#this goes on this blog for a reason

[glambots]

@ Steel Wool Studios (Official Twitter/X)

[some-pers0n]

I might be poking at a bear here but I kinda really dislike the "all or nothing" attitude the WoF fandom has. This character is evil the worst piece of garbage imaginable or is secretly a great character and you're just a fool for thinking otherwise. It's ridiculous at times

Like I recall the stuff with Secretkeeper a while back. Now, call me crazy, but I don't think she's some horrifically abusive and neglectful parent. She did the best that she could. Was it great? No, but she was trying to keep her daughter safe in a hostile world that she was terrified would reject or, worse, hunt her. Her leaving Moon alone for days was bad, yes, but she wanted to keep Moon free from the horrors of the volcano. She loved Moon and clearly took care of her a lot. You can't just look at a character and paint them as being a "horrible abusive POS" for something that, let's be real here, is much more forgivable and understandable than anything Coral, Scarlet, Diamond, Cobra, Jerboa, or Kestrel did

[moonpaw]

[laswells-ashtray]

It's me yet again. I need me some slightly tipsy Kate and John in a lighthearted sparring match while her wife and Nik stand off to the side and gossip about their respective partners. (Again, take your time. Don't burn yourself out )

Now, because I can't describe movement for shit. I'm an internal dialogue like the Green Goblin voice or a banter typa muppet this interaction will mostly be between Nik and Laswell's wife. and I'm using my interpretation of her whom I have called Sarah if only because typing out Laswell's wife so many times makes the words stop looking real

"I cannot see this going well in the long run." Sarah Laswell, very proud wife of a certain Kate Laswell. It's not often she sees Kate get tipsy in front of anyone who isn't her, she'll indulge in a drink or two but never to the extent of this. However, it'd be dumb to assume that combining Kate, John and alcohol that Nikolai, bless that man, was paying for would lead them anywhere else.

"And yet you make no move to stop it." Nikolai doesn't bother pretending that he isn't amused, it's deeply humorous to watch two of the most fierce people he knows spar each other.

"Neither do you, don't think I can't see you staring at his ass."

"You haven't stopped looking at your wife's chest since she took off her jacket."

Okay, they're both deviants.

John is in what are probably his nicest jeans, not very suitable to a lot of movement given that they must've been painted onto his arse.

Kate is wearing a dark blue tank top that Sarah bought her absentmindedly last week and for the briefest moment, she considers just dragging Kate to the nearest closet and hoping it's soundproof.

The two move in such fluid ways that it's clear they've sparred together before. Even with a few drinks in both of them, it's the most gracious violence she's ever seen.

When John narrowly avoids Kate's elbow to the face Nikolai does little more than chuckle, he clearly isn't worried about his partner and he enjoys the smug grin on the other man's face.

"Tempted to video this." Sarah mutters, watching them both in awe. Even if her main reason for watching was to shamelessly admire her wife in all her glory, she can't deny how impressive Kate is. She throws a hit with enough force that Sarah almost pities John and she takes an equal hit with such little care. God, if there was to be a walking advertisement for lesbianism it would be Kate Laswell.

"That would involve taking your eyes off of them."

"Nevermind."

Nikolai understands, he truly does. His three favourite Johns are fucked senseless John, John when he's asleep and purring against Nik's chest like a cat and John when he's fighting just for the fun of it. Watching his biceps flex, testing the tight stitching around the sleeve of his t-shirt is a damn near biblical fucking experience.

Maybe the greatest bit of their little sparring match is how happy the two look to be there, throwing hits at each other while simultaneously muttering their banter in a way that neither Nikolai nor Sarah can hear. Carefree for once in their lives, it's no secret that their jobs weigh down on the both of them and to see them in a position so laid back, it's endearing.

"Those the socks Kate bought him for his birthday last year?"

"Да."

"Thought so, I picked them out."

"I assumed so."

"What gave it away?"

"The word cock printed on the soles." Sue her, she thought it was funny and given the expression on Nikolai's face so did he.

She watches John swipe out Kate's legs from under her and feels pride settle in her chest when the other woman immediately pulls the Englishman down with her.

She spares Nikolai a knowing glance, it would appear the both of them are going to be enjoying their nights when they head home.

Kate moves so quickly that Sarah can't help but think of one of their cats back home as she pins John to the mat, their sparring might be lighthearted but she wouldn't make the mistake of thinking Kate would let herself move.

