#she's fascinating

[beevean]

I can just picture Shankar's Berserk

Guts is an ineffectual idiot

Casca spends her time shitting on Guts

Skull Knight is like Death 2.0

Schierke is just another Sypha

Farnese and Serpico do their best Lenector cosplay

Meanwhile the series is turned into the Griffith show because "every villain is the hero of their own show"

Comparing Farnese and Serpico (Farpico? Serpese? lmao) to Lenector is hilarious to me because 1) Serpico was meant to look like a bumbling sidekick until he revealed that he's actually cunning like a fox, which is what N!Hector was intended to be before Peak Writing striked; 2)

Farnese acts more like a kinky vampire than Lenore does. It's just funny to me. Wow, it's almost like your dommy mommy has to do more than just sexually molesting her pet! This scene is short but unironically hotter than any "good boy" Lenore can throw at me, even with Serpico not exactly being enthusiastic about being treated like a doll, and I'd be delighted to explain why :)

oh but i bet antis would shit themselves because oh noooooo they're half-siblings, quick, let's pretend they're not, that will make everything acceptable! at least it wouldn't look massively racist unlike with the japanese not-twins

anyway the rest is too real and I can only imagine the massive amout of whitewashing Griffith would receive because #HeDidNothingWrong and he's actually a tragic anti-hero with noble intentions :^) how much do we bet that the Eclipse wouldn't even happen?

[lgbstims]

Desi lesbian Anthy Himemiya stimboard

🌹 ✨ 🌹

✨ 🌹 ✨

🌹 ✨ 🌹

[mmmthornton]

Himeno

[dippyface]

I'm still using the Kroger frozen bread dough loaves for pizza crust bc it comes in at like $1.19 a loaf but it's like almost hilarious how much it refuses to get crispy and also has basically no taste. I'm determined to keep tweaking how I use it until it tastes...

[petrowriting]

the revelation that claudia’s rebirth was such a twisted and horrible moment, with louis dragging her like she was a thing, a stranger who neither of them knew but he kept saying over and over “our daughter, our beautiful little daughter” to lestat, really solidified the way she was never the main character of her own story. she was always an accessory to some or the other of louis’ whims: his guilt, his loneliness, his conflict of being a killer, his rocky relationship with lestat. there was love there, love from both her fathers, but it was never enough. lestat saw her too much as a wretched mirror held up to his own self, and louis was always too steeped in his own feelings to care enough about hers. claudia’s story truly was the greatest tragedy in this tale, treated horribly by every man around her, even her fathers, relentlessly exploited and brutally ignored, always second and never first. the only one who loved her the way she deserved to be loved was madeleine, and the moment she truly had her, her happiness was torn from her. and just before she died, she got to see someone actually choose her in her entirety, not for what she can be but for who she is, and it still wasn’t enough. she still burned alive in the sunlight. the love was there, but it wasn’t enough to save her.

[queenofshilla]

LINDA HAMILTON as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) (dir. James Cameron)

[abhorsenkatiel]

My opinion on the 'would modern au Harrow be goth or Catholic' debate is that she would be both and it would throw everyone off. She goes equally hard on both of those things and no one knows what to do about it.

[wyrdle]

In love with this post, OP. Tbh, something I hope we’ll get is this overload of responsibility chipping at her mask of calmness and self assuredness. Like, burning out from micromanaging everyone, as well as crumbling from the isolation/distance that comes with being a leader like this. No one likes their boss, and the E4 feel like a pseudo found familyge where she’s excluded... which is a little sad.

I’m hoping DLC or in fanworks more people will tune into the above, especially since her oversight of Area Zero’s research and its endangerment to students + rest of Paldea would probably weigh heavily on her mind/conscience. As in: “I’m already doing all this for this vision of Paldea but holy shit this giant crater was going to hurt so many people and pokemon, I’ve fucked up big time by neglecting this.” We don’t get to see her react to the fact that the Prof died, the time machine was fucked up etc. I like to pretend she and the director have a much more serious discussion after, and that she even checks up on the 4 kids for their wellbeing out of both concern and guilt.

She’s a flawed boss, but still a compassionate/kind person. The decisions she made got her and Paldea here, I’m sure it influences/affects her and would be a great push towards some character development/change for relations with people around her/work for her.

Regarding this post I made earlier examining Geeta's antics in Paldea.

In Defense of Geeta

I feel like Geeta absolutely was written to be the shitty boss she is intentionally. There's too many situations where attention is drawn to her bad habits, either as them being directly pointed out or indirectly referenced. But what I really hope the case ends up being is that she's not at all a villain. Pokemon has gone the route of the suspicious CEO-type character being the "twist villain nobody could have seen coming!" for several games now. It's getting pretty old and I feel like it would be a weak direction for S/V to take.

Interestingly enough, one actually can look at all of Geeta's actions and not really see anything nefarious about them. Discussion after the jump for the sake of spoilers and wall'o'text.

