#seriously he is babey

[justtuffithinkabout]

So I just got around to watching the first of the Lord of the Rings movies (extended edition of course) and they made me realize just how much Gandalf's death must've weighed on Pippin.

Like, when they come out of Moria, you see Pippin curled up on the ground with Merry holding him and at first you think "that's so sad look how much they're grieving that Gandalf is dead" but Pippin could reasonably blame himself for the death. He caused that corpse to fall down the well and let all of Moria know they were there, which probably alerted the balrog.

But!

Consider *book Pippin*.

Book Pippin did not poke an arrow and accidentally knock a corpse over the edge of the well. In the book "he groped for a loose stone, and let it drop. He felt his heart beat many times before there was any sound. Then far below, as if the stone had fallen into deep water in some cavernous place, there came a *plunk*, very distant, but magnified and repeated in the hollow shaft."

That was *not* an accident.

And that would be a lot of guilt for even someone like Aragorn or Boromir, someone accustomed to things going wrong and losing people, but Pippin is not even an *adult* yet!

Hobbits come of age at 33. Pippin is 28. Even if you are conservative about it and take that 33 to be more equivalent to 21, he is *seventeen years old*. If you go by the technical, legal adulthood of 18, he is *fifteen!!*

Like. Wow.

Imagine being fifteen and being the probable cause of death of an extremely powerful, possibly immortal being who has been involved in the history of your family (it's mentioned in The Hobbit that Gandalf has taken many Took boys and girls off on adventures through the generations) and community for probably centuries, because you were *bored and curious*

Like-

Can't wait to watch the rest of the movies and get emotionally whammied even more ��

[pumpkin-mines]

Your Dirk and Jake are incredible, and seeing your art always makes my day. Seriously, the way you draw Dirk is maybe my favorite interpretation of him! You do both of them such justice.

Thank you, I've been drawing them non-stop (almost) every day for over a year, while my Dirk has stayed the same my Jake def got WAY better.

Here's a collage of some of my favorite bits of both dudes.

(super deep and sincere thank you to the discord server bc they made me more comfortable in drawing Jake. everyone is always on about mischaracterizing Dirk but Jakey is a real doozy to handle if you think about him for longer than 5 seconds)

[skecherss]

for the last time. Dick is 9-year-old angry and Jason is 12-year-old angry and Tim is 14-year-old angry and Steph is 17-year-old angry and Damian is pretentious rich kid angry. There is no single Angry Robin. we all know this to be true

[thirddagger]

Happy First Mention of Quincy Morris in Dracula Day !!!

[icewindandboringhorror]

finally settling once and for all... with the evidence laid out plainly.. which of these brother boys is more stinkys ,,,

[crehador]

mashle really said you two can have a little redemption arc. but first? yaoi duty

[lecliss]

Wait while I'm here lemme say something that's been on my mind for like 2 weeks at least. So, Yahiko was alive when Obito first came to Ame and talked to Nagato. The canonical ages of Obito and Nagato in shippuden are 31 and 35 respectively. So the ame orphans are all 4 years older than Obito. Considering Yahiko died at 15, the oldest Obito could be when meeting Nagato is..... 11. When did Obito have his death scare and meet Madara before leaving for Ame??? When he was 13. Sooooo... unless I somehow got something wrong, and please correct me if I did, Kishimoto is once again a hack fraud.

[solis-solaire]

If Apollo would be a NICE PERSON and SHARE WITH THE CLASS the overwhelming confidence he (sometimes) has - like that silly time he single-handedly overthrew the government AT GUNPOINT - then no one would have anxiety anymore

We need less "shy, anxious, always second guessing" Apollo in fanworks, and approximately 400% more of whatever the hell this is.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

I do agree with your assessment that Eridan is one of the more repressed trolls of the Alternian friend group but I do not believe so full-heartedly that he never found time to enjoy himself for a scant few seconds at minimum. So I ask you what does a week look like for Eridan Ampora on Alternia, and how much of it is composed of desperate posturing towards others?

It's less that he's never enjoyed himself and more that his perceived experience is that of never enjoying himself. He self-describes murder as "all i evver done practically," and while that's obviously not LITERALLY true, it's how he FEELS the truth to be - that his entire life has been dominated by this endless cycle of murder, preparing for murder, cleaning up after murder, thinking about murder, obsessing about murder, and feeling like he should be doing something about murder.

It's anxiety - Eridan is one of those people who has no idea what to do with himself if he doesn't have some sort of Task hanging over his head (we see it with his utter inability to make smalltalk with Feferi, and his general reluctance to shoot the shit without some sort of goal in mind for the conversation). Under these circumstances, any fun or enjoyment he DOES have feels stolen - like he shouldn't be having it. If you can lean, you can clean. If you have time to be watching a movie or shopping for clothes or playing pretend with your shitty wands, you have time to be MAKING SURE YOUR WHOLE SPECIES DOESN'T DIE IN AGONY.

