#or if it's finally a fair fight

[mistergandalf]

ULTIMATE TOLKIEN BLORBO: ROUND THREE

BILBO BAGGINS vs. LEGOLAS GREENLEAF

See the ULTIMATE TOLKIEN BLORBO MASTERPOST for details and follow #ultimate tolkien blorbo to cast your vote for the blorbiest blorbo of all!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Turtle Takedown Teamwork.

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[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Godzilla vs. Scylla in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

[wowa-bublord]

If you are driven over the edge, the game is over. (Hold on as long as you can, help isn't coming.)

[featherlumina]

Hey, do you reckon Zack kept this feather he caught after Genesis took off in Banora?

Maybe he stashes it in a drawer once he gets home, unsure how to feel about it or even if he wants to ever look at it again. And then, almost a year later, he happens across it again after returning from his trip to Modeoheim, having opened the draw to put another feather—this time, a white one—inside. He takes Genesis's feather, brows furrowed in angry sadness, and holds it along with Angeal's to his chest. He flops onto his bed, curls into a tight ball, and sobs, all while cradling what little he has of them left. A month later, Sephiroth enters his office to find a simple, plain envelope on his desk, addressed to him and written in Zack's typical scrawl. Confused yet intrigued, he opens it, finding a small note and two feathers—one from Genesis, the other from Angeal—tucked inside. These are what you think they are. Figured you deserved them more than me, since, you know...they were your best friends and all. Hope that's okay. - Zack Sephiroth is truly glad he's kept his office door shut. He certainly isn't ready to face anyone with tears streaking down his face. ~ Fin

I think I just broke my own heart oh my god- /gross sobbing

[montanabohemian]

WGA GOT A (tentative) DEAL

WGA GOT A (tentative) DEAL

WGA GOT A (tentative) DEAL

AND NOW WE KEEP FIGHTING TO GET SAG-AFTRA THEIR DEAL

[theminecraftbee]

man. genuinely actually. they fought through every phase of the herald. they had to claw their way through every challenge the gods could throw at them. through wendarr, and the challenge of speed. through velara, and the challenge of the horde. through tenos, and the challenge of rarity. and through idona, and the challenge of damage.

and in the end, the ones left standing are the ones who have been here since the beginning.

you start to wonder if the gods play favorites too, see.

[priceofreedom]

No matter what happens, I have to protect my honor. As long as I hold the Buster Sword. Zack, join my battle. Our enemy is all that creates suffering.

Alright, I’ll help you.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[altocat]

You ever think about the Zack and Sephiroth scene in Junon?

Sephiroth was going to Modeoheim where Angeal died….and was probably going to see Genesis there. But he stopped to check on Zack first. I always wondered if they wanted to talk more about Angeal’s death there, since the subject was brought up by Sephiroth’s mission.

I always thought it was weird that CC never, ever addressed Angeal's death with Sephiroth. Like going by context we KNOW he's depressed about it and that it likely helped contribute to his madness. Opera Omnia even explored this idea and put it front and center. But Crisis Core never once takes the time to show or tell us that. And it especially doesn't feature Seph and Zack grieving together. Which is bullshit.

That said, the Sephzack sunset scene is one of my favorite scenes in the game. Keep in mind that Sephiroth literally stalled his trip just to check in on Zack. You get the sense that they've bonded in the two years of being around each other, even if most of it was offscreen. TOO MUCH is offscreen in CC imo. It's the biggest problem I have with the game.

[paris-geller-was-straightwashed]

disney is a coward so I know they'll never do this, but given what we learned was SUPPOSE to happen between alex and stevie, I would still love a post-eloping for the reboot.

like just imagine alex and stevie as the Cool Gay Aunts(tm) for justin's kids (+ billie). they show up for the holidays and totally shower the kids with magical gifts, including a baby dragon for the boys (which does end up setting fire to their parents bed sheets). milo shows off a magic trick to his friends, using alex (since billie's not allowed to) sneakily casting spells from the bushes so the card really does dissapear from his hand, leaving his friends cheering (stevie smiling but refusing to admit to alex how cute is it). stevie has a motorcycle (which alex thinks is super hot but also refuses to admit) and while the kids aren't old enough for a ride, she does let them sit on it and rev the handles nice and loud while justin panics from the porch. they team up with all three kids to pull pranks on justin and even sometimes get giana in on a few harmless ones. maybe alex even uses her role on the tribunal to get stevie's records cleared, and they both start to advocate for a more fair way of distributing magic between families.

and billie could have an extra adult at her side! I know justin is suppose to fill the pseudo-dad role, but while billie spends her time with the russo's, also gets to spend her summers or whatever with her two cool wizard aunts. they encourage her to keep up with her studies but for the most part they just chill, letting billie indulge in a few sweets (knowing how health-conscious justin has forced his family to be) and sometimes in a pg-13 movie together. when she's there however, the house does turn into a prank war; guests are to be extremely careful when entering and encouraged to bring a separate pair of clothes.

