#then i understood why lol

[randomnameless]

Do you feel like the fandom has a sort of bigotry of low expectations attitude towards Almyra? Like Rhea is literally satan for not teaching Cyril to read (even though she didn't know he couldn't) but Almyra, where he lived during the time in his life where most kids are learning to read, doesn't get any flack for not educating it's children. And that's on top of treating the whole "ignoring the orphans you create in your raids for funzies until you can use them in your raids for funzies" as not a big deal at best and something Cyril needs to get over so he can embrace his Almyran heritage at worst.

Hm...

I didn't interact with khalidstan side of the fandom, a friend gave me a few links and I clicked, blinked, and they immediately returned lol.

Almyra in fandom in general is... a short summary of what Fodlan's issue is, and the need to use copious amounts of headcanons or to project real life events on the two lines given because 10k years of lore means we still don't know the name of Claude's dad or why the fuck he isn't stopping the raids.

And in a way, I can't really say it's undeserved, to project so much, because we all like to see something new, and something "not often seen" in jrpgs, Almyra's aesthetic was so heavily inspired by real world locations, so of course people wanted to know more about it than about "random medieval european land #8854" and...

Well. The game doesn't say a lot about Almyra, it is mentionned about, someone you are supposed to see as a protagonist with knowledge about this land says some good stuff about it and... that's it!

(at least it wasn't the utter disappointment Hyzante was in TS, because that's another can of worms, but given the "aethetic" picked for the ultra religious people who justify everything by their religion that is actually false and controlled by an old fart using a puppet, and who also enslaves people, and has no redeeming quality bar its last survivor being a Mother (tm) who apparently knows some medicine - let's say this portrayal would have fit well with the early 2000s depictions of a certain religion and its followers in the real world).

So for this new and "exotic" (i fucking hate that word) country, of course people wanted to know more... and when the "more" showed that IS didn't move from the Kaga era with Persia = Verdane, well.

Some people, who really wanted to be invested in Almyra (maybe projecting a lot about it) were disappointed, and had to basically create fanon!Almyra from the few breadcrumbs we got - ending with the "Almyra is wonderful and #didnothingwrong, Fodlan BaD and Syrup must embrace his Almyran identity as Khalid's bby bro!" - canon events can be ignored!

And, as headcanon/fanon, okaay, this can work, I mean, it's not because people make sandwiches with mayo, eggs and cucumbers that I have to eat it, you know? Some people eat those kinds of sandwiches, I don't, don't like, don't read, etc etc.

But then, removing the fandom's tendency to headcanon and, well, be a fandom, in FE Fodlan itself we have... Claude.

And the way the games treat Claude, imo, ultimately fuels those headcanons.

Rather, not only Claude, but more specifically, his views about Fodlan, Almyra and the supposed reasons why they can't get along.

As I posted way too many times in the last 4 years, Claude will - for a reason I suspect is tied to Hresvelg Grey and the red herring called Rhea - never interact with the Almyrans attacking for shit'n'giggles in Hilda'n'Cyril's paralogue. He will not talk about House Goneril's habit to, uh, "take orphans left on the battlefield" with them.

But it's an issue with the Fodlan games in general, you can have an elephant in the room, or a giant dragon, if it goes against the narrative a certain character pushes, that elephant will be ignored, like, the lord won't even have 1 line about it.

The game took time to code Claude having line about random pirates "dirtying" Almyra's good name by pretending to be Almyran pirates to, just, steal stuff - but it didn't took time to code Claude maybe tell to the random peon leading the raid of the week to stop the fuck out - and I ultimately don't think it was a foresight.

Claude will tell you the reason why Almyra isn't well seen nor accepted in Fodlan is because of the Church or the faith Rhea preaches (since in VW Billy will still be head of the church), because the faith Rhea preaches apparently encourages isolationism, xenophobia, etc etc...

And nowhere in the game(s) will someone tell him that, uh, no, the faith Rhea preached welcomes people of all faiths and origins (Cyril sort of does, but this support is optional when Claude will always say the same thing at the beginning, middle and end of his route(s)), or how people do not welcome Almyrans with open arms because of their habit to raid their lands every sunday (re : lack of reaction in the Hilda'n'Cyril support) - Hell, in Nopes, it's Lorenz, not Claude, who tells Almyrans that they shouldn't pillage the cities they are invading (re : the elephant in the room, Lorenz adresses it though, even if it's played for funsies).