It's not that he literally never has fun, it's that any fun he does have feels undeserved, unearned, and shameful. Distractions from his responsibilities. Failures to live up to expectations. That's why the few leisure activities we actually get to hear about or see him do are usually couched in being part of his duties - FLARPing with Vriska feeds their lusii, and his attempts to hang out with her are transparently hidden in trying to get her to build him doomsday devices. He dresses to emulate Dualscar first and foremost, and even though he prefers drama and romance, he only lets himself read them in the context of military history.

It makes his love of wizards more striking because he can't come up with a good excuse for it - he just ardently fucking loves magic and pretending to be a wizard. But even then, he clearly feels shame for liking magic, because he's constantly decrying it for being fake kiddie playtime shit for wigglers. See what I mean? It's not that he doesn't have fun, it's that he doesn't feel like he's ALLOWED to have fun. Even when he is doing things that are objectively fun, there's a part of his brain chastising him for wasting his time. He's always filled with a nonspecific fear that if he isn't doing something "useful," then Something Bad Will Happen. So to that end, as much as he's been able, he's tried to make his hobbies all somehow related to fulfilling his various overhanging Duties and Responsibilities, to the point where his own lived experience is one where he is perpetually on call. Das mental illness babey!!!!!

The one exception to this seems to be his long conversations with Karkat, where we actually see Eridan chill way the fuck out, crack jokes, and talk about his and Karkat's feelings. It helps that Karkat's, like, the only person on the team who takes Eridan's problems seriously.

[sufferingink]

the way that TMA has altered my brain chemistry is unreal so here's 911 characters and their fear alignments (without having watched past season four):

Buck: I don't think his would actually be The Lonely. while that's certainly part of it, I think too much of his fear comes from the idea that he's replaceable and filling too much space and needs to hide parts of himself to be loved and if that's not The Stranger, I'm not sure what is.

(I think you could probably make a case for all of them EXCEPT the corruption. when faced with a decomposing dead body he stabs it without gloves to manually drain fluids. when faced with a maggot that had crawled from somewhere I'd prefer not to think about, he goes "maggot :D!" he's kinda chill around killer bees apparently?? I've not gotten that far. but he's not afraid of bugs or sickness or anything so long as it doesn't keep him from his people. tldr: Buck loves bugs too much to be a corruption avatar)

Eddie: that's The Desolation babey. Is terrified of losing everything, so blows up his life before anyone else can. routinely loses things, relationships, people in a dramatic fashion, usually descending into guilt spirals that makes everything so much worse. has yet to end a relationship on even remotely good terms, I think it's fair to say they'd all be better to not have been with him at all

Bobby: I'm actually not too sure about this one but I'll go with The Eye. After the fire that killed his family he talks about how he should have known better, both in doing drugs and in the building's many safety violations. He's a fire captain that takes the injuries of his people very seriously because they happened under his watch and he should have kept a closer eye on them. he's got religious guilt. he even immediately gets sucked into spying on people "just in case" just like one Jonathan Sims circa Magnus Archives season 2

Maddie: The Hunt. do I need to explain this one? her abusive husband LITERALLY HUNTED HER through the woods. not to mention her relationship with her parents. The Hunt is also the fear that the people closest to you would turn on you, and I think trying to erase your brother from existence, leaving you (a ten year old) to raise your OTHER brother, then completely ABANDONING YOU when you get into previously mentioned abusive marriage qualifies as a betrayal, one that has broken her trust in others to help her (Buckley parents when I find you-)

Chim: The Lonely. his mother died when he was young, his father barely speaks to him, one of his brothers died BECAUSE OF HIM (in his mind anyway), he refuses to admit he thinks of his found family as more his family than his blood relatives till his late thirties, and I haven't got to where Tommy gets reintroduced, but Chim's origin episode I'm sorry but he's trying a LOT, TOO MUCH to become friends with someone that's been exclusively a jerk to him, he strikes me as a lonely guy

Athena: The Hunt as well, and I'm not just saying that because she's a cop! that's only part of it- but she's also a black woman working in a police department. she's aware of how easy it is for officers to get away with basically anything, even aware of exactly how unsafe her OWN family is, yet insists on staying and insists that there are more good cops than bad. you can't tell me she doesn't doubt that every single day, and what if they prove her wrong? (remember what I said about the fear of being turned on?)

Hen: I'm feeling The End, but less in a Death™ way and more of "there's nowhere to go from here." Hen prides herself on her ability to learn and grow so naturally that hard stop, you will be exactly as you are now forever, scares her. also people keep telling me she's the only one yet to get a major near death experience soooo

Ravi: Buck

[canmom]

the adventure of canmom at weird weekend (part 1)

is this 'adventure of' joke getting old? like I've already done the 'translate into scots gaelic' variant. it's not exactly an adventure if it's a half hour bike ride is it? ah fuckit

This weekend was the Weird Weekend film festival in Glasgow! it's the tiny kind of film festival with one screen and folding chairs - they did get their hands on a real beast of a projector mind you...