Her muscles are taut as she holds the struggling Englishman in place, her back arched and a downright gleeful smirk on her face. Strands of hair fall into her line of vision, fallen loose from her typical bun and they frame her face in a way that can only be described as angelic. If angels were the single most fuckable woman that Sarah has ever interacted with in her entire fucking life, Jesus Christ.

As much as John is losing, he does so proudly. Who better to lose to than Kate of all people. And Nikolai isn't complaining, John's t-shirt is riding up and he's offered the perfect view of the happy trail he has every intention of running his face over later.

Their little sparring match comes to an end, with both participants walking over to their respective partners before heading to grab their shoes and the jackets that had been dumped carelessly on the floor.

It's only when Nikolai catches the two sharing a look that he realises they've been played. Kate and John are both too smart to start a friendly spar for no reason. And it isn't a coincidence that both Sarah and he are desperate to drag their partners away for the night.

They were putting on a show. Sly bastards.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

The fandom can't make up its mind on what's supposed to be a joke and what's supposed to be serious because the show can't either half the time. It's a tonally disjointed mess that wants to have absurd over-the-top humor as well as a plot and moments of drama, romance, and angst that demand you see the characters as people and feel for what they're going through. Except you can't do that without also treating the dumb bullshit in a somewhat grounded way. Like, you're still dealing with the same characters. You can't just go "Oh, that? Let's ignore that!" the moment it's no longer convenient to you. You've opened this can of worms and now you have to sleep in it. So, every character flip-flops between two different versions of themselves depending on what the writers need in any particular scene.

This is not to say surreal humor can't be used right alongside characters you're supposed to empathize with, Teen Titans (not Go) did that and it worked. It's just that the absurdity can only come from the setting (Mad Mod, Mother Mae-Eye, pretty much anything Control Freak is in) or from designated joke characters (Date With Destiny). Teen Titans never had the main characters acting in clearly absurd ways as the butt of a joke unless those characters were brainwashed somehow, because the writers knew that would ruin any of the more grounded moments they wanted to write. The writers of Miraculous missed the memo on that one.

I don't disagree. A perfect example is Derision where the show takes all of the bad jokes about Marinette's crush and decides to take them seriously as if you can possible take them seriously without making Marinette come across as unhinged and dangerous. You can't, which brings us to the topic at hand: how do you even begin to understand these characters when the show is constantly making character-breaking choices?

My approach - and the approach I recommend others take if they're going to keep watching the show - is to focus on the characters' cores and reject anything canon does to violate those cores. I don't argue for this stance because I love the characters so much that I only want the good things to count. I take this stance because, if you don't, then the characters fall apart. There is no way to make them work as fully realized characters while embracing every choice canon has made. Miraculous has massive characterization issues that go well beyond the humor.

For example, Adrien has multiple moments of terrible behavior that are played in a serious manner such as the moment in the episode Frozer where he tries to start a fight with Ladybug in the middle of an akuma attack because she wouldn't accept a rose from him earlier:

Setup

Ladybug: I can't accept this rose from you. I told you already. I'm in love with someone else. Cat Noir: I know, M'lady. But if he weren't here, would things be different between us? Ladybug: Well, you know, I can't even begin to imagine him not being here. I'm sorry, Cat Noir. I really gotta get going, and you better do the same. (Swings her yo-yo to head back home; Cat Noir is sad, looking downwards, with one petal of the rose falling.)

Payoff

Ladyice: Cat Noir. We need to set up a trap for whoever turned the city into a giant ice rink. (throws yo-yo) Icecat: (bitterly) My feline instincts prefer to track and observe before I attack. You go your way, I'll go mine. Ladyice: Please don't tell me you're mad at me about the rose. Icecat: There may be a certain chill now between us. Ladyice: I get it, but we should really focus on saving Paris right now. Icecat: We don't always have to do everything together, after all. It's not like we're a couple. (skates away)

There's no way to argue this off as a bad joke. While Adrien has every right to feel hurt, those feelings don't excuse him acting like a pouting child in the middle of an akuma fight. It doesn't excuse him acting like this at any point! Ladybug is not a villain for telling him no. She wasn't even mean about it!

I clearly fully agree that Adrien looks awful and selfish here, but I'd still argue that it's not something that should be used to define Adrien's character if your goal is to tell the "ideal" version of Miraculous. "Ideal" being the version that canon seems to be going for based on the overall picture we can sort of make out if we back way, way, way up and look at the extremely abstract picture canon is clumsily painting.

