#sorry this went on a ranty tangent

[henarikat]

Hey hey 👋 Thank you for your Mr. Qi arts, they're great ❤️ I was wondering... do you have any headcanons about the blue mysterious man? 👀 (Have a good day!)

Aaaahhhh hi hello! Thank youuuu, I'm so glad you enjoy the silly lil drawings I do of the blue guy :')) I have a whole lore doc dedicated to him I have spent way too much time rotating him around in my head like microwave popcorn

Apologies in advance, I am not much of a writer and my brain is the most beige place imaginable, but we ball!!

So, I don't really hc him as being, like, a god or an all-powerful being necessarily? I think of it as, like, his circumstances led him to be in the right place at the right time. Kind of. He was the first to make it to the 100th floor in the Skull Caverns and on his way down, he formed a sort of alliance with the snakes (It is convoluted please) and when he finally made it down after weeks, he was presented with a purple opalescent liquid. He was so dehydrated, so desperate for something! Anything!

It is also my hc that the Skull Caverns contain extremely high amounts of iridium (as in the game you can only get iridium from Skull Caverns, right? i don't even remember rip) and spending any amount of time longer than absolutely necessary (certainly not WEEKS) would result in iridium poisoning, which effected Qi by turning his skin blue. After drinking the liquid, the snake milk, it healed him, but it also changed him! He became addicted to the effects he felt, to the power. He would continue to drink it for the next few years, more and more, until his body has completely changed, he became immortal and his body stopped aging (and also it gave him magical abilities idk what to tell you idk!!).

Before he went down to the caves, he had rented the space above a little shop in the desert from a man with a small daughter. (I hc that before that, he helped out on grandpa's farm and grandpa was able to pay him handsomely, being the only supplier of produce and artisan goods in the Ferngill Republic.) Eventually, he was able to build an exclusive clubhouse, it started as just a bar and eventually he began including uh gambling machines and tables and he was able to magically extend the interior and add a lot of things. So the casino is like, giant on the inside, but you can't really tell from the outside.

Umm and some silly hc's!!

-Photosensitive, so he doesn't usually go out in the day time since he's essentially allergic to the sun! -Since his addiction to the snake milk, it's changed his body. Namely, it's made his teeth sharp and pointed and his irises have turned yellow, with a rounded slit for his pupil. Also his skin has started to become slightly scaly, like a snakes. He also has a split tongue that is slightly longer than a normal humans.

Okay my brain is not working anymore I'm so sorry if this is ranty or like, not at all what you asked I sort of went on a tangent I think!!!!! Thank you for asking me about The Guy I could talk about him for hours/days/weeks etc etc etcccccccccc.

[hiroshotreplica]

im sorry you probably dont want this in your askbox but i dont really think it makes sense to talk about madness and leafi the same way for a lot of reasons. Idk maybe im just seeing a transgirl getting relentlessly dogpiled because of old screenshots and having an over-empathetic response but fuck man she was 13 when those screenshots were taken. Shes not even 18 right now shes crazy young for her level of play (like literally should be community banned for lying about being 13 for multiple years during splatoon 2 to get around discord community guidelines but thats a tangent). She said in her apology she was trying to fit in with a real shitty group of people she doesn't associate with anymore and fuck man im probably giving herself way too much grace cause i seeing a terrifying exaggeration of something i went through on a public scale but like people are editing HER face onto memes and talking shit about HER and constantly misgendering her when madness is not only an actual adult but has been ACTUALLY DOING THIS SHIT RECENTLY. im not saying the shit she was saying wasnt heinous but fuck man this isnt gonna help her and i dont want the dumass bullshit she said when she was a middle schooler to ruin the rest of her life. sorry for the white girl mental illness blast but there is important context in this ranty anxiety and projection goop

anon asked for a tldr for the situation w/ jackpot as a whole, which included leafi's part in the situation. as the post was about how jackpot as a team has made racist statements. i chose screenshots that put my point clearly, which just so happened to be screenshots with madness and leafi. i'll go more into it here, though

i did not mean to compare her to madness when including screenshots of her old statements. i was compiling the most blatant screenshots from the thread i had originally linked in a prior post. i was going to include other things, but didnt have the time to compile them and was beginning to get stressed about being the source of this info on tumblr.