Look at that concentrated beam of pure film. Kind of awesome to actually see a lightfield intense enough to scatter off random bits of dust in the air honestly.

This is apparently the fourth time this festival has run - though as is often the case I'm terribly out of the loop and only heard about it when @birdfriender told me it was on lol. It's also only my third time going to a film festival (the previous times both being Annecy, a very different kind of festival). It was a great time: the organisers have excellent taste and there's a lot of deep cuts, and made some good friends among the attendees.

On Friday night I showed up for the opening evening of interactive film - this included a short film/video essay commissioned for the festival based on of all things the Goncharov meme (seriously...), followed by a brief history of interactive film including the amusingly ill-fated venture of a certain former Microsoft guy called Bob something (I really should have written this down), and then someone called Puke ("everyone’s favourite genderfluid body fluid") came out dressed like this to oversee the actual event...

...and we watched of all things Final Destination 3 with the DVD feature that lets you switch in alternate scenes at various points (mostly death scenes). This was actually a pretty good time since it was my first time seeing a Final Destination film, and there was a good energy in the audience (although it seemed like the film always picked the opposite of what we voted for - not sure if that's a thematic point or programming error lol), but I'm glad the rest of the festival was more obscure stuff.

On Saturday, the festival proper began! I am reminded of a certain line in Exordia, in which the alien Ssrin gives her assessment of humanity, opening with "You’re a species of gangly distance runners, adapted to sweat and throw stuff. You like watching each other fuck." And indeed, there were few films this weekend that did not offer an opportunity to watch someone fuck. That's art for ya babey.

Looking back the clear highlight was Louise Weard's film Castration Movie I: Traps, but more on that anon - let's start at the beginning. I ended up catching all but one of the films over the course of the weekend and there was maybe only one I'd call an outright miss, so great going in all.

On Saturday we opened with a pair of Hungarian films directed by György Révész, about an incredibly up himself intellectual-in-exile named Dr. János Bátky - the self insert of author Antal Szerb. the first film, The Loves of a Dilettante, sees Bátky going through a series of affairs with women around him - in each case abruptly ending the relationship because it doesn't conform to his specific fantasy. The reasons become increasingly absurd: at first Bátky wishes instead that his partner is a certain Countess, but when he chances to meet the lady herself, he refuses to believe she is who she says she is; at last another woman at the library turns out to be the secret admirer who has been sending Bátky gifts in the post, and he cannot stand to be pursued instead of the manipulative pursuer he fancied himself to be, and spurns her as well.

Bátky is very much the butt of the joke in this film, and the ending sees everyone pretty much done with his bullshit; at the same time, he is an entertaining character, with a nonstop patter full of literary allusions, bizarre tangents and dubious observations. Not so charming that I can quite see why all these women are throwing themselves at him, but that's the conceit of the film I suppose! The actor playing him, Iván Darvas does a splendid job of making this sideburned wanker come across as interesting enough to carry a film.

The second Bátky film, The Pendragon Legend was a major tonal departure from the first - and also featured a different cast, despite including a number of the same characters. (Funnily enough Iván Darvas returns, but as a different character.) This time, rather than a study of Bátky's foibles, we have a complicated conspiracy at a stately home in wales, tying in with biological experiments, immortal sorcerors and the Rosicrucians, assassination plots, affairs; the works. It ends up a lot of fun, although the sheer number of characters made it a little hard to keep track of everything. Here, Bátky is pulled in as almost an observer of all the shit going down, and comes across a lot more sympathetic as a result.

All in all, a pretty fascinating pair of films and window into Hungarian cinema. With both these films set in London and Wales but voiced entirely in Hungarian, it seems to present an amusing alternate universe in which Hungary is the language of the UK, but nobody knows where Hungary is. It's a very old-school 'from outside' view of the UK, full of tea-sipping aristocrats and walks in the park and intellectual conversations in a library - it's quite funny to me. I haven't seen a ton of Hungarian film (mostly animation), but everything I've seen has been fascinating, and terribly literary.

A whole lot of the films in this festival were restorations of various out of print films, and that includes to the next one, Treasure Island directed by Scott King. This film has absolutely nothing to do with Stephenson's book, instead referring to the island near San Francisco where mail was processed during the second world war.

The basis of the story is the historical Operation Mincemeat, in which the British constructed a false identity for a corpse and planted it to mislead the Nazis; here the story is transplanted to the American invasion of Japan, but the focus is hardly wartime intrigue, instead the psychosexual inner lives of the two Americans who are involved in constructing the fake identity for the corpse. One of them secretly has two wives, one a white civilian woman and the other a Japanese woman who works in translation for the military; the other habitually invites other men for group sex with him and his wife and has a whole lot of hangups about how he is not gay, and that corpse is not at all sexy thank you.

