#that's the objective fact. not subjective.

[ravewing]

whirlpool — is he really as awful as the fandom makes him out to be ?

a wings of fire character analysis. minor content warning for mentions of abuse, grooming, pedophilia, and the likes.

whirlpool is, indubitably, the most universally disliked wings of fire character (and by a long shot, too). in the seven years that i've been an active wof fan, i think i've only seen two, maybe three, people say that they can even stand him. ask anyone in the fandom who the "worst character" is; nine times out of ten, they will probably answer, "whirlpool." ask the reason for this, and they will probably reply with something along the lines of him being a pedophile.

but is he?

i would like to note that i am in no way defending whirlpool. he is by no means a morally good, nor redeemable, dragon. i recently reread the lost heir, so i'm trying to approach this with an unbiased, strictly objective viewpoint. this is just my analysis of his character based on what i've heard people say about him compared to his actual character in the novel.

for a character that appears only in one book (two, if you count turtle's brief flashback in talons of power), whirlpool is a character that wings of fire fans just cannot seem to let go. for countless years, whirlpool has been the subject of a wide array of jokes, memes, and is overall used as the fandom's punching bag—and with good reason (at least, to an extent). however, this has, in recent years, quickly downspiraled into blatant pedophilia jokes.

pedophilia is something that, as i've noticed, is seen as "funny" or "quirky" in certain niches of the wings of fire fanbase, especially so on reddit. make a post asking for people to share their favorite ships, and you'll get at least five people saying something like "clay x bumblebee" or "burn x auklet" to be funny. perhaps it's just the fact that most of the people cracking these "jokes" are teenaged redditors, but the fact that pedophilia is watered down to nothing more than "Boiii!😂😂Cursed funny joke🗿🍷" is, without a doubt, an issue. this downplaying of such a heavy topic not only leads to people just blatantly saying insensitive things for a bad jest, but it also results in the people making those jokes becoming desensitized to the severity of the issue.

when something as serious as pedophilia is treated as nothing more than meme fodder or a buzzword to casually throw around, it diminishes the real harm and suffering experienced by victims. and over time, this normalization will blur the line between satire and genuine endorsement and create spaces where predatory behavior is either ignored or, in the worst cases, subtly encouraged under the guise of just being “dark humor.” this kind of discourse can also alienate victims of a genuine real-world issue, which inevitably makes it harder for them to speak out or feel supported in these communities. and while yeah, humor can be a tool to cope with difficult topics, there’s a stark difference between using it to challenge harmful behaviors and using it to trivialize them.

but i'm getting off track.

whirlpool is not a good dragon. he's manipulative, concerned with nothing more than his personal status and wealth, lacks proper seawing etiquette and self-awareness of his patronizing, annoying personality, by all accounts, an awful teacher, and is just overall a condescending know-it-all. he was a one-off pretentious antagonist, and that is all he was ever meant to be.

he serves as queen coral's most trusted advisor in magic and publishing in her council, and, since he's practically bending over to kiss the ground that her talons walk on like a well-trained circus seal, she finds him to be absolutely delightful, intelligent, and just overall a brilliant gift to all the world. considering this, it's no wonder why coral arranged for him to marry anemone in the future.

that's a detail that most people seem to forget. coral is the one who set up the whole anemone and whirlpool thing. of course, this doesn't mean that whirlpool didn't want to marry anemone; it's just that he was only in it so that he could become the future king of the seawings. he is never shown to have any sort of attraction to anemone (nor to tsunami or auklet); he simply views them as pawns in a game that will ultimately result in his seat in a throne. obviously, this is not a good thing. it's implied by anemone that he was essentially manipulating her to use her magic more, thus becoming "evil" and more susceptible to challenge her mother for the seawing crown (and i'm pretty sure that blister was encouraging this, too; the only difference is that her ideal end result would be using anemone as a war weapon to secure her reign over the sandwings). he is a manipulator, but not a pedophile.

when i first read the lost heir in third grade, whirlpool was nothing but just an annoying side character who's only trait was being a boring "erm, ackshually" kind of guy who spent his every waking moment praising queen coral's literary works. obviously, as an eight year old, i didn't fully pick up the more serious underlying tones of manipulation for power, but after re-reading the book many, many times over the course of seven years, i've gathered a much more comprehensive grasp of his character.

