#when i say it's so exhausting to be me

[katierosefun]

back at my place and i need to do my homework but mentally i am sobbing and shaking and clutching my little ships in my hand and shaking them shaking them shaking them

[leciraofthewilderness]

So, despite some faults, I really enjoyed totk, and on its anniversary I want to say something about it. Other people have said similar things before but it’s really important to me and actually a big part of why the story of totk was meaningful to me, so I want to also say it:

Zelda needed to come back from draconification. The story needed that. It wasn’t lazy and just ignoring “consequences” because (imo) that was the *point*

The point is to feel like there are going to be terrible consequences and then say actually, no. You can come back from this, with the help of other people.

To me at least, that was the theme of the whole story.

If botw was about how the world goes on past loss and grief and starts to heal (how flowers grow in the ruins and the world can be beautiful again, be worth saving, even if it has changed)…then totk was about a more personal kind of healing.

The weight of the world should not be on your shoulders alone…you, alone, should not have to fix everything…you should not have to sacrifice yourself, but when you do, someone will be there to save you from it.

This turned into a really long ramble so:

You (Link) gained so much and now it’s gone. It feels like you’re back to where you started and yet you know you have to do it all again…you were weak and you failed and you’re weaker now…but

You go down to the surface. Monsters swarm across it once again. Other people are fighting them too though. You help, but it’s not just you…

You go to the Rito, the Gorons, the Zora, the Gerudo…just like with the divine beasts, there are friends who help you save each region. But this time, part of them comes along with you when you leave. It’s nice, you realize, the first time one of them protects you from a monster you weren’t prepared for. You’re still weaker than you were before, but someone has your back…

When you go up to the sky you see a strange new dragon there. There’s something about them that feels familiar. You try not to think about it.

You go down to the depths too. It’s terrifying at first. You hate it. You only want to get what you came for and get out of the dark….but slowly, the light grows. You get stronger. The dark feels like a challenge you can face (and someone has your back).

There are spirits down there. You don’t know when they’re from, but some part of you wonders…are these all the people you let die in the Calamity? (You help them find rest from their wandering. The weight on your shoulders feels a little less heavy).

There’s so much gloom. The first few times the sky turns red and hands chase you (a reminder of what you’ve lost, how you failed) you just run. Eventually though, you have to fight. It feels like the (second) worst day of your life again. But you manage to get free of the grasping gloom and stand and fight, as wild and desperate as it is. Beneath the manifestation of your worst fears, there’s another thing to fight, but this time it has a face (a voice in the back of your head says…you know this isn’t all on you and your failure…it’s really Ganon’s fault right?). You get through it.

At every turn in your travels, it seems like something reminds you of Zelda. Her passion, her curiosity, her kindness. You miss her.

At first, the tears you find reassure you. She may be in the past, but she’s safe. She’ll come back somehow…but then you hear the word draconification for the first time. You want to believe she wouldn’t do it but you know her and the fear sits cold inside you. (Zelda is a lot of things. She’s been allowed to be more of them, since she was freed from her hundred year battle, without her father holding her back. But deep down inside her, there’s a vein of self-sacrifice that still runs strong. It’s what saved the world before, after all).

She did it. She really did it. She’s gone from you (from Hyrule) forever, and it’s all your fault. If only you hadn’t failed so utterly in the battle (you can hardly even call it that) under the castle. If only you’d caught her. If only you hadn’t let the sword break. You should have protected her you should have been better it’s all your fault and now she has to live with the consequences, forever. Everything really is on you, you should have been better.

(Zelda POV: you couldn’t call upon Hylia’s power in time, you were too content to let it wither and fade away from you, ready to be free of it. You shouldn’t have. He got hurt, the sword got hurt, it’s your fault…Sonia and Rauru help you channel it again, Sonia helps you learn how to turn back time…but you don’t save her. She dies because you couldn’t save her. Rauru dies not long after. There is no one left to guide you, once again. You could spend years trying to figure it out on your own. But you did that last time. It didn’t work. Self-sacrifice, stepping in front of someone you love, that worked. (You do what you can, to call upon the sages, to help Link in the future, first). And then you swallow the stone. You’ve come a long way, in the past five years, allowing yourself to exist. But in the end, self-sacrifice worked last time. It’ll work this time too.)

