#she has a lot of nuance to her character

[poisonouspastels]

Anon forgot time exists. I would really love to hear more about Groda's transition from antagonist to basically house cat! Her character really fascinates me and I love a good redemption arc.

Hey no worries at all!! I've actually been talking to Atlas a lot abt Groda lately (he's #1 Groda fan I'm pretty sure) so I can actually copy/paste some of the stuff I've talked abt previously! And to anyone who needs to do some additional catch up reading, I talk about a lot of her past history here, and a bit about more recent (but also still past) events here. But!!! Talking about her (rather long) transitional period specifically, that pretty much started the moment that she got (unwillingly) taken home by the main 4 players after her defeat. Given she held Rana hostage for a few days, among other things, fair's fair. The main focus point though was after everyone getting back to somewhat decent health, Herobrine using his magic was able to find a way to block Groda from using it on her own, hence creating a longer term solution than just having her tied up forever effectively. Groda, without her magic, is a goddamn sitting duck. No Wardens, no turning people to stone, no way to fight back other than a half-hearted slap fight at best. Unfortunately her loss of the ability to use magic ALSO means almost no one could understand her anymore. Previously, thanks to her magic, the Galactic language was basically auto-translated to the players as Commonspeak (her lips actually wouldn't fully sync up with words she spoke, something that was noted by Rana during her time stuck with her in the caves), but now she'd only be reduced to Galactic at its purest form. Fortunately due to Herobrine's self-taught learning of the language (albeit a VERY butchered version of it being self taught), he at least was able to still understand her and communicate in some regard. Or perhaps you could consider that unfortunate for him, given the only weapons Groda had left to use was her words, and he had to be the brunt of actually understanding that and teaching her Commonspeak. On the contrary, soon after this revelation Rana would try and learn Galactic to try and make Groda more comfortable with the current circumstance and maybe feel more motivated to put in the effort. She's not very good at it, but it's the thought that counts! Groda did pick up rather quickly on Commonspeak though, since it and Galactic aren't too far apart in translation. Once she picked up enough on the language to be able to communicate basics (and maybe curse words she would pick up on from Alex), she would soon be getting her hands dirty for once in her life and actually doing field work with Rana, not only to carry her own weight in chores but also to get her more in touch with the new world and being an actual PERSON after her long lived royal life. With time, learning more of Commonspeak and taking in the world around her with the people who were willing to even TRY and help her change for the better, she started to realize more and more how badly her actions managed to inadvertently fuck everything up. How much the world had changed because of what she unleashed, and the weight of her actions fully dawning on her. Which I give this important note of Groda's characterization to:

She gets better slowly with time of course, its all just taken day by day and she learns more and more to do things for herself and to help those around her. I think one of my favorite turning points for her though is when Rana and Herobrine bring home a Sniffer egg they found in some old wreckage at sea. (Sniffers being a species in this instance that went extinct because of the Wither being unleashed by her) Groda is dumbfounded to see the thing even intact at ALL, and hesitant to hope that it may still harbor life at all, but she does take it upon herself to care for it until it does indeed eventually hatch! She names him Bear :)

Thank @beegswaz for the art of them together im obsessed with it Another important arc for her character, arguably the most important one is when she's spotted by the Wither Cult and is eventually pursued directly by White Eyes upon her finding out that Groda is still alive. Upon the (deadly) confrontation between White Eyes and the main 4 + Groda, she shows her truest colors:

After the dust settles, White Eyes is brought home much like the same way Groda once was (albeit unconscious this time around) and a way to free her of the Wither's influence will eventually be found. And though the mere sight of Groda brings her to a rage even now (very understandable), Groda takes some solace in the fact that she for once can think with 100% unbiased confidence that she did the right thing.

