#no matter the storyline

[chilewithcarnage]

i want to be able to say I don't want miles and gwen to be together without hoteps and anti miscegenation incels agreeing with me aww

[buttercupbuck]

"you know, my therapist says everyone needs a safe space, a place where you can fully be yourself"

[image description: 2 large gifs of evan buckley and eddie diaz from 9-1-1.

gif 1: from season 6 episode 12. in the diaz home, eddie (out of frame) watches buck sleep on his couch, his arm draped across the sofa.

gif 2: from season 7 episode 5. at buck's apartment, the camera pans as eddie, holding his phone, turns to face buck as buck rounds the corner of his kitchen island.

/end ID]

[anintrovertedechoe]

just played through the mammon date card. what if i die.

in the date event it’s established that the two of you are already dating (or at least romantically involved) and,,,holy SHIT???

he becomes SO much less shy and bashful about things i asked him to make out out and this was his response:

like he’s so much more chill about flirty things and even reciprocates (“…just remember—you started this.” HELLO???) and the way he still hasn’t changed at all and is still your bestest friend in the entire world at the end of the day. im in love actually.

there’s a few other things too that made me giggle and kick my feet (lmk if you guys want screenshots or like a screen recording of the date or something) but overall it just made me realize like,,,that’s my boyfriend guys. my man forreal.

also his voice lines are SO soft??? he sounds,,,SO cute???

the cuddling voicelines???? the one where he tells you to “c’mere”?????

what if i die what if i die what if i die what if i-

going to kill myself right now so i can see him in the devildom holy SHIT.

mammon ilu. never change please.

[idontmindifuforgetme]

I love the Vegas plot in Sex and the City where Samantha can never ascertain whether Richard cheated or not, but decides to leave him anyway bc it doesn’t matter……… the whole thing is about walking away when you realize a relationship has run its course, in complete opposition to Carrie running back to Big despite his very glaring imperfections . Like Samantha just walked tf away. She realized she did not want to waste her time agonizing over whether he would cheat in the future, and even if he came correct she owed herself the peace of mind not to stay w a man she can never trust again. And that’s valid

[fairycosmos]

happy place by emily henry

[mayabishopgold]

Maya & Carina | Station 19 - Andrew's passing

Give me the guilt. Give me the blame. Give me the part that stings the most. Okay? Let me hold on to it for a little while. And when you're feeling a little stronger, you can have it all back.

[justablognothingweirdhere]

Also also, while I’m here, why tf did they spend all that time having Klaus be so insistent on staying sober in the beginning of the season, just to have him relapse immediately after getting his powers back? Yk what would’ve actually been interesting? Having Klaus decide that he’s worked too hard for his sobriety to just give it up and try to navigate using his powers while sober (which is probably something he hasn’t had to really do since he was a child).

[butchvamp]

i already said it but it does really frustrate me how little agency Taash has and the more i think about it the more insidious it gets. again their entire story revolves around Rook making choices for them, and they're also consistently talked down to by other characters, even if those characters are depicted as being friendly or nice. Isabela treats them like a child despite Taash being a very accomplished dragon hunter with the lords (which we see, repeatedly, when fighting the blighted dragons! Taash is not a child), and of course there's their mother (at least this is intentional) and both her and Isabela go behind Taash's back to throw them in with Rook, without asking for their input. Isabela just assumes without even trying to discuss it with Taash separate from their mother, despite seemingly being aware of the two's strained relationship... and from there Isabela continues to make unnecessary comments to Taash whenever you visit the hall of valor with them.

even Flynn, the nonbinary grey warden you meet in the wetlands, condescends to them about the Qun when discussing their gender, and Taash isn't allowed to disagree with them (apparently they give Flynn a Look but ultimately don't press the issue) and Flynn is depicted as being helpful in this discussion. Rook lectures them about gender and their own culture; their entire narrative revolves around Other People telling them what to do and how to feel-- it's obviously meant to be Bad when Taash's mother does it, because she (the Qun) is oppressive, but otherwise the game seems to be fine when it's Rook or literally anyone else doing it, because we're the enlightened Good Guys, and Taash is just helpless and confused and so oppressed. of course, i don't think it's bad for Rook to discuss these things with Taash or give them gentle suggestions, and i don't even hate the potential gender discussion you can have with a trans Rook; and for the record, their mother does treat them poorly. but we can't ignore the way Taash's repeated infantilization culminates in the player being the one to choose their culture for them in the end, because..?