You (Link) go down beneath the castle. You were supposed to bring the sages but you didn’t. It’s nice, for someone to have your back. But no one else should get hurt to fix your mistakes.

They follow you anyway. They fight with you, against the hordes, against the greatest enemies you defeated together, along the way. They’ll have your back, even if you don’t think you deserve it.

You fight Ganondorf, and then the demon king, in the hardest battle of your life. You think it’s over and then the demon king decides it’s better to lose himself completely than let you win. You’re exhausted and afraid of yet another battle, but up there in the sky, when you’re falling, the Light Dragon catches you (you wonder why she changed her path to catch you, you wonder if there’s still something of Zelda left in there to save). With her help, you win.

And then you’re in some other realm. The spirits of Sonia and Rauru are there. You remember how the two of them and Zelda channeled such incredible power together. You think about Recall. Turning something back to the memory of what it was before, like Sonia said. You stand with them and you allow yourself to hope. Maybe the Light Dragon can remember the form she took so long ago, the person that she was.

And then you’re falling, and Zelda is falling, but this time you catch her. You catch her. She’s back home with you, finally, finally.

And maybe, one mistake doesn’t have to be the end of the world. You don’t have to be perfect. Sometimes, someone else can stand with you, and it’ll all turn out alright. (You can put the weight of the world on your shoulders, you can sacrifice yourself, but someone will be there to catch you, someone will be there to pull you back to yourself, when all is said and done).

[spotsupstuff]

(hii Spot been awhile) Something I think that's interesting about the observation about how Slugcats are getting so much attention nowadays is that its almost a 180 from how things were in the pre-downpour days, iirc.

Though I am glad we're getting an AU like yours it's so interesting compared to the usual

Im eating with a fork

Yeah, the fandom was not particularly strong back then, but I think there was more Iterator content. My suspicion as to why slugcats are so much more popular now is because the general "cat appeal"*. Downpour brought in wider audience which mostly consists of people that go wild over cat videos on the internet.

Not my intention to throw shade on it, because after all what does my opinion matter to anyone, but I find the whole "cuteness cult" of the internet annoying and, when applied to Rain World, frustrating. There's a whole silent worldbuilding in basically every screen of the game and the only thing that people seem to take away post-DP is "cute sluggy go wooo :3 the Ancients were such cultist pricks Dx". Which like alright, but expand a little on the latter please? Try? There is So much fun to it when one moves past the "religion only BAD" mindset.

DP also I think didn't care much about the Ancients and the culture they left behind (and therefore the root of Iterators). "But there's Saint!" Saint is almost everything new that wasn't heard of before, can be taken as another fact of monstroid mad religion and, of course, it Has to be wrapped in a fluffy cat package. The undergrowth Echo also feels like a spit in the face to the lore/religion than an addition, to me. My *guess* would be the original intention was showing an individual who failed to ascend because of the Fifth Hindrance but it doesn't *feel* like it. If that was the intention, I think the author didn't understand why a desire to live/survive could ever, in any form, be bad

It's interesting as well in the sense that when there was only Survivor, maybe up to Hunter- the slugcats felt like a vehicle that brings the player to the story. The player saw the world through their eyes and got to experience the world's rules, abiding them- the original campaigns were still subject to the lore/religion of the world.

DP made the slugcats characters, the main focus, in some cases a rebelion against the lore/religion (forever beef against new route for Survivor and Monk). So people had an easier time latching onto them.

That is my theory at least. Fact is also when I first watched RW I almost didn't get into it as a creator because I felt like I had nowhere to hook to and work with. Characters are great anchor points for people to latch on to and then work with/through, so it's not like I blame the fandom for quite literally getting slug infested. It's natural and logical and I'm well aware of it as someone who's trying to be a writer. Still frustrating.