I dunno it would just be super cool; alex and stevie reunited and I think the kids would love her too - plus watching their aunt who's always acted so aloof get all smiley and whatnot and I'm just imagining a scenario with alex and the kids like:

billie: why does stevie call you babygirl

alex: hey who wants to play the quiet game!!

[kingcunny]

this, is a threat.

alicent can believe dyana, even feel bad for her, and still threaten her. still dismiss her claims. because aegon and his reputation are more important to her than any of his potential victims. dyana is just a servant girl. aegon is the future king.

alicent starts out by hugging dyana, stroking her face, physically comforting her, telling her she knows its not dyanas fault. once dyana lets her guard down, calms down enough to have a conversation, alicent immediately steps back, putting space between herself and dyana. drops the comforting persona and closes herself off to dyana (crossing her arms).

this is practiced, this is something shes done before. she places herself as the only safe and dependable person dyana has, ‘i might believe you, but no one else will’, and then takes that away too, when she scolds dyana for telling her what happened, something she thanked her for doing just a moment before. ‘dont tell anyone- including me’. she very plainly lays out the threat and consequences for dyana.

the moon tea and the money was not a (wholly) compassionate act. that was alicent destroying the evidence, ensuring dyana cant come back with a little silver haired baby and a story about how the prince (fingers crossed-king) raped her. the money was a bribe. alicent literally says 'for your trouble'. thats the most… bribe ass line to exist. dyana does not look comforted by this. she does not look grateful. she looks mortified, by alicent.

alicent also had the money and the moon tea ready to go, this is not the first time shed had to clean up after aegon.

and im not saying this was easy for alicent to do, or something she delighted in, she looks absolutely tortured throughout the entire scene. but she still does it. no one forced her to do this, no one told her to do it. this was *her* decision, *her* solution to aegons ‘problem’.

[clamsio]

Final Fantasy

Cloud and Sephiroth

[blueskittlesart]

any thoughts on how once again zelda was robbed of her agency because her "father figure" didn't listen to her? even if rauru was kinder to her than her father. and that she had sonia who was patient and loving for a little while before she died (just like her mother). i know rauru apologizes for his hubris but still, i wish we saw zelda be upset about it. and even if zelda was such a big part of the quest she still literally sacrificed her humanity once again because of someone else's mistake- because rauru literally didn't listen to the girl from the future that warned you that shit was going to go down. o know nintendo just loves putting zelda inside crystals and stones but i wish we got something better. even if it was her decision to become a dragon... did she have any other choice? it really just feels like they robbed her of agency again just like botw and the games before

i've been trying to figure out how to answer this one. because there are two ways i could analyze this plot point, either from a writer's perspective or an in-story perspective, but neither of those lead to me fully agreeing with your interpretation? I think there's definitely something to be said about zelda consistently being pushed aside in these games, but. well. ok let's get into it ig

from a writer's perspective, I do honestly have quite a bit of sympathy for the zelda devs as they attempt to navigate the modern political landscape with these games. The cyclical lore, though canonized relatively recently, holds them to a standard of consistency in their games in terms of certain key elements. one of those key elements is that there has to be a princess, and that princess must somehow be the main macguffin of the game. The player must chase her, and the end goal of the game must be to reunite the player and the princess. In 1986 this was an incredibly easy sell. women didn't need to be characters. players were content with saving a 2-dimensional princess whose only purpose was to tell them "good job!" at the end. but as society advances, that princess becomes a much more difficult character to write while adhering to the established overarching canon. (as a side note: i don't necessarily believe that the writers SHOULD be held to the standards of that canon. I think deviating from it in certain areas would be a good change of pace. but i also recognize that deviations from the formula are widely hated by the loz playerbase and that they're trying to make money off these games, so we're working under the established rule that the formula must be at least loosely adhered to.) Modern fans want a princess who is a person, who has agency and makes decisions and struggles in the same way the hero does. but modern fans ALSO want a game that follows the established rules of the canon. so we need a princess who is a real character but who can ALSO serve as a macguffin within the narrative, something that is inherently somewhat objectifying.

