#not primarily a shipping post

[zuko-always-lies]

One thing that newer Azula fans might not appreciate is how much the perspective on Mai and Azula's relationship has shifted over the past few years. Between the shows' ending and 2021 or so, it was extremely common for postwar fics, even Azula redemption fics, to depict Mai hating Azula with power of 1000 suns and never being the slightest bit open to having any sort of relationship with Azula other than trying to stab her. For instance, Maizula had only a handful of fics on fanfiction.net, while Tyzula had hundreds.

A lot of my early posts on this account were me going "wait, Mai eternally hating Azula doesn't make much sense."

[aroaceleovaldez]

i stand by that a better, more sensible, and more intriguing plot for TSATS would have been, instead of retconning literally everything:

Bob is dead (because he was very explicitly absorbed/killed by Tartarus Himself in House of Hades, alongside Damasen), and nobody is going into Tartarus to save him. He made his sacrifice and is gone. However. Remember how the Titans, including Bob, were just kind of kicking around for several years? Particularly. On a cruise ship full of mortals. And Bob happened to be kicking around in general for an extra year versus all the other Titans. And he mythologically sometimes has a mortal demigod son who partook in the Calydonian Boar Hunt (Dryas of Calydon). Yeah.

So turns out, Bob/Iapetus leaves behind a demigod (demititan?) child. And because Nico was pretty much his only friend, he named Nico his child's godfather. And while he's not being left in charge of the child, as a son of Hades and godfather to this kid, Nico is duty-bound to fulfill Bob's last will and go find this like 2 year old to make sure they're safe. So Nico has to undertake this very unusual quest (that raises many questions, such as "demititans are a thing?" and "DOES THIS MEAN THERE'S POTENTIALLY MORE-?!" and "SHOULD WE BE CONCERNED ABOUT THIS?") and is kind of freaking out because. He's the son of Hades! He's notoriously bad with living things, and animals, and definitely small children! Even if he does find this kid and assure they're safe, he is the last person who should be undergoing any kind of quest involving even potentially having to babysit. Fortunately, his boyfriend is the human embodiment of sunshine and calmness and good vibes, and also once helped a nymph give birth, so he feels Marginally More Confident in theoretical demititan babysitting and offers to come along on this Epic Journey of Figuring Out What In Hades' Name Is Up With This Demititan Baby Business.

Proceed with wholesome epic shenanigans quest of Nico and Will scurrying around trying to locate this random OP baby while Nico has an existential crisis about the nature of his powers because he doesn't want to let Bob down! Both for Hades Kid Honor Reasons and because Bob was his friend! But what if he's destined to fail this quest just because of who he is? Because he's simply not built for hanging out with the living/mortals? And Will reassuring him that He Will Probably Not Traumatize The Weird OP Titan Baby And It'll Be Fine, and simultaneously getting a peek into the weird other life Nico leads hanging out with immortals much more than the average demigod, which Nico considers his norm. Bonus shenanigans of both of them getting caught off-guard and culture shocked from where each other's respective worlds (Nico's mostly-immortal versus Will's mostly-mortal) cross over and learning to navigate those for each other - Nico finally starting to make some mortal connections and get glimpses at modern mortal American life, and Will trying not to get his brain literally incinerated while Nico's happily casually catching up with some of his old friends who happen to be literal gods.

[lesbianralzarek]

trying to not complain about the discrepancy between how much content fictional women and poc have vs the white dudes in every fucking fandom im in, because no one owes me fanart/fic and i can make shit myself, but holy fuck can any of you name a woman?

[autisticburnham]

The Supernatural fandom has this term, the Ghostfacers Effect, named after the episode Ghostfacers, which is presented as though it is an episode of the in universe Ghostfacers webseries where some dweebs do your average real life ghost hunting bullshit. In the episode Sam and Dean are both swearing up a storm using real swear words, not the "frig" they typically otherwise use, and are bleeped out with the Ghostfacers logo covering their mouths the way they do in reality TV. The Ghostfacers Effect then refers to the idea that we the audience do not see the true story of what is happening in universe but instead an unreliable recounting of the true story, which is why we typically hear "frig" despite knowing the characters actually say "fuck."

Which, ignoring the concept of a story "really" happening in a way disconnected from the canon because that's a can of worms I do not want to touch right now, is generally a good explanation for why characters who you would reasonably expect to swear don't. And you can of course apply this to any character and say that even if they don't swear in canon, you know they do really.