well, the game clearly doesn't think Taash is capable of doing it themselves. at one point Taash links the ropes they wear for the Qun to the ones the antaam used to tie down a dragon and "blight" them. even if i'm feeling gracious and say that Weekes really meant that womanhood & their mother's expectations are restricting, they actively chose to use the ropes of the Qun to make this comparison, and so are also implying here that their mother teaching them the Qun has tied them down and "blighted" them-- that the Qun has "infected" their thinking and is as bad as the blight (this is also implied in the previous discussion with Flynn). this is.... really racist. it takes Rook and their, again, "enlightened" (white) ideas about gender to get through to Taash, nevermind that the Qun has its own ideas around gender that just get shouted down or completely ignored. the racism here results in the narrative contradicting itself, considering one of the first things Taash says is "you don't get to tell me who i am" but... Rook does, in the end, because intentional or not the game is clearly convinced that a person like Taash needs someone from outside of their and their mother's culture (aka free of "blight") to come tell them what's best for them.... 🤔 hm! and while it's true you can choose for them to align with the qunari in the end, that doesn't mitigate all of the heinous and racist writing that leads up to that choice (and that the choice itself is racist. and you have to make it twice!)

of course we can say that Rook makes choices for all of the companions, this is true, but it's obvious that none of the other companions' choices are in the same ballpark, we aren't directly deciding something about their identity, and none of them lack agency to the same extent as Taash. we can even argue that they need Rook to explain gender to them, no one else ever has-- well, sure. the thing with Taash is that some parts of their story, when removed from context, are perfectly fine. i'm not criticizing the way Taash talks or acts or "does gender," all of which are things some people may connect to for various reasons (all of our experiences are different) but unfortunately we cannot discuss any of this without addressing the racism that is so thoroughly baked into every aspect of their character.

i criticized Taash for being "childlike" previously and that really wasn't the right phrasing-- i don't think that Taash themselves is childlike, it has nothing to do with them-- it's the way the narrative treats them, the way other characters talk down to them, how it takes away their autonomy & forces us to go along with it, and ultimately educate them and "save" them, and i think it's worth interrogating why Taash, of all the companions, is specifically depicted this way (it's racism).

[cnl0400]

Obviously normally a gacha game will never make drastic changes to their characters, and Simeon has the 'appeal' of being marketed as an angel, but I just don't like how they are trying to make him an angel again? Like he wants to be an angel because of Raphael/Luke now, not because of any real attachement to the CR. Hell, even If he were to made It back to being a archangel, he would just be Michael's errant boy, he would still be demoted, and every problem he had with the CR before being turned in a human would still be there, he would be in square one again I guess.

Like even If I don't like human!Simeon, in the Devilgram Coffee Someday, he talks about how he dreams of opening a cafetería and how he never thought an angel could 'dream of something like that' (this being in the NB timeline, a obvious reference of him opening the Angel's Halo in OGS3) Is he just suposse to abandone his dream like that? To return to the Celestial Realm just for the sake of Raphael & Luke? I do wonder... Is there really a life for Simeon in the Celestial Realm?

[circle-of-the-spores]

Genuinely how fucking dare Larian pat themselves on the back for their portrayal of male victims of abuse in BG3 when Wyll's fuckass storyline exists. When they sexualise his abusive relationship with a woman who publicly treats him like a dog. When they allow players to sleep with her and write her as some kinda sexy domme. When they include her in so much of his official content that she's literally on the cover art for the game and Karlach isn't.

Astarion gets to kill Cazador and has a poignant animation where he screams and weeps with sorrow over his body because he's confronting everything that happened to him and accepting that it's finally, truly over. What does Wyll get upon breaking his pact with Mizora? She literally fucking stays at camp right next to his tent and WILL NOT LEAVE. You can't even harm her. Where's Wyll's scene of getting his vengeance for the torment he's endured, for the hell she's put him through since she took advantage of him at 17?

Because who cares about male abuse victims if the abuser is a """hot""" woman? Because who cares about male abuse victims when they're black men in a historically white genre?

Why doesn't Wyll's abuse matter?

[corpocyborg]

so like... the Qun being reveled to be pro-trans in DAI makes zero sense... considering both sten & the arishok are shown to believe strongly in gender roles... and that sten even goes as far as to say that a person can never be anything other than what they're born and that a fisherman who tries to become a merchant will never be a real merchant and will only ever be a fisherman pretending to be a merchant... like... ?????