As the film progresses, both of them are increasingly struck by visions of the dead man talking to them and the line between 'reality' and fantasy gets blurrier. It's a very well crafted and engaging film; shot in black and white in 1999, it aimed to challenge the rather sanitised and straightforwardly heroic picture of the 'Greatest Generation' who fought the war, presenting a more 'warts and all' look with the sexuality and racism and so forth in full view. I found it very effective! And it was cool to have the director there, a bearded American guy who spoke very confidently about his intentions for the film - I got to ask a question about how he kept all the fantasy and more literal elements straight while scripting the film.

(Do you find that when you get a Q&A session like this, you really want to ask a good question? Because I do. It's very silly. But like if I am going to hold the mic and get the spotlight on me... sure I don't want to waste peoples' time, but also I kinda want to come off well lmao. If I can get people to go 'ooh that's a good question' I feel like I've won audience Q&A, a real thing that is reasonable to want.)

In the afternoon we got a massive block of trans films old and new. We opened with Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucubers featuring Holly Woodlawn; Jaye Hudson of the TGirlsOnFilm Instagram account (which I was not previously familiar with) gave an introduction, telling the story of how Woodlawn came into the orbit of Warhol's 'Factory', and reading out some funny anecdotes about her experience on set. As Jaye talked about it, at that point in the 70s, trans girls were kind of the flavour of the month and we appeared in a bunch of films at the time, of which this was one.

The film sees a girl called Eve Harrington moving to New York in pursuit of the dream of becoming an actress; there she meets a series of weirdos from taxi-driving nuns to 'Mary Poppins', the drag empress of a kind of roommate finding service who's always trailed by worshipful boys. Most of the film sees Eve trying to find an apartment and a boyfriend, and running into various 70s archetypes along the way: a werewolf (also played by Woodlawn in boy mode), political lesbians, a plant-obsessed hippy, and finally a taciturn amnesiac Russian woman and her brother, a little person in a cowboy outfit who does pro wrestling. It's an intriguing slice of the 70s and of New York in particular.

Apparently this film has long been out of print and only narrowly evaded being lost media, so it's pretty sick to see. (And honestly despite the long cultural shadow they cast, I don't actually know that much about the girls around Warhol's 'Factory', so I was glad to get a look in.)

Next up we had 'An Untitled and Perfectly-Legal Coming-of-Age Clown Parody Film' - not hard to figure out what film this is (The People's Joker), especially with the still and trailer right there, but while the courts in the US seem to have come down on recognising it as a valid Fair Use defence, the legal status is still a bit up in the air in the UK.

This one got a lot of buzz for thumbing its nose at Warner Bros.' copyright empire - and of course being part of a recent wave of trans girl directed independent films such as I Saw The TV Glow. It's a trans girl coming of age story built around the Batman milieu, and clearly by people with a pretty thorough knowledge of Batman's cinematic history and DC universe deep cuts (the final act involves a musical number with Mx. Mxyzptlk, played as a puppet, which I'm sure means something if you read the comics).

It's largely shot on greenscreen, with all kinds of mixed media and animation segments - deliberately going for a grungy, chaotic look where it doesn't try to match lighting and animation styles (there's a whole bunch of indepedent animators contributing brief segments here, much as in Barber Westchester). The story concerns Joker the Harlequin, a trans girl who finally moves away from her controlling mother after being drugged with 'Smylex' for most of her life; now in Gotham she can transition, have a dodgy relationship with a trans guy (who is also a version of the Joker, and - spoilers - a former Robin), and build an 'anti-comedy' club with most of the usual Batman villains before going to confront the cultish institution which controls all legal comedy in post-'cyber war' America.

The film's strongest aspect is, fittingly, jokes - throwaway lines about the casually dystopian setting ('drag was outlawed after the explosion at RuPaul's fracking ranch' got a big laugh); a running joke of namedropping cancelled comedians with 'before the unpleasantness, of course' 'of course'; the playful riffs on past Batman films. The core story, though, is a fairly by-the-numbers queer/trans coming of age about self-acceptance, parental mistreatment and finding community, and a bit of a satire on SNL which is perhaps more specific to the director's history - I get the purpose of this kind of narrative and I certainly needed it at a time, and wrote similar stories myself, but it's a kind of story I'm kind of increasingly tired of hearing. I don't mean to say it's bad for that - just it doesn't resonate the way it might have ten years ago.

Honestly, I think trying to make a 'trans movie' kind of paints you into a formulaic corner. A corner very deftly avoided by the next movie, Louise Weard's Castration Movie Part I: Traps. This was the theatrical debut of this movie, though it's been available to download on Weard's gumroad for some time.

Louise Weard made herself kind of notorious for her previous movie, ten years ago, Computer Hearts, but even more so for her castration scene supercut at the Fantastic Fest '100 Best Kills' event a couple of years ago - something that has left her feeling a bit pigeonholed into castration scenes. Part of the joke about Castration Movie is then that it's eight hours (only half of that presently available) of trans girls being sad (emotional drama) without any castration until the very end of the movie. It doesn't even come up in the first half.