You could say Captain Kirk always swears as much as he does in The Voyage Home, we the audience just aren't being told the truth about it usually. But I reject this notion. The point of this post, why I explained the Ghostfacers Effect, is to say I refuse to believe it in relation to Captain Kirk. The Voyage Home is an outlier which should not be counted and 99% of the time the most scathing insult Captain Kirk will level you with genuinely is "go climb a tree."

[sweetpapercroissant]

i don’t get the appeal of an incest ship if you’re only ever going to focus on the good romantic feelings and not the icky negative ones. the resentment the feeling of being trapped shackled wanting out and away from the person who knows so much too much about you since before you even knew to not allow it but at the same time you can’t imagine living in a world without them being away is like tearing a limb a piece of your soul you will never again be complete without them. no one else will ever understand you the way they do no one else will ever get so deep under your skin and you may hate it but you hate the thought of them not being there even more you can’t stand to see anyone else get to a part of them you didn’t and even worse when they get it before you. you push and you push and you push but when they let go it’s like you’re free falling and it doesn’t matter how far away you run you will never be far enough away because you carry them inside you everywhere you go. you tell yourself you want nothing more than to get away but they’re the only home you will ever have and you won’t ever let anyone get that close you’re already moulded to only fit in perfectly with them and you didn’t have a choice but this is who you are. there’s nothing you could do to make them let you go but there’s nothing you could do to make them let you go. you want to be so close to them you want to merge your bodies into one you hate how crowded you feel when they’re in the same room like they’re sucking in all the air and there isn’t any left for you and you want to get away so you can just breathe but you don’t even want to breathe in the air that hasn’t passed through their lungs first you hate that you feel this way you wish you could claw it out of your veins but then who would you be without it without them you want so much and it’s so ugly and you’re ashamed of how raw that need is how you want every part the good the bad the human you wish none of this had ever happened you feel dirty you never even had a chance to find something else be something else but then you look over and you love them so much so much and when it comes down to it nothing else was ever going to be enough for you anyway.

[winepresswrath]

Oh so you are one of the jiang' soupbot' yanli who will throw jiang cheng under the bus for little xianxian. Cool

this like the time someone accused me of only caring about Wei Wuxian's feelings. thank you for the laugh anon but also are you lost.

[moongothic]

The bizarre duality of like... not wanting to call anyone over the age of 25 """old""" (see "old man yaoi" when the characters are like 35) as if the second you turn 26 you become a 'wrinkly raisin that's falling apart who might as well go plan your funeral already', because I feel like that can enforce a negative mindset about life etc in ways I don't have the brain cells to summarize rn

But also, in a culture where youth is worshipped so much I find this odd comfort in considdering myself "old" (even when I'm not even 30 quite yet), as if I'm kind of reclaiming it? Because being """old""" isn't a bad thing, it's not something to fear or shun, it's just one of the two absolute inevitabilities of existence

But also I feel like by calling myself """old""" rn I'm just helping warp people's perceptions of what the average adult is/looks like. Like we go from young adults to just regular ass adults to middle aged adults etc etc. And I feel like people mentally skip that middle portion for characters that aren't even middle aged yet. And it's kinda sad?

[batsplat]

casey also talks about sepang 2015 what do you think of that

oh in that podcast? uh... lemme listen again...

yeah idk it's not really anything new I'd say? he's said basically all the same stuff in more interesting and extensive ways elsewhere. I think casey inevitably has a very 'well feuding is bad and helps nobody' point of view, has expressed that before in the past, does it here again, and he's also drawn a parallel between himself and marc on several occasions. which... well, of course there's similarities in terms of public discourse or whatever, but the parallel really falls apart whenever casey argues the feuds cost valentino. like, I do think it's sometimes important to just. keep in mind. it's interesting that casey draws this comparison in his mind but that doesn't necessarily means he's right about this. I'm not sure how you'd argue that starting a feud with casey cost valentino anything competitively? you can argue it didn't help him I guess, and then we can have a debate about the ins and outs of the 2008 season. we can also have an argument that in a hypothetical world where casey isn't ill in 2009, valentino doesn't break his leg and casey isn't on a piece of junk in 2010, and valentino isn't on a piece of junk in 2011-12, then actually maybe valentino sparking open animosity with casey COULD have cost him. but we don't know that! didn't happen! I wish we could have found out, but we never got the chance! as it stands, the tally on this is pretty straightforward: casey won the title when things were reasonably civil between them in 2007, and valentino took control of the following season at the exact moment he worsened the relationship between the pair of them in 2008. obviously, it's all more complicated than that and casey would of course argue laguna didn't negatively affect his subsequent performances... but it certainly didn't help them. like, at the very worst valentino escalating tensions in 2008 is a complete net neutral. after 2009, them being bitchy to each other every other tuesday was completely competitively irrelevant beyond maybe affecting how they approached occasionally fighting for a podium position. hey, maybe casey used that feud to fire himself up through sheer spite throughout the later stages of his career, but that doesn't actually support his anti-feud stance - it's basically the exact same thing as what valentino does. they're both quite similar in that regard! always so hungry to prove a point, to show how someone else is wrong. kinda half the point with this feuding business is to get yourself going, get yourself motivated, yeah. he straight up openly admits to using yamaha's repeat rejection of him as a way of giving himself motivation, and at the end of the day that's really not all that different?