the thing is, he just... doesn't have that much depth to him. that's the whole point; he's meant to just be a one-off antagonist that the reader isn't supposed to like. think about it. why would tui intentionally put a pedophile in a book directed towards elementary and middle schoolers? she wouldn't. he's literally just supposed to be annoying and die.

compare him to coral, for instance. yes, whirlpool was awful. but unlike coral, he did not write a scroll about eugenics, treat and harness a dragonet like a literal dog, publicly torture and execute loyal subjects for an accident (that was really coral's brother's fault), threaten to KILL his own daughter (okay, well, he did attempt to murder tsunami, but i think it's also pretty bad to tell your kid that you're going to kill her), neglect over 30 other of his own children, among a bounty of other not-so-great things? no. what i'm trying to say is, people often bash repeatedly on whirlpool with the same three jokes (like, come on, at least make a new joke. like whirlpoop or something i haven't heard that one before) while overlooking awful things that other characters do as well.

people love scarlet, blister, burn, darkstalker, vulture, mastermind, and countless other villains, despite the fact that many of them have done the exact same things as whirlpool or worse (elaboration in like two paragraphs). and there's nothing wrong with liking villains at all (personally i love a ton of wof's villains; i mean, come on, who doesn't?), so long as you're not trying to justify/redeem/defend their actions!!

what i'm trying to say is this:

this extreme vilification of whirlpool relies on literally nothing but exaggeration or outright misinformation. while yes, it is absolutely true that he was manipulating anemone to serve his own ambitions, his interest in marrying her had nothing to do with attraction or pedophilia—it was calculated power play, one arranged by queen coral herself. many people conflate his manipulative tendencies with predatory behavior, but his treatment of anemone was no different than how many other power-hungry characters in wings of fire have used young dragons as pawns in their schemes. this does not make him any less of a bad person, but it is important to distinguish between the two accusations.

another major issue with the fandom’s treatment of whirlpool is the sheer inconsistency in how different villains are perceived. as mentioned earlier, characters like darkstalker, scarlet, and even queen coral have committed arguably worse acts than whirlpool. darkstalker, for instance, manipulated young dragons like moonwatcher, fathom, and his own girlfriend, placed magical compulsions on his own friends, and tried to commit genocide—yet he has a massive fanbase, with many people willing to justify or romanticize his actions. scarlet is a tyrant who tortured innocent dragons for entertainment, but she is often seen as a charismatic, even beloved villain. (i can't lie, i love her too) coral, despite being directly responsible for the forced betrothal of anemone and whirlpool, does not receive nearly as much backlash as he does. why, then, is whirlpool singled out as the worst villain when he is hardly unique in his cruelty?

the answer likely lies in the nature of his character. unlike other villains who are powerful, charming, or entertaining, whirlpool is pathetic. he is not a fearsome warlord like burn or a tragic antihero like darkstalker is meant to be—he is an annoying, self-important sycophant whose ultimate goal is to climb the social ladder by cozying up to queen coral. he is the kind of villain who is easy to mock, easy to laugh at, and easy to pile hatred onto without deeper discussion. it’s the same reason why villains like mastermind or vulture don’t inspire the same level of vitriol—they are manipulative and amoral, but they aren’t written to be particularly cool or interesting in the way that characters like darkstalker or scarlet are.

at the end of the day, whirlpool is a terrible dragon. he is an opportunistic manipulator, annoying, a pathetic wet cat, and an overall detestable character. however, the way the fandom fixates on him, and exaggerated or misrepresents his crimes while ignoring worse actions from other villains, makes me wonder: why do some villains get a "pass" while others are relentlessly mocked? why do people misrepresent certain characters in ways that turn serious topics into joke fodder? and most importantly—why are we still talking about whirlpool, a one-off side villain from a book released over a decade ago, as if he’s the worst thing to ever happen in wings of fire?

side note: i couldn't figure out how to work this in there, but i don't know where the misconception that whirlpool is a super old decaying man came from. is he far too old for anemone? without a doubt. but from what i gathered from reading tlh, it seems like he's implied to be only slightly older than tsunami; somewhere around riptide's age, perhaps. anyhow, thank you for reading my chaotic mess of a character analysis! as a treat (or an abhorrent punishment, depending on the kind of person you are), here are some funny whirlpool expressions. the last two are my favorites .. he looks like he has eyeliner on in the last one lol

