#re: random thoughts

[sleepingdeath-light]

Wahahah! Hello! I’m a crazed Submas fan and found your blog of your fics (I’m over 18 btw)

What are your personal thoughts on Submas btw? Like… I know you’ve had to do your fair share of research and stuff to get to write for them, what do you think? Do you like them a whole deal? They’re so silly and I love them so much lmfao

Hello, glad to have you here!

As for personal thoughts on the twins, I’ll try to summarise as I have a few lol:

i love their theming and design — the angular nature of their costumes and how they relate to their environment specifically looks cool to me

ingo’s consistent encouragement is absolutely adorable imo (‘bravo’ bless him)

emmet’s speech pattern is unique and fun to write around

in love with the fanon additions to their characters — specifically the stashing of pokémon (joltiks?) everywhere by emmet because that is the most adorable mental image lol

ingo deserved so much better than what happened to him in legends, poor bb

conclusion: they’re fun, interesting characters that are enjoyable to write — and they have pretty appealing designs to boot lol

[aroaceleovaldez]

I was reading a post about CoTG and I realized: Rick has seemingly started to write every character pairing with the exact same dynamic, and he's not good at writing that dynamic and it doesn't make sense for 90% of the characters he writes it for.

It's that very specific dynamic of one half of the pair who is almost aggressive to the other party - "teasing" them constantly/insulting them, affectionately punching/judo flipping/maiming/etc, seemingly almost always exasperated with the other - and said other party usually just accepts this treatment or blanketly views it fondly, and may generally be framed as more incompetent than their partner and a little bit of a doormat (particularly relating to being insulted/teased/etc by their partner).

We start seeing this dynamic in HoO with Percy and Annabeth, as a sort of semi-inconsistent twist on their rivals-to-friends-to-lovers dynamic from the first series. Then the dynamic pattern develops further with Leo and Calypso. Then Magnus and Alex. Then Nico and Will, particularly in TSATS. And now in CoTG, it's Percy and Annabeth again but even more in this direction.

I know people have talked about Nico and Will's relationship over the series rapidly being shoehorned into Percabeth Two™, and it's extremely apparent in TSATS that Rick's doing it on purpose (including directly quoting Percabeth scenes but minorly tweaking them to be Solangelo). But recognizing it as an overarching trend in Rick's later books honestly reminds me a lot of how Rick started trying to apply the "Percy Formula" so-to-speak to nearly every protagonist in HoO (and then try to replicate similar character archetypes with Magnus and Apollo's narrations - moreso Magnus in being jaded and sarcastic, very much trying to be first series Percy. He only sounds unique because Rick failed at making him Percy 2. Apollo is more akin to later-series Percy characterization of being goofy and incompetent. Apollo [and Zeus] even got retconned to give Apollo a more similar backstory to Percy's). Rick seems to have decided that he thinks the audience wants this specific dynamic but 10 times over, except he's not good at writing it the first time because it's a bastardization of the time he did a different thing okay.

And Rick also seems aware of that too! Because he retconned Calypso and Leo at the end of TOA, probably because he realized how absolutely awful it was reading when they were written with that dynamic of Calypso just functionally hating Leo and constantly being aggressive towards him! The only time Rick's actually made the dynamic even semi-successful was with Magnus and Alex, because it actually fits within their characters, their dynamics with each other, and their environment. Alex beheading Magnus on the regular works out fine because there are no repercussions to that in Valhalla, Magnus will be fine, so it does genuinely come off as humorous. And Alex has been effectively established to be abrasive at times but have her genuine feelings shine through regularly, and that meshes well with Magnus' jaded-and-aloof-but-quietly-very-empathetic character. And Magnus has been established to, yes, not be great at combat, particularly compared to Alex. They are the only time that flavor of dynamic in that form was effective and cohesive.