Either way, at least there's a vacuum for me to fill with something I'm actively actually passionate about. It's kind of a sweet bonus that people are somewhat interested, too.

[c-kiddo]

been thinking abt this and ngl theres something that feels so cruel and unnecessary about the final combat in the cr2 finale.. i just dont fuck with it, despite the sheer drama of it all. the clays home being (partially) destroyed Again after they just got it back is so sad. we didn't need to be shown how cruel ikithon is again, like of all things that specifically didn't need reiterating and i think it was honestly a weak narrative choice from matt. fighting ikithon is whatever, sure, that plot needing some wrapping up. but like, i hate that the clays became collateral in it. and even though they all lived, house fires are devastating. add to that the fact that their house is also their sacred temple and has been where their family has lived since they existed And that they'd spent so much time and effort trying to save it and it rly just feels horrible to me. like, they had their beds and heirlooms and clothes and shrines in there and then theyre all destroyed or covered in ash and water damaged from putting the fire out... caduceus has to spend the next year turning it back to a sacred site again. i dont doubt that ikithon wouldnt give a fuck and would kill an innocent family, he obviously would, its like his fave thing to do apparently but i just think that the clays had suffered enough and they deserved better and deserved safety and shouldve been left alone at that point in the story and i think im a hater abt this plot point now actually

[azaracyy]

a lesson on good karma digimon survive week 2024 day 4: supporting characters

[dayurno]

this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it

and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?

anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode

[shopwitchvamp]

me the absolute first split second people are acting up in the shop

[sergle]

I feel you, its so bad 😭, I had to go on a functioning adult human schedule for school and good god, out the house by 7am... bad bitches are not built for that..

WE REALLY ARE... and man, I can brute force myself into any schedule if there are things that HAVE to be done at certain times (like school, like you said) but it absolutely never feels "right". it feels like waking up at 3am to go to the airport type of shit. and it is truly so annoying... to get hit with the "that's a Normal schedule, you need to Fix your schedule" okay. alright. but let me hit you with this one. is it "normal" or is it just conducive to a 8 - 5. because no matter what my sleep schedule is like, or how locked in I am, I'm more clear headed at night + more productive and energetic. and no matter what, I'm tired during the day, especially the brightest times of day when the sun is allegedly supposed to be signaling my brain to be awake and alert. and it doesn't matter how much sleep I got.

[shorthaltsjester]

free my complex female character, she did the same thing as complex male characters but the fandom takes Any analysis of her actions/choices/motivations that doesn’t strip her of all of her agency in bad faith and claims that only misogynists would dare to critique the things that they’ve noticed in her character because she’s a woman, completely ignoring the over-presence of discourse about similarly traited male characters in their fandom.

[topaziraphale]

"Stop saying Crowley won't help Aziraphale in S3 he'd go back to him in a HEARTBEAT and nothing would stop him" I get it no one likes the idea of Crowley being bitter after what happened for a long period of time but like can we at least acknowledge that he's currently going through probably the most emotional pain in his life since falling? Can we agree that he's opened his heart entirely - something you couldn't pay him to do unless the world is literally ending and he's desperate - to Aziraphale, and got shot down? Can we understand that he did it AGAIN only to lose Aziraphale again? Not that what Aziraphale did isn't without Crowley's own shortcomings (hiding the truth of Heaven's cruelty from him) but like,,,,

The appeal here isn't Scorned Crowley Doesn't Love Aziraphale Anymore, or Never Wants To Help Him Again, the appeal here is Crowley learning enough self respect to not just walk back right to Aziraphale like nothing happened after Aziraphale has had a pattern of consistently refusing him. Going years ping-ponging between "We're not friends I don't even know him" to "That's what friends are for right?" and "We're friends, why would you even say anything?" and "Friends? We're not friends. We are an angel and a demon!"

