#old relationship drama/

[pharawee]

Joe, no matter whose body you're in, you're still you.

[disgruntleddemon]

unironically i think post cannon fiddauthor works pretty well with the tone of tbe show, cause they work well as a mix of sincere and comedic.

Like, they have all their messed up history together of course. But also, Ford comes across as a put together guy (even if he's not rly) with some moments of goofiness or weirdness, meanwhile McGucket's still very much old man McGucket, even if he's recovered a lot.

I can absolutely Ford walking around town with Fiddleford just chilling out on him backpack style. Or maybe McGucket says something incomprehensible and Ford's just like "you are so right"

Idk, they're just silly and fun to me

[tomurakii]

I like bloodweave. Okay. But I DON'T like the version of them in fanfic where Astarion is a dick and Gale is like. Whining and pleading for him to be emotionally vulnerable (or just. Nice to him) prior to the relationship being established. Because that is just not accurate. Gale needs the player to express interest in him during his weave-teaching scene before he even considers hitting on them properly. Gale is entirely resigned to his fate and needs someone else to pull him away from it. Gale only starts being sweet and romantic and devoted after you accept his love confession and give him hope for the future. Gale says fuck all and then slinks away to cry privately if you break up with him.

Like he isn't chasing after people lmao. He isn't dropping to his knees and crying about anything much less this dickhead he met a week ago. He is overwhelmingly passive about literally everything personal to him up to and including his own death (provided there are no casualties/there is a good reason) until after the player expresses that they care about him. Astarion is not doing that in any of these fics.

Like Gale is friendly and a dork and doesn't wanna get murdered but he fully has a suicide plan. He thought the artefacts would help him survive but he didn't believe he'd ever truly live again. If Gale confessed and Astarion said/did like one (1) mean thing afterward Gale's romance is closed off forever. He's wandering into the forest to cry. He's killing himself immediately. His fragile ego and self worth can't take it. You have to understand that when we joke about him being pathetic it's not bc he's like. Sopping wet and chasing people down and begging for a scrap of attention. It's because he craves affection but would literally rather die than ask or even hope for it until someone else forces that hope back into his serotonin-deficient tadpole brain.

[vaguely-concerned]

lucanis truly has a near terminal case of burned out golden child syndrome. caterina fucked both of these kids over so incredibly bad with the dynamic she enforced there, with illario being labled the perpetual fuckup kid where lucanis 'could do no (would never be allowed to do) wrong'. the way he admits in the first coffee date scene that the only thing that happened when he showed he could carry the weight of expectation was that more weight was added makes me so sad. you can hear it in caterina's voice in his intro mission that she's incredibly proud of him, but this is clearly a leandra and hawke situation where that pride never translates into relief or resolution or unconditional warmth or understanding or anything that really helps.

[coconutcows]

For real though what is up with the people currently doing media for Gen 1??? Can they really not think of any kind of teenage drama other than breakups to put the ghouls through???

Haunt Couture Cleo’s diary had her pointlessly break up with Deuce

The new book whatever it’s called broke up a bunch of couples Except Cleo and Deuce (most notably Draculaura and Clawd)

And now they established Clawdeen and Toralei as a couple for pride only for them to seemingly be broken up in the next issue

Like please give these characters a break and have them worry about midterms or outfits for the next big dance or the upcoming big sports game or racism again I beg you

[camellia-thea]

okay. just rambling here, but, i think armand took more than just the end of the interview away from daniel.

we got that little moment about that night, saying 'you asked me to' to louis. 'you asked me to take this from you, you could not live with it,' leading into, 'i look after you when you cannot look after yourself, i make those choices for you.'

we know that during the chase and devil's minion era, daniel was an addict, who was, by his own admission, slowly killing himself. he was also addicted to blood.

it's really not too far to make the jump, if devil's minion occurred, that armand made the choice to step in, in his own mind, for daniel's best interests. i know this isn't a unique jump to make, but; again with armand's "i look after him when he cannot look after himself" continual reiteration, i think it's a fair assumption.

he can also replace and blur memories, which makes the discussion of alice and paris -- why the dessert from that night? -- and how immediate and sincere his answer of "she wanted to say yes, but she didn't trust you. you hadn't given her a reason to." this could be the night he took them away, replaced himself with alice, planted something similar for her to start the relationship, then step back and watch it fall. and i think the thing that stands out there is just how tender he is while saying it. there's an undercurrent of something else entirely underneath, it isn't a dig at daniel in the moment, despite the pushing earlier in the scene.

