#ppl they loved turned their backs on them

[drenched-in-sunlight]

"Marika becomes the sum of all the Fromsoft girlies" is nice but you forgot Nashandra who actually has parallels with Marika! Recommending to check it out, she's cool!

let’s get this out of the way now… I love DS2, I think the vibe and gameplay is immaculate and I’ll defend it as a whimsical and enjoyable videogame experience till the end of time.

But my god, I hate how they handle female characters in that one 💀

In fact, I don’t like how they handle female characters in DS franchise in general. It got a bit better in Bloodborne and Sekiro and especially AC6, but overall ever since I started playing Fromsoft game in 2020, my main gripe with them is they only have 2 tropes to shoehorn their female character into: helpless victim of a system that would mangle and exploit them OR serious sword lady. And if I’m being real, it’s the main gripe I have with Elden Ring base game too?

I didn’t discuss it on tumblr because back then I were still trying to keep this blog art-focused, but when the game came out in 2022, I did express my concern on twitter that I found the female characters cast… strangely lacking. Because I went into the game expecting Ema-level of writing (literally Sekiro’s Ema is one of the best female characters Fromsoft has ever written to this day I could and have talked ppl’s ears off about her. And I’m glad she on her own is very different from Marika. That means they could at least write 2 more types of female characters now the bar is on the floor but I’ll take it and cherish what I have), but it felt like they got reset back to DS franchise with ER base game.

(This has an added layer of me being a girl born, raised and lived in a Sinosphere country that is entrenched in Confucius values just like Japan, so yes I do understand and experience firsthand the underlying culture values that shapes their writing. Hell, I live and study postgraduate in Japan for 2 years too).

But we are going off track, this is about DS2. Now, my problem with DS2 is, see, with 1 or 3, the female characters either have very little agency or no agency at all. And it just…. be like that. The male characters are somewhat the same, so it really doesn’t bother me that much. The cool, unique, not sexualized design is enough. But 2?

2 has a lot of female characters…. who either play no role in the world setting or sinister figures that charm men and bring ruins to kingdoms? What?

(Before anyone says “but Lucatiel—” Lucatiel is the beacon of light in that game, yes, but at the same time her purpose centering around her brother is… also a problem I have with the way they handle Malenia’s story. My Fromsoft experience has lore to it as well jfc)

Like, it’s just ??? to me half of those women have no agency or backstory whatsoever apart from being the Dark’s daughters that would bring doom everywhere they go??? You can say everything wrong in DS2 world is their fault and I actually wouldn’t have much to argue. Actually, it’s interesting you bring up Nashandra because I do think Nashandra has parallel in Elden Ring. But not to Marika.

Nanaya.

That’s who reminds me of Nashandra in Elden Ring. Literally the mysterious, lowkey nefarious lady and her old man husband with questionable dynamic DS2 trope 🧍‍♀️ you can actually see that in their name too.

If I have to pick a character in DS franchise specifically to make parallel to Marika, it’ll always be Gwynevere. Because I honestly think it’s amazing they took a character that has the least amount of agency they’ve ever created, and turned the core concept of her (warmth, healing spells, sunlight, mother, daughter, queen, faith) into another character with actual good writing.

That’s why I didn’t include Nashandra in my previous post. Not because I don’t know about her. It’s because I know.

[schmweed]

[fridgrave2-0]

hehe ghost-turbo haunting felix au

turbo is connected to the last piece of his code in the whole arcade - a trophy he gifted to felix in mid 80s as a symbol of him genuinely caring about their relationships on par with being the best racer. felix also gave him one of his medals and both kept their gifts next to other rewards, but when roadblasters and turbotime were unplugged, the medal was gone with everything else

now, after burning in cola-lava turbo is basically dead, but scraps of his code still were intertwined with the trophy (after all, it was his first winner's cup, but felix never knew about it), giving turbo an opportunity to exist as a shadow incapable of interacting with anything and anyone besides felix, who kept the trophy even after the roadblasters incident

also I went crazy in tags, feel free to check them out

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OOH YEAH BABY ITS THE SURGERY EPISODE BABY!!! ME AND THE HOMIES NEED SOME NEW FACES FOR OUR NEW PLAN, AND WHO BETTER TO GET THE JOB DONE THAN THE TWO MOST EVIL PEOPLE WE'VE EVER HAD THE MISFORTUNE OF HAVING OUR LIVES VIOLATED BY? I MEAN IT WOULD BE FUNNY. IT WOULD BE FUNNY.

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[callibee]

women

[zrllosyn-art]

A naru sketch page. Because he is surprisingly fun to draw.

Inspired by a VERY GOOD TRANS NARU HC FROM @jelliefeesh (who also draws VERY good narus n also jus has super good art in general go check his stuff out)

The stickers are available for free download in both English and the original Japanese. If youd like.