Unless canon is going to do something monumentally stupid, Adrien is Marinette's endgame romantic interest. It's also clear that there is no plan to cut him from the team. He's going to be Chat Noir for the rest of his life or at least well into his adulthood. This means that he is supposed to be a good hero who deserves his miraculous just like he's supposed to be a charming and cute romantic lead. These are the two things I keep in mind when trying to shift through canon to figure out what writing choices I should fully embrace and what writing choices I have to either ignore or treat as true flaws that get an actual character arc. In my book, either approach is fine because most of the characters are deeply flawed at this point and you can't give them all arcs without bloating the story to nonsense levels.

My goal with this approach is never to say, "oh, that moment shouldn't count in terms of how people feel about the character." It's more, "that moment goes so hard against who this character is very clearly supposed to be that I can't take it into account if I want to tell the kind of story that Miraculous is trying (and clearly failing) to tell."

As an example, let's list off Adrien's worst behaviors. The things that make him look terrible:

He sucks at communicating his needs and feelings, leading to multiple moments where he gets mad at Ladybug for things she's totally unaware of

He has quit or considered quitting without warning multiple times and only one of those was because of something he did "wrong" (NYC Special)

He puts his feelings before the safety of Paris on multiple occasions, even going so far to purposely miss akuma fights to see what happens

He is incredibly pushy about his crush, often ignoring Ladybug's feelings on the topic by continuing to bring it up even after she asked him to stop

There have been multiple instances where he almost cataclysmed multiple people in a fit of anger

His love for Ladynette isn't strong enough to let him break free of things like akumas and nightmare dust even when he's looking her in the eyes making him a pretty crappy romantic lead

People will argue that some of this behavior makes sense for his character because of the abuse that canon has technically introduced, but that the writers seem blissfully unaware of. I don't disagree with that argument, but that doesn't change the fact that none of this is acceptable behavior for a hero and Adrien is a hero who keeps doing these things. A sad backstory doesn't give you the right to behave poorly without consequences.

At the same time, if I fully embrace these elements of canon, what I get is an Adrien salt fic where he loses his miraculous for good while Marinette finds her real true love or even just a non-salty fic where Adrien leaves for his own meatal health and gets replaced by someone who can handle being a hero right now. Canon's not writing either of those, so the only way to engage with these flaws while enjoying canon or aiming for the same end goals as canon is to say, "I guess this doesn't count" or "I guess I need to tone this way down and work through it via a character arc" or even "I guess that was just a bad joke maybe?"

That is the essence of what I mean when I call myself a writing salt, character sugar blog. It comes from looking at canon and seeing that there's simply no way to embrace the worst moments and the best at the same time. We're not dealing with a coherent plot and/or complex characters. We're dealing with a nonsense plot that will warp the characters to bizarre shapes to make random ideas work even if those idea go wildly against canon's end goals.

As an example, Glaciator and Frozer should not exist in the same universe or, at the very least, something should explain why Chat Noir randomly changed his stance on Ladybug's crush from acceptance to pushiness. As is, the pieces don't fit together. The behavior is too contradictory. Remember, this is how Glaciator ends:

Perhaps Ladybug will love me someday. I mean, like, I love her. I have to believe. In the meantime, her friendship is the best gift of all.

Where did this version of Adrien go? Why did he regress in Frozer? There's no in-universe reason. It happened because the writers weren't ready to let the love square date or grow close, but they also wanted the love square to cause drama, so Adrien ends up looking terrible just like Marinette ends up looking terrible when it's her turn to cause love square drama. Her terribleness takes a different flavor so it can be hard to realize that this is a systemic issue, but that's what it is. It's deeply frustrating, but it also clearly stems from cheap writing and not quality characterization.

This is also why my stance is that canon as a whole only supports my Doyalistic core-character analysis style of approach. The writing is too poor quality to do Watsonian analysis where you embrace the full picture and try to put it all together. The closest I'll get to Watsonian analysis is pointing out how much the writing botches a Watsonian take by showing you all the way the writing contradicts itself, twisting into a nonsense pretzel of frustration where the payoffs never satisfy! (See the season four rant for an example or anything where I talked about Chloe's supposed damnation arc.)

There are even characters where canon is such a total mess that you can Doyalistically argue for two separate takes! Gabriel is a perfect example. He is all over the place and his ending was so poorly handled that you can make strong arguments for writing him as a cold-hearted villain or a sympathetic villain without the end result feeling like it spits in the face of canon because both takes maintain his one core element: villain.