Percabeth is no longer rivals-to-friends-to-lovers badasses on equal levels with shaky pasts who finally found some form of permanence with one another. Now it's super smart doting and affectionately aggressive girlfriend and her silly goofy 50%-of-the-time incompetent boyfriend who she judo flips/pushes off cliffs/etc - but affectionately~! Solangelo is trying to riff off of the early series "Poseidon & Athena are enemies" dynamic that Percabeth had but with Apollo & Hades being "opposites" but learning to accept each other, except it ends up with Will just coming off as a huge asshole and Nico being retconned to a complete doormat about it - when prior to that those characterizations would be completely contrary to their established characters (even just from TOA!). Calypso in HoO gets retconned from her PJO characterization to being snooty and aggressive, and Leo's false persona gets merged into his just normal personality except he just also becomes a doormat but more goofy than Nico with occasional haha-dark/depression-humor! Which Nico also got. Which was also a bastardized Percy trait that got redistributed.

It's exhausting. Rick write more than one relationship dynamic you can do it I promise

[echofades]

I love you, and us, and I wanted to celebrate our awesomeness as a couple. NCIS: HAWAI'I | 2x20: NIGHTWATCH TWO

[moongothic]

People often bring up the omake No Respect Time to use as Crocodad Propaganda, and y'know, I think there might be just a smidge more the omake can provide to Crocodad than what people have already discussed in the past

Like everyone's seen the comparisons between Crocodile and the anime screencaps of Don Luffyone, we all know how the two look so similar etc etc. But honestly, the resemblance is even more obvious (and hilarious) when you look at the OG manga version (Sidenote but Don Luffyone is the only one who smokes cigars in the omake... Everyone else has plain ol' cigarettes... That sure was a decision there Oda)

And yeah, you might be thinking I picked this mangacap of Crocodile in particular because the resemblance is the most obvious here and I have My Crocodad Agenda to push etc etc. But I will have you know that the original omake was from Log Book 5, which was published February 28th 2006. Meanwhile that Crocodile is from the cover of chapter 398, published February 6th 2006. So these were drawn by Oda around the same time. I didn't just cherry pick this cover page because it's convenient for my evil agenda, if these were drawn around the same time then the likelihood the resemblance is intentional does legitimately go up a little. (Also since they're both drawn by Oda instead of random animators, again, it's a bit less coincidental and could be a bit more intentional)

But as I said, I think there might be more to the omake than that.

In the past people have also pointed out and joked how a mere few months before Oda revealed Dragon was Luffy's father to us in the story (post-Enies Lobby), in the Monster Time-omake Luffy was depicted as a dragon.

Needless to say, people believe this was intentional foreshadowing (/trolling) to the Dragon reveal by Oda-- if not it'd be one hell of a coincidence at the very least.

The reason I'm bringing that up is that if people think it's safe to assume Oda was hinting at Luffy's heritage in one omake by making him a dragon like his father, then why couldn't Oda do the same in another omake (by making Luffy a mafia boss who smokes cigars like his father)? Keep in mind that Monster Time was published in May 2006 (in Log Book 7), just three months after No Respect Time. So again, these are from the same era. To me, that just makes the resemblance between Don Luffyone and Crocodile seem even less coincidental

Oh, but there's one more omake I want to bring up.

So people do often bring up Nerd!Luffy's appearance in One Piece Gakuen spin-off manga, pointing out how much he looks quite a lot like the Theoretical Child Oda gave to Crocodile in that one SBS. Yeah. So. 'Bout that.

There was this one omake called Red Hair of Class 3-Sea Time, in which Luffy was a loser ass nerd. And man, that resemblance

Like it's one thing when a spin-off manga drawn by a different artist does A Thing. It's another when Oda himself does it

[gayferrari]

As another lesbian European who went to school with straight boys who jokingly made out in the hallways, slapped each other’s asses and pretended to give each other blow jobs in English class I want to add that while I absolutely agree that none of the grid really reads queer to me (and especially the whole Leclerc family), they are in fact just another example of freaky male Europeans, there’s also the fact that statistically speaking there’s a shit ton of queer people on this planet so like I wouldn’t be that surprised either if some of the drivers turned out to be not straight considering the whole dynamics of the sport lol

Potential homophobia aside it would be quite funny to see people lose their absolute shit over it too

Oh yeah absolutely I think the power of statistics is on our side!!! (our = the queers. the gays. the alphabet people) I think some of it is cultural but also, really, men's sport as a whole is just SUCH a homosocial environment, if you'd allow me the term. Shipping aside I'm always thinking about this quote and just, like, the sociology of men's sport in general. Even in cultural spaces that are WAY more "no homo" than Monaco-based racing driver circles, men's sports are just... so physical and so male-centred and so primed for highly emotional moments and 'us against the world, you're my only one' kinda vibes.