[jacketpotatoo]

I'm stealing this from my lit teacher but he posed that something certain characters in arcane s2 missed were 'Zuko Alone' moments. Moments where characters took an extended amount of time to introspect, face the consequences of their actions, and connect with the wider world. This, to me, is why Caitlyn's arc wasn't as effective as it could've been. After a switch-up, after a big 180 like hers, it is simply necessary to track the progression of her arc. It's easy to say "In hating you, I've hated myself" and "no amount of good deeds can undo our crimes" but when you don't see her face the Zaunites or acknowledge the class-privileges she exploited, it all rings a little hollow. Arcane usually does a good job of tying the personal with the political and I think that's hidden in Cait's arc. She works as a character when you're understanding her actions in relation to her love for Vi and forgiveness of Jinx. She doesn't if you think of it on a wider socio-political scale. It's just a little odd when the show is such an arbiter of 'show don't tell'. That line has to do alot of heavy lifting. Alas, what time restraints does to an arc.

[kabutoden]

could you draw tavros bug? I looked for him but couldn't find him :[

Thx! <3 :]

i keep thinking about this ask. tavros bug. tavros bug. there is he. i think hes complaining about how people keep telling him to grow up when he's objectively never going to get to do so.

tavros...

[gods-favorite-autistic]

I’m going insane over Kipperlilly Copperkettle she’s such an amazing character because yes she is selfish and absolutely very privileged and she glorifies trauma in a really unhealthy way that is shitty for everyone around her and her view on the world and adventuring is horribly skewed but also she is a teenage girl with anger issues who just desperately wants to be seen and she didn’t actually hurt anyone before spring break sophomore year and she lost her best and closest friend and she was trying to get help because she knew something wasn’t right and her character is just so

[possamble]

do you have any particular thoughts regarding marcille being a half-elf? its interesting to me considering the fact that she seems self-conscious about being a half-elf, but denies it when its brought up

i remember marcille looking visibly uncomfortable over laios simply asking her how old she is, which i think the only reason she might feel nervous about this is because it might reveal her as a half-elf to him.

she's never corrected anybody whose called her an elf either.

never mind the circumstances of the reveal, in which thistle goes on about how half-elves are inferior and accusing her of wanting to become full blooded elf, she seemed particularly upset like he struck a nerve-

i wish the half-elf thing was built upon more. also, underrated marcille line:

okay so i revisited this sequence just to make sure I could back myself up and it's just... man. there's a lot going on.

the first reaction we get from Marcille is this huge panel that takes up half of the page

she is viscerally affected. flushing to the tips of her ears with the intensity of it. and we see it again, a few pages later

so it might seem like she's embarrassed about it and lying to herself, but... I really think it's just that Thistle is accidentally hitting sore spots. If you really look at what he says to get these reactions

"you'll live out your entire life [...] and die that way too"

"a hundred years from now, nobody will be there"

Hear me out. I think, if he stuck to harping on about her inferiority without bringing up how terrifyingly long-lived she is, she wouldn't have been as bothered. But right now, Thistle is accidentally hitting all the marks on Marcille's deepest fears-- and this is after the Winged Lion promised her that her dreams could come true in an extremely vulnerable moment, so it also hits her slightly guilty conscience as well.

I do truly believe that Marcille isn't bothered about being a half-elf the way that people assume she'd be bothered by it. To her, the biggest problem with being a half-elf is that it's isolating.

On one hand, it's not hard to imagine why she'd distance herself from elves in the west. A lot of them can clock her as a half-elf on sight, unlike other races, and therefore she's always branded with this weird stigma of being Othered -- I would even say that she considers herself lucky for being born outside of elven culture instead of having to grow up in it. I mean, just... look at the way elves talk about her.

Skipping past the uncomfortable implication of what 'not tolerating the existence' of half-elves would actually entail, this is incredibly fucking annoying. You can see why she wouldn't want to be around elves much. You see a lot of Marcille reacting badly here, but honestly, almost all of it can be attributed to her freaking out that her bluff completely failed. She's honestly more paying attention to Izutsumi's footsteps and trying to coordinate an opportunity to escape.

And in the end, you see her built-up frustration at being asked if she wants to be a full-blooded elf like 2-3 times in a row.

Yeah, yeah, "the lady doth protest too much," and all. But we know Marcille. We know that she's a lot more embarrassed and horrendously unconvincing when she's being prodded about something she's actually self-conscious about.