It's very easy to look at Geeta and think she's a Bad Guy, given her strange behavior and all the negative attention she gets among the fandom. I'm certainly not innocent of seeing her in a less than endearing light, given my prior post. But a lot of that view does come from real world parallels and comparing the game's presentation to past Pokemon games in which nobody ever says the slightest criticism of the Champion, which may not necessarily be fair.

One of the biggest justifications Players have to indicate Geeta is bad is the way she meddles with the Gym Leaders and how corporate she's made the League. I pointed that out myself. But to flip it around... maybe she behaves that way because it's what the Gym Leaders need?

We constantly see Geeta inserting herself into events throughout the game. She shows up at the Academy, pops up at Gyms seemingly at random, and is always talking about how she has other pressing business that pulls her away from lingering too long. The only way she gets time to participate in casual encounters is when others (usually Nemona or the Player, if not both) take some of her workload off her plate. While I criticized the way Geeta had apparently deeply intertwined the Pokemon League, the Academy, and the Paldean economy itself, it does stand to reason doing so puts a ton of work on her having to maintain it. That's her own doing though, so it's a case of her getting what she signed up for and she never seems to shy away from it despite her habit of recruiting others to help.

The Gym Leaders, though? While they do remark about Geeta meddling with them, giving frequent reviews, and otherwise sticking her nose into their business, they've also shown that they're all pretty flaky. Rather, they're a total mess both individually and collectively. It's possible that the reason Geeta is constantly keeping an eye on them is because they need that in order to fit the direction Geeta is trying to guide the League in.

When we meet each of the Gym Leaders both in our first encounter and in the rematch post-game, we learn a lot about their behaviors through casual exposure. All of the Gym Leaders have a job besides running a Gym and, with the exception of Grusha, all of them show that running the Gym is by no means their top priority. Nor are any of them especially reliable when it comes to managing their Gyms. Based on past games, we're accustomed to Gym Leaders taking a large amount of pride in their position and holding it in esteem even when they also had other simultaneous jobs. We've seen Gym Leaders and Elite Four who were also artists, performers, athletes, CEOs, and such before. That's not the case with Paldea though; to these Gym Leaders, it's just a job and not necessarily one they put a lot of personal investment into compared to their actual passions/careers. It's mentioned that Geeta "strong-armed them" into taking on the role, which can be read that she went out of her way to convince strong, capable Trainers to become Gym Leaders for the sake of Paldea and because she saw the potential they held but weren't utilizing.

Katy flat-out forgot that she was under review and only appeared for the rematch by pure coincidence because she just so happened to visit that day. When we first meet Kofu, he and his assistant are both a totally scatterbrained mess. Iono only bothers with being a Gym Leader because it gets her viewership for her streamer career; if something else better came along, she'd surely jump for it immediately. Brassius is very upfront about his artistic passions being the number one thing in his life and openly abandons his responsibilities as a Gym Leader to pursue them during the rematch. Tulip's modeling career keeps her busy and she only has just enough time to show up for a brief match before immediately leaving to get back to her work. Ryme is more focused on her music career and wasn't even the original Gym Leader; that position belonged to her sister, Professor Tyme, who left the role to become a teacher. Larry, despite being the most vocal about his dislike of Geeta's habits, is also the most distracted as he has three simultaneous jobs and constantly works overtime. Finally, Grusha doesn't have any job besides being a Gym Leader, but that's only due to an injury that has made it impossible for him to pursue his original passion. That same injury has likewise cost him his motivation and drive to improve; he's only hanging onto his role as Gym Leader because he doesn't think he has anything else going for him now.

With all that in mind, it makes sense a rigid sort like Geeta would want to keep a close watch and short leash on all these unreliable personalities, doesn't it? She has to keep tabs on them because they risk failing the various Trainers who hope to challenge them otherwise, along with squandering their own potential. Geeta is always very open about her desire to foster powerful Trainers out of Paldea, if nothing else. After the rematch, all the Gym Leaders express a level of understanding and even appreciation toward Geeta for what she's done for them. Grusha and Larry stand out in particular, as they both confess that her meddling has helped motivate them to go beyond what they've settled into. Where Larry mentions that Geeta will dock his pay if he wastes time, he also mentions that she insists he stop overworking himself with overtime hours. So it's possible she's simultaneously trying to keep him focused without letting him overdo it as well.