I mean i get wanting iron bull to be pro-trans himself but wouldn't it make way more sense for that to be something he actually dislikes about the Qun... and then it would actually create tension in his storyline between his own viewpoints & agency and the messages he's learned from the qun and partially actually believes and has partially been forced to believe through literal indoctrination and abuse... and therefore whether he becomes tal-vashoth or not could actually be something that matters instead of just a meaningless pseudo-choice...

[golden-lovers]

btw never let them make you forget that in the end, it's because of kota ibushi. kenny went to japan and truly kicked off his wrestling career there because of ibushi. they were called the golden lovers because ibushi's nickname is the golden star. the golden elite is also based on ibushi's nickname. if you erase the side of kenny's character that is so intrinsically built upon ibushi's presence in his life, you're erasing an essential part of what makes kenny so great in the first place.

[lyriumsings]

The assumptions people are making on Veilguard bc ALL decisions won’t carry over are insane to me “OH so morrigan won’t mention her ONLY SON!! or her roMANCE??”. We have no idea what context or capacity she’s going to be in the game? In skyhold, she stayed at skyhold for a while, so it made sense to chat her up and ask about her life. Also Kieran was THERE bc he was TEN. Kieran is now in his twenties and most likely living his own life. If we’re saving the world and fighting darkspawn WHY would her grown ass son come up? Esp when she doesn’t even know Rook?? Like i would understand if we had veilguard in our hands and people were complaining bc Morrigan actually had dialogue invalidating their canon but for fuck’s sake the game isn’t even out yet. They’re saying it doesn’t matter as in it’s not gonna come up bc Rook is busy doing other shit, rather than quizzing characters who aren’t companions on their lives. “What about Varric”. Varric seems to have a pre-established relationship with Rook which means you can headcanon that they already had the talk about Varric’s life story considering he called them his “second in command”. Like cancel your preorders, preorder, do whatever you want no one on the internet is the boss of you. But oh my fucking god complaining about something you don’t even fully know about is already getting so old. Best case scenario, you’re right and i guess your bitching is validated yay for you ig. Worst case, you’re wrong and like wasted so much time and energy bitching for nothing. Like I completely understand being upset the choices don’t carry over, it IS disappointing! But we don’t even KNOW what it’s going to affect if anything at all. It’s just so funny how everyone was like “it’s not about the Inquisitor” and now that the focus is confirmed to be pretty much entirely on Rook and the inquistor’s choices barely seem to matter in game and half of everybody has lost the plot bc of it and we don’t even actually know how this will affect the game like ????

[hyog-blog]

Emotionally this scene is so hot and intense. Zhuo Yichen demanding answers from Zhao Yuanzhou, for it, for him to make sense, especially in the context of his own (already awakened) feelings. And it must be driving our boy literally insane - the contradiction of Zhao Yuanzhou being his family's killer, the one demon who single-handedly destroyed the Demon Hunting Bureau (which was kind of everything ZYC ever knew at that point, that it was it, his life was just that, and his future as well).

And Zhu Yan destroyed not only his family, nearly cutting down the whole lineage apart from Zhuo YIchen, but also the organization, that was put to a halt and nearly ceased to exist, and he literally took whatever meaning Zhuo Yichen's life had and threw it in the gutters. So ZYC was not simply alone, with his whole family dead, but also meaningless and without a place to go, or to be, or something to do in this world, his ancestral home becoming a limbo of sorts, with him - a lost soul that had no means to move on, to start living again.

Because he was an anomaly from the start and whatever he would become - would always be in the context of demons, and BIng Yi, and murders, and investigations, and all that weird stuff that most people considered as nightmares personified. He was already a part of all that even when he didn't really know it himself, just following his brother around, just being, just going through that archive of books and writings about monsters that were actually his kin in a way (and when he learns that Bing Yi was, actually, a demon, in my headcanon that would have shattered his self-identity quite a bit, at least for some time).

And now we meet this boy, already a young man, who has single-handedly restored the Demon Hunting Bureau, finding it in himself to build his own meaning of life from scratch, getting back that place in life he thought was his and that it mattered, and that his service to all those people was what he's supposed to do (and probably, the only thing he could do being an anomaly, an outcast, someone stuck between the worlds of humans and demons). He has more in common with Wen Xiao than we might think upon meeting him first. She's a bridge between the demon and human worlds, but he's also a bridge, or rather a shield protecting the human world from the demons and, as he later learns, maybe simply protecting the innocent, be it demon or human, from the ones that want to hurt them, no matter what realms they come from.