Moving onto the flipside of things, it might seem weird that she "pretends" to be a full elf around other races, but it's not really that strange if you think about it. Again, people are weird about her being infertile or whatever, and a lots of them don't even know much about what sets half-elves apart from everyone else. I mean, look at how uncomfortable Laios is just asking her about it

and look at how exasperated and resigned she looks

And like... she's right. Where would that come up in normal conversation? Why would she go out of her way to tell them? She's functionally a normal elf to other races anyway -- got the ears, the abnormally long "childhood", and the huge mana capacity. Unless it's directly relevant or important for people to know, I don't think it's all that strange or indicative of insecurity that she prefers not to bother with it.

(This combined with her sense of being an "outsider" to elf culture also explains why she thinks elf superiority is embarrassing. She sees the way elves treat short-lived races from the "outsider" perspective nonetheless, and thinks it's obnoxious; especially more so because she usually has to play the elf around short-lived races and deal with the reputation of arrogance that elves have built up.)

The sad thing is, this all means that... she doesn't actually fit in anywhere. She doesn't like going out West much because of how elves treat her. But she's also an outsider in the continents she was born in, treated like this exotic long-lived alien choosing to live among short-lived races for some reason. She is always an outsider, the Other, no matter where she goes. Add in the fact that she'll live longer than literally anyone she knows, and it's honestly kind of heartbreaking.

And I think that's the crux of it. Marcille really doesn't act like she's at all self-conscious about being a half-elf because of any feelings of inferiority or being half-made or whatever. She considers herself a perfectly legitimate being and might even, in some ways, consider herself superior to normal elves because she's not blind with elf supremacy or whatever. (And whatever "elven biases" she displays, all of them are born more out of the fact that she's kind of bad at conceptualizing how other races age and mature compared to herself, not that she actually considers herself better or more mature simply for being an elf.)

I think that whatever self-consciousness Marcille has about being a half-elf is, instead, related to terror and loneliness. The reminder that it ensures she'll never truly belong anywhere for the rest of her very long life. The reminder that, in truth, even she's not actually sure how old she is by other races' standards (hence the discomfort when asked how old she is). She doesn't want to not be a half elf, or be a full elf or full tall-man-- in her ideal world, she's still a half-elf. She just gets to live out her life at the same pace with the people she loves and doesn't have to say goodbye again and again and again until she dies.

and one last very important panel, right after Mithrun tells her that all her desires would be devoured

In her ideal world, she's still a half-elf and reality magically starts marching at her pace. But failing that, the second best thing is that she's still a half-elf-- but one who is able to accept reality and let go of her fear.

(But the rest of the story pans out the way it does because, to Marcille, taking reality apart and reshaping it was less scary than simply and fully reconciling with it.)

[fromtheseventhhell]

One major factor missing from most debates on Arya and Lyanna's beauty is that they're being judged by their society's extremely patriarchal values. In both looks and personality, that context is essential to understanding how others perceive them. George explores the misogyny experienced by non-conforming women, especially with Arya, and it's interesting how he plays with that regarding their physical beauty.

Her mother used to say she could be pretty if she would just wash and brush her hair and take more care with her dress, the way her sister did. (The Blind Girl, ADWD) "You never knew Lyanna as I did, Robert," Ned told him. "You saw her beauty, but not the iron underneath. She would have told you that you have no business in the melee." (Eddard VII, AGOT)

These two quotes offer a nice summation of this idea. With Arya, her supposed lack of beauty is defined by her being a non-conforming wild child. Her hair is messy, her face is dirty, and she's often in "lower class" clothing while engaging in unladylike activities. None of this says anything about her physical beauty but it tells us everything about how she's perceived. Arya could be pretty...If she conforms to society's standards for a highborn Lady. With Lyanna, however, we get the opposite. Where Arya is judged based on her personality, Robert's romanticization of Lyanna is rooted solely in her looks. He doesn't know anything about the person she really was. There is an assumption that, because she looked a certain way, her personality must fit and Robert imagines her much softer and more passive than she actually was.