So if Claude says Almyra is the second coming of paradise on earth, and the game never bothers to correct him or have him learn, react and reconsider his earlier opinions, why should the fandom bother? Claude is a protagonist and can be the Lord, so of course whatever he says - even in passing, is true!

Coupled with the projection/fanon/headcanon issue of earlier and you have fanon!Almyra - where Syrup needs to ditch the woman who gave him meals and a roof and basic care to return to his "almyran" origins even if in Almyra he was treated like fodder and had "no reason to live".

Why?

Because said woman is a certain fandom's projection on the catholic church + the game(s) need a red herring + Hresvelg Grey + Claude said so and the game(s) never confronts him so it sort of works.

I think, back when I still had faith in redshit, I tried to argue to someone who said "obviously Almyra has more advanced medicine bcs trust me bro" with something like "in a world where singing 2 "Ave Sothis" can heal a fractured arm, what the fuck is advanced medicine?" Ditto for the more advanced ships because they have canons, we're in the Fire Emblem series, who gives a fuck about a canon if you have a mage with long range magic on the other side ? Ask FE4, people can summon meteors - do you really think a "canon" is advanced technology in an universe with magic? (unless we make a difference between magic and technology but it's all sort of pointless, some place isn't more backwards than the other if it uses different methods to reach the same results?).

----

Then, let's not kid ourselves, Almyra, just like everything in Fodlan, has been used by the fandom to demonise Rhea, because Rhea BaD since she's the fandom projected version of Pope Francis and Supreme Leader + Claude think she's the reason why Fodlan sucks.

So with the "Rhea is satan because she never taught Cyril, who kept that information hidden, how to read, but the Gonerils are somehow A-ok despite not teaching him too - granted they also forgot to give him food so at least they're consistent in how they completely don't give a fuck about him" -

I also read the "Rhea is evil because she only saved 1 Almyran Child from House Goneril, but again, House Goneril isn't evil for, uh, keeping more than 1 Almyran child needing to be saved" -

And Nopes gave us the best "Rhea is evil incarnated because she doesn't tell Cyril to run away when people want to slaughter her, unlike what she did for her blood relatives, so it's actually Rhea's fault that Claude had to use Cyril as an archery practice dummy!".

If Rhea must be bad, then everything she stands against must be Good! And that includes the people she bought a fort to defend against!

Tl;Dr : some part of the fandom idealisation of Almyra comes frmo 1/projection

2/Khalid said so and the game(s) never force him to reconsider

3/Rhea BaD (this one is a bit of a cheat, since it can be used to explain 95% of the various discourses that happened in this fandom since its creation!)

[ganondoodle]

(OC Lore and design time!)

(it got longer again ... sorry ... idk how to make things short, i just need to talk, but i guess if you can read the written stuff in the pic thats the barest bare bones of what i wrote here)

i was asked what new lore story stuff i had thought about that made me sad which i mentioned a bit ago, and while that is too hard to explain given all the missing context i thought i could at least talk about lore having to do with it :D

so, (Lord) Eadrya is one of my fav OCs (big blue lad, here a rough sketch in humanoid form) they are both one of if not THE most powerful demon alive and the most battle trained;

at the mid point of the story the demon world gets invaded by the celestials (the angel inspired things i talked about in the previous lore post with Xaror) and Shargon, as the king, should be their first and only frontline, but at this point his life is only being sustained by maschinery after being mortally wounded, he cannot fight (he realizes what is going on, rips himself off the maschinery to get at least his youngest child to safety, barely managing it before dying- the guardian, the demons god, takes over his body to attempt to fight against the celestials but cant keep itself alive long enough since its host is already dead) Eadrya takes the role of the frontline fighter (despite being very full of themselves and aggressive they care about their 'job' of protecting their own, also giving them the chance to show off just how strong they are); the fight was going well for them all things considered, but when the guardian activates it drains the power of all elemental lords (which Eadrya is one of, and since they have the most strength it also takes the most from them), so much so that they lose the fight and suffer deadly wounds (the worst being a spear through the chest made of a material that grows hard, root-like formations when in contact with demonic blood like a fungus but worse, also stopping any self healing processes) after the guardian falls apart it creates a huge shockwave of energy that stuns every living thing within a certain distance and possibly more-