i was also going to include this video of her saying racist statements in 2024, but i didnt want to include a twitter link for an anon that couldnt access twitter. im realizing i shouldve done so

i do feel bad for her getting involved with a group of people THAT bad if she was truly that ignorant when she was younger, but thats where my sympathy ends. she still acted racist and still associated with clearly racist people even when she was older and more mature. ive learned since making that post that she was born in 2007. 16 is still an age where you should be mature enough to understand that those comments are racist, even with america's shitty public education system glossing over racism.

i definitely see why this can look like people dogpiling on a trans woman though, and the people doing memes and editing her into them in general about this situation are disgusting. i had no idea she was trans and that people were misgendering her. anyone making this situation about her being trans are awful and not people i stand by.

but all of that, including her being skilled despite her age, still doesnt forgive or erase her actions. nothing like that does for the other members of jackpot that have also stated racist things. nothing like that does for any other comp splatoon player that has said anything similar. the apology she put out was needed, but from what ive heard from others, it wasnt the best. she is writing another apology, though, so it couldve just been rushed.

no one has to accept her apology, either. as a white person myself, im not one that should even be one to accept her apology. it wasnt an apology for me, and it isnt one for you, either (if you are white as you say but i might be misreading). people should not be painted in a negative light for not accepting her apology even if it were an amazing one.

the way some people are reacting to this situation is not okay, but she still did awful things that she should be held accountable for. the other guilty members of jackpot are not better than her, but theyve all still said fucked up things. none of them have done anything to prove they arent racist, and theres only more evidence coming out that proves that they have been, so its hard to process at the moment.

could things change? yes, of course, but as of right now, leafi has stated racist things as recent as 2024 and put out a poor apology trying to defend herself. people are handling it poorly and trying to make it about her identity and making memes on it when it is not the right thing to do. these racist claims are being put w/ other racist claims made by other jackpot team members so it was included in my tldr post about the entire situation.

i apologize for poor wording in this, im not the best w/ these kinds of posts

[bentlands]

ranty anon here post-episode 7 and they addressed a lot of the things i was worried about. becca is still a mess but that is just a fact of the plot lol

how did you feel about cam and dusty's scenes this episode? they were my favorites aside from Suman's scenes.

YES... watching that episode i was simultaneously relieved and physically ill for other things. rebecca being a hot mess especially now that we're almost done with the show has me like...? because a part of me understands the emotional turmoil of reliving your worst memories and i'm sure rebecca irl went through it when writing and researching the book but the other part of me is like wow. you guys are almost doing her dirty there's no way she was like that. sorry for that rebecca tangent!!

yes i loved them... i think dusty, along with reena and even warren (not so much yet but you could see the roots take hold this episode) became disillusioned with the gang mentality, and with dusty in particular i think she understands cam now, and cam understands dusty better now. that shot where cam flips through the lord of the rings and sees the picture dusty has really got to her, and i think the idea of her being reunited/reconciled with her family got her to go easier on her, because that is an opportunity that cam alone can give dusty, while also being an opportunity she herself never had.

[spread-positivity-everywhere]

hey, it’s me again, the person from the validation ask, I have suspected something like depression or a personality disorder but I’ve been afraid to get counseling for a lot of reasons. I’ve been trying to work on the trust part of it, the fact that I always felt like I can’t trust anyone with certain secrets. However that has been getting better and I’m more open to it but I’ve also been afraid of what might get told to my parents because I’m still a minor so I want to wait until I’m an adult. I feel like I’ve hidden my problems from my parents for so long so I didn’t feel like another thing to worry them when they have so much on their plate already. I feel like saying anything now would make them feel like they failed and also make them mad that I didn’t say anything sooner. Another problem is the possibility of a personality disorder combined with my mom’s choice words about some personality disorders that make me worried she won’t react the best to me potentially having a personality disorder. I guess I just want to be in a position where I’m not dependent on my parents before I take action because at least if I’m not legally dependent on them I have full autonomy to choose what I tell them and when and if they react poorly to something I can get out or at least retreat to compose myself before handling the aftermath whereas right now I don’t think I could do those and I don’t know how much autonomy I’d have in what gets told to my parents and what doesn’t. I convinced myself I could probably wait it out since it’ll only be about one year until I’m and adult but I’m not sure, this year hasn’t been off to great start. I just feel like there’s no clean solution and maybe that’s a bit deserved since I went behind my parents’ backs so many times just to make them more comfortable in my eyes without thinking about how this would stack up and how much it would hurt once it all came out and they learned everything. Sorry for the ranty tangent ask, I have a lot on my mind.