and then in s1, when louis say to daniel, "i'd give it to you now." and the cut to armand, still in disguise, and his micro-expression of horror, the way he stiffens and looks away... and the little moment of what i read as conflict when daniel says no. his jump to "may i be excused?" i can't tell in the moment, if he's horrified about the offer itself, the fact that it is louis offering to turn daniel rather than himself, or the fact that daniel denies it. because i don't think armand could actually let daniel die if this was the case.

the disguise itself-- why pretend to be rashid? i think part of it is to try and hide behind a human persona to keep those memories at bay; especially given the little moments of flashback that got triggered by little mannerisms. i can't decide whether they're intentional pushes or not, whether armand wanted/wants daniel to remember on his own, or wants to keep it under wraps. i think, even if he believes he doesn't want it to come forward, he truly does deep down.

and once he's revealed himself as armand, the way he gazes at daniel, his beautiful boy. the continued "our boy", from both he and louis, the "he's still in there, somewhere..."

and i think "our boy" is also really interesting, because why would daniel be armand's boy, based solely on the moments that louis initially remembered? armand didn't really have any emotional connection to daniel that night, sure, he saved him, but that doesn't really mean anything; he saved daniel for louis, not for daniel's sake.

and, jumping back "our boy,[...] he's still in there somewhere"... there's implication that louis might know about it? again, i don't think this is related to the original interview, or at least, limited to it? i don't have anything concrete here, just vibes, but again, why is armand's boy still in there somewhere?

and sure, some of these are reaches and i don't think i'm necessarily right, but god it would be deliciously awful if i was.

[hatchetation]

the way teenage bounty hunters DESERVED a second season. like what a tightly written, quippy, funny little show with so much heart. there’s so much good going on in it but things I particularly love:

Twin themes!! There’s so much good foreshadowing surrounding the big reveal (iykyk) and there’s also so much DOUBLING. Double lives especially is a big theme. Like, Debbie hiding Dana; sterling and Blair hiding their bounty hunting; the (functional) froyo shop being bowser’s bounty hunting lair; Terrance the lone wolf bounty hunter and bowser with his little “teen white savior” teammates; Yolanda’s sister who is a perfect foil for her; miles hiding Blair from his family; sterling hiding april from Blair…and then april hiding sterling period.

And I guess the doubling is kind of showing like, here are all the possibilities and here’s what happens when we let love in and here’s what happens when we shut it out

so much good stuff about being from the American south. As someone who grew up in the south and who grew up visiting close family in Atlanta…it is cool as fuck the way the south is portrayed in all of its complexity. The show does not shy away from issues of race, religion, SES, etc SPECFICALLY in Atlanta and manages to do it in a way that doesn’t come across as heavy handed. This show could ONLY be set in the south—it would be a fundamentally different show in any other setting

Also, like I said with the doubling points above, this show is full of secrets and secret keeping!!! But yet a fundamental point of the show is that being silenced is one of the worst things that can happen to a human being. There’s a scene where Blair is telling sterling that her dad yelled at her and that the worst part of all is that he told her to Be Quiet! And like in some ways that scene highlights what a loving household Blair has grown up in that the one of the worst things her Dad has ever said to her is be quiet (not even shut up)…but it really made me be like wow being told to stop questioning and be quiet IS something terrible. It’s a denial and a violation of our right to use our voices

and like it’s not a coincidence that in the final ep Dana gags sterling. Because the way sterling is talking to her is powerful and you can tell it is making her hesitate and question her whole life

so yeah anyway watch teenage bounty hunters! Or if you haven’t in a while, it’s definitely worth a rewatch

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

the reason why c//a stans find lumity "boring" is because the writers of toh actually portray luz and amity as children.

[fluffypotatey]

y’all help i’ve got two hangster x twister aus haunting my brain and one is mostly silly and fun while the other is angsty Bradley character study

[nyan-bynary]

modern au sukugo sukuna should be like 50 (or older!!!!!!) and gojo should stay 28/29

[borgialucrezia]

“We did love our children, did we not, my dear?”

[seraheart]

I kinda wish that the DetCo canon would do more with the fact that the relationship (I don't mean this in the shipping sense) between Conan and Haibara has been, or at least logically should have been, really strained for a long time.

