#they killed a great character

[stil-lindigo]

prodigal son.

a sort of epilogue for God of War Ragnarok, since I miss these two so much.

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[srapsodia]

Maaaaan, that was close...

[bixels]

vague-posting about this here cuz i don't feel comfortable yapping about my su takes on twitter, but after everything that's happened the most interesting thing about the su fandom to me is that so many are 100% there for applying the "everyone can change and deserves a second chance" message to everyone, even the diamonds. except for one ☝️ she doesn't count. cuz she's dead.

[undefbug]

Little (super) late to this trend lol

[glitter-alienz]

goofysona :p

[unionizedwizard]

so. many people have already pointed that koana is sort of like an ARR alphinaud remix and while it is not untrue, i think this analysis is only superficially correct. because the salient point of koana's character is that he feels shame and resentment towards his roots & origins and therefore overcompensates with sharlayan weabooism (well-intentioned, but still unsuitable). he comes off as really weird and stuck up, in the beginning especially, where it's like. "what the fuck is this guy's problem" in a way that's rather similar to the average player's reaction to ARR alphinaud.

BUT!

the thing with ARR alphinaud is that he was the Quintessential Sharlayan, both on account of his upbringing and family tree, and of his personal interests and achievements. he was (and still is) secure in his origins and cultural identity. koana's case is different, because he clearly loathes tradition and turali cultural practices in a way that comes across (and fundamentally is) really weird and destructive, which comes to bite him in the ass on many occasions during the rite of succession (and understandably so).

it all starts to make sense when you learn about his backstory though. while we know that wuk lamat doesn't remember anything of her own childhood, having been adopted by gulool ja ja as a toddler, koana was adopted at a much older age. he remembers his early years, and that's what fuels his entire vision for the future of tural. as he tells it, he was born to one of the most traditionalist hhetsarro tribes in tural, and abandoned (accidentally(?) left behind) during one of their yearly migrations, only surviving thanks to a pelupelu merchant who rescued and took him in before employing him in his tuliyollal shop. an obviously incredibly traumatic event that would shape everything about his future mindset: he's closed off and withdrawn to the extreme, highly analytical, values self-sufficiency and independence and technical innovations above all else, because that's how he survived to begin with. because his nomadic, highly traditional, presumably (from what we've seen of the one hhetsarro tribe we've met so far) tight-knit, spiritual and social tribe rejected and abandoned him. it would make sense that he'd rationalize this unfathomable violence by leaning hard into the opposite, and letting his own pain and resentment color his entire vision, turning his own feelings into a more general mindset of shame, resentful inadequacy, and complete rejection of anything "traditional"

i think sharlayan was a good choice for him because it's pretty much, indeed, the opposite atmosphere: in sharlayan culture, family ties are a lot less emphasized, while the kind of ties that colleagues, peers, teachers and students develop are considered as very important (see pretty much every sidequest and margrat's custom deliveries and all). all these relationships based on a common work and aspirations rather than origins would indeed agree with koana's character better, and his analytical skills, vision and intelligence are pretty much the most valued traits to them.

which is why it was actually such a stroke of genius to have thancred and urianger specifically support him. of course, both of them had a character development arc that echoed with koana's issues: learning how to express himself more openly and acknowledge his feelings, all that, meaning they were uniquely able to help him. but when you look more closely, they can also relate to him on a more personal level: thancred was "adopted" by louisoix as an orphaned lominsan street urchin, probably at a similar age as koana when he was adopted by gulool ja ja; and urianger's parents notably "abandoned" him to the point he was mostly tagging along at moenbryda's house and, later, at the leveilleur estate, as louisoix's disciple and honorary uncle to the twins (also worth noting that urianger and koana share the same flavor of autism).

so the rite of succession was a much-needed window into his own biases and (literal) coping mechanisms, and must have been quite difficult to deal with considering pretty much all the feats involved interacting with and strengthening tight-knit smaller communities with strong traditions and family ties. luckily, partly thanks to thancred and urianger (but not only! he did the work himself), he was clear-minded enough to realize his own failings, and well-intentioned enough to step down - because he did not want power for its own sake, unlike zoraal ja; he wanted to protect the turali people from a potential invasion by leaning hard into foreign technological advances, therefore mimicking his own personal journey and adapting his own tried-and-true methods of survival: anticipating the hardships, being as independent and self-sufficient as possible, and choosing isolationism.