And so he meets Zhao Yuanzhou having just figured things out for himself, and suddenly learns that the world, again, isn't so black-and-white and even that gruesome hideous murder had so many layers to it and wasn't at all what he perceived it to be. And the man who had been his dreamless nightmare all these years turned out to be a whimsical creature that only appeared to be dangerous when he first saw him, yet possessed no killer intent whatsoever. And in fact, turned out to be a protector as well, trying to protect everyone from himself first and foremost.

And he watches this gorgeous mysterious man, as complex as he is, getting close to Wen Xiao, whom Zhuo Yichen adores more than any other woman in this world (emphasis on woman) and he already has feelings for Zhao Yuanzhou as well, however suppressed and unfathomable they are for now, and he wants this man to give him answers, but whatever Zhao Yuanzhou can give him - it's not that. It's not the certainty of being bad enough to just kill him and be done with it, and it's definitely not a certainty that he deserves to be killed at all. And even not the certainty of him seeking death at this point, even though he continues to talk about it, but it's not so strong now, not to the extent that it was before, when Zhuo Yichen first met the Great Demon.

And this is where he finds himself that night, when Zhao Yuanzhou finally approaches him for that don't-hesitate-to-murder-me pep talk, and Wen Xiao is brought up, and his newly found will to live (or something close to it) through that affection only, but Zhuo Yichen doesn't know it yet, that it's not just that affection that keeps this demon from deteriorating into the depths of despair facing that goddamn horrifying blood moon all over again, that destroyed so many lives, including the life of this gorgeous young and so very sensitive Zhuo Yichen. That there's another type of affection and feeling and need that draws him to Zhuo Yichen that night in an attempt to protect him from this, as best as he can, giving him that immunity from the one-word spell, and asking him to live well no matter what happens next, knowing already that it might turn into a bloodbath at some point.

But this time ZYZ is as proactive as he can be, and he trusts Zhuo Yichen enough to kill him or at least to stay alive and protect Wen Xiao. It will be bad, he knows that much, but at this moment and in this instance he comes to spend this time of his own uncertainty with Zhuo Yichen not only because the boy needs this to stay strong and to realize what he's actually facing, but also because Zhao Yuanzhou needs him to stay strong himself with whatever ZYZ is facing again, with that glaring possibility of losing control and wreaking havoc everywhere, with this one young man, truly, being the only one who could stop him at this point. Kill him. Save him from this torment. And it's heavy, and Zhao Yuanzhou knows it is, so he goes for that talk and talks carefully around the very notion of ending his life, but also - about that and that only, sensing Zhuo Yichen's confusion as if it was truly his own, and that turmoil of emotions, and that need to understand, to make everything make sense somehow.

And so they talk. And do some magic. And none of them gets much relief after that conversation is over, but there's a certainty now. That at least this one boy would be protected from the Great Demon's magic. And if he has a chance of surviving the blood moon, than so does Wen Xiao (who probably is protected by their contract anyway, but Zhuo Yichen isn't, and it matters to Zhao Yuanznou already oh-so-much).

And Zhuo Yichen is left even more strained and confused than before because of all the contradictions he's facing, this demon acting not like an enemy, even though he's about to become one, but rather like a caring friend. And what is he supposed to make out of all that? When he simply doesn't, just doesn't want to kill him, no matter what.

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the reason that MTMTE remains the most defining, influential, and loved series in the IDW1 run is fundamentally because, despite its many flaws, MTMTE has the power to make you think and wonder about the world beyond what's shown on the page. The character relationships are so strongly developed that it's easy to care about the characters and easy to imagine further adventures they could go on. While the myriad dropped plotlines, underwritten/underutilized characters, and worldbuilding with weird implications are all fucking maddening at times... even if it makes you mad, MTMTE makes you mad because you care and it makes you want to immerse yourself into a world that feels like it's real beyond what's explicitly shown to you on the page. It's a sandbox of a story where there's so much fertile ground for pretty much anyone with any preferred character archetype, storyline, etc to dig in.

It's just... immersive. That's the best way I can put it. It feels like it could be real and it makes you want to spend more time in it than the constraints JRO had. It makes you want to know more about it and come up with theories on how/why things function or happen the way they do. That's why it's loved and that's why it's the best series in IDW1.

[aliferousdreamer]

so that's it huh