Eadrya (in true demon form, so like a blue whale in size at least) was likely taken through an active gateway to the human world in a large tidal wave also created by the guardians fall; they wash up in the harbor of a small secluded village, the head of which is 'lady 13'; although never having seen a demon before and everyone being afraid (largely thinking its a strange hurt animal, only she suspected otherwise), they still gather all villagers to pull out the celestial spear, which is diffcult and brutal given that its already taken root, but the village lacked both knowledge and means to help any other way- doing so damaged their heart which is how they were able to collect samples of all three demonic blood types ('normal' -red like humans-, energy -essentially purely magic- and heartblood -highly concentrated energy only found within the heart of a demon and the only one to contain genetic material) (this is the start of Eadryas character arc, having to deal with the fact that their world is likely destroyed, them failing what they didnt think they could fail, having lost a battle so badly (even if not really their fault) for the first time and not knowing if literally anyone else has survived .. also being now stuck in the human world, which they dont like)

Lady 13 (placeholder name? stands for experiment 13) is a human that was tricked by demon hunters to enroll into a series of experiments trying to create hybrids of demons and humans, which they hoped would be powerful and easily controllable tools for their endeavours, though the two are inherently not compatible, they tried grafting body parts of demons on humans to make them compatible- all experiments failed except for her, more or less, though she never got to see the hybrid she carried and was then told it had died too, they threw her out believing she wouldnt survive much longer either and all such experiments were cancelled due to the high cost of human life, research material (demons are still rare) and upkeep with no successful results Lady 13 survived though (perhaps even via the pirates picking her up?) and she ended up living in said small village far away, hiding her half demonic body, though most know there soemthing 'wrong' with her (her being this tall when it doesnt fit the rest for one), only few know the full extent; she enjoys the life she has now, perhaps on the more poor side but safer and more loved than ever before; she largely lead the efforts to try and help Eadrya when they ended up in the harbor, though there wasnt that much anyone could do it was still enough- they leave immediately after waking up, but return after really having nowhere to go and struggling to deal with everything that has happened; over time (probably years) they start to open up towards the people there (though not .. very much) enough to get rather close with Lady 13 too- she actually falls madly in love but after Eadrya (extremely aro/ace) rejects all her attempts quite clearly she respects their boundaries

However, after hearing news of potential demon sightings Eadrya decides to leave in hopes of not being the last demon left after all; Lady 13 then decides to reveal her secret to them (though hearing and seeing what lengths hunters would go to for their experiments makes them absolutely seething with rage- she insists on not being out for revenge) and asks if they would be willing to donate a small amount of heartblood; shes always wanted to be a mother but is now incompatible with humans too- through things she picked up back at the experiments facillity, hers and her doctors research she is sure that is all that is needed, she dares to ask since she does not know when, if ever, she will meet another demon, much less one she could actually trust enough for this though Eadrya hesitates (why would she want to go through the same thing again that didnt work and threatened her life, if it does work, do they want to be involved with any of this? what if hunters find out it worked after all?) but after her ensuring that they would have no part in it other than giving up a little blood and would not be considered a parent in any way, nor made responsible for anything that might happen to her, but considering it all in the end they agree to it

only for her to reveal shes had a small bottle of it already, along with multiple samples of the other types, which she collected when Eadrya was bleeding out into the harbor not knowing if they will survive, though not wanting to make use of it without their consent either way (they are actuallly rather touched by this)

alot later the main group returns here and it turns out to have worked (though she is unable to walk/bedridden for a long while bc it did alot of damage to her body, which can heal since its demons parts, but only really slowly bc she does not have a full functioning system and no demonic blood of her own -she uses the other samples for the healing process-) though its a little awkward to explain, especially considering that 13.1 took alot after Eadrya xD (their theory as to why it worked so "well" that time is that even though the sample was already taken, them giving their consent for it still made it less likely to be rejected; demons dont need partners to have offspring, and all can do it, they just have to decide to- so them agreeing to it, even though its long been outside their body, still had an effect on the blood sample)

[carlostck]

egh Misako design for my cowboy AU!!

[pepperpixel]

SAID HE LIKES CRAZY GIRLS,

BUT HE HATES WHEN I ACT CRAZY,

IT TAKES TWO TO TOXIC!

FINALLY!!! Finished these pics of jinx I’ve been working on!!!!! HOLY SHIT, these took so long…. But finally… they’re done… pls enjoy this art of my beautiful princess w a disorder. Featuring alternate colors for the big pic and also a closeup! Cuz I rlly like how both the lines and coloring on her face turned out… like the pink gradients w her eye… her deer in headlights expression,, like uve just startled a raccoon digging thru ur trashcan and r two seconds away from getting mauled.. m proud of it!

