#truly an insane conversation

[helenofblackthorns]

just remembered everyone thought that Jace was better then Alec except for Jace

[essektheylyss]

I just remembered Ludinus telling Caleb outright that Trent "has his uses", and with regard to the Scourger program, which Trent himself designed and pitched, "desperate requirements might call for unsavory methods."

And given that we know now that Ludinus has been singlemindedly focused on the current goals of the Ruby Vanguard for a lot longer than the program would've been in existence, I'm just imagining a timeline in which Caleb and Beau had not gotten the program shuttered in 836 PD, and that entire force of highly-conditioned, high level arcane assassins was simply at Ludinus's disposal.

[spearxwind]

Hello everyone I need your help. You need to help me give a name to this fucking thing:

for context this is a very small crop from an AI generated picture. For some reason the AI saw fit to make this little staring freak with pink gucci boots a crucial detail.

it just has me so utterly captivated that I cant stop thinking about it. I have made fanart of this thing. And now I want to make it into a character. Not anything serious, just a recurring visual gag. But it needs a name

I was thinking something silly sounding like 'bingus' 'squingo' 'scrung' and stuff like that but a more unique one. But also it would be extremely funny if it was called 'rupert' or some shit equivalent.

PLEASE I would love input of any kind on this. Thank you.

[jaskefer]

Obsessed with the idea of Extraordinary Things being a back and forth between Jaskier and Radovid, with Jaskier trying to draw him out in the first verse, and Radovid finally answering him in the second.

Cause like, with Radovid, Jaskier meets someone who he can't fully read properly. He knows there's something under the front of a drunken, bumbling prince, but he doesn't know him well enough yet to be certain as to what.

So, he tests the waters a bit. throws out a line to see if Radovid will take it—and he does. A little bit. But it's so interesting to me, because it doesn't just feel like Jaskier is trying to nail down Radovid's truth in this verse; it feels like he's injecting elements of his own mask into it, as well.

"Keep your words on ice, your gaze lights the fire. They say 'keep on playing nice,' but I have no desire. Why waste our words when lips were made for extraordinary things? It's not a want, it's a need, it is paying no heed to what others say to sing."

This is Jaskier's read of Radovid as he knows him so far: a man hiding more complex wants beneath the veneer of a drunken party boy. But it's also Jaskier admitting that he knows this about Radovid because he wears the exact same mask himself.

Much like how Jaskier and Ciri speak through Geralt and Yennefer in order to process their own feelings about them later in the season, Jaskier sings through himself in order to comprehend who Radovid is. Jaskier is using the performative persona he's crafted for himself in an attempt to coax Radovid out of his.

All of it leads into the main intention of this song: "The greatest songs are made up of unspoken words of love. Of them, I've had enough. with you, I am enough." I am tired of having to put up a front. I want to be understood. I think you understand me. Prove me right.

And Radovid sees what Jaskier is doing. He comments on Jaskier's ability to see people for who they are and not who they pretend to be. But there's still more he wants to understand. This still feels like a game, in a way.

It's only after Radovid sees the brutality of Dijkstra and Philippa up close, watches them orchestrate the assassination of the queen and threaten to incriminate him if he doesn't fall in line, that he then grasps the vulnerability in Jaskier's lyrics. Jaskier is also caught between multiple conflicting desires, that of his loyalty to Geralt/Yen/Ciri, and that of his work as the Sandpiper & how said work is backed by his continued commitment to Redanian Intelligence. That internal conflict and the desire to escape it is also highlighted in the song's first verse ("they say keep on playing nice, but i have no desire"). Only after all of this, when true fear begins to take over and the game stops being fun, does Radovid truly begin to truly understand Jaskier.

And so, he seeks him out. And he responds.

“Drop the sweet disguise, your heart’s beating too loud. The fairytales and little lies can’t drown out all the sound.” You were right. I do understand you. I know what you really want, because we're the same. You can’t hide it behind a façade of a song and a story and a persona.

“Take this heart and break this heart for extraordinary things.” I don't know what will become of this, or us. I still don't fully know if we can trust each other. But no one has ever seen me in the way that you have.