That's the big thing I keep in mind when I look at the characters and the lore and the plots and try to come up with versions that the average fan would like. I don't think that there's one true version of any of these things, but I do feel comfortable saying that there are versions that will very clearly only appeal to people who are salty about a specific thing that canon did poorly. That's not who I want to appeal to in my adaptions, so while I'm not going to argue that those takes have no backing in canon, I will argue that those takes are not supported by canon as a whole. Embracing them requires you to take the worst parts of canon at face value while ignoring what canon is clearly trying to do with the overall story.

I get the appeal of that, but it's not fun for me because that approach feels like rolling around in the mud with the pigs. I don't want to sink to canon's level! I want to have fun! That's why I talk about how to make canon into its best self, not its worst self. If you want its worst self, just go watch the actual show. I will be shocked it if disappoints you.

[eywaseclipse]

Neytiri’s Selfcare Day Headcanon

Authors Note: Found this in my drafts with some dust collecting lol

Neytiri’s self care day:🦋✨🌱🥭🌲🍯

It’s rare enough for Neytiri to get a day of solitude let alone the time to take extra care of herself away from the kids

She feels guilty at first when she leaves Jake alone with all of them, but he constantly reassures her to go for the day and enjoy herself

She starts off with a hunt. Nothing makes her feel more exhilarated than going back to her roots as a hunter

She typically cleans herself in the communal hot springs on busy days with the clan, even though the family of the Olo’eyktan has a private spot

She makes use of the privacy for once and brings all her salves and scrubs

She loves exfoliating her scalp with a homemade scrub, and then lathering her braids with liquid from the Panopyra plant

She decides that if she’s going to really take care of her hair, she might as well just unbraid her luxurious locks and really get into it

She loves using the healing rose oil to care for her braids and rub gingerly onto her scalp helping to lock in the moisture

She uses the humid air to air dry her hair which is quite wavy out of her braids

She’ll go and find a giant tree branch in the canopy after collecting some fruits and just sit there for a bit enjoying the sounds of the jungle

She snacks on bananafruit, bladder polyps she packed earlier, and some episoth seeds

She can’t help herself and thinks about the kids so she ends up collecting a bunch of rocks that remind her of them

She will take her time rebraiding her hair gently weaving it all together. After she’s done she’ll finish up with some more oil like Lionberry oil to keep her hair shiny and healthy

She loves the Forest Hive Nectar. Clear in color and floral in scent, it makes an excellent moisturizer when combined with some ground up dried Vineshrooms to make a paste, and will rub it into her skin all over her body and face which acts as a nice moisturizer. It has a nice minty smell to it

After a little nap she collects some herbs for her mother and Kiri smiling about it as she harvests them and makes her way back home feeling relaxed and rejuvenated

[sleepy-harper]

hello, could i do a request? it's a bit self indulgent so i'll put some things and if you don't use all of them that's okay! i'd love a caregiver leon for a disabled regressor if possible. pink (or another pastels) puppy elements, a wheelchair, stim toys or care bear plushies - whichever of those interest you!

no worries if you don't feel like doing it, i know it's a bit of a weird one! thank youuuuu

pink feminine caregiver re4 leon kennedy to a disabled puppy regressor moodboard 4 agere-buppy

I am soso sorry I tried to fit as many things as I could in while keeping it all neat and easy 2 look at 😓🫶

[darkstarofchaos]

since the writers and this fandom has a hate boner for prowl, if he has a support network, who would you include in that little circle? very much would not include every autobot that punches him because fuck them lmao. but yeah? who and why though? for me, and i know i shouldn't be looking into their relationship through a shipping lens, but jazz seems like a good choice, he is the only one i can see that could possibly be in that circle 😭

Oh, that's an interesting question. And a difficult one to answer if we're looking specifically at IDW, because it's not enough just to be nice to Prowl - the character(s) need to be a positive (or at least neutral) influence in his life. For example, I wouldn't count the Constructicons, even though they were outwardly nothing but supportive, because they loved Prowl for all the things he hated about himself. Prowl needs people in his corner who can help him become who he wants to be, or at least won't hold him back by praising him for things he regrets doing.

Another issue with the Constructicons is that their support was superficial - they just did what he wanted, and then dropped him for basically no reason (yes, they had a reason. I do not accept that reason because they've been in Prowl's head and knew he never wanted them or saw them as anything but tools, but liked him in spite of that. It makes no sense to know he would drop them if he could, then get mad at him for doing just that).