Again, some of it is the european-ness but I'd be curious to know whether the people who get legit gay vibes from Lando or Charles are familiar with sportballs kinda dynamics and if they get gay vibes from that too. Because yeah a non-insignificant number of straight guys I know have kissed their buddies on the lips at some point, but so have multiple footballers live on global tv

[aceredshirt13]

having read nearly all of the Jeeves short stories, it’s so funny to me that Bertie’s bisexuality manifests as casting a wide but shallow net at girls and a narrow but ridiculously deep net at men. He thinks girls are pretty on a reasonably frequent basis, and has tried to marry at least four women thus far (not counting the unwanted engagements), but when it doesn’t work out he’s over it in 24 hours. Meanwhile he shows absolutely no interest in and never gives flattering depictions of 99% of the men in his life, but will praise Jeeves to anyone who will listen, wax poetic about his appearance (and get defensive on his behalf about it when a child insults it), and is absolutely inconsolable when they are separated.

(also Bertie is in no way allosexual. he is canonically terrified at the thought of reproducing. and due to the narrow but deep net on the other end I don’t imagine he’s going around sleeping with loads of men, either. that man’s either demi as hell or just entirely ace)

[rayven-ray]

Random thought: i cannot stop thinking about this scene despite having read it first time months ago

It's interesting from a point that Rewind had to ponder about the value of his relationships with Dominus and Chromedome in a hypothetical situation where only one could live

And the pondering resurfaces in the final issues, where the situation is not hypothetical anymore

I love this parallel

[mygreatadventurehasbegun]

OK.

So I've kind of been obsessing over The Crow since watching it for the first time last Friday.

I cannot believe it took me this long to watch it because it is so up my alley and once I get a physical copy that can work in my blu-ray player (I bought a 4K and didn't realize until I'd opened it), I can totally see this becoming a comfort movie.

Bad day?

Watch The Crow.

Home sick?

Watch The Crow.

But I want to talk about what might be my favorite scene in the movie.

Which may seem an odd choice compared to something like the scene at the pawn shop, where we get to see Eric have a little fun...his humor and personality come through along with the menace.

But this scene with Eric and Tin Tin?

It is fantastic.

I love how it starts with Eric experimenting...testing to see how far he can go...ending with that maniacal, gleeful laugh when he discovers he is impervious to harm.

But it gets really good when he confronts Tin Tin.

When you see him through the fire, he's like an animal. He has his prey in sight, and nothing will get in his way.

He is being fueled purely by his rage.

And when he screams: "MURDERER!!!" at Tin Tin, it legit gives me chills.

And then the dialogue between them starts and he switches. He is no longer being fueled by rage alone...now the pain is starting to creep in. But the pain is keeping his rage in check...for now. And I find it interesting that it almost seems to physically hurt him when Tin Tin starts talking about what he did to Shelly. Which of course, is what gives Tin Tin the brief upper hand in the fight.

But he's fighting a temporarily immortal being, and so that upper hand doesn't last. I'm obsessed with the way Eric avoids the knives (I guess you missed Tin Tin) and how he turns the table to take his first act of vengeance.

I lot of the reason I love this scene really comes down to Brandon Lee's performance. Like I said earlier, this is his rage and pain laid bare and Brandon Lee did such an outstanding job and physicalizing it and making it so palpable. Again, hearing about the pain Shelly went through seems to physically hurt him (which we also see in later scenes)...and I interpret the story as Eric came back to avenge Shelly's death, not his own.

And the other reason I love this scene is the fight choreography. Of the four villains Eric goes after, Tin Tin is really the only one who put up a fight (I know Fun Boy's scene was longer where they actually fought once Darla left), and so that makes the scene a bit more interesting to watch. But the fight is very raw and rough...I appreciate the fact that the fight wasn't "perfect", even though they could have easily done it, considering all of Brandon Lee's skills. And the knife work is really cool, culminating in that final blow with "Victims. Aren't we all?"