Ultimately, it’s your choice what you do, but I personally wouldn’t cast aside my mental health for someone else’s sake, ever. Doesn’t matter if it’s your parents, significant other, etc. Your needs matter and should never be cast aside.

[mostly-mundane-atla]

i realize you probably dont care about the upcoming netflix adaptation but the cast pretty much got confirmed and people are talking about it again so, whats your take? are you lookin forward to it or dont care for it?

Usually I wouldn't care about this, and I have said before to please not involve me in discourse i haven't already talked about, but I was going to make this post anyway so

*cracks knuckles*

Alright children, it's come to my attention that some people don't know their etiquette regarding Indigenous peoples and are making themselves look a fool.

First: you are not entitled to anyone's family history under any circumstances, save perhaps them paying you to do a family tree.

There is an aspect of this specific to Native people. I don't know how it works for Native folks in Canada but in the United States, when you are born Native your parents do some paperwork and the Beaureu of Indian Affairs gives you a Certificate of Indian Blood, stating exactly how Native you can be proven to be based on how Native your parents can be proven to be. The Certificate of Indian Blood is often called a pedigree with bitter irony because in essence, that's what it is. We come with papers like fancy show dogs, just instead of it qualifying our "breed" it's qualifying our right to be enrolled in tribal membership.

I keep my pedigree with all my other important documents, like tax information, birth certificate, social security card, that sort of thing. I inherited a total blood degree of 1/4 Eskimo from my mom and thus qualify for tribal membership. Past a certain point, I wouldn't be considered "Native Enough" based on blood alone and i'd have to get a special dispensation to be legally recognized as an Indigenous descendant. It doesn't matter what my tribe or nation's traditional customs regarding kinship and identity were, by United States law, I could be declared "Not Native Enough" no matter my connection to my culture, no matter how accepted I was by my Native family. Kinda fucked up, isn't it?

Oh, and the Beaureu of Indian Affairs is part of the US government. They ran the schools where kids got beat for not speaking English. We have to tell them we are members of this marginalized group that seems to keep demanding safe drinking water and the right to not be kicked out of our homes at the expense of oil companies if we want access to healthcare and scholarships we may not otherwise have access to because of our "unique situation" (systemic disadvantage). This marginalized group that faces police brutality and wrongful arrests for peacefully protesting our right to live in the few places we have been allowed to live. So if the US government decides Native people are a problem, they have a registry of us. Kinda fucked up, don't you think?

So with that all in mind, do you see how uncouth and just plain nasty it is to demand proof of someone being "Native Enough" or "The Right Kind of Native"? If some freak tries to dig up this info and he's more mixed than some have deemed acceptable (so 1/4 or less) or god forbid doesn't even have his papers or tribal membership for any reason (justified paranoia, clerical error, any degree of negligence on the parents' part) he gets to look forward to being treated even more like a pretendian than the fans have already seen fit to treat him as. How fun.

Every day I wake up I am made to remember that I'll never look "Native Enough" to a huge swath of people who may not have even talked to one of us face-to-face. And it's only a matter of time before one of them sends me a message, written to sound like they're crawling on their belly because they have nothing but respect for "Real Natives" but if they saw me in the regalia my older cousin in Nome made for me so I could graduate high school in regalia, they'd throw a fit. If they saw me after I eventually get my tavlaģun, all pale skinned and blue-eyed, they'd treat me as a study in cultural appropriation, as if i'm not trying to learn whatever variation of my ancestral tongue I can get my hands on.