Arcee pretty much did the same thing: she was perfectly happy following his orders, but then she dropped him the moment she felt like he was impeding her personal growth. And no, I don't care if that's a misrepresentation of what happened, because this also happened:

Way to prove him right, Arcee.

So that's another criterion for being a part of Prowl's support system. If you consider yourself as bad as or worse than he is, you're happy to do things he expressly said he doesn't want to do, and then you get uppity because you were given a chance to change and he didn't, you're no better than the rest of the morally judgmental pricks that make up a large percentage of the Autobot ranks.

So with (some of) the ranting out of the way, who actually fits my unreasonably strict criteria of... *checks notes* ...Being genuinely supportive and neither pushing Prowl to be worse nor punishing him for not knowing how to be better?

My first choice would be Cerebros, for being the only person I can think of to ever apologize to Prowl for hurting him (I think Bumblebee actually apologized too, but Bumblebee grabbed him by the throat in a fit of anger, and Cerebros took over his body briefly to save their little group from Sentinel, not knowing he had trauma around being controlled. I'm gonna say the accidental harm with good intentions is more forgivable than straight up violence). Admittedly we don't see a lot of Cerebros, but honestly, that might be a good thing since there isn't time for the writers to turn him against Prowl.

I would also propose Red Alert, who similarly doesn't get a chance to turn on Prowl after their peaceful final interaction. I feel like Red might be one of the only people who wouldn't just dismiss Prowl's trauma around being controlled and having his mind messed with, having experienced both himself, and the romantic in me likes that the moment he was about to kill Prowl was the moment he broke free of Sentinel's control. I doubt it meant anything beyond being the most dramatic moment for him to return to himself, but with no evidence to the contrary, I'll read whatever I want into it (I don't actually ship them, but considering Sentinel's scoffing about sparkmates, it would be thematically appropriate for Red to break free at that moment because of genuine affection for Prowl. You know, if there was actually a theme there and it wasn't just the writer who wrote most of the romance in IDW using aromanticism to make a villain more hateable. But anyway).

I would not add Fort Max to the list, because even though he seems to at least accept Prowl's presence by the end, everything about their scenes together is so? Weird? Max is mad at him when he first shows up, but then apart from a few disparaging comments (mostly meant for humor) he's just kind of fine with him being there? And Prowl himself is completely out of character, the whole scene with him forgetting why Fort Max might hate him is one of the most "he would not fucking say that" moments I've ever experienced from canon material. Those two issues feel like Fort Max speedran forgiveness or something, and I really don't think it works. So yeah, Prowl can have the rest of the Luna-1 crew, but I'm not sold on Max.

Unfortunately, while I've come to like them as a pair (and I'm not sure why you "shouldn't" look at them through a shipping lens?), I don't think I would count Jazz as part of Prowl's support system:

As Prowl notes, that's a biased description of events, and one Jazz presumably got from Optimus or one of the others who was present for the Combiner Wars arc. But the fact that he accepts that version of events, and that he supports Optimus long after Prowl has had enough of him, makes me feel like he would actively choose Optimus over Prowl if he had to. At very least, if you told him that Optimus physically attacked Prowl after his arrest, I don't think he would believe you. Or he would believe Optimus' version of events, which is that Prowl "made" him do it (come to think of it, Optimus must have told people something to explain how Prowl "escaped". Wonder what it was).

So yeah. Looking at canon as it is, I really can't come up with anyone else I'd choose as a support system.

Now if I could choose to ignore parts of canon, I would definitely pick Jazz because it seems like he and Prowl got along really well during the war. I also feel like Arcee shouldn't have been so quick to turn her back on him, considering she was such an enthusiastic partner in crime, so I guess I'd add her to the list. Maybe Wheeljack, since he was willing to give Starscream a chance (though Prowl almost killed Wheeljack while being controlled by Bombshell, so I could see that maybe being too uncomfortable for one or both of them).

And if you want an option that's more a giant "fuck you" to canon than anything that could actually happen, I've always felt Prowl and Starscream should have been friends. Which sounds like it flies against the "no bad influences" rule, but Starscream himself was trying to do better after a while, so they could have done better together. Plus, I like the idea of outcasts standing by each other when no one else will.