anyway, what else does casey say... oh yeah, that him and the other aliens were already kinda prepared for this and had learned vale's tricks. that valentino had only been able to get into the minds of the previous generation. welllllll *wiggles hand* sure, I mean, he did clearly have to change his approach... he couldn't just use the exact same playbook to get to them, either on-track or off-track. but that's why he did change up the playbook... again, whether you want to believe valentino won his final two titles 'in the head' rather than just through pure pace kinda depends on how you assess the evidence, but it is at the very least a debate. and, y'know, it's always worth remembering that valentino's most important mind games with casey didn't happen in a press conference... it was on the track. and the on-track stuff really is just embedded in how valentino approaches winning. speaking of aliens, this is what dani and jorge have said:

like, valentino's entire approach to his riding, even to the way he's setting his bike up, is deliberately about directly fucking with you... he's not actually always trying to be faster than you as much as he's trying to give himself the tools to make your life miserable, to pressure you into mistakes, etc etc... and again, especially with casey (if anything because he was so mentally sturdy), the off-track stuff was really just window dressing. (I know they bicker a lot after 2009 but it's just so fundamentally irrelevant to actual on-track competition.) so you can be aware of those tricks, but it also doesn't necessarily help you when someone's being nasty to you on-track in a way you just fully do not enjoy. which is what it was like for casey! for casey, a lot of this comes back to the truly unpleasant context of how he was perceived by the public, how he was treated as mentally weak or 'broken' or whatever partly because he had the misfortune of coming up against a bloke who had the reputation for breaking rivals. I think it's quite natural to end up with a bit of a hardliner 'actually I've never been mentally affected by a result in my life' stance - and of course casey is a lot tougher than a lot of people give him credit for. that being said. sometimes your rivals affect you, shit happens, it's part of the game. it's fundamentally a nice idea to think that valentino's tactics weren't just morally wrong but also ineffective, which is kind of the appeal of this narrative, right? you want to believe you're above that, you want to believe you were adequately prepared and wise to valentino's tactic. it's unsurprising and understandable that casey does tend to tell the story that way, but again it's *wiggles hand* also hard to describe it as completely factual

uh. what else. oh I'm thrilled casey does canonically know valentino and marc were friends, he has said he wasn't following motogp too much during that time period so you couldn't be sure of that. does this mean anything? does it tell you anything? well, no, but it's just a pleasing thought to me. I like that. oh also 'provoking particularly aggressive riders isn't a good idea' is kinda a funny take from casey? like, he of all people would hate the idea of being cowed by someone's reputation like that... casey's right that provoking fast riders can potentially be dangerous, but y'know I do think that's probably not news to anyone almost nine years later. um. that's all I've got I think

[yukipri]

The grind is FINALLY over!!!!

Ngl Empire is not my department in SW, and prior to playing SWGOH I would not have been able to name the Executor or Admiral Piett etc etc. However, my desire to remain sitting at No. 2 in my fleet shard won out, and made the Executor my priority farm😂

It does help that most of the farm were bounty hunters, including Boba and Bossk, who I wanted to level up anyway.

Anyway, I know it'll still take a few months of collecting shards to max it (I paid enough crystals to get it to 5* no more💀), but for now, Satisfaction!

My next big goal is going to be GAS, which I've about finished collecting shards of all requirements for. But it'll take me a while to get them up to relics, and before that, I want to prioritize beefing up my CLS team. They're all 7*s but I wasn't giving them much love.

(I also desperately want to relic up my clones, who are currently sitting at G12, but I feel like I should prioritize at least getting GAS, since I know he takes a while to collect shards afterwards...)