I can totally understand why he or anyone else might have thought it was better not to specify. Like my first reaction (and this isn't necessarily correct nor something i'm proud of, just the first thing that came to my mind) to seeing Katara was cast as that Mohawk girl from Anne with an E was "they couldn't even get a real eskimo?" I'm guessing others felt similarly. If he didn't wanna deal with that, I can't blame him.

If you think he doesn't look brown enough to convincingly play someone native to the tundra, i recommend the following: go on youtube, look up "inupiaq" and watch at least five of the videos that come up to see how varied we are.

Don't watch this live action adaptation if you don't want to, but if you refuse on the grounds of "the actor's not native enough :/" and go on to ignore actual Native media, that's some performative shit if I've ever seen it. Seriously, how many of the people complaining have watched Smoke Signals? Dance Me Outside? On the Ice? How many were hyped over Reservation Dogs (first two episodes are on Hulu as I'm writing this post)?

Anyway, I'm tired. I'm probably not gonna watch the live action series, but that has nothing to do with Sokka's actor not being "brown enough" to be seen as one of the red and brown. I'll finish off this post with a 1491s video so everyone can get a taste of Native media and maybe elevate it more than discourse over who gets to play a Fantasy Eskimo who was originally written and played by white guys with no Actual Eskimo input:

[staboteur]

And your otp

SEND ME A SHIP AND I’LL DO THIS THING

personally, I tend not to have one single otp bc it really does depend intensely on how the ship is handled by the creator of the fan work, but... I guess my original otp of this fandom was medic/spy aka gentle surgery

The ship is my: otp obviously lmao

I consider this ship’s feelings: Mutual | Mixed | Strange | Awkward | Platonic | Sibling-like | One-sided | They don’t really like each other |

I’d consider the relationship: Healthy | Awkward | Abusive | Doesn’t work properly | They’d never get together |

Children: No | Yes | They’d think about it

under a cut bc it’s not entirely relevant to the spy/medic itself bc I start rambling about ocs and game mechanics, but the first little bit up until the italicized portion is mostly about “why spy/medic and not another ship that is far, far more popular in the fandom, I promise

But before that, the simplest explanation as to why I liked spy/medic as my first ever otp in this fandom: I started as a Spy main and I thought Medic was hot. That’s the easiest explanation there is, but over time, I’ve (hopefully) developed a more mature and thoughtful way of approaching this outside of “uwu animu” bc that was my old mindset and it was really gross and I am very ashamed of how I used to think, the end (almost).

General Opinion: It’s probably got potential to be anywhere from healthy to abusive, and I’ve seen it handled in many different ways. I reading about the different interactions they could have, especially since Medic is actually probably a higher priority target than any other person (that includes Sniper). While Spies were meant to counter Snipers, a Spy is actually a “pick” class (which is also a niche that Sniper fills but y’know it’s just game niche shit that I won’t get into too much). He’s meant to “pick” important classes like Medics (ubercharge is important), Heavies (no one wants to fight an overhealed/ubered heavy), Engineer (sentry nest. Enough said), and finally Snipers. I know I’m focusing a lot on other classes, but that’s really the reason why I now think that Medic and Spy do have a good potential for an interesting dynamic, whether it’s a healthy one or not, because I’ve gotten a deeper understanding of how the game and all of its intricacies work. The Spy’s sole purpose is to take out important targets on the other team because he can literally get anywhere in the map, and has the second (?) fastest movement speed in the game (second only to scout). That’s why he was made to pick priority targets like Medics, Heavies, Engineers, and Snipers. Sure, Snipers are easy targets (alone, usually scoped in, and probably not paying attention to their immediate surroundings), but Medic is the more important target and I am severely sorry this has basically turned into “Why René mun likes spy/medic more than spy/sniper”, but yeah. Y’know. Game mechanics and gameplay, with a close analysis of in game niches that certain characters fill haha I’m a really big stickler for that so please never get into a discussion about mechanics in tf2 bc I have some very pointed opinions about certain... Characters, I guess. Fan characters. Granted, many are amazing but some just... Don’t make sense in game, but if someone has/makes/enjoys their oc, I’m not gonna go and police them (which is why I haven’t been in the inbox or PMs of people who have ocs, critiquing them on their oc bc it’s their life and this is my opinion that they probably don’t want to hear) And if you don’t want to hear my opinion, please, I highly recommend not asking. This has been a PSA with René mun who already posts far too many PSAs about unrelated shit.