[dramatic-dolphin]

my high school history teacher (the philosophy teacher i previously mentioned) once complained to his favorite student (who was my friend and told us later) that SOMEONE a while ago complained to the principal that he was "popularizing homosexuality" in class, and he went "i do NOT support homosexuality, that is something i don't support, but I WAS TEACHING ABOUT ANCIENT GREECE. it was a part of their society. this is a neutral statement of fact" so at least he was like committed to truth and objectivity in his subjects. despite being a homophobic conservative. yay.

[danadiadea]

I mean I don't disagree with your concept and I didn't in my previous post too, this line of thought is very fair and much better than hegemonic body positivity. of course, one never is going to find every single person beautiful, so we should internalize the idea of theating aestetucally unpleasant for us peoole with as much dignity as the ones whose appearance we like or have no strong opinion about. I just have a problem with:

1) the word ugly itself, but it's an English language problem I suppose, because I also can't really think about one word what would convey the meaning and don't carry so much negative emotional charge in it. "not beautiful" is my best bet, I guess, or "not aesthetically pleasing/unpleasant". overall, the words change their meanings or at least soften them, so maybe this one would too, but right now I don't feel comfortable using it or hearing it used towards real people, since in the linguistical context we exist in it automatically implies contempt;

2) ugly/beautiful not being as relatively objective as tall/short. we can set an objective criteria for being tall – let's say "taller than 170" or "taller than average", with average being a number that can be objectively measured. this just doesn't work that way with beauty, because the concept is too multilayered and also based exclusively on subjective perception, whether it's rooted in the way our brain works or how our culture shaped us or which internal beliefs we posess. any skill also is judged (if we are being reasonable) with objective criteria. spotted skin is just as objective as an inability to solve a trigonometry function, but the ugliness of spotted skin is not objective.

and I don't really agree with "everyone knows what tall is", let alone with stretching it to "everyone knows what beautiful is", because subjective perception will always remain subjective. for someone leaving in Timor-Leste a 170cm person is rather tall, for someone from Netherlands it's rather short. Not only the concept of beauty vastly (and I mean VASTLY) differs among cultures, the previous issue I've discussed, wich is the inability to set any kind of universal standard, makes this not a usable concept for me (like for the height we can technically count the average height of a person in 2025 and decide is 170 objectively tall or short based on that, but subjective perspectives of people from different regions wouldn't rely on statistics). Even if technically we could ask a big sample whether they find person A attractive and see if more or less then 50% agree, it is 1) inapplicable to other people 2) doesn't erase the fact that the descriptive "beautiful" can be honestly applied to them. Like I understand that both you and I probably understand whether the person is "generally" considered beautiful when we look at them, especially if are unusually fitting/not-fitting to the "global" beauty standards, but I still think it's not all that universal and obvious. My autistic ass living in non-native for me culture is so often genuinely shocked when other people frame someone as beautiful/not beautiful, I've thought I was pranked a couple of times I swear. us living in the times of globalisation doesn't help, but I think that when Japanese people described first Portuguese that contacted them in 1543 as the ugliest beasts possible, they weren't joking, but also the Portuguese people were perfectly ordinary. now it all blends together a bit more.

so the concept of "letting people be ugly" doesn't exactly work for me if it's intended as "let people be objectively ugly". if it's "let yourself think someone is ugly and be normal about it" – I'm all for it.

also about the unhygienic stuff – I've put it to refer to that "people are trying to find exuses for Snape's hair" bit, because problems with hygiene are not exclusively about appearance, they also are about actions or a lack of them, and this is something people fairly wish to discuss when analysing a character. it's absolutely wrong to bully or demean actual people for it, but when people introduce "reasons" for Snape's hair being this way, I believe they mostly try to either debunk the implications of it being dirty or explain it – people very rarely neglect something that basic without any reason behind it, just as there are reasons for people to not have enough sleep or not eat enough. greasy hair which are just greasy don't need justifications (of the fandom, obv real people who neglect their hygiene for whatever reasons don't owe anyone explanations on their choices, but when we analyse a character saying that they can't keep up with showering is important for character charachterisation) though, because this is a purely aesthetic question, just like a hooked nose, and it doesn't characterise a character in any way. so I'd say that it's fair to approach the issue of Snape's hair differently if he neglects it's state v/s if he just has oily hair because oily hair exists, since he's a BOOK CHARACTER, not a real person, and in the first case his action or inaction has motivations that may interest us as readers, in the second case it's just hair and whether we find it beautiful or not beautiful or neither is just our personal issue.