I feel like I should also go back and get the Revans, but I'm kinda wary bc I feel like they're prime targets for the next Lightspeed Bundles. Which. I've been getting them, and they're a great deal and useful, but. Makes putting the time and effort into some things feel stupid.

Anyway, roughly half a year? maybe? since starting SWGOH and here we are lmao

[mirokuna-hime]

Saw someone starting this discussion on twitter about who you believe will die before bsd ends and I just don't see Dazai or Chuuya dying.

Having a depressed character die in your work, especially if it's a main character, is one of the worst decisions you can make. Their development should always push them towards a path of healing and away from being actively or passively wanting to die even if they still struggle mentally and always will.

As for Chuuya, his death makes even less sense, because often one character's death is used to propell another characters development forward.

Dazai lost Odazaku already for this, so Chuuya dying would not only be redundant, but most likely have the opposite effect on Dazai, because it just reinforces the believe that everyone is gonna leave him in some way or another. Chuuyas death would make Dazai worse, possibly even fuck over all of his development to this point.

Chuuya is one of the people meant to be alive with him especially under the consideration Chuuya was literally made for Dazai. They're meant to stay alive into old age and make the nurses lives in an old people's home hell with their dumb shit. They aren't getting rid of each other.

As for people who will most likely die: Bye Mori, you will not be missed

[pinazee]

Okay, i have some thoughts on the Spock/Chapel thing so spoilers, obvi.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but i dont think Chapel did anything that wrong. Yeah, she probably should have communicated with Spock better. He’s supposed to be her best friend at the very least, she should want to tell him. She likes Spock, we know she wants to be with him despite what she said to Boimler about not wanting to influence him. she didn’t say we’re through, though. She said, if i need to leave you, i wont fight it. Which to me, sounds like if it comes down to us or me, i choose me. Which she absolutely should! This is her dream! If the long distance was going to get in the way of her happiness, then they probably weren’t ready to commit anyways.

But I understand Spocks perspective too. He is, basically, a teenager when it comes to emotions. Living with them is different than suppressing them like hes been taught his whole life. We know vulcan emotions are stronger than humans too. His happiness must be like ecstasy for us. That excitement of a budding romance must feel like the epitome of love. When his heart is broken it must feel like being ripped in two. As such he put everything into this relationship. In his own song he admits he changed for her because he thought they were on the same page. He blames himself for turning his back on his disciplines for her. So you guys, please don’t change who you are for someone. Especially when that someone loves you for who you are, like Chapel did.

I hope they don’t use this for Spock to go full vulcan. I feel like he could use a better excuse than because he got dumped from a weeks old relationship. Like maybe he goes a little crazy in the heat of battle and they lose someone because of it? Idk.

But i love this development for Chapel. I’ve been hoping for her to get some non-spock related content. Though, now i fear they’re going to make it about her love for korby, which we know will come. I just hope its not right away and they let her be all smart and free for a bit. And more scenes with Ortegas or M’Benga. I love their dynamic. And same with Spock. I want more scenes with him and the other crew.

Overall, I don’t really blame either of them. Chapel should’ve communicated more directly and Spock shouldn’t have changed who he was for her and put so much pressure on it.

[rerenikos-sweetheart]

me with my f/os

[afrenomes]

Literally the second after we put up our Harris-Walz lawn sign, some dude walked by and said “Wow, can I wipe my ass with that?”

Wow, real classy, dude. He must be fun at parties 🙄

[userpreviouslyknownasbakudeku]

folks sorry if this kills the mystery but i want to clarify that I'm not really a hater anymore. i don't have much of an opinion at all since I haven't been caught up on the series in years. anyways I admit to loving toxic gays now so

[rainbowangel110]

I think I have a type.....

Lol help :)

[gay-mike-wheeler]

okay look i get that it’s difficult to get new characters involved in the supernatural plot in stranger things since obviously they need to be caught up on everything first. but the fact is eddie and argyle were present all season which. yes eddie was plot relevant and argyle was fun and occasionally helpful but. we don’t see vickie at all.

like okay let me list all the scenes she was in (at least the ones that i remember please lmk if i missed something i’ll edit the post)

robin and steve talk about vickie in the car on the way to the sports event(?)

vickie agrees that tammy thompson sings like a muppet

robin sees vickie and her boyfriend at the weapons store

robin and vickie make sandwiches together

like. the duffers know how to introduce and get people invested in new characters but with vickie they quite literally did not bother. and i guess you have to wonder why that is (we can all deduce the reason why).