[heraldofzaun]

//Still lurking.

Some thoughts below the cut. A little melancholic. A little ranty. Many thoughts on how Viktor is perceived by the fandom at large. It got away from me.

I think I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but I have followers here and this is also a Viktor blog... I think it would be nice if people stopped making fun of Viktor’s accent - I saw T/BSkyen’s (I think that keeps me out of the tag) shorts video on Viktor, and it was disheartening that he chose to make fun of Viktor’s accent several times throughout a one-minute video. No other character with a hammy, over-the-top accent, as far I know, receives this treatment. No one makes fun of Caitlyn’s British accent in character analyses of her. No one makes fun of Fiora’s French accent in character analyses of her. (I just checked his videos on them, actually, and guess what - no mocking their accents by doing them! Although Fiora’s accent does get mentioned, at the least.)

Just... stop doing it? We know the accent is cartoonishly bad and not accurate to actual Russian accents at all. But why, specifically, are people - T/BSkyen, in this instance - compelled to make fun of Viktor by putting on an accent and saying “Get reed of all emotions“ and “GLORIOUS EVOLUTION” and “BEEP BOOP ROBOT BRAIN”? (The misspelling in the first is not mine. It is in the actual subtitles for the video.)

I mean, we all know that the answer is the fact that American (and other countries, but we can focus on America for now) media spent the Cold War convincing Americans that Russians and Eastern Europeans were mindless followers of ideology and/or Crazy Insane Scientists, instead of like... people with diverse thoughts and feelings who may or may not agree with their government, but like... I have to ask the rhetorical questions here because no one else is going to apparently. Anyways it’s 2021 stop conflating people and the governments they live under, I guess.

Anyways, also very disheartening that I just checked the pinned comment on that video and he is now saying that Viktor’s endpoint is the Battlecast universe, which is not a canon fact even in current lore. It’s an assumption. I can’t even say that Full Machine Viktor is Viktor’s endpoint, because that was retconned into being a janitor skin that randomly breaks into Spanish in the skin bio for a... “joke”? (Because that’s a cool thing to do. I’d ask how that got past anyone, but that’s a pointless question.) But Battlecast is not stated anywhere to be the end result of canonical Viktor, as far as I know. I suppose it’s not stated to not be the result, but... Like, what other character gets an AU skinline that people then say has to be their canonical endgoal when it is not said to be their canonical endgoal by any official source?

Quothe the loremaster... “The endpoint of Viktor's quest is the Battlecast universe. In case y'all forgot. Read between the lines of his stories even a little bit before stanning him, I'm begging you.”

The entirety of the pinned comment is frustrating. It is frustrating not only because it clashes entirely with the funny comical tone of the minute-long short, which also decides to yet again conflate transhumanism with being trans (we have heard my thoughts on this before. Please stop doing this), but because it is unfortunately true in aspects about current Viktor. He is really not a good man, even though you may be able to argue that Riot’s biased narrator choices mean that a canonical version of the Viktor-Jayce fight does not exist. (Because both lores tell their sides of the story. Biasedly.) But as the story stands, his character getting filled out didn’t make him more morally ambiguous than his original counterpart. The ambiguity that existed originally was due to us not knowing a lot about him and thus being able to interpret things the way we wished. (I’m sure that there is still room for interpretation in the new lore, but it seems lesser to me. Also, his color story is framed atrociously. It’s going for warm and fuzzy when the content of it is giving a kid drugs but this is a long enough post already...)

Riot does not know what to do with Viktor. They’re content to portray him as a Russian mad scientist and buffoon in LoR and in some other media, because... [gestures at the struck-out paragraph above]. But then they have his lore which... could be interesting, maybe, if it weren’t convinced that the way to tell a morally grey story is to have narrators more unreliable than a pull-start lawn mower. Like, they just don’t know what to do with him.