It's not a want, it's a need. With you, I am enough.

[phleb0tomist]

hung out with my cousin’s kids today and it once again affirmed to me that 8 year old girls are the coolest category of human alive

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Thoughts on TOTK Ganon's appearance?

A lot of them!! Some would say: too many!!! Too much!! So much so that I was almost starting to turn this ask into a TotK early review, so I'll simplify my answer a little.

I have not finished the game yet, but I have seen the memories and a good chunk of it, but my opinion is therefore incomplete and subject to lapses in judgement/hasty positions. Also, my opinion on this is kind of a buzzkill and I already made people depressed and bummed out by explaining it, so I'm putting it under the cut to avoid hurting the good time of people who might not want to think about this/might disagree on this description alone (and I understand, since it's an opinion that also depresses me!!! I wanted to like everything!! I wanted to be blown away!!).

I think this Ganondorf is like OoT Ganondorf redux, but with even more problems than OoT Ganondorf, somehow??? which is honestly a flex at this point.

(I love OoT Ganondorf to be clear, but the flaws are pretty undeniable and you have to navigate through a lot of bullshit to get to the good parts)

Between the green skin that lacks any proper justification in the context of the game (I say this because I always hear "oooo but it's because he's a demon/undead" and uhhhh no, it's not because of that apparently), the fact that he's half naked but we're never ever meant to conceive him as a human person in any way but merely as a constant physical threat... Like I'm certain the famous Ganondorf Designer did their utmost to give him justice and there is an obvious attention to details in his design, and I'm not blaming them or anyone in particular for the Nintendo treatment --but it does add up to something quite uncomfortable in his characterization regardless. Even the fact that his face rigging is extremely flimsy and makes his emoting feels super strange bugs me (I heavily suspect it's because it's way less soft anime and structurally very different from any other face in the game, especially around the jaw, and so they had to do a custom rig and had to work around its limitations --it's all speculation, and I am always here for Unsettling Ganondorf Faces, but it kinda felt accidental and not intentional like in WW or TP). He's at once a lot and really not much. I find his characterization beyond barebones. Even Twilight Princess Ganondorf had more to him than this (like the man was fascinating in comparaison, show me a guy claiming to be chosen by the goddesses while sitting on a throne next to the decapitated statues of said goddesses any fucking day over what we got here)

I like the mechanical aspects he introduces; the gloom is cool, the hands that grab you are amazing, the bosses are such cool callbacks --and he's just causing messes and putting parasites in things!!! You go girl. I do love that he's having his little puppet Zelda run around causing hijinxes, that's very fun of him and my favorite part of his character in this game so far, tho I don't know if that even counts as him --and I'm not 100% sure what that even says about anyone?

But here's the thing: nobody (beyond * arguably * Rauru) seems to be allowed to have a character arc in this game, so it's hard to come up with anything to say since he's the sole cause of conflict while being almost completely motivation-less. I don't think anyone is written particularly competently honestly; it just shows more with him because a Ganondorf who's not well written reverts back to Ganondorf at his most generic expression of a baddie imaginable, with a side-serving of, quite frankly, really questionable orientalist themes that I see little excuse for being handled the way they were in the year of our lord 2023. Like I'm kinda shocked not to see more people calling the racism for what it is, because it's... pretty blatant. But that goes beyond Ganondorf and that's the whole game, and I said I would try to keep my scope limited, but!!! I will screech about imperialism eventually!!!

The other aspect of that discussion, which is inevitable, is how much does TotK erase everything that came before? I'm sure there are some amazing Zelda theorists out there who will find a way to reconcile all of this, but for now, I get the sense that Nintendo wanted to get away from their messy timelines (fair) and reinvoke some of the old songs for a new audience, and in doing so scrubbing the slate clean. My problem is not so much that they wanted to do this (even if I think BotW's solution was, strangely, much cleaner and more respectful of their own history), but what they introduced instead: and, in Ganondorf's case, he's kind of reduced to a parody of himself --one that is so unbelievably unsympathetic and impossible to relate to and also responsible of his own oppression and also not oppressed since he attacked first!! and also oppressive?? (I made A Sound when I heard the line about Rauru talking about "the last free gerudo village falling" bitch!! free according to whom??????)