Like I get it, Crowley is a heartbreakingly forgiving person. Of course he's gonna forgive Aziraphale, I'll be surprised if he didn't forgive him by the time he walked out the bookshop door, but gdi he could at least grant himself the luxury of being at least a little irritated for longer than however long it takes to make a globe and some books float and angrily cry out to God in his flat. But due to the change of pace and dynamic that is establishing part of the conflict for Season 3, I just really like the idea of him for ONCE prioritizing himself and being like "Okay, fine. We'll get back at it when you're ready, then," instead of just taking Aziraphale back like his words and actions meant nothing to him, when clearly they have an effect on him.

What is Aziraphale going to learn if Crowley just accepts what he did so quickly, like he always has the entire time they've been friends? Idk maybe I'm just projecting too much darkness on their dynamic but I mean, if the pattern of Aziraphale pushing Crowley away/disrespecting him one day and then being fine with his friendship the next + Crowley never stopping to be like "Hey, that's not cool, at least give me a little credit" or smth was fine all along and will continue to be fine in the future, then why, after 6,000 years of being friends and loving this demon, can Aziraphale still not accept that Crowley is just fine the way he is, and instead got excited to promote him to an angel in a heartbeat once the opportunity presented itself? You can't blame all of it on Heaven when Aziraphale has demonstrated his free will/defiance to Heaven so many times. Or, I don't know, I guess maybe we can? Maybe I'm just craving too much angst to the point where I'm letting it cloud my analysis of canon. Idk.

[edwinisms]

banging my head against the wall every time I see someone reblogging a post of mine with tags mentioning the ‘unrequited confession’. we have been OVER this it is NOT a case of unrequited romantic love it is completely canonically up in the air as a possibility. listen to jayden revri himself and be enlightened i am begging you

[frodo-with-glasses]

So uh. I might’ve found a pattern here.

From The Fellowship of the Ring, “Three Is Company”:

From The Two Towers, “The Uruk-Hai”:

From The Return of the King, “The Houses of Healing”:

Now I know Tolkien hated allegory. And I know LotR is not a copy-and-paste parable about WWII (which he didn’t fight in) or even WWI (which he did). But the man did see war, and so did people he loved, and he had a non-zero amount of trauma, and some of that is gonna make its way into his writing somehow.

And I think his soul might’ve had something to say about soldiers being forced to walk until they dropped from exhaustion.

[eclipseshotel]

Me busting into Elder Predator’s chambers to chew his ass out after he ignored my gauntlet call six times in a row (he was taking a much needed old man nap)

[nachosncheezies]

Mulder, Scully, and "sibling vibes"

So a few times lately I've remarked on the sibling energy I see in early Mulder & Scully, and I think perhaps it's misunderstood. I jokingly self-identified not long ago as "not a romo, not a noromo, but a secret third thing (delighted they ended up together but wishes the whole kiss kiss kiiiiiss! thing wasn't dominant forever and always)" This applies to all my fandoms fwiw. For me the friendships generally trump everything.

The other day I added this (among some other rambling) to one of @randomfoggytiger's excellent posts about Mulder and women:

To me, these two start out as best friends, almost a "sibling" relationship at first: Mulder has been looking for Samantha, "walking into that room" everyday for many more years of his life than he wasn't, and here comes this precocious, punchy little woman who says she's looking forward to being around him. She plays with him in the rain, she laughs at him, teases him and calls him "sucker", she listens to him and is eager to learn everything he can teach her. They squabble, but always stick together. She stands next to him with her little foot stuck stubbornly out to the side and her arms folded, or her little hands on her little hips, always exuding an attitude that's surprisingly large for her little body. When he looks at her it's at the top of her head. She's even the same age as Samantha. When she panics or gets scared she turns to him, and he wraps her in a blanket and tells her stories. I know it is often interpreted as flirting, but if you were to age them down, it could just as easily be a big brother who adores his little sister and a little sister who thinks her big brother hung the moon. My personal feeling is, it would be almost impossible for him not to notice commonalities between Scully and Samantha. Perhaps that's partly why he's so comfortable sharing Samantha's story with her.

To clarify, I don't think either saw the other as an actual or replacement sibling, and I don't see it as something that is remotely incompatible or icky regardless of where they ended up. Love's a lot of things and it can change and be all of it or none of it at once.