[dailypav]

hey soooo

i'll be really busy with moving out irl and won't have time to maintain this blog for a bit, apologies for that

I'll probably be back in a couple weeks idk

[bidaryl]

RICK: it's soda and candy. why the trouble? DARYL: it wasn't any trouble.

THE WALKING DEAD; 6.10 — the next world

[blitzbuckz]

[jazzy-art-time]

Epic doodle of me grabbing Goddess’s face.

She hates it

[journeyman-tier-fibercraft]

I've never met a doily before that looks so much better the further you view it from but this guy really likes to be seen from half way across the room at a 45 degree angle.

[callipraxia]

Lying here at 7am, sneezing my head off because of ragweed, and I had a thought about the novelization of Revenge of the Sith.

Early in said novelization, there’s a retrospective on a couple of important moments in Anakin and Padme’s early marriage, specifically around how, since Anakin, as a Jedi trainee, doesn’t own things or have much ability to acquire them, which is an Issue when it comes to giving his new wife a wedding present…so he ‘gives’ her C-3PO, to be ‘a friend’ while he is, as he frequently is, absent, and there’s a sweet moment where Padme politely invites Threepio to join her staff, because on Naboo, droids as high-functioning as Threepio are considered beings, not property. Anakin also notes that technically, since his builder (Anakin himself) owns nothing, Threepio kind of owned himself even before this. Then later, she gives him R2-D2 as ‘a friend’ in return, at which point Anakin starts modifying him this way and that until Artoo eventually obtains at least as much cognitive function as Threepio, setting the stage for the bond the droids have throughout the series. All very nice…but then jump to the very end of the book, immediately after Padme dies and Bail Organa adopts Leia. Y’know. The moment when he casually orders that Threepio undergo a mind wipe to forget…pretty much everything. Who “the Maker” was, all about his years of service to Senator Amidala, where the Princess came from and the fact she has a brother, etc. Then cut forward about twenty years to the beginning of A New Hope, where Threepio fussily keeps scolding Artoo about how “Master Luke” is his owner now and he should therefore forget the mission from their previous owner. It never seems to occur to Threepio, after his years on Alderaan, that they could think for and own themselves, even though again, in the novelizations, Threepio has technically done so for longer than Artoo has; the only difference is that Artoo still remembers everything, whereas Threepio only remembers, at most, the past twenty years.

Clearly, droids did not enjoy the same legal privileges on Alderaan that they did on Novelization!Naboo…but why is that relevant? Threepio, recall, was said to have legal rights on Naboo as a member of Padme’s staff. At a stretch, since Anakin couldn’t technically own Artoo either, one could make an argument that Artoo was still legally Padme’s property and therefore automatically passed into the ownership of her daughter when Padme died*, since Anakin and Padme and Threepio seem to have been the only ones who realized at that time how sentient the astromech had become, but there was really no doubt about Threepio: if Stover’s writing in the official novelization is taken as on any level canonical, then Threepio, as a high-functioning droid, was an employee; certainly this is the case within the pages of the book in question, where he meets the same ends. Padme no more owned him than she owned Jar-Jar or the Handmaidens who acted as her body doubles or her other Senate aides...at least on Naboo and areas where its laws applied, like the embassy on Coruscant, I suppose. They were not in Naboo space at the time of Padme’s death, and apparently the idea that droids could be autonomous was culturally alien to Alderaanians…but we see in TCW that Bail had worked pretty closely with Padme for years. They were political allies, but also friends. They’d risked their lives together before - in the Committee of 2,000 conspiracy, in that episode of The Clone Wars where they investigated a murder together, and arguably, Padme had put her life in his hands without a second thought again on Empire Day when she made that “how liberty dies” remark in the midst of the rest of the Senate’s enthusiastic endorsement of Palpatine’s announcement. Padme also was shown to have a real Problem with the discovery that slavery still existed in the galaxy when she met Shmi and Anakin as a girl, and considering she later married an ex-slave who had…rather strong feelings about the subject, it’s hard to imagine that she didn’t get personally emotionally invested in the issue as well. Anti-slavery measures would have probably been part of her political platform, especially in that gap between Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones where there wasn’t a war that depended on slave soldiers to consider. It never, in all that time, came up with Bail? He never said, “It’s strange how you treat that protocol droid of yours - you act as though he were a person,” to which Padme could only reply that “by my planet’s laws, he is”? Padme never voiced any discomfort with the Alderaanian stance on high-functioning droids in all their years of working together? Why would her good friend not think twice about treating one of her staffers as his property before the poor woman’s corpse was even cold? Even if he disagreed, he ought to have at least had the thought “oh wow, I am disrespecting my friend’s memory here,” or even a hesitation about his legal right to give orders about Threepio’s memory, given that there would of necessity have to have been some interstellar agreement on whether Planet A’s laws about droids applied to droids from Planet A when they were on Planet B, especially if Planet B was neutral space like Coruscant, the place where Bail would have been most familiar with Threepio. I’m American and reasonably historically literate; American history was never my favorite branch of history, but I know all about the sort of trouble it causes when people don’t agree about whether laws from one state in a republic apply in another. See also: the American Civil War? And more recently, the issue of gay marriage, back when states determined that individually. Didn’t cause a war that time, but anyone who had the political awareness of a tree branch probably knew of the issue and, however dimly, probably something of why it was such an issue.