Technically, this is a four hour long movie - the first part of an eight hour long movie! - consisting largely of very long takes of naturalistic conversations shot on an incredibly grainy camera, now and then mixing that with musical montage and sex scenes. Something I'd raise an eyebrow at on description, and I want to kind of lead with that because like, no joke, this is legit one of the best movies I've seen; those four hours absolutely fly by. Incredibly sharp character writing, incredibly strong naturalistic acting - and unreasonably funny, just way too much.

The first hour or so focuses on Turner, an aspiring film director who spends his time working odd jobs at a film crew and increasingly torpedoing his relationship with his furry-artist girlfriend - someone he clearly isn't very compatible with and views with little actual interest, and his efforts to try and salvage the relationship ring false in ways he's clearly unable to see. But at every turn he doubles down and builds on his resentment and sense of emasculation, until he's picking fights with a living statue in the street and busting into his ex's room late at night.

Along the way we get all sorts of darkly funny conversations - Weard has an incredible eye for subtext and awkwardness, and can lend an ultimately very unsympathetic character like Turner enough sympathetic motivation to make his downward spiral completely human and convincing. It's both sad and terribly funny, perfectly pitched.

The punchline sees him posting to /r9k/ - and at this point we cut to a new story about 'Traps', the film's actual main character, a sex worker in Vancouver played by Weard herself, who is caught up with the drama of various partners and her own completely unresolved shit around transition to make her an entirely unsuitable would-be mentor figure to her friend Adeleine, who's kind of the deuteragonist of this act, cracking under the pressure of being the only one in the house with a shit but paying office job while her boyfriend gets top surgery.

The first act sets us up a frame to look at the second - Traps is a pretty messed up person, but in a deeply understandable way, and it serves in ways to show that the shit she's going through is not some unique trans girl thing but very much the torment of being a human. Desperate for connection and fucking it up, digging ourselves deeper while convinced it's the right thing to do. Along the way, we see her having various kinds of nasty sex, injecting DIY HRT, taking a bunch of cocaine, a trans guy getting top surgery, and various other fun things that I could never stream on twitch (or you bet I'd be planning a screening right away) - but it's also in many ways incredibly matter of fact about all this shit we get up to in a way that feels incredibly real.

It's a film that benefitted a lot from viewing with a largely transfem audience who would laugh at certain lines in the right spirit - I have no idea how this whole thing would come across if you aren't trans and don't know what 'agp' means (about the person saying it as much as anything) lmao. But if you are, it's like the film I never even knew I needed. It's way too real: from amusing setups like the polycule who has the access to DIY HRT trying to drag you into an argument about Dune before one of them wakes up and has a panic attack or daft conversations about boobs, to the pinpoint depiction of the kinds of neuroses we end up carrying from our shitty tenuous work, and of course the friction and fireworks of trying to care for each other when we're all burned out from carrying our own shit. Weard is fearless, and does seem to rather revel in being transgressive, but this is not edge for edge's sake.

And honestly this is 100% what 'trans film', if we can't help but have such a category, needs to be I think - a story heavily informed by the specific fucked up experiences of being trans but not like, About Being Trans(TM) in the way People's Joker was. Uncompromisingly honest (but with plenty of humour) about how we are, which is to say painfully human, rather than cheerfully painting the sort of freeing subculture we'd like to think we have.

I got to talk to Weard quite a bit on Sunday (ending up in a pub with her and a number of other mostly trans festivalgoers), and it turns out the slightly ludicrous length of the film wasn't even planned, with the original idea to edit it down to something like a standard 90 minutes - but when it became evident after shooting the first forty minutes or so that these long scenes were kind of absolute gold, someone (I forget who now) made the case that they shouldn't be cut down at all and to just go for the full behemoth. And honestly? They were fucking right. This did not feel like a four hour film, somehow. There were definitely other films this festival where my mind wandered and I kind of checked out a bit, but not this one.

As a chaser (ha ha) to that, we had Louise Weard's 'Unsee' segment, screened just once in the hour before the clocks change (which is in a certain sense lost to time, or at least that's the joke of this segment). An elaboration on the experience of presenting the castration scene supercut at the '100 Best Deaths' event, it dives into a reprise of that supercut before increasingly alternating with scenes of a kind of introspective monologue on how people reacted to that event and how far Louise herself started to end up feeling like the butt of the joke (even as random cis women accused her of being transphobic lmao).

As the video progresses it segues into an increasingly ridiculous sequence where two of Weard's friends step in (as substitute Louise Weards) reading out her essay of Lacanian film analysis on castration scenes in movies, while Weard (behind the camera) gives them directions to frame the shot to better show her cis ex's boobs. In between, more castration scenes! So many, most of them unfamiliar to me (funny moment when I finally recognised one and my brain was like hey! that's Sálo! and I found myself turning to face Violet with an excited grin before my brain caught up with that)

Among other things, the narration talks about the whole arc being a transgressive tgirl filmmaker who frequently faced some rather ridiculous accusations of being a transphobe or nazi troll (by TV Glow's Jane Schoenbrun, although it seems they have since made up), all in a time when it seems like a lot of her contemporaries in the transgressive film scene actually do seem to end up going nazi; the trouble of getting pigeonholed as the castration person, and so on - but also kind of playing with like oh, fifteen more castration scenes, that's what you want right? So many swerves, and the supercut was in fact very funny (I wonder if I find it easy to laugh instead of wincing since I actually have been castrated lmao), ending in a scene which is constructed to suggest Louise actually cut her balls off for the bit - though since she showed the prop penis earlier it was pretty clear that she didn't. (Yet..?)