Any analysis of him needs to come with that caveat, not someone deciding that the best way to spent a minute of analysis is to make multiple jokes about Viktor’s accent being stereotypical via... feeding into it being stereotypical... and saying that transhumanism is related to trans rights in any inherent way.

Also, T/BSkyen says that Viktor only has an augmented hand and the third arm, which conveniently ignores the fact that Prototype is probably supposed to be taken as semi-canonical considering its name and the fact it was made when backstory-related skins were a more common thing. (And also because it hasn’t been retconned into being a janitor.) It also conveniently ignores the fact that Viktor’s lower legs clearly don’t look like armor on his model, but this is a side tangent that doesn’t really matter, so...

Whatever, right? I’ve clearly put more thought into this than League’s local loremaster put into that video and subsequent “no guys he really is a baddie stop stanning him and grow critical thinking skills” comment. Sorry if I sound jaded here or am taking this far too seriously or whatever, it’s just... man, it’s a lot. It makes trying to do my take in any public capacity feel kind of like shit, because it’s clear that the general perception of Viktor is currently 1) Haha Funny Accent Man, 2) Trans Rights!1!, and/or 3) He’s Evil :(, and it sucks. I already am writing for a niche audience who will accept a Viktor who never went to Piltover and who exists in old Zaun. I know that that’s niche. I’m okay with it being niche, I think.

But it sucks to build up all this character and do all this writing and try to... I don’t know, present a nuanced view of someone, and then just get another fucking joke about his accent or his design tropes or about what transhumanism is. Especially when those jokes are what people remember, right?

Sorry. This got whiny. But I think it explains why I’ve lost so much steam on writing our favorite Machine Herald, because stuff like this just keeps kind of... happening.

Thank you to the folks that send in anons about my analyses or who like my posts about my artistic endeavors or just... well, interact in general. It does mean a lot to me that you guys are invested enough to hang around and read 2k words of me doing the Pepe Silvia scene from Always Sunny as I connect dots that might not have been meant to be connected. It’s just hard to keep doing it, sometimes, and I guess this is one of those moments.

[snowliesred]

what is your opinion on when people question you being gay bc you have male idols? I always struggle w it. How do you feel?

Ah, I don’t think I’ve ever had people question me about it? At least none of my friends, and I don’t think I’ve had strangers ask me about it either, but I do sometimes, only sometimes feel weird about it because, I’m a lesbian, shouldn’t I have more women I admire? Two of my biggest idols (Gavin Creel, and Mika) are both gay men, so then I dunno I get conflicted about it because like, yeah they’re men, but like me they’re also gay? so that’s fine right? people shouldn’t find it weird? But yeah I def get where u come from nonny, mostly I just try to enjoy whatever they do and admire them for that.  Heck sometimes I feel bad I don’t have women I idolize like I idolize them. Mostly I try not to worry much about it, and if anyone were to ever question my sexuality (which im super self conscious about cause in the past I’ve identified as bi/pan until I really realized it) because of it I’d just give em the honest answer that I admire their work most of all and the fact they’re men shouldn’t have anything to do with my sexuality because i’m not crushing on them or anything. Like if a straight woman idolized an actress/musician/etc people don’t usually question their sexuality do they? anyway sorry for going on a rant, but yeah I struggle with it a bit too even if I never get questions about it, but I tend to rant about said male idols to my friends a lot and I get a lil bit self conscious it might come off in a way that would make em question my sexuality. 

Hope you find a way to not feel self conscious about it and hopefully people stop/never ask you such rude questions, cause your sexuality is your own and no one gets question it for you just because of your likes and dislikes and those you admire!

[xennariel]

@calithildes said: do whatever makes you happiest, you don't owe anything to ppl to continue if you don't want to

It’s not that I don’t want to continue it, it’s just that people keep dropping it and if no one’s reading it anymore then it’s just not worth it to me to keep writing for a fic people don’t care about. Not to mention all the people that never bothered to try reading it in the first place. I thought it was a good idea, but apparently it’s just not interesting enough anymore. I just put too much effort into it to have people not reading it. And yeah, little to no feedback or attention is the norm for fanfiction, but at least with one shots they’re easy to write.