also people airbrushing charachter into "prettier" ones should be called Hermione Granger fenomenon fr, I am so sad she is almost always depicted as a literal supermodel:(

I love how the Marauders fandom is like everybody is perfect the way they are, they can be black, brown, white, fat, skinny, tall, short, everyone is pretty. Except Snape, no no no, he cannot be pretty, he has greasy hair, you cannot be pretty with greasy hair

[doodlepede]

Rain World Flat Earth Theory. I'm serious

Moon does not believe that the spritual elements of the setting are real or legitimate, but we, the slugcat, know that they absolutely are. We interact with echos, we interact with void worms. We clearly and obviously experience a spiritual journey throughout the game.

Moon describes echoes as "horror stories" which would "grandiosely haunt the premises forever" [LF Red pearl], and dismisses spiritual practice as "an instruction on how to starve yourself on herbal tea and gravel, but disguised as a poem" [LF Red pearl]. She completely doesn't understand why the Benefactors would care about keeping automated holy object production on the same grounds as the temple [HI blue pearl]. She famously dislikes having citizens in the UW Green pearl. Her disdain for their beliefs and culture is made clear through her dialogue.

When she speaks of the scientific, however, there is no trace of that implied doubt. She speaks in a factual, matter-of-fact tone when discussing the cyclical nature of life and death [SU Blue pearl] and how circumventing the self-destruction taboo works [CC Gold pearl].

I make the case that, despite being an inherently unreliable narrator due to her expressing a personal perspective to the slugcat, when it comes to matters of science, she can be taken at her word.

"If you leave a stone on the ground and come back some time later, it's covered in dust. This happens everywhere, and over several lifetimes of creatures such as you, the ground slowly builds upwards. So why doesn't the ground collide with the sky? Because far down, under the very, very old layers of the earth, the rock is being dissolved or removed. The entity which does this is known as the Void Sea." [SB Teal pearl]

If the world of Rain World were a globe, this would necessitate that the globe is ever-expanding as the globe is hollowed out from the inside. Moon specifically says "collide with the sky" as if it were a ceiling. An ever-expanding globe would have to reach that ceiling eventually as it grows, but that doesn't appear to be happening. This only makes sense if the world is flat.

So where's the end of the world? I don't know. Maybe it's like the Pirates of the Caribbean where you have to be enlightened enough and already know where it is in order to find it.

Or maybe this is complete hokum and she only sounds authoritative on the subject because she thinks she knows the scientific truth but it's really just hard-programmed knowledge, courtesy of the Benefactors, who were totally wrong. That seems like a break in character for her though, since, if they did that, why not hard-program affection for them too?

Maybe the Watcher dlc will provide more information on the subject. That's why I wanted to get this post out there before then. A game like Rain World implying that the truth is somewhere between the scientific and spiritual makes sense, considering how the game really likes blurring the lines already. Further iteration upon a theme.

[tinylilvalery]

Y'all really not getting that Ken moved to start cutting Sh/v out because she literally couldn't have an objective business discussion and instead just wanted to be shady and shit in every interaction (eg the plane where Ken and Rom where trying to prepare for Lukas,,, which she shoulda been preparing alongside them instead of sidelining herself after just being obstructive) because her ego was bruised that her Fairyland idea where her and her brothers are COO together isn't a reality due to the fact that 1. The board wouldn't have gone for it cos the idea of a 3 sibling COO is fr a fairytale. Ken and Rom where correct in saying this and they know the board more intimately then Sh/v. 2. She has no experience at Waystar unlike Ken and Rom who have been a part of the company for years, Ken WAY more intimately so.

Her ego is literally so fragile and bruised rn and has sm internalised misogyny that she fell for Lukas' "You're not like other girls, you're a cool girl 🙃 You're like your dad :)" and is now sided with him cos she CANNOT bear the fact that her dad named Ken as his Successor, not pinky, not daddy's princess.