It's a really clever bit and superbly entertaining bit of filmmaking, all told. I'm a full Louise Weard convert at this point, can't wait for castration movie part ii.

This post has gotten pretty long now, so I'll write up Sunday tomorrow. Do go watch Castration Movie tho, it's worth your time.

[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)

[subbyp]

seriously Achilles’ codex entries are a trip and if you don’t read them you’re just missing out

the entry on Meg where he admits multiple times that he’s just too scared of her to ask her to spar or dig into her history with Zagreus

his opinion that the archers of Elysium must be experiencing some seriously diminishing returns by now in terms of skill gained with practice

his noting that Hades and Artemis have a very similar temperament and could probably reconcile if they tried, which is why they probably never will

”how many of my brethren did [Poseidon] drown during my mortal days? he comes across as affable, yet I’ve not forgiven him” damn son ok

his entry on Cerberus starts out roughly “yes, his three razor-lined maws have rent asunder countless fleeing souls and hubristic interlopers, but he’s babey”

the brief aside in the Varatha entry about Hades insisting that Posiedon’s trident is a cheap Varatha knockoff

he notes that for the record he has asked to help Dusa with her housekeeping duties and she may have literally tried to bite him for it

his recurring thoughts on gunpowder and explosives (gross and scary, probably also cursed)

the brief aside in the pom of power entry about “antioxidants, whatever those are, and whatever they are for”

his entry on trout which is basically “it’s a fucking trout”

when you first meet the Elysium npc, and his dialog box name tag is just “???”, but then the codex updates, so you look at the entry, and it’s just “PATROCLUS: Forgive me. It is not my place to speak of him now.”

the entry on Thanatos, which starts out describing his personality and divine portfolio, takes a hard left turn into him being in love with Zagreus, and concludes with, basically, “something something something therefore Zagreus is the god of blood”

[rinupi]

Ok so, this is **REALLY** rough and i wrote everything on the bus today lmao

Haitani brothers are at the end of their sentence when Inui gets sent to the same reform school.

Bad first impressions, but Rindou gets a lil' crush

Wing-man Ran pesters Seishu a lot, so his little brother can get close to his crush by simply sticking to Ran.

Time skip to after they're all out

Mostly the brothers just hang out with Koko & Inupi. Koko is highly suspicious of Rindou trying to hog Inupi.

Rindou is high-key jealous of Kokonoi

They sorta join the Black Dragons as honorary members and/or Friends of the gang.

Haitani's get their own black uniforms and will at times meddle with gang stuff for shits & giggles

Around this time Rinupi start getting involved

Seishu still takes a while to realize Rindou likes him too, because he's just. Like that. (rin has been weird around seishu since day 1)

Both Ran & Rindou are occupied during the Black Dragons arc bc let's say that's when Izana contacted them and Tenjiku began forming.

Rindou has to inform Seishu that the S62 is back and the bros will be occupied with old friends for a while :)

Tenjiku arc starts

Enter: the worlds most awkward meeting between Ran, Rindou & Koko

All three realise that they left Seishu for Tenjiku

Rindou gets some seriously traitorous thoughts & Koko feels bad

Koko stays in Tenjiku

Rindou & Ran argue about staying. Both know that separation is *not* an option.

Until Rindou starts crying, then Ran decides to pack his baton & leave with Rindou.

Izana: where tf are those brothers?? Are they late again?

*Koko sweats nervously*

Haitani brothers show up at Seishu's place and nervously greet him

Seishu just stares. stunned

Ran third wheels rinupi reunion

Seishu decides to inform Takemichi and all 4 have a little meeting together.

Ran informs everyone of the Emma assassination plans

Takemichi appointments himself her bodyguard.

Another meeting point is whether the brothers should join the battle or join ToMan.

They settle on it being the brother's choice. Both Takemichi & Seishu will attend regardless

The brothers sit it out, trusting Koko & Seishu's friend to keep him alive

Ran does convince Seishu to bring a weapon though.

They do spectate

The neutrality does not last at all, and both join

A shit ton of confusion from both sides as the Haitani Brothers just beat up whoever

They mostly focus on anyone seeming to target Seishu, Koko, Mocchi & Kakuchou.

They also beat up Kisaki & Hanmna

Somehow the whole conflict ends with no deaths.

Btw Emma lives. She survived with no lasting injuries, but is injured.

