosing this field but she does so because she loves it. As explained above, I don't see Lemon settling anymore, especially for something as important as her career. She still does her research, goes to university and career fairs, shadows people who's jobs interest her, reviews career progression potential and income etc. She chooses studies of magical creatures.

Lemon has always been brave and Easton Academy, including her friends, have inspired her to be bolder. To keep going despite all the rejection. No attempt is futile. The world was saved thanks to ordinary people coming together. Lemon saved Mash (and the world) by physically shielding him, no magic involved. She follows her heart and wants to live a life without regret. So she applies to the most prestigious universities and most competitive programs. She puts in the work.

For me Lemon is not magically inclined. She stays up late, reviews her flash cards at lunch, tapes her notes to the bathroom mirror to revise while brushing her teeth. She works hard. She is not and will never be a girlbossTM to me. There will be no radical transformation into a snarky "not like other girls" overpowered character. Lemon is very aware of her limitations. She will never be as powerful as Dot or Lance or even Finn. She will never be as strong as Mash. Surrounded by such incredible people, she grapples with insecurities, doubt and even jealousy but life goes on. She tries to do the best with what she has got. She remains the sweet girl who doesn't let Mash finish his choux creams because their senior is at the hospital.