When it comes to how corporate Geeta has made the League, that's not technically fair to say either. It's an easy shorthand but not entirely accurate. The goal of corporations is to make profit no matter what, but that's not really Geeta's motivation. She's not looking to get rich or powerful, but to rally as many genuinely powerful and talented Trainers up within Paldea as she can. That, in and of itself, isn't at all a bad thing and is commonly shared among all regions that have a League. While I criticize League Points as being company scrip, it does supply not just Trainers but all citizens of Paldea with an alternative way of funding themselves. This would include the Gym Leaders; despite common remarks (which I have made myself) about Geeta not paying the Gym Leaders a living wage, it's entirely possible they do indeed make plenty to thrive on and just have their non-Gym Leader job because that's their true passion that they want to put their effort into. Be it cash or League Points, they do have a salary. Larry himself mentions it outright, while Grusha and Brassius don't seem to be in any financial straits despite their unstable working conditions outside the Gyms. When it comes to the region's economy as a whole, subsidizing major commercial chains throughout the region just to make food and supplies more accessible can't be cheap; when you sell goods to the PokeMart for cash, you only get a fraction of the total value, but get significantly more (usually double) the value in League Points. Geeta's overall emphasis doesn't seem to be shaping the League and its sphere of influence within Paldea to make herself wealthy or powerful, but rather to make the whole affair as plainly efficient and self-sustaining as possible. In that regard, she's done a fantastic job.

When all is said and done, I genuinely hope Geeta isn't a villain but simply a boss with lofty visions, exacting demands, and absolutely terrible interpersonal skills. I feel like she'd be a lot more interesting that way in that she'd be a genuinely flawed person without her issues just being dismissed as "because she's the Bad Guy".

[aroaceleovaldez]

i have suddenly become obsessed with a theme that HoO established but never proceeded to extrapolate on, which is:

You are Percy Jackson, and you have been swapped with a boy who was allegedly everyone's favorite person, but they have decided to replace him with you. They just met you. You stand next to his best friend and the people he's known his entire life. In his home. In his cloak. In his place. They stopped looking for him.

You are Jason Grace, and you have just found out you have a long lost sister who completely replaced you in her life with this girl you just met. Your lives and personalities are mirrors. She is you, living the life you were robbed of.

You are Annabeth Chase, and you have just become starkly aware that you have been inhabiting the void left behind by your best friend's long lost brother. You and Luke were just replacements for him. Now you have to look him in the eyes when he has nothing and know you took that life from him.

You are Piper McLean, and you have just found out your relationship is fake and built entirely on the memories of Annabeth Chase. You have been given a boyfriend when hers has been taken away. You have no idea how much of it is real or not but regardless you feel like if your relationship isn't exactly in their image that you have failed.

You are Leo Valdez, and you have just learned that you are the echo of your great-grandfather. You are not your own person. You just exist to be a mirror of him. A doppelganger. An actor and stunt double facing all the danger he never had to but wearing his face. To be there for his best friend decades later simply because he couldn't. You are playing a role. A seventh wheel and a pawn for a goddess who carefully sculpted your entire life for her own purposes.

You are Hazel Levesque, and the only reason you are alive is because your brother couldn't save your his sister. You are a consolation prize. An apology. Your existence here is misplaced in every way but you inhabit it anyways.

You are Frank Zhang, and you are a shapeshifter. Inhabiting your own body feels strange and clumsy when you could be literally anything at any time. You are anything and everything and live your life with the simple certainty of knowing exactly how you will die.

[rqg179]

the way brennan lee mulligan plays single mothers needs to be studied because i have been thinking about the delivery of "maybe we could bump up the priority on de-cursing the old ... my only daughter in the world" for 4 days now

[demigods-posts]

think it'd be really cool if percy could teleport using water. just needing to be in direct contact with a water source to transfer from one puddle to the next. cornering monsters in damp alleyways like it's no one's business. foregoing the subway when the forecast calls for showers. crossing the ocean quicker that you can say pacific. quality content.

[ilikedetectives]

Minthara Baenre

Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023) by Larian Studios

[beevean]

Fascinating dynamic. Too bad we don't see much of it in the manga itself.

Cithis gets assigned the job of taking care of Mithrun, perhaps due to her powers of persuasion - not that they were needed, giving his utter passivity. Her first idea is to make a game out of it, humiliating Mithrun for her own amusement: Mithrun obeyed without resistance, as he couldn't care about anything, which in turn bored Cithis due to the lack of challenge.

The only time Mithrun showed resistance was when Cithis crossed the line and ordered him to hurt Pattadol for no good reason. It was the only time an order of hers entered in conflict to the one desire left in Mithrun: working with the Canaries to find and kill the demon he so despises.

And this one act of rebellion made Cithis stand down and finally treat Mithrun not as a cute pet, but as a person.

It says a lot about both of them, I think, that Cithis couldn't wait to abuse her power over her own captain but still respected his rebellion, and that Mithrun is fragile because he's almost at the complete whims of anyone who takes care of him, but he's not as spineless as others might think, because his one drive is unbendable. There is a compelling switch of power, here.

[abyssal-ilk]

no more romance. romance is canceled. tell me about your warden/hawke/inquisitor's best friend and any info you want to add about their dynamic 🖐

[wisteriasymphony]

every time a tumblr post mlb rewrite mentions the fact that they're taking out marinette's 'obsessive stalker' characteristics an angel gets run over by a steamroller and fucking dies

[gorgynei]

doodled a moment from my wenclair fic. runs away