Originally, they had this development where Haibara was really messed up, overly cautious and trying to force her maladaptive survival psychological issues onto other people, and generally not good at positive interactions. Then, slowly, Conan and the others started gaining her trust (not entirely though), and also her general mental health improved (never completely though).

But then it turned around, and started getting significantly worse. Haibara isn't really in a healing arc anymore. If Aoyama still took her seriously as a character (which, to be fair, I don't think is the case), she would be in a retraumatization arc. Conan and his allies are limiting Haibara's agency, invading her privacy, dismissing her concerns about all this, and pretending that this isn't happening while she can obviously tell that it is happening.

I think the really obvious turning point was the Mystery Train arc. Haibara even called Conan and Agasa out on it and stated that she wouldn't forgive if she were to be treated like that again. Instead of taking her hurt seriously, they just told her she should "be thankful", and dismissed her hurt as "tsundere", refusing to take her trauma seriously after using it and using her as a mere chess piece in their plans (and Akai even triggering her more by gloating about it).

Since then, Haibara has been trapped under the constant, violating supervision of these people who have demonstrated that they don't respect her, and also refuse to acknowledge that the problem even exists. It's not a situation where her recover arc could realistically continue. By all logic, she should be spiraling, getting worse again.

And maybe this is on purpose; Aoyama definitely didn't plan the manga to get this long when he introduced Haibara, and originally the slow-burn of her recovery was a good way to postpone a scenario where Haibara could actually trust Conan enough to give him the kind of information that would lead to the finale arc. But... eventually, even with the extreme slow burn of DetCo, Haibara's recovery arc and relationship development with Conan would have gotten to the point where her continued withholding of crucial information would no longer make sense... and, I guess, rather than start concluding the story at a humanly reasonable rate, Aoyama just opted to nuke Haibara's whole recovery arc and character and relationship development (not only with Conan but also Agasa).

Which could have been tragic but realistic (albeit kind of a major downer out of tune with the manga's usual tone, and upsetting to anyone who had been invested in the slow-burn mental health improvement arc), but then Aoyama can't even be arsed to take it seriously, and is now just pretending that the situation with Haibara and her relationships with Conan and Agasa are still "normal" instead of FUBAR.

It's regrettable and really shows how much everyone dragging out this franchise to milk it for more money just... doesn't actually care about the story anymore, hasn't in a long time. They'll eventually just kill central, fan-favorite, long-running story arcs rather than actually letting them conclude or evolve in a satisfying manner if that would mean risking their precious status quo (which has warped beyond all recognition anyway, so I'm not sure why they bother).

[aceredshirt13]

today on things I ponder while playing rhythm games: I think that when fellow queer people say that so-and-so m/f pairing is "for the gays" what people actually mean is that so-and-so m/f pairing is "competently written and makes you invested in their relationship as human beings, rather than shoehorning in a romance because of the belief that if a man and a woman are in close proximity they are required by law to kiss and/or bang"

so like. perhaps we should stop denigrating m/f relationships as inherently inferior, and instead acknowledge that the problems often seen in m/f relationships in fiction (especially when the romance isn't the main subject of the work) are caused by authorial laziness in favor of the heterosexual hegemonic rule of "boy + girl = sex"

[lifewithaview]

Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton in Bridgerton (2020) Old Friends

S3E4

When a caller arrives at her home, Penelope faces a difficult choice. For others, opportunities to build a fresh start - and find a love match - abound.

*Penelope and Lord Debling discuss books and he asks if there is a book about a man who goes on an adventure and the wife stays at home tending to the house. There are books to that effect, The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer.

[moons-of-weedclan]

Hey, burrow paw, you ‘dont’ seem to like sky kit very much. I get it, little kids can be annoying, but why would you save them if you didn’t like them?

Skykit is just a little kid, but remember, Burrowpaw is also a child :]

[spotaus]

Late Night quick thing (New Age Sillies)

Bad news: That joke post about including Reset + Orchid is definitely not canon. (I legit got sad thinking about Reset being in a universe where Orchid isn't- because their stories are so so intertwined- but Nightmare 100% would NOT risk the whole twins exploding Error's soul thing.)

Good news: This means I COULD include Kane (Reset's older brother who usually dies in timelines where Reset is born) and use it to develope his character a bit more! Also! Perhaps a Blue × Dream kiddo is finally in the stars for me to design?