#the stereotypical character archetypes!

[lichtecht]

i am currently on book 3 but this is my contribution

[vigilskeep]

a couple fairly spoiler-free notes, in no particular order, on neve gallus in her short story, the streets of minrathous, in tevinter nights

the story is by brianne battye, who wrote cullen for dai. we don’t have confirmation yet on who wrote neve for veilguard, but battye isn’t spoken for. lucanis’ writer didn’t write his tevinter nights story, but emmrich’s writer did write the one emmrich appears in. could go either way

it’s written in first-person, and there’s a lot of neve’s apparent sharp, no-nonsense personality in the blunt, fast-paced writing style. she’s got a fair few sarcastic retorts in the classic way of a private eye, but she’s also capable of holding them back when the situation calls for it. she’s a very archetypical detective in a lot of ways, working on her own, answering to no-one, and relying on street contacts for information

neve’s narration briefly refers to the herald as “the “glorious” inquisitor”, with those quotation marks on glorious. while she’s clearly opposed to the venatori and all they stand for, she might not exactly see the inquisition and our previous hero with rose-tinted glasses

she can summon mist for stealth purposes. she can’t truly stop serious bleeding from a deadly injury, but she can numb pain from it and later manages a smaller one of her own: “i’m not a healer, but i can patch up a wound well enough. i slowed the blood flow, tore off the sleeve of my blouse, and wrapped the wound as best i could.” she can hold people in place with air or pin them with ice. she can create ice crystals in the air and throw them. she can slow the air around someone as they move to throw off their momentum. she can blast someone off their feet with a gust of wind. she can use a frost slick to topple people. she’s not bad in a straight up fistfight

a rich man is not the usual crowd she takes jobs from, and she lives in a very different part of town to his manor, instead renting a room from a “third-rate bookseller”. at a house belonging to an ancient mage lineage, she says, “my family has more templars than mages. i’m sure that says a lot about me. the point is, i’m not from an old family and i felt as at home in [a wealthy mage’s house] as jahvis looked.”

neve finds tevinter’s templars, who in the story mostly fulfil the role of a police force, a “usual annoyance” in her life. she used to take jobs assisting them, but avoids it now she can get other work on her own, even though the templars pay better. she says that this is not because they have too many rules for her, though she does repeatedly express irritation at those, but because there are some templars who really do want to “try”, yet “too many times out of ten, it’s the wrong coin in the right hands that makes [them] stop”

she wants to go home and sleep for basically the entire story, but she repeatedly ignores it because far more than that, she wants to finish anything she starts and find closure to a mystery, even if she’s no longer being employed by anyone and she’s being actively told to keep out of it from now on. she goes out of her way for no reward to bring that closure, as much as she can find, to the person who is no longer employing her

fried fish from a specific market stall—“salty, piping hot, and perfect as always”—is a very regular favourite of hers, with the gruff stall owner convinced she’d starve otherwise. she seems somewhat more distressed by losing her fish dinner than when she witnessed a murder

her prosthetic leg is especially survivable because it’s dwarven crafted

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

shadow weaver: i care about the safety of everyone in etheria and i’m actively trying to help protect everyone

fans: omg shadow weaver evil!! she’s just selfish and wants to drive catra and adora apart!

catra: i’m going to abandon adora on her deathbed just because she didn’t choose ME over the safety of the entire world. i only care about adora if she prioritizes me over literally everything else.

fans: poor catra, she’s so right! she just wants adora to be happy!

[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.)

[anyatomy]

attention all tmp fans: please know that being goth is just a music subculture and not indicative of mental health or personality. it is odd to say that because gerry is happy he is not goth; conflating taste and mental health is... strange, to say the least?

he's more bubbly now because he's not constantly in horrifying situations. he's always been incredibly kind and caring under the layer of Grouch developed from being used as a tool by every single person in his life for 26 years until and even AFTER he died.

just because he never developed the layer of grouch does not mean he doesn't still listen to mastodon.

sometimes the soundtrack for baking a loaf of bread is death metal and i think that's beautiful.

[friendofthecrows]

As always, (no pressure) reblog for more votes, etc. <3

[dkettchen]

You know when your friend shows you her favourite streamer and it's the most average looking white guy you've ever seen in your life and you're like "why are you obsessed with this man, he's Literally Just Some Guy?"

So, I've acquired Laios Dungeon Meshi and I get it now

[lesbiankordian]

now why did dazai say here he wanted to ask chuuya sth 🧐🧐...? WHAT WAS THE QUESTION SUPPOSED TO BE?! like I know it'd be probably another joke but what would he say hadn't he made that joke...

[crescentmp3]

love planning out an entire video game that will take me years of learning to get started on making.

[trans-xianxian]

I think it's so funny when media and fics attribute reading to like. a thing only "nerds" do and the stereotypical Cool tm characters just never read a single book because they are too Cool tm for that and the idea of such a thing is laughable and ridiculous. almost every single person I know reads regularly regardless of whether or not they'd fit into the trope of a nerd character in a given piece of media. what are you talking about

[loverboydotcom]

that flavour of characters where it’s like you are clearly displaying autistic tendencies to me but i am so glad that the writers did not intend for that and write you with autism in mind because they would have handled it horribly and ruined the fun vibe

[the-busy-ghost]

Me: Ah nice I'll just have a little nap and then get on with my reading

My brain, an hour and a half later: 'Now let's go back and talk further about George Kirrin...'

[august--and-everything-after]

By the way, we finally played session 1 of our new dnd campaign and I've already managed to get several of the player characters and NPCs falling in love with me

I'm playing a human bard who's essentially just a cowboy and I'm not entirely clear what I've done to come across as hot and charming from the jump, especially since we're playing exclusively via roll20 and voice chat with no video or in-person element, but damn if I don't love the attention

[chronomally]

Luis: [Frank Polidori] is a really bad man.

Gladys: Of course he is, he's in real estate.

[moophinz]

Gripping the hand that is the awful visuals of the Minecraft movie is a crooked hand full of deeply sensitive hatred and anger. And by that I mean the unhinged, extremely verbal racism I’ve seen about the one black woman in the film.

The gaming community is not a cesspool. The gaming community and all the grifters who sink their rotting teeth in it are not doing large amounts of harm. It’s all good on Twitter in reaction to this spectacular film.

[the-boy-branithar]

i can't believe there are so many sansa haters when shae is RIGHT THERE