The Sanos talk it out & all is well

oK. WAIT . THIS IS SO INTERESTING OMG i love bending the canon liek this just to make rindou and inui meet it's so GOOD!!!!!!!!

i chuckled at the *koko sweats nervously* LMAO

"haitani brothers show up at seishu's place" yesyesyesyesyesyesyes

the rinupi UST bring it bring it bring it!!! oh lrod i wanna draw themmmm againnnnn ughughfuh

RIN IS SO BABEY PLEASE RAN CANNOT RESIST RIN'S TEARS 🥺

BUT DADDY ANIKI I LOVE HIM

VERY CUTE VERY HAITANI

RAN WOULD GET A KICK OUTTA THAT IM SURE

WDYMMMMM WDYM WDYM IT ENDS HERE WHERE'S MY RINUPI HAPPY ENDING !!!!!! I NEED ME A DOMESTIC RINUPI LIFE AFTER-BATTLE@!!!!!

Rin: Domestic life w u sounds good, baby Inui: Mm. Except in bed, I guess. Rin: (smirking) Woof woof.

thank u sm anon for showing me ur outline!!!!!! even if it doesn't end up being an actual fic the fact that there's an outline for it shows that the idea's still there, still planned and was very fun for u im sure!! COS IT WAS FUN FOR ME TO READ HEHEHEHEHEEEE <3

[jacenotjason]

OK this will be an extremely long ask i am sorry. i love radford

i havent sent an ask to people in years but i am one of the radford fans of all time and demonic possession is a fun concept to me, so the idea of gadreel possessing him specifically makes me INSANE

i just think itd work extremely well. radford doesnt take anything seriously and doesnt understand boundaries, but he always puts his concern for others first and his well-being last. he annoys father gregor and compares him to priests hes seen in the movies, and he does spray holy water + offer free candy against kevins wishes, but he also warns rick about the trouble he could get himself into when not giving the right movie tickets, and helps kevin with his job with no pay in mind. hes annoying, but his heart is in the right place

but gadreel is the Ultimate Prankster. him trying to imitate radford would backfire Hard, because gadreels idea of fun is,, More Extreme. he allows kids to enter adult films, he steals candy and says its fine since hes friends with kevin, he tells his friends and brother to break the rules and disrespect authority, etc etc. im unsure what gadreels motives are other than to ruin everyones day, but hes doing a damn good job at it. all the blame is going to radford, and honestly, its just So Easy to blame him for it

i imagine it takes a while for most people to figure out that somethings wrong with radford. he does what he wants freely, wherever and whenever, so these mistakes could be rationalized by him having an off-day. i assume rad would look extremely tired after a days long session of gadreel torturing him (because he loves pushing the human body. bill cipher behavior). but i think what makes everyone truly concerned is when "radford" starts involving Others in his antics

it isnt like rad to encourage bad behavior. he would never tell rick to swap the prices of two items at his new job, or tell robert the best blind spots to steal from stores, or forcing kevin to take his anger out on someones property. the radford everyone knows is ditzy, but kindhearted. if theres trouble, radford would be the only perpetrator

and god, imagine how much worse it gets if "radford" gets in trouble with the police. john would be frustrated seeing his own nephew be so careless and cruel all of a sudden. itd probably even make him spiral and assume the cult had something to do with it, and that john and his family arent safe like he thought. and i think gadreel relishes in that knowledge

im also so curious as to how gadreel and radford met and how long the possession lasted, maybe it was a week? in my head, he came to radford in the form of a snake before revealing his true self and attacking, leaving no time for rad to fully process it and run away. i also assume skid and pump will have some involvement, and pumps eyes turning blue will be a clear sign that "radford" is associated with a demonic entity, or Is one. either way i love gadreels character being a "twisted" version of radfords if that makes sense

so um ya sorry for the longest ask ever. heres a drawing

OPOOOHMYGOHMOSIEJHIOSRHGIUSADHRUITGHSDUIGSDB !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE AWESOME!??!?!?!?!? FUCK OK OKAYAKOAJTYAOKATY THANK YOU SO MUCH THIS IS SO COOL

THANK YOU FOR THE DRAWING, EATING IT, YOUR POINTS ARE ALL CORRECT

Unlike Moloch whose possessions are more brutal and obvious, Gadreel hides and youre so right! Hes here for the long haul babey!!

yes i imagine the possession lasted about a week, week and a half. Gadreel can't feel pain (at least Radfords pain i mean, he has a higher pain tolerance, as a demon yknow) so he could very well accidentally snap a bone as Radford and not even notice. What im saying is Rad is hospitalized afterwards

AUGHHH the police thing. Gadreel sees the cops and WANTS to get caught by them, just for goofs. in a "Oh what would happen if i did this :)" way.

GOD THIS IS SO COOL YOURE LITERALLY THE BEST

OH!! AND ON THE SUBJECT OF HOW RAD AND GADREEL MET !!