Not a person, but a pattern

Mulder and Scully were thrown together and immediately flung themselves about as far from home as you could get without crossing an ocean, at a time when there was no internet and a long distance phone call cost a million billion dollars (adjusted for inflation)(facetious). This is more than just long hours doing stakeouts or interviewing witnesses or writing profiles or joining sting operations or whatever it is that average partners (especially green-ass newbies from Quantico) might presumably be doing. They might as well have been at sea. They'd known each other for maybe a week and suddenly had to learn to not just work together but to live together, being each other's only company and support system, etc.

Watching the way they interact particularly during the pilot could be (and it seems almost always is) interpreted as crushes and flirting. I see that too, but I'm gonna toss that aside for a sec and ask you to imagine they are children, or at the very least that they're not looking to date (other people have written some very good posts about sex not being that important to them ever, or how they use it for self-flagellation (him) or rebellion (her) etc. And as fun as fanfic is, I agree with that take. For all their smouldering - both individually and together - they're remarkably sexless. But I digress. Just imagine that the search for a date or the possibility of sex is not part of the equation at this stage.)

They're both SO influenced and informed by the patterns they've been living all the way since childhood, as most of us are.

Scully is used to following strong male personalities, living to impress her dad, being a kid sister to a man who has strong opinions about how the world is or ought to be. She's extremely capable but very young for her long list of credentials (she's presumably gone from school to school to school without much lived experience), and they give her her very first field assignment with Fox Mulder. She's heard a lot about him. She's looking forward to working with him. This is probably nothing at all like what she expected when she went to Quantico, but she wants to distinguish herself so she'll go where she's asked and do her Very Best Job at it. But he immediately absconds with her and now she's doing something fun and new, and this man they've assigned her to is quirky and weird and possibly just bat-crap crazy, but in between it all he's incredibly intelligent and he's showing her the ropes and teaching her new things and she's just so excited to be here.

Mulder had to grow up way too fast, aged 12, and maybe suffered a sort of arrested development in that sense. He was once a big brother to a girl who was 8 years old and probably a bit of a brat, as precocious 8 year olds often are (I mean the first time we actually see her she called him a buttmunch and screamed in his face because she didn't get her way). They've sent him a partner who is a remarkable overachiever; she's a biophysicist and medical doctor, a Quantico graduate, and all under age 30. Her credentials include rewriting Einstein and her job responsibilities include "tattle tale". She's gonna challenge him at every turn, but she's green and earnest enough to want his to learn from his experience. She's following him and she's hanging on his every word and she's laughing at and with him. She asks a lot of questions and openly enjoys just being there with him, just being a part of it all.

Age them down 20 years and they could just be two kids playing in the woods and the rain. That doesn't mean they see their siblings in each other, but... to me, it doesn't not mean that either. It's patterns they've carried with them their whole lives. What I'm getting at is that that sort of sibling push-and-pull would be an extremely comfortable and familiar dynamic for them both to slip into, especially considering their isolation, and it's one which also lends itself to quick and easy affection. It's not the predominant feature of their friendship, but it's a starting place, and it ripples forward across time. (Imo it also informs the lack of romance for a number of years.)

The sibling vibes fade into the background after a few episodes (although I see shades of it popping up here and there through at least Darkness Falls), and it transforms into what becomes an easy, fast friendship, and then a deep, ride-or-die best friendship.

Of course, a twisted version of it is brutally resurrected and brought to the fore in season 2, and I think that more than anything is what scuppers a move out of denial or past anything apart from best friends until at least cancer arc, but that's a whole other post.

Thanks for readiiing 💕

[c-kiddo]

was worried parts of cr2 would not hold up on rewatch (especially seeing people hate the aeor arc so much) but ngl so far its either been good and fun as hell (travellercon, pirate arc) or just straight up banger after banger. like the xhorhas to angel of irons through to refjorged arc and then the cathedral.................. unrelenting slay

[puppyeared]

i feel like. theres designing a character with certain themes and motifs in mind, and then theres making a gijinka for the water bottle on my nightstand