That Arya isn't pretty or Lyanna wasn't wild are two perceptions that George specifically pushes back against. This is where people miss the brilliance of them being linked as literary mirrors; it is largely about us learning more about Lyanna, but it touches on more than that. The significance of them being written as wild, willful, and with their own beauty is that George isn't writing his female characters around patriarchal expectations. When people debate their beauty, that's often the trapping they fall into. Beauty and non-conformity are treated as mutually exclusive factors when the story itself never makes that point; this is also the logic that leads people to the (incorrect) conclusion that Lyanna and Arya aren't meant to be similar. Arya's self-esteem issues around her looks and being a Lady make this a topic certain to be addressed in the future; George has made it a part of the story. The conclusion shouldn't be that "looks don't matter", but that looks aren't indicative of a character's value, personality, or morality.

[girlishwhimsies]

thinking about ace, bev, and sandy being friends when they were younger. just. ough.

[alagaesia-headcanons]

I love that Nasuada's major flaw is the same as one of Galbatorix's greatest flaws, and that it gets worse and more ingrained throughout the series. And it's so compelling because it's incredibly in character for her and there's every reason for the circumstances to perpetuate and exacerbate it, but that doesn't make her flaw any less egregious. The scene where Galbatorix compares the two of them is so fascinating because his intention is very manipulative and malicious, yet the statement itself isn't entirely untrue.

Because Nasuada treats people like tools. She considers a person's utility more important than anything else, including their personhood.

And it's such an engrossing flaw because of course Nasuada treats people like tools! She is proud and powerful and stubborn and noble and utterly committed to achieving what she has set out to do, by whatever means necessary. She will use whatever she has at her disposal to reach her goal, and that includes using the people around her. Of course, this doesn't make Nasuada inherently immoral; she cares deeply about justice and protecting her people. But her views on the individuals around her are impersonal and self serving.

And the goal she's trying to achieve is to win the war. Nasuada would never be pushed out of her ways by the circumstances because they work, the way she treats people accomplishes exactly what she intends. By its nature, the bloody act of war rewards using people like tools. It demands that, even; to a certain extent, it's an ugly necessity in war, but the thing is that Nasuada doesn't see it that way. She never struggles with or grieves over the need to consider people's individuality as secondary to their function. It comes naturally to her, and it lasts through the end of the books, when the war is already over.

Because I think the most flagrant example of this is at the very end, when Birgit intercepts Roran as he's leaving, presumably intending to kill him, and Nasuada says, "He has proved himself a fine and valuable warrior on more than one occasion, and I would be most displeased to lose him." It's such a wonderful, pointed line that perfectly sums up this aspect of her character. Because what a disgusting thing to say. Especially for the queen of all Alagaesia, perfectly positioned and empowered to stop this confrontation and declare it unjust if she cared to. But her words make no attempt at all to defend Roran as a person, only his value to her.

The way she uses others I find most evident in her treatment of Roran, Murtagh, and Elva. The way she tells Eragon that she thinks of giving Katrina a dowry as a "purchase" of Roran's goodwill and loyalty. In Uru'baen, only at great length, she makes the conscious choice to ignore Murtagh's past and only judge who he is in the present, but disregards any care for what that might say about him as a person, solely focused on if he could be useful as an ally. And when Eragon offers to revert Elva's curse, the one that condemned an infant to feel every piece of pain and suffering surrounding her, Nasuada is so fixated on Elva's utility and value to Nasuada's goals that she goes so far as to ask Eragon to fake his effort to cure her. She sees people as tools to such an extent that she can't recognize that relieving an innocent baby of unimaginable, cursed agony should come before her own priorities.

[backpackingspace]

Guys listen I'm once again having ideas that I cannot draw. Consider:

A brief look of rage on Calypso as odysseus calls out for /a different goddess/

[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.

[daily-hanamura]

[gingermintpepper]

Extracts from The Greenhouse Floor

[thedrotter]

((cw blood, reference to eating a person))

(OC) More Shiba drawings, but these are actually recent! This time I will share a bit about Shiba. A non-goat creature from the Nether (She is a Minecraft OC ww) who now walks with society. She can be briefly described as strange in any angle ww

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[sukibenders]

Listen, and I say this as a Rhaenicent fan, but seeing some on Twitter going "Alicent would never hurt Rhaenyra like that," or "But if she were with Alicent..." really has me shaking my head because, really? That's what you thought coming out of this episode?

[cathalbravecog]

i'm the antonymph of the internet