Removing a lot of the Goddesses/Triforce thing (so far, maybe it will come up) also does this conflict zero favors in my opinion, as it makes everything and everyone's actions much less fated and an expression of self-determination/resilience over their predestination, and much more uhh political in a bad way, while still borrowing the aesthetics of divinity to justify its own mind-numbing moral simplicity.

I don't know. Maybe the third act reveal will really surprise me and make me reconsider my position, but it would take a lot to scrub off all the dedicated efforts made to flatten Ganondorf to his lowest possible denominator (him and his people honestly my follow-up to the gerudo post will probably be Oops! All Salt) for the sake of the most brazenly imperialistic and feudalist Hyrule to date and its really weird and uncomfortable reimagined origin story.

So uhhh, Thoughts Bad! I guess thoughts bad. :(

(Matt Mercer did a great job with what little he was given tho, and so did every voice actor)

[set-wingedwarrior]

I know it happens often to see writers during a long fic to complain at some point about the first chapters because they got better in the meantime and they look bad to them now.

But this is the first time where I saw this happened when the writing actually got worse

[dreamertrilogys]

my friend: do you think vicodin made house gay

me: ummm..Yes 👍. what made wilson gay tho

my friend: i think he’s just like that

[bandzboy]

i have to say that it makes me so happy when people genuinely appreciate the things i say especially when it comes to important things like the hybe boycott because i truly thought i was being annoying about it in the very beginning but then, i realized that it's important to keep reminding people that shit is not okay! it doesn't mean we have to fall into despair and all of that but we need to think about what we see and listen to and consume and how we can make the spaces we are in more welcoming and also hold certain people accountable.

i feel like this year has been so shit to me (both irl and online) that i sometimes forget that the things i do or say have some sort of impact on people. i am constantly so focused on trying to do everything and update and etc that i forget that are people here still listening and i actually helped them have another perspective on things so truly, thank you so much! my year was better because of people like this

[elytrafemme]

life update i will NOT be elaborating on but my entire friend group now knows i have written a dreamSMP fanfiction (which apparently now TWO people have read? i know one of them has but who is the other...) and one of my friends (dsmp hater) distantly knows several dsmp members. i hate college

[ishikawayukis]

🧍‍♀️

[dennisboobs]

sitting back after writing 3k words of a fic and thinking. what the hell is this

[bayofwolves]

i can't believe i've never talked in depth ab drineke before. all this babbling ab shaneke and never a fic or analysis or even an explanation for some of my favourite doomed sapphics of all time. Wow

[exopelagic]

i said i wouldn’t do it this time but it’s 3am and mods asleep. boy

[satanslion]

Me trying to get out of a conversation I didn’t want to be in after i said multiple times I didn’t want to talk/explain myself (that started after a throw away comment abt my experiences with dealing with health care MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE): i just don’t want to talk about it, don’t take it personally (PLEASE FOR FUCKS SAKE)

My Ma immediately talking about it (advocating for them, not only that but in a way of trying to explain why i was wrong about my feelings about it): oH I leArNEd Not To YEaRs AgO (i think you’re absolutely targeting me every time you don’t completely agree with me or doesn’t do exactly what i say when i say)

[everysongineverykey]

3, deltarune or undertale? bc I'm morbidly curious now

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

fortunately i curate my dash so that i never see anything too outrageous. sometimes i'll be looking through a tag and see something icky or something bad'll come up in one of the tags i follow but i've never seen anything that hasn't been talked about already... i will say that i once saw an edited ut textbox conversation with asgore sadly musing to sans about how TERRIBLE toriel REALLY was and how HORRIBLE it was of her to ABANDON him when he decided killing innocents was fine and okay and the entire kingdom agreed with him and how she should have STAYED and TAUGHT him why that was bad and made him see reason because that was her DUTY as a female character queen. and then at the end sans didn't disagree. and you could tell the op had put a lot of work into this bafflingly passive-aggressive piece of fanwork. also abusive suse/lle art in which susie was yelling and throwing things and scaring noelle who was crying and cowering in fear