the two games that i think do the best job writing a princess with agency are skyward sword and botw (based on your ask, our opinions differ there lol. hear me out) in both games, we have a framing event which seperates zelda and link, but in both games, that separation was ZELDA'S CHOICE. skyward sword zelda runs away from link out of fear of hurting him. botw zelda chooses to return to the castle alone to allow link the time he needs to heal. sksw kinda fumbled later on by having ghirahim kidnap her anyway, but. i said BEST not PERFECT. botw zelda I think is the better example because, with the context of the memories, she's arguably MORE of a character than link is. we see her struggles, her breakdowns, her imperfection, specifically we see her struggle with her lack of agency within the context of the game itself. when she steps in front of link in the final memory, and when she chooses to return to the castle, those are some of the first choices we see her make almost completely free of outside influence; a RECLAMATION of her agency (within the narrative) after years of having it stripped from her. from an objective viewer's standpoint, this writing decision still means she is absent from 90% of the game and that she has little control over her actions for the duration of the player's journey. however I think this is just about the best they could have done to create a princess with agency and a real character arc while still keeping the macguffin formula intact--you're not really SAVING zelda in botw. SHE is the one that is saving YOU; when you wake up on the plateau with no memories, too weak to fight bokoblins, let alone calamity ganon. the reason you are allowed to train and heal in early-game botw is because SHE is in the castle holding ganon back, protecting YOU. When you enter the final fight, you're not rescuing zelda, you're relieving her of her duty. taking over the work she's been doing for the past hundred years. in the final hour, you both work in tandem to defeat ganon. while this isn't a PERFECT example of a female character with agency and narrative weight, i think it's a pretty good one, especially in the context of save-the-princess games like loz.

as for totk, you put a lot of emphasis on rauru not believing zelda and taking action immediately, which, again, from an objective standpoint, i understand. but even when we're writing characters with social implications in mind, those character's actions still need to... make sense. Rauru was a king ruling over what he believed to be a perfectly peaceful kingdom. zelda literally fell out of the sky, landed in front of him, claimed to be his long-lost granddaughter, and then told him that some random ruler of a fringe faction in the desert was going to murder him and he had to get the jump on it by killing him first. the ruler which this girl is trying to convince rauru to wage an unprompted war on has the power to disguise himself as other people. no one in their right mind would immediately take the girl at her word. war is not something any leader should jump into without proper research and consideration, and to rauru's credit, he DIDN'T ever outright dismiss zelda. he believed her when she said she was from the future, he allowed her to work with him and he took her warnings as seriously as he could without any further proof. but he could not wage an unprompted war on ganondorf. that's just genuinely not practical, especially for a king who values peace among his people as much as rauru seems to. as soon as ganondorf DID attack, giving rauru confirmation that zelda's accounts of the future were real, he began making preparations to confront him. remember that zelda didn't KNOW that rauru and sonia were going to be casualties of the war--she didn't make the connection between rauru's arm in the future and rauru the king until AFTER sonia's death, when rauru made the decision to attack ganondorf directly. I think the imprisoning war and the casualties of it were less an issue of zelda being denied agency and more an issue of no one, including zelda, having full context for the events as they were unfolding. if zelda had KNOWN that sonia and rauru were going to die from the beginning and was still unable to prevent it that would be a different issue, but she didn't. none of them did.