[robron-til-the-end-of-time]

Trust me you're not the only one highly uncomfortable with it many ppl on tumblr and especially twitter are not happy with the way it's being portrayed again ED have written it one way and it's coming off another way no ones happy about it but what can we do it's alll a big mess and won't move forward until the whites exit plus the fact that Danny and Steven have no chemistry when they're supposed to be a romatic pairing makes it even more awkward as hell to watch #givehimbackRyan

When I said I was the only one, I was being a little bit dramatic / flippant. I certainly feel in the minority (I don’t ever venture on twitter, so my basis is purely here). I really get the impression from DM that he can’t be fucked with this side plot, but it’s making it come off as Aaron being really uncomfortable, which given Aaron’s history is a bloody issue. Add to that the promised soon reunion, the fact he’s not over Robert, and Alex gets moody because Aaron won’t put out? Yeah, for me? Coming off really wrong, and like the ons consent issue, Emmerdale haven’t thought it through. They’re just using it to make a point.

I don’t really have the faith it’ll actually move forward when the White’s go. The interest (for me) has gone. Had the Whites exited between August and November, I was actually really invested. Had Emma died in June, I was really invested. Things are being dragged out so long to the point that I really don’t give a shit to be honest. I wonder if that’s why last nights episodes fell flat. I just do not care any more. Emma lasted 6 months beyond her sell by date. If Robert had been the one to push her off, that probably wouldn’t have got much of a reaction, because I’m past the point of caring.

Iain really needs to get his bloody pacing sorted the fuck out. If he managed that, I actually think he’d be quite a good producer. Yeah, I don’t like what he’s done to robron, and how sloppy parts of it are. But shrug. That’s a fan issue. His pacing is such a huge show one, and it effects everything we watch.

Does anyone actually care how the Whites go? Or are we all at the point that we just want them gone and really don’t give a shit how?

I went off on a ranty tangent there. Sorry!

[derekscorner]

Kingdom Hearts Tangent: Keyblades & Ceremony

Kinda surprised I never did this one, eh. I’ll warn you up front, this one will be a bit ranty. I usually try to keep these more analytical, I do rant but I do more to try and point out a logical hole or something that my mind is mulling over that day.

My issue with these two concepts honestly boils down to one word, superfluous. I don’t like them, they are pointless, and add what doesn’t need adding.

Many will point to the argument that it “cheapened” the keyblade, which to some extents it did. Up till then we had been told the keyblade chooses people. We knew only one requirement for it’s preference (a strong heart) and this power of choice gave the keyblade an air of sentience combined with it’s moments of autonomy over KH1 and KH2.

Going back and saying that a master chooses a person rather than the keyblade takes away from the keyblades, then, built up autonomy. It’s not so much what the keyblade chooses as it’s what some master chooses for me.

And in turn many will counter this by listing the “recommendation” argument. That they just show the keyblade to a candidate. This is also partly true, we know that being chosen by a master actually is a requirement. Even if the keyblades still chooses them, it’s still partly dictated by someone else which cheapens the aura the keyblade had before Birth by Sleep.

There is however a huge hole in this argument, Sora.

Sora is the exception. If you wish for the validation I will pull it but I’ll sum up an hour of image grabbing and interview digging and tell you, Sora was never chosen by a master. The Kingdom Key also doesn’t belong to Ventus. It was originally Riku’s, something said in various places, even the KH1 Journal.

The reason this matters is because Sora proves that the concepts of a Ceremony and Master aren’t needed. Before BBS we just assumed the keyblade chose people and older masters like Yen Sid just found them to train, keeping the profession alive.

There was nothing wrong with this, we even saw the keyblade react on it’s own with Sora, almost giving this vibe of growth between him and it. It wasn’t so much about being “properly trained” or being a “true master” to unlock the keyblades full power, no.

It was more akin to a symbiotic bond. The keyblade would abandon Sora on a dime as it showed in KH1 however once he was proven truly worthy in it’s eyes it went back and they grew in almost subtle ways.