It’s now 9am, and yeah, yeah, I know, all this was necessary to protect the Chosen Twins because Threepio is a bit of an idiot, or it would have taken too much time/been too much at the tail end of a plot as dark as that of RotS to have a quick scene where Threepio agreed to become Bail’s property in order to stay with Leia, etc etc. But considering that Bail’s one of the good guys, it’s pretty messed up to realize how casually someone’s rights could just get hand waved away the moment they no longer had anyone politically powerful immediately on hand to defend them. It’s hard not to think…with his memory gone, Threepio doesn’t even know that he was supposed to have rights, and most humans cannot communicate fluently with Artoo. Bit disturbing to put oneself in that position, to wonder, as messy as the world’s getting…who’s the one person standing between us and having our rights almost as casually overwritten? Not quite as casually, I suppose, since mind wipes don’t exist for us (…yet…probably), but almost. Not something Lucas probably meant to put there, given that he didn’t write the official novelization and his apparent failure to think out the droid issue especially well**, but there’s where my brain’s going on this sneezy, sneezy morning.

* Note: this is totally ignoring the issue of whether this is moral and ethical or not. Also ignoring the issue of how that even stacks with the assiduous efforts to conceal that Padme’s child/children hadn’t died with her, in which case, being legally dead/never personified, it’s hard to consider them her legal heirs anyway.

** See also this video essay: https://youtu.be/WD2UrB7zepo?si=HcttHLpZFGnU5bNb

[ruvviks]

PLEASE DO NOT TAG AS YOUR OWN OC.

Rafael is driven by his independence and his anger, fighting for what he believes in and deems right to free his people and return peace to Medici. But his tendency to push people away blurs the lines between selflessness and self-destruction, and his desperation for control greatly overshadows the true lack thereof— and it has turned his spark into an all-consuming forest fire, with no way to douse the flames. And everything burned, as promised. OC WEB WEAVE SERIES: RAFAEL RODRIGUEZ.

richard kadrey, aloha from hell // by eyedeeuhs // firestarter; torre florim // by gundula blumi // savannah brown, from 'closer baby closer' // leach; bones uk // ocean vuong, from 'to my father / to my future son' // by ysociety // maybe, i; des rocs // victoria chang, to love anyone // 'smoke and fire 1' by jennifer walton // burn; vorsa // vita sackville-west, from 'solitude' // by spelio // arsonist's lullabye; hozier // shira erlichman, from 'how to become a forest fire'

[recurring-polynya]

Good morning, happy Thursday, who wants to read a fun idea I had about giants in Soul Society?

So! I was reading this @littleeyesofpallas post about wuxing symbolism and was particularly struck by this passage in a section about the gate guardians:

There is no central guard but conspicuously Kirinji's name comes from Qilin, but apparently according to official height he's actually not nearly as tall as Kubo's drawings always made him seem. Not that he was on the same scale as the gate guardians even then...

No, I said to myself, of course not. He's powerful enough to control his size, because I was thinking of the part where Grand Fisher claims Isshin is too small to defeat him and Isshin responds with a lecture on soul reaper lore:

Now, bodies are not swords, but maybe the same mechanic applies! It certainly applies to Hollows. Earlier in this same scene, Kon mistakes Grand Fisher for a Menos Grande, and Grand Fisher is insulted by the comparison, but it's the same thing. Menos are huge and scary, but when they become Arrancar, they shrink down and become scarier. [Aside: I think this is why the Yammy-is-secretly-Espada-0 reveal doesn't quite manage to hit. It goes against the lore Kubo has been laying down for ages]

On a meta level, this is just a shounen storytelling tactic where X is an indicator of strength, but then later on, it's like "Reverse Uno! Not-X is the real indicator of strength!!" That's exactly how this zanpakutou-size thing is used when it's first introduced.