[luuxxart]

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[makesyouevil]

happier days

[biggest-vi-defender]

arcane S2 ep. 3 spoilers [question]

genuine question, why does vi not knock or push the gun out of isha’s hand when she’s pointing it at her & clearly very close to shooting her?

was she just too shocked to do anything or still processing it or smth?

[etrevil]

How can this man, who is in prison for several counts of murder and other charges, look so adorable

[purgaytorysupremacy]

oh nuts. a life experience has given me a new layer of perspective on Cas's homosexual declaration of love to Dean.

recently I had occasion to tell a person I had feelings for them knowing full well they didn't feel even a twinge of the same thing for me. while the whole thing was a decidedly unpleasant experience, I kept laughing at myself internally bc I didn't want to say "the happiness is just in saying it" like fucking Castiel over here. (we don't need to talk about it, it's fine.) (I am happier having said it and it's kind of bullshit, but I digress.)

because the thing is, the happiness isn't in just saying it, right? the happiness is in the having. I made a whole TikTok "proving" that the Empty didn't come for Cas when he confessed his love, but rather when he realized Dean loved him back. even for Cas, the happiness was in the having, not in the saying, however brief it was.

and I've always been one of those people who rolled their eyes at the whole concept. why would the happiness be in just being, in just saying it, if it's right there in front of you to have. and then it hit me like a tonne of bricks (as I was washing my kitchen counters).

Cas really didn't think he could have Dean.

at all. in any capacity. he really, truly, and honestly felt to the depths of himself that Dean did not have any twinge of similar feelings, that this really was a Hail Mary shot-in-the-dark. and I think me, personally, really didn't understand that about Cas. that his belief in his love being unrequited was that unshakable.

something else I've been pondering is how audiences have so much more empathy for fictional characters who share traits that IRL they find objectionable and unappealing. but the thing is about fictional characters is that we follow them around in their most private, vulnerable moments. we see Dean mourning Cas when he dies, literally killing himself because he can't live without him, but it's so easy to forget that we're the omniscient ones here.

Cas never knew.

Dean's whole thing was pushing him away, keeping him at arm's length, making it seem like whatever heroic thing he does for Cas he'd do for anyone. he downplays how important it is for Dean to share the Deancave with him, to show him his favourite movies, share his favourite songs. he acts like the things Cas does for him don't mean that much to hide how much they do mean. he uses "we" whenever he even gets in the vicinity of expressing a feeling. "We were worried." "We're glad you're back." "We needed a win." "You're our brother." The audience knew the difference. We saw how he'd clench his jaw or swallow hard or make a face that said "God, I'm being such an idiot". Because we saw him in those little moments. We got to see the cracks in the mask.

but Cas never knew.

the self-hating angel of Thursday was never going to think it was all a way for Dean to protect himself. obviously, that's the delicious tragedy of it all, but what I think I realized at the end of all that is Cas confessing his love to a Dean who didn't love him back wouldn't have worked. Because the happiness really is in the having. If happiness was just in saying it, then The Empty would have come before Cas even finished getting the words out of his mouth.

so Cas's plan wouldn't have worked if Dean didn't love him back.

this is just me yapping on about my own nonsense, but I do think it's really interesting. there's contentment in "just saying it". there's freedom and relief and an unburdening. I think one can argue that it makes being happy in the being easier. there is certainly some joy in telling a person you think that highly of them. but true happiness?

nah.

true happiness is always going to only be in the having. Cas didn't understand the difference until he experienced it, and by then, it was too late.

[bleue-flora]

just a random thought/idea: where I'm from, parents used to make their kids kneel on mongo beans or rice grains for a while as a punishment. I wonder if that's how it feels like to kneel on the obsidian in the cell

Oh yea, 100% I love this. When I’ve gone rockhounding we often wear knee pads depending on the site, because of the sharp rocks, loose and solid, so I absolutely think the obsidian ground is very painful. Especially, because obsidian is volcanic glass so it breaks unevenly with pointy edges and unless they took a grinder to the floor (which even then) it’d be very course not unlike how it’d feel to kneel on beans like you describe, though potentially actually sharp to the point of breaking skin. (If you buy obsidian at a store lots of times the corners are rounded off because they’ve been tumbled (basically sanded down) a little to smooth it out.)