[lambmotifz]

am i the only one who doesn’t like normal/regular wincest au

because all the supernatural storylines are the main factor that makes their dynamic so special. wincest without horror elements just. isn’t wincest

[winteriron-trash]

rdj the (whitewashed) electric boogaloo

This is a reminder to everyone who's excited about RDJ's casting as Doctor Doom that this casting is whitewashing. Victor Von Doom is a Romani character and has been a Romani character since his introduction in the 1960s. (Fantastic Four Annual #2 [1964]) Not only that, but his Roma identity and the persecution he and his family faced due to it is integral to his character, it is what forms his identity. (Books of Doom by Ed Brubaker) Even if on the off chance this casting is meant to not be Victor but instead be some variant of Tony or whomever else becoming Doctor Doom, it is damaging to the character to rob him of that important cultural background. Doctor Doom does not exist without that history. Fans have been pushing hard to cast Doom as a Romani actor for years, especially since the MCU has whitewashed other Romani characters. (Wanda, Pietro, etc) This casting is not a celebration moment, it's fucking heartbreaking that the MCU repeatedly ignores the important and nuanced cultural backstories of characters.

I know I can't change anybody's mind on whether or not you want to be excited about RDJ's return to the MCU. But I do think at the very least you should be mad that the MCU is baiting us all and destroying nuanced and interesting characters for the sake of self-referential easter eggs and nostalgia bait. Because that's what it is. Feel how you'd like to feel about RDJ's return, but personally, this is soul-sucking. I had such a deep love for the MCU as a teenager, it was obviously something incredibly formative to me, especially Tony Stark. This isn't recreating what I fell in love with the MCU for. This is turning a well-planned and artistic storyline of adaptations into cheap cash grabs and fan service. Because, I think we're past the point of being able to call the MCU an adaptation of anything. They can use existing characters' names and powers, but to say they're being properly adapted is laughable.

This is not an adaptation of Doctor Doom. This is RDJ the Electric Boogaloo because Marvel's fear of losing the interest of dedicated MCU fans overrides their willingness to tell stories that are genuine to the characters. I don't know what there is to be excited about that. The MCU has lost its authenticity and aside from a few projects, feels heartless. Every movie is a copy of a copy. This announcement isn't something celebratory, it feels like a death knell of a cinematic universe that's so desperate to cling to relevancy it's resorting to nostalgia for a character/actor who hasn't even been dead for a decade. We're not getting anything new, we're just rinsing and repeating the same song and dance.

I get it. I love Tony Stark, his death destroyed me and I to this day, rue the ending he got in Endgame. It misunderstood his arc and it robbed him of a satisfying conclusion. But the solution to that isn't dragging the corpse out of the grave five years later to whitewash an existing character with rich and interesting nuance, just to forcibly tie his existence in the MCU to Tony. Whether he is a variant or not. Why would you want someone else's fave's legacy to be destroyed simply so your fave's legacy can go on? Hell, if we were really all so hellbent on the return of RDJ and/or Tony to the MCU, we have the multiverse for a reason. There were other ways to do it that didn't whitewash and ruin someone else. This just. Isn't something to be happy about.

[pinkhysteria]

tucker looking for who made him a "lone wolf" in the first weeks of the game

[crescentfool]

What are your ryomina headcanons? I've loved these two since I played P3 FES, and I'm so excited to get back into the fandom^^

hi!! thank you so much for the ask, welcome back to the p3 fandom, it's always a delight to see new and old ryomina fans alike! 🥺💛💙

as for headcanons, here's a "few" i that i tend to come back to a lot! my interpretations of them are influenced from both the source material and other's fanworks, so i've linked to them as i saw fit! hcs in no particular order under the cut because oops this got long (900 word bullet point list, mentions of reload content up to 1/1)

minato's hair is dyed blue (hair originally brown, you can see it in his roots!) and he has a beauty mark on under his left eye. i like mirror imagery and there's definitely a few arts i've rb'd that portray them this way :) (e.g. this one by feliichu and this one by marasschino)

as far as i'm concerned the bathhouse scene from the manga where ryoji's hair down = similar shape to minato? that is canon to me. this art from xierru is a fun depiction of hair down ryoji :D

ryoji is homeless. everyone say thank you foxmulder_whereartthou for this awesome fic it's why i have the headcanon! but like seriously. we have no idea where ryoji lives and i could believe this.

minato dying at the end of the game is sad to an outsider's POV BUT!!! ryomina gets to be together in death for the rest of their lives (this illustration from mafuwara is a gorgeous representation of them as nyx avatar + the seal)!

speaking of the seal, they are like telepathically communicating to me in the great seal together. (mymp3 had a comic wip with this. give it a looksie :D)

ryoji likes cuddling with minato because he's warm :) (something something orpheus has fire affinity, minato is warm by extension and ryoji is cold because he's death)

ryoji's camera roll is filled with pictures of minato! ryoji... loves life, to me. and i feel that photography and journaling are perfect ways of expressing gratitude and capturing the moments in life that are most important to you :3

my other favorite activity for these two is stargazing- i feel like it's something they could appreciate either in life or death (looking at the stars from the great seal...)! they do a bit of this in the fic eurydice's vow by crescentmoontea (P5R spoilers, takes place in third sem it's a very fun fic concept).

between ryoji and minato i feel like ryoji was the one who fell in love first- and it doesn't really click in place for minato that he loves ryoji until december hits (appriser reveal + ryoji transforming into thanatos). its about the realization that ryoji was with him for his whole life and that he gets him like no one else does.

ryoji is like a sad and wet puppy who is so scared minato won't like him back. he is so scared of being rejected by minato to me like. this boy straight up deflates after he does his "i know i said i wanted us to be friends, but... i actually want to be something more." / "what about you?" on 12/1 ???