Exhibit A: Renji, a court jester, being impressed by the size of Ichigo's sword:

Exhibit B: A handful of issues later, Urahara, an intellectual (lol), sets us straight:

Genre convention or not, I think it lends itself some interesting world-building. Among low-powered people, size is impressive, but as you scale the ranks of power, it's kind of pathetic. Weirdly large people are like the petty bourgeoisie of Soul Society power dynamics.

But that's actually the perfect niche for a gatekeeper! In general, your typical Joe Shinigami is going to be able to take on just about any rando from the Rukongai, but maybe not a particularly strong ryouka. Ganju was able to take on Yumichika, after all. A single shinigami wouldn't be able to take on a planned rebellion, like in the Bount arc, and they've got to, like, sleep and stuff. The Gotei could, in theory, have an entire gatehouse and a gate patrol, etc, but that they are perpetually short-staffed as-is. Instead, how about one medium-powerful gatekeeper whose size makes them well-suited for fighting groups of people (or siege weapons), and who is going to be intimidating overall?

Furthermore, it's implied that Jidanbou isn't actually a shinigami. He wears a shihakushou, but his axes don't seem to be a zanpakutou (he doesn't release them and is distressed when they are destroyed). His neighbors offer this comment on him:

It's not quite right, though: after all, many shinigami are from Rukongai, including Gin, who is the reason Jidanbou is being healed at the very moment this panel takes place. I think what this guy means is that Jidanbou is of Rukongai, which is to say not of the Seireitei.

So what is he, then? Here's my big idea: I think that the gigantism in Soul Society might actually be a reiatsu-developmental disability! It's always been my impression that growth, especially for powerful people, happens in fits and spurts, rather than linearly, and that furthermore, big changes in growth tend to coincide with developments in reiryouku. Somewhere, either in childhood or adolescence, someone's spiritual pressure grows more quickly than their control over it, which results in their body growing uncontrollably. They become very powerful "physically", but their strength is all in their mass/reishi, which takes most of their spiritual pressure to control. This may end up limiting the upper end of power they are able to achieve and some cases means they get cut off entirely from the other forms of power used by shinigami (connecting to a zanpakutou, kidou). I think this might be especially common in children from the Rukongai, who lack access to education and training. I can also imagine it leading itself to cautionary tales in the outer Rukon that if you feed your hungry children too much, you'll end up with a giant on your hands.

This offers one explanation to why Jidanbou is a giant and his brother Jiroubou is large, but not remotely on the same scale (the Souls Data Book lists his height at 7'7" vs Jidanbou's 32'5"). There are a handful of other shinigami of larger-than-human height, which could be a milder form of this, or it could mean that some sort of special training or medical intervention helped keep their growth manageable. I think you can squeeze in a lot of interesting character insights into this headcanon, from Hachi (8'5"), who perhaps worked exceptionally hard in an effort to control his power and ended becoming incredibly skilled at kidou as a result (interesting that he, too, is not actually a shinigami). Or Oomaeda (6'11"), who gets by a lot on his family's wealth and clout, but is definitely on the weaker end of the lieutenant power scale. In his case, his large size kind of speaks to his entire "thinks he's classy, but is really just gaudy"/can't-even-tell-how-outclassed-he-is-by-his-peers deal.

Then, as a counterpoint, you've got Hitsugaya: immensely powerful from a young age, and one of the hallmarks of his character is how in-control of himself he is, down to having developed an actual visible power bar for his bankai. Whether this is some effect of his personality, or whether it's an intervention on Hyourinmaru's part, his growth has been choked off as a side effect. He's the direct opposite of Jidanbou, who additionally seems somewhat childlike in personality (crying over his axes, for example, or his attachment to his extremely dubious "rules of the city"). To me, it's very sweet that their friendship might have roots in opposite expressions of the same reiatsu-growth-fuckup.

Much in the way that the Shiba use some sort of magic that's distinctly different from shinigami-kidou, I guess I really like thinking about other ways power might manifest itself in Soul Society outside of the shinigami-industrial-complex. And also the way the Seireitei may or may not try to control those powers."Guard this gate!" they say. "We won't actually let you live in the city or give you city wages, but you can have a cool outfit and, uh...do it for the exposure?"