Instead of possessing Patty in the morgue, Gadreel took the form of a snake and.... left lmao. or got noticed and thrown out bc oh my god a snake

he ended up near the candyclub and radford was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gadreel saw Radford as a hiding place and a means to have fun.

I imagine Moloch doesnt care about what his vessels look like, meanwhile Gadreel won't possess someone if he thinks theyre lame. like yeah he couldve possessed patty but then he would've had to.... do stuff. eugh. This guy looked WAY more fun.

im actually vibrating yourel iterally the coolest dawg.

[stars-n-spice]

Silly Squad Alignment Charts

Because I thought it would be fun and silly :)

Find out more about the Silly Squad here!

Of course, have to start with the classic:

Hunter will say they have food at home and it's literally like probably two slices of bread, a bottle of ketchup, and a head of lettuce

Viram KNOWS how to cook so you best be happy to eat her food instead of having Mcdonalds

Khea and Echo it depends on their mood whether they pull up and order a single black coffee before leaving (Echo would never do it if Omega is in the car)

Crosshair doesn't even like their coffee but he does it to be a little shit

Feel like Tech is also kinda in the middle because he'll be like "Technically we have food at home-" but he also needs his caffeine

Phee will ALWAYS pull up to the Mcdonalds, especially when Omega's with her. Then Omega always holds it over Hunter- "Well, PHEE takes ME to Mcdonalds!"

Tay is the definition of a bastard (no seriously)

Phee is bastard (affectionate) but would technically be more of "Badass" than anything

Khea, Crosshair, and Tech are the Bitch Trio and if you put them in a room together they WILL tear each other apart (emotionally most likely but Tech will goad Crosshair and Khea into physically fighting each other while he records)

Majority of the squad is Babey though

Echo is also "Bad Ass" but he could also be a Bitch if he wanted

Hunter is Bastard just because I think it's funny

Dumb Bitch Hunter my beloved <3

Echo is sad dick because he has no dick

I use dumb affectionately with Wrecker (not with Hunter and Tay)

Tech just has big dick energy to me idk

Khea's a sad hoe but she'll never admit to it (the being sad part)

If you've noticed, I really like making fun of Hunter that's why he's there in the dumbass squared category

Wrecker, Khea, and Phee are all smart as fuck but have more fun pretending that they aren't really

Tay is good at pretending that he is smart - he is not

Then of course, Tech, Cross, and Echo are all smartasses

This fit so perfectly I was dying

Hunter is laughing nervously because he's aroace lmao

Omega would be like "Thanks! :D" and just carry on

Jung would most likely do *thumbs up* instead of finger guns though

When you pair up the couples, it's funnier

If Tay said "I know" after Cross told him that he loved him, Crosshair would dump him on the spot

Khea tells Wrecker she loves him for the first time and he short circuits and probably would say something along the lines of "YEET!"

Viram and Echo both have issues and would not be able to comprehend why someone would love them - I'm sure Echo's got insecurities and Viram knows she's a workaholic and therefore difficult to be in a relationship so she apologies in advance

If Phee told Tech she loved him and he went "a horrible decision, really" she'd probably laugh

And of course, who doesn't love Phee? If you don't, get out of here.

Crosshair could care less, he ain't dealing with that shit

Tech would say this ominously as if he's seen the future and knows your death is imminent meanwhile Khea's is more of a - "you probably will because everyone close to me has already died" sort of way :/

I feel like Omega might also be "i'd die for you first" too

Hunter, Viram, and Echo don't want to deal with that shit either, they've already got so much loss, guilt, and other things on their plate

Tay's probably not listening when someone tells him they'd die for him while Phee's like, "Oh, neat. Anyways, as I was saying about my last adventure-"

Jung is ready and willing to put his life on the line and Wrecker would probably more like a "Nu uh" because he's got your back and would look out for you

Phee will also do it for some credits or a cool treasure

Tay is going to fight god (and he's going to lose)

Tech could do so much more than take down the government, but he needs incentives (him and Phee can take down the government together <3)

Khea is a bounty hunter, her job literally requires her to stab people sometimes in order for her to get money

Crosshair would stab without anyone needing to ask him

Echo's taking down the government no matter what, but especially if Rex asks him to come along

Jung is going to fight god if you ask them to (and he'll win)

Viram is the type of friend who is an excellent tutor and you end up understanding the concept after getting her help meanwhile Omega will explain what she knows and then the homework becomes a group project of figuring out what the fuck it's asking

You can copy Hunter's homework but there is no guarantee that the answers are right (most of them are wrong)

You can copy Jung's homework and there's a high chance the answers are right

Khea had better things to do than homework - like get frustrated over it and cry for a bit before giving up on it

Phee did some of the homework but she'll only help you out if you give her something in exchange

Wrecker and Tay, beloved himbos, they had no idea and even if they did do the homework, you wouldn't want to copy off of them

Crosshair also didn't do the homework but he also doesn't want to respond

Tech and Echo both did the homework and it's correct but they don't tolerate copying work to even have suggested it is offensive so now you're left on read