And not to get too engineery, but additionally, obsidian is very hard and not very shock absorbent, meaning it does not absorb much of the energy of your weight leaving the energy and force to essentially rebound back into you. If you’ve ever walked around all day on concrete floors and your legs and feet are sore afterwards this is part of the reason why. The floor isn’t taking a lot of the pressure off your feet like wood does when it bends under your weight. Hence, one of the reasons why we wear padded shoes, especially if you work on hard floors all day, to help absorb some of that energy.

So even without Quackity’s visits and the resulting injuries, Dream’s body would still be in bad condition as a result of the floor alone, not just because of all the cuts from the jagged surface, but the lack of shock absorption. He would likely develop calluses over time to deal with the floor, but there is also only so much you can do if it’s super uneven and sharp. And the result of the forces on his body from a lack of shock absorption would lead him to face a lot of joint strain and likely chronic pain in his knees, hips and lower back as well as muscle pain, posture deterioration and fatigue making it strenuous to stand for long periods of time… in other words, even if the cell wasn’t surrounded by lava, even if he wasn’t starved, even if he wasn’t in isolation, and even if he wasn’t tortured, Pandora’s Vault was still hell and he’d leave that cell in poor physical condition with chronic pain just from the obsidian…

[tinkyrubi-png]

An Austin redesign I made in gacha life that I decided to draw, I'm actually really proud of how this came out

[stone-stars]

Transcript:

Murph: They wanna like-- just like toss it down their mouth. Or just like put it in-- Emily: Have you considered like, hucking it up their butthole-- Murph: What? Emily: --so hard that it goes into their stomach? Jake: Yeah. Caldwell: Ohh. Aabria: As long as it's inside their body, I think it counts. Emily: (laughing) Right? Like, alternative means of entering the body! Caldwell: You-- you wanna egg chug. Aabria: Yes! Murph: Okay. Jake: I fear that a deviled egg doesn't have the structural integrity to go up an ass. Emily: Ooooh. Murph: Right, to get through a butt. Yeah. Emily: The flimsy egg defense. Caldwell: Yeah. Murph: It would-- It would crack in the cheeks. It would crack in the cheeks. [Everyone laughing.] Emily, through laughter: You're right. Jake: Yeah, but you have to keep in mind that a deviled egg is only half an egg. Caldwell: That's true! Jake: So that's-- Emily: Ohhh, that's just so it's easier to go down. Jake and Caldwell: Yeah.

[galedekkarios]

"how could anyone ship bloodweave they make no sense at all" did you think about their stories, their motives, their ailments, their shared hobbies, the subtle progression of their relationship throughout the acts, and how very similar they can be despite being different. i know that you didn't but if you had then perhaps you would understand why some people might ship them, especially since a) you can successfully romance them in an origin run thus making it possible, b) astarion already tries flirting with gale unprompted in act 1, and c) you can romance astarion with a good-aligned pc and romance gale with an evil-aligned pc. so, like. what's not clicking

[peteytheparrot]

Toyhouse warnings are a different breed of chronically online ☠️

[keepthetension]

still stuck on mhok's trauma, unsurprisingly. i keep thinking about the opening scenes of this show, showing us day losing his sight, and mhok losing rung. i really thought that the show would spend equal time and care on both

my first post about this show was pointing out that the first shot of day is a close up of his eyes, and the first time we see mhok, he's holding something in his mouth. and i thought it was so interesting that we see mhok gagged, because society generally doesn't care what people who've been incarcerated have to say. or poor people. and by and large, it doesn't care about the voices of traumatized people, either

and i was so curious to see what the show was going to do with that. i can't believe the show itself was never really interested in what mhok has to say

and i'm stuck on mhok's time in hawaii. the show highlighted over and over again how poor he is, and we know that he didn't like studying. what are his english skills like? we saw singha there, and i think one other thai person. was that the extent of his social circle? he seemed pretty happy to leave hawaii behind, so did he make no new friends? did he spend his days off just sitting in his room by himself, the way day did when he went to songkla with mhok?

i assume he and porjai were still in touch, but he moved abroad at a time when his ptsd was getting worse, and in the wake of a terrible breakup, and he just walked all of that off? alone???

feeling overly protective and over-responsible is absolutely an understandable trauma response for mhok, but you know what else is? losing a relationship, and feeling like you HAVE to go back and fix it, and that if you can just get a do-over, you'll be able to do everything perfectly this time, and you'll get everything right, and everything will be okay! this makes more sense to me in the final episode than the idea of mhok and day having a happily ever after does

[jorrated]

i agree that latinos experience xenophobia/racism just for being latinos, but also i cant help but laugh when white latinos try to pull the race card. girl you cant even take a photo with the flash on