#which also feels very ted

[welcometogrouchland]

my Stephanie Brown hot take is that she should get mad bitches now that she's single in comics. Yes yes shipping BUT the one time she had sex she was punished by the narrative via teen pregnancy. I think she should be allowed to have as much sex as she wants with zero consequences. Could be a lot of sex, could be a little. Point is she should get to do it without getting narratively baby trapped this time. she should get them pregnant, actually.

[sunlight-shunlight]

putting it into an ask because I don't want to derail your post sorry

As someone who's culture lost their last L1 Speaker