Like,,, what are you not getting. You want her to have a win? It's not at Waystar that she'll have it. She was leagues ahead in season 1 of where she is now, since she'd actually worked for herself and built her own career instead of just acting entitled and like she should be handed Waystar on a silver platter despite having no experience. Rom and Ken have been a part of Waystar for YEARS. Ken was literally trained by his dad to take over. His initials are fuckn KLR for Killer. He is the eldest between Rom and Sh/v (I don't mention Con here cos he's never frothed for Waystar like the others have). His father wrote for him to take over Waystar and then underlined it.

If you want a win for Sh/v then root for her to achieve that outside of Waystar instead of acting like she deserves to be CEO at Waystar for whatever outlandish purely emotional based reason.

[bixels]

As cameras becomes more normalized (Sarah Bernhardt encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use cameras because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by manufacturing companies. I paint not because I want a painting but because I love the process of painting. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

if i have to explain to you that using a camera to take a picture is not the same as using generative ai to generate an image then you are a fucking moron.

[gcballet]

Doctor Who as tweets/textposts pt.4

<- | DW | ->

[marciaillust]

mom come pick me up people related to my personal posts too much

[philosophybits]

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Notebooks (1886-1887)

[loosethreadsofyoursoul]

btw there never has been, nor will there ever be, a ship as sacred as wolfstar

[tj-crochets]

So my little brother and I are not allowed to be on the same team for family game night when we play games like Taboo, because most of the time we share a brain cell and the rest of the family has decided it's an unfair advantage. Today, I was trying to remember the word hummus but completely blanked, so what I said was: "Cabbage. No, hermitage" And my brother guessed "Brussels sprouts?" "No, it's a brown goo" I said, but my brother heard "it's a round goo" "Hummus!" he said "that explains the green from cabbage" "It was hummus, but hummus isn't green????" "Oh I was thinking of guacamole" So like. Even when he and I are thinking of totally different things we can still come up with the same word lol

[acebytaemin]

literally whenever i feel like an ego boost i do a little dance in the mirror it’s so good to me

[axolotlonamelon]

Marcy Wu: Newtopia's first and only marine scholar

The Newtopia Trilogy: 1/ 2/ 3

In a world where saltwater is a death sentence, the ocean is completely unexplored. It was believed that either nothing lived down there, or it was full of monsters that would drag their ships down if they went too far beyond the shore.

Marcy found herself in a unique position when she discovered this. She was attending Newtopia University when this interesting fact caught her eye. Knowing amphibians' tumultuous relationship with salt, the teenager decided to test whether or not it was actually toxic. It wasn't, it was just salt.

The girl begins sneaking out to the smallest and least populated harbor, an old one with sediment build up, crumbling docs, and a few worn aground boats. The sea spray wall being the only new thing in the area. She dives and finds the ruins of sunken ships filled with sealed wine vessels and precious metals. She writes her final paper on this harbor, and it gains a lot of attention fairly quickly.

She begins to apprentice under and gather data for various different kinds of scholars from historians, economists, and archeologists to every kind of naturalist under the sun. Marcy even begins to do some of her own research, going out on Merchant ships and diving around mainland coastal cities and in deeper waters.

Marcy gets her answer- yes. Luckily, she's played Subnautica enough times to be desensitized. The ocean only caps out at about 40 meters deep, so they aren't too big, and she has a pully system to get out fast if need be.

She even begins to capture smaller fish species and other marine life to study in Newtopia, creating the first ever aquarium.

She begins to be known as the Naturalist of the Abyss

Other names I was considering that sound raw as heck but didn't fit what she actually does: Curator of the Fathomless Waters and Professor of the Drowned Realm

[kkpwnall]

one of these days i'm going to write an essay about spotify wrapped and identity, the perception of self vs how society at large (or in this case a mega corporation) perceives the individual and the narratives they push to reinforce that (daylist) but today i'm just trying to convince myself not to do my own count of listens for the next year

[ectonurites]

i looooove getting yelled at for trying to explain the answer to a question i was literally asked.

[philosophybits]

The overbearing matter-of-factness which sacrifices the subject to the ascertainment of the truth, rejects at once truth and objectivity.

Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 81