I think another thing worth pointing out with rauru and his death irt zelda is that rauru is clearly written specifically as a foil to rhoam. this is evident in how he treats both zelda and link, with a constant kindness and understanding which is clearly opposite to rhoam's dismissiveness and disappointment. consider rhoam's death and the circumstances surrounding it. He died because, in zelda's eyes, she was unable to do her duty; the one thing he constantly berated her for. Rhoam's death solidified zelda's belief that she was a failure, a belief which she KNEW rhoam held as well. his death was doubly traumatic to her because she knew he died believing it was her fault. Now contrast that to the circumstances surrounding rauru's death. Rauru CHOSE to die despite zelda's warnings, because he wanted zelda and his kingdom to live. rauru's death was not agency-stripping for zelda; in fact, it functioned almost as an admission that he believed her capable of continuing to live in his place. With him gone, the fate of the kingdom fell to her and the sages. he KNEW that he would die and still went into that battle confidently, trusting zelda to make the right decisions once he was gone. where rhoam believed zelda incapable of doing ANYTHING without link, rauru trusted zelda COMPLETELY with the fate of his kingdom. several details in totk confirm that when rauru died there was no plan for zelda to draconify, that all happened after rauru was gone. it was HER plan, the plan which rauru trusted her to come up with once he was gone. and I think it's also worth noting that zelda's sacrifice with the draconification parallels rauru's!! Rauru gives up his life trusting the sages and his people to be able to continue his work in his place. Zelda gives up her physical form trusting link and the sages in the future to be able to figure out what to do and find her. these games in general have this recurring theme but totk specifically is all about love and trust and reliance on others. zelda relies on link, link relies on zelda, they both rely on the champions and the sages and rauru and sonia and they all rely each other. reliance on others isn't lack of agency, it's a constant choice they make, and that choice is the thing which allows them to triumph.

The draconification itself is something i view similarly to zelda's sacrifice in botw--a choice she makes which, symbolically & within the confines of the narrative, is a demonstration of her reclaimed agency and places her at the center of the narrative, but which ALSO removes her from much of the player's experience and robs her of any overt presence or decisionmaking within the gameplay. again, I think this is a solution to the macguffin-with-agency dilemma, and it's probably one of the better solutions they could have come up with. Would I have liked to see a game where zelda is more present within the actual gameplay? yes, but I also understand that at this point the writers aren't quite willing to deviate that much from their formula. the alternative within the confines of this story would be to let zelda DIE in the past, removing her from gameplay ENTIRELY, which is an infinitely worse option in my opinion. draconification allowed her to be present, centered the narrative around her, and allowed the writers to reiterate the game's theme of trust and teamwork when she assists the player in the final battle, which i think was a REALLY great choice, narratively speaking.

In any case, I don't think it's right to say that zelda was completely robbed of her agency in botw and totk. Agency doesn't always mean that she's unburdened and constantly present, it means she's given the freedom to make her own choices and that her choices are realistically written with HER in mind, not just the male characters around her, and I think botw/totk do a pretty good job of writing her and her choices realistically and with nuance.

[possamble]

AHA thank u i was mostly just. frantically pulling the "no hetero" card bc farcille is super super always endgame for me and the "marcille has two hands" thing is absolutely not for me and my personal characterization of marcille

i like. can't find it anymore for some reason but there was a farcille fic set just after the shuro confrontation where laios reaches over to hold marcille's hand and ask her if she likes him or if she's just tolerating him too and it was so. the vulnerability. the puppyness.

that safety and security he must feel in knowing that she wears her heart on her sleeve and he will always know when she's unhappy with him because she will absolutely let it be known. the way that falin's first revival was the turning point for the way he felt about her because, for the first time in his life, protecting falin wasn't something he had to shoulder alone. there was finally someone else who cared about her as much as he did (in his eyes, resenting his parents for failing to protect her) and would stop at nothing to save her. the way it must have been proof for him that, not only was falin not alone anymore, he wasn't alone anymore.

idk why i like rather than dislike the fact that his only framework for parsing how he feels about "the first girl other than his sister that he's ever cared this much about" is a comphet romantic lens. like he would have the autism moment of fully assuming that he's in love with her for a while and just like. not? doing anything about it? because he doesn't feel the urge to, nor is he sad that he knows marcille would mostly likely never "feel the same way" about him?

like. he "figures out" that he's "in love with marcille" with all the passion of printing out a label and sticking it onto a favourite scrapbook for organizational purposes. he's equally happy to be her husband or brother-in-law so long as it means she stays close and is part of his family.

i know logically i should hate it but it's sooo crunchy to me. my comphet besties ever. designated plus one and dance partner to all fancy and formal occasions. having actual real chemistry but the "romantic" part of it is some weird shapeshifter smokescreen. augh

[toonagi]

happy artfight the site has fucking died again as per artfight tradition <3

when things start working again you can find me here! --> https://artfight.net/~Toonagi

yknow if you. if you want to murder maim kill me. wink wink