and finally i want to point out that the new techniques and technologies he imported from sharlayan are all (safe, fast and reliable) modes of transportation: aetherytes, dirigibles (including the alpaca carriage adaptation), and trains. interesting choice, moreso considering that while aetherytes are the #1 sharlayan specialty, they have neither dirigibles nor trains; which takes on a whole new layer of meaning when you remember that his original tribe was nomadic and that he specifically was left behind, stranded in the desert, during one of their traditional migrations............

in this regard he truly IS green g'raha, considering that g'raha was, similarly, raised in a traditional seeker manner before being sent to sharlayan for his own (and the tribe's) safety; of course the difference is that g'raha embraced his heritage by locking himself in the crystal tower by the end of ARR, since the G tribe was tasked with guarding the remaining allagan ruins and weapons, to make sure their power would not be misused by yet another imperialist military force (he locked himself in the tower to reinforce its defenses and make sure the garlean empire would not access it to conquer eorzea)

thank you for your time 👍

[unlikablefemaleprotagonist]

i keep thinking about the possibility that if there's ever a senior year, emily might choose to come back as a different player than fig. i say might because even if she felt like she wanted to play as someone else before junior year, by the time senior year rolls around (if ever) she might change her mind again, or feel that fig's story has taken a unique enough path at the end of junior year that it's compelling to continue playing with it.

and while i would certainly miss fig, and i think the team dynamics would change a lot if a new sixth character was pal-ing around with the bad kids, i hope that if she goes that route, she takes inspo from murph, and the greatest replacement character in d20 history: cody walsh.

because what was great about cody was that finding someone everyone would like as much as kugrash was a very tall order! so instead he veered the other way (on his moped) by creating this perfectly annoying drip of a loser, that everyone else would have strong feelings about, and more importantly, conflict with.

[notsosecretlyalesbian]

"At a time when my life felt scattered and incomplete, the fantasy world of The Parent Trap, and the warm and maternal presence of Chessy, provided me with a dream of gluing the pieces of it together. The film, though not explicitly queer, still provides a sort of utopia of queer acceptance, connection and love. [...] Some days I still think that maybe all I need is a hug from Lisa Ann Walter and I will be all right." - Michael Elias (x)

Lisa Ann Walter as Chessy in The Parent Trap (1998)

[raining-anonymously]

i still can’t believe there was a phineas and ferb episode where a man hunted perry and doof for sport with the implicit goal of murdering them both and keeping them as trophies

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

When they come to do a live action reboot of Wonder Woman they need to remember that Diana has two mothers.

[sarahreadstoomanycomics]

Superman by Dan Mora in Batman/Superman: World's Finest

[loudclan-clangen]

i'm going to explode you with my mind. (sobbing.)

Bad Idea

If I don't make it out alive neither does Rosehipkit.

[wisebeth]

why does the pjo series have to unnecessarily villainize goddesses (hera & athena) or show them as silly ladies (aphrodite & demeter) BUT posiedon and apollo are somehow shown as the coolest/most likeable gods, even though arguably, they're right after zeus on terms of corruption?

ares shown as the worst god after zeus and hera amuses me. last time i checked, he was the patron god of amazons and literally killed a man for attempting to rape his daughter but guess who cursed women for rejection? apollo. guess who raped women when they said no (aside from zeus)? posiedon.

[presiding]

revenge solves everything.

by @lexsnotdead commissioned for swan song, in which daud is haunted by regrets and jessamine kaldwin.

[timethehobo]

Curious to see where the next KTJL ep will take us. Would love to see the dynamic of having to work tgt and if it’s anything like the occasional comic team-up.

[autistically-zoinked]

People thinking that Daniel was gonna be the exception to the "all vampires are bad" rule is so funny to me! Like he fucked a girl with a bag over her head, he cheated on both of his wives, he admits to being a horrible father AND doesn't really care that Armand is going to kill Malik! If you saw him do all that and thought he was gonna be a nice vampire, that's on you.