AND SPEAKING of wet puppy ryoji. ryoji is like. every animal in the world to me. he's a bird. he's a cat. etc. and also ryoji knows every language in the world ever and uses it to express his love for minato. see this fic from superheroics to see what i mean.

both of them are lactose intolerant. "this isn't lactose, it's milk!" i definitely think ryoji would make himself sick eating ice cream and milk he doesn't know what lactose is. (i made a silly poll about this once and the tags were very entertaining.)

i see minato as transmasc or nonbinary depending on the day (schrodinger's headcanons babey they're simultaneously true and not true at the same time!!). either way he's not cis to me and ryoji is like. His Gender. anyway go read this fic by nail_gun for t4t ryomina :D !

ryomina are WEIRD GUYS TO ME!!! they are so strange and they understand each other better than anyone else because of the circumstances of their relationship!!! if you asked them to do the "i wonder what i taste like" meme i think they'd start biting each other (affectionate) tbh but that's just me.

after ryoji gives minato the music box in 12/31 on reload, minato listens to the music box every night in january. this boy has insomnia and also chronic illness to me (things that housing death does to you). but i think he finds comfort in the melody and memories he made with ryoji.

in general, i think it's fun to imagine minato taking ryoji to places and show him things he's interested in! i feel that ryoji takes a lot of interest in minato's life, this isn't really a hc because in reload, minato DOES give ryoji a tour of the school (11/9) and possibly port island (11/12). but ITS CUTE OK! (tangentially related fanwork: this series of doodles from vinnigami: 1, 2, and 3)

not a hc but minato's kindness is like the backbone of their relationship and i think we would not have the ryomina we know and love today if minato wasn't such a kind soul. oh minato.... we can learn so much from you... like ryoji did!

anyway! that's all the hcs that i could think of, thank you for the ask! i had a lot of fun answering this, these two mean a lot to me 💛💙

i hope you don't mind the links to the fanart and fanfic as well, the fanwork people have made for ryomina have really made an imprint on me! if you want to see more of them, i definitely recommend looking through my tag for them because oh. i got a lot of them reblogged alright 😂 (<- SOOO NORMAL)

[puhpandas]

I think the reason beckory works well is that tony has a habit of getting self righteous and in his own head about things but Gregory isnt afraid to tell him off or call him out about things. the point of tony in ggy is that nobody ever told him that how hes treating other people isnt good, so that's why he got so bad. but tony would be close to Gregory and have every rational reason in the world to listen to Gregory so when he would say something like "you're treating ellis badly and that's not what a good friend does, you need to do better" hed actually listen and take it into account and improve himself

[galaxygermdraws]

so instead of get back into art after the basic recovery of my surgery, I instead replayed Mario and Luigi Partners in Time…and why does nobody talk about this game?? Hardly ever see it in the Super Mario tag. Like. It’s actually insane how dark it gets. People die. Like actually die. Not as dark as SPM but like we see the dead spirits of Toads get siphoned through tubes. They had their life force sucked out of them via genetically modified trees. Yoshis were eaten by a larger alien Yoshi and were gonna be turned into more alien Yoshis via a factory IN THE GIANT ALIEN YOSHI. We see a town that’s literally just “Christmas is Cancelled” the city. Their mayor probably died. We never see these places restored because there are no survivors to restore them. The citizens of Hollijolli village probably all died by the time the bros shut down the Vim factory. And also there’s the entire scene with the Star Gate. Like. Hello??

maybe I’ll stream or let’s play this game and share it here because I think. More ppl should talk about Partners in Time. I’ll say it too: I like it more than Bowser’s Inside Story. By like a LOT. That’s my ramble for the night. Ttyd day tomorrow. Yippee

[iamumbra195]

Don't you love it when you get back into your childhood hyper-fixation that you remember very fondly as an adult and realize how fucking depressing the actual story is now that you have the capacity to understand it beyond cool fighting and characters, humor, and awesome friendships?

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

sometimes i remember that gojo wanted to tell geto “we’ll meet again, right?” just before he died but forced himself not to knowing it would have cursed him and then i start thinking about how kind and thoughtful gojo is as a character and how he hasn’t been able to lean on another human being since geto defected and then i want to . Scream

[angelsdean]

people who are like. there's can't be an spn w/o sam....um. i think we just saw that there actually can be an spn without sam. and in fact, canonically, now there very much is a part of spn without sam, and a part of dean's story without sam. like whether you watched it or not, it's there now. it's part of dean's canon. dean, canonically, was not driving aimlessly for 40 yrs waiting for sam, he was doing his own thing and finding his own purpose and processing his own grief and trauma, and figuring out what he wants for *himself*. like whether you like it or not, whether you watch the prequel or not, the dean parts of this story are canon now and any future spn continuation / spinoff / mini series reboot (with or without sam) is going to acknowledge those new parts of canon