I am so happy I finally got to see this movie.

And if you're looking for something to watch this Halloween season, I highly recommend this one!

[homicidal-slvt]

Vendetta Leon is like a cat that's dunked it's head in the water dish for the 15th time

[listieshadows]

If you wanna know how bad I am at posting, consider that I meant to share the below picture months ago, saying alongside it that after I'm pretty sure a decade I'd finally managed to collect all the books, and that I'd finished re-reading them for the second time ever in my life.

[sleepingdeath-light]

I love how diverse my requests are but it’s also incredibly funny how broad of a spectrum they can be.

Like — in the last 1.5 hours I wrote my first M/M/M threesome request and it was a really fun experience because (a) I haven’t gotten to write smut in a while and (b) I love writing smut.

So my sincerest thanks to whoever sent in the request below — it will be published tomorrow on here and it’s already up on AO3 lol

And then I’ll be plotting out an angsty drabble dealing with the ideas of self sacrifice, isolation and leaving behind everything for someone you love vs leaving behind someone you love for everything else.

(It’s a WH request in case you were curious)

Like you don’t get that sort of range anywhere except from anon requests and I love you all for it lmao! Anyway back to writing.

[anatomical-puppet]

miscellaneous appearance headcanons ,, these two should be scarred to high hell they are so fucking bad at not getting injured

[darnellthefirestarter]

Haven't drawn these goobers in a while

[icewindandboringhorror]

examining a seemingly normal image only to slowly realize the clear signs of AI generated art.... i know what you are... you cannot hide your true nature from me... go back where you came from... out of my sight with haste, wretched and vile husk

[ssspringroll]

A himbo, as promised

This look is what happens when you try to be Y2K but youve only ever seen Earth in vintage tourism brochures

[randomnameless]

Reading something about "why won't the CoS open the borders will Almyra?"

Disregarding the fact that the only CoS controlled territory is Garreg Mach and the Locket is located in the Alliance, why won't the Alliance open the border and welcome Almyrans with open arms?

Well, it's basically showcased (tfw show not tell) in a certain paralogue in FE16.

To start, this is one of the few "defend" maps in the entire game, iirc we have this one, the "protect GM" version of chapter 12, Shamir's paralogue and, iirc, Chapter 14 when Randolph tries to earn "merit".

Basically, the objective of this map is to protect the locket from Almyran forces who are raiding them for some reason.

Hilda starts with :

"Most of our allies have fallen."

So confirmation that Almyran forces aren't only coming with mock weapons to play bowling with their Fodlan neighbours, or are asking politely if they can pass, House Goneril's allies were killed.

"He's not here?! Oh... I'm sorry. You must have been absolutely terrified."

She tries to reassure her random (a Goneril soldier) that she will help, so they don't need to be afraid/to panic anymore.

"That's you, Professor. Please help us save our allies and protect Fódlan's Locket."

The first thing she says is to please "save" her allies/her randoms, and then to protect the locket. Emphasis again on "saving" lives, because Almyrans are raiding not only houses to bring souvenirs, but take lives too.

"Support! We're saved!" "Ah, things are looking up. Let's keep going, and save the others!"

Yep.

If a loldier dies :

"Oh no! They got one...but we can still rescue the others!"

Hilda still wants to "rescue" the others. She worries about the lives of her soldiers who are defending the Locket, but not only the locket!

If they all die, a soldier says this "We must defend here, or else... Our house... The Alliance...".

And if the line is breached, an Almyran soldier will say this :

"Yeah! We took Fódlan's Locket! With this, we'll be able to invade, no problem!"

:(

So bar this chapter blowing a hole the size of a 7 floors building in Claude's character across both games, we see here that, well, Almyra uses weapons and isn't afraid to kill Goneril soldiers who want to protect their homes and houses to "invade".

So who is behind Fodlan's general apathy towards Almyrans, the CoS like Claude says in both games (even if he seems to reconsider after discovering water is wet in VW), or Almyrans themselves???

Or, in other terms, who are we supposed to believe, Claude who tells us the CoS is the reason why Fodlan people don't like people coming from Almyra, or the game, showing us Almyrans are trouncing Fodlan people to happily invade ?