Sora’s power with the keyblade was such that by KH2 he was a one man army against Nobodies, Heartless, Disney Villains and any other being in this shared universe.

Skip to Birth by Sleep and this is basically spat on. It’s not about growing with the keyblade, it’s about being “properly trained”, it’s not being chosen by the keyblade but by a “true master”. The keyblade wasn’t a sentient force but a tool, one that’s basically a “magical swiss army knife” thanks to the introduction of transformations in KH2 Final Mix via the Lingering Will.

This was even worse in KHDDD I feel, Sora and Riku who have been self taught and very successful series wise to that point are told to forget it all and learn it the “proper way”.

I know part of that is an excuse for the KHDDD/Command system but meh.

It also doesn’t help that KHDDD reminds us that Sora “wasn’t chosen” when he’s probably the most chosen one there. Others were picked by some older teacher, Sora was chosen entirely by the weapon itself.

Sorry, sorry, began to rant a bit too strongly. This went on longer than intended. My point is that I dislike these concepts because they are pointless. They didn’t add anything to the mythos. If anything, they’ve kind of cheapened it.

And yes, it’s true any mythos will be elaborated on as a story goes but it’s also true that this can be done without sacrificing the mysticism of it. A key example is story telling. In many stories, something is introduced as a myth or legend among the characters. It introduces this concept but never elaborates on it. It leaves you to wonder.

A master of this was Tolkien in his legendary story, ‘Lord of the Rings’. Leaving your reader to wonder makes them think about your fictional world more, it enriches it by not knowing which is the root of the issue with KH.

You’re told what isn’t necessary while denied what could be elaborated on. What we once wondered about it answered in sub-par fashion.

Summarizing

Basically these two concepts equate to what my friend @blackosprey called “midoclorian lore”.

Much like the lil midoclorians in the Star Wars Prequels, they don’t really add anything. It tries to science what was magical and thus cheapens it.

And, honestly, the biggest issue I have out of all this is that they serve as a plot device. A thing that was invented to make the meeting of Terra-Riku and Aqua-Kairi seems special or unique.

They are forced interactions and connections. KHBBS was a prequel, Riku, Kairi and Sora are the original characters of the first game, they were gonna be in this story no matter what.

We didn’t need some reason for them meeting, it didn’t need to be some clandestine event, they just had to meet and interact. Just a brief meeting, nothing grand, just a nod to BBS in the stories placement. But I guess this just ties back into a pet peeve of mine about how Nomura feels the ridiculous need to make everything deeply rooted and connected.

Honestly, the simplest ties, the purest encounters, hold more weight than saying it was destiny.

[cfpotionsandsummons-blog]

pst, love the blog, but u may wanna change ryalle's fc since she's a cis girl and ed is nonbinary

Kind of ranty about race under the cut.

Nonnie, I greatly appreciate you trying to help me avoid a shitstorm kind of like the one that caused me to put my last blog on hiatus, I really do.  But the thing is, Ryllae is my oldest OC.  I love her to bits, she developed with me, she helped me get through the shit life gave me, and I am not going to whitewash her to make some people happy.

I understand that nonbinary characters are hard to come by, I do.  But…  I refuse to whitewash my OC to make some people feel better.  So if anyone at all has a problem with Ryllae, I’m not changing her FC unless one of you decides to make me some icons for the new FC.  

((I’m not entirely sure if you’re aware, but it’s hard to find POC in animated things.  And if you do find one, there’s hardly enough screen time to make enough icons of.  And if you go into the fanart department, they’re whitewashed.  Terribly.  And going off on a slight tangent, do you know Rose?  From both the first FMA anime and Brotherhood?  She went from being a POC to being white.))

I already need to make a ton of icons for Caelum when I get the time/access to a decent computer/laptop that doesn’t do its own thing.  I respect all of you nonbinary people, I truly do, but I’m not going through extra work hunting a female POC for a new FC to make icons of when I don’t even have time to make icons for my other muse.

…I’m sorry this got ranty.  I’ll go hide under a rock now, since I’m probably going to lose followers over this…  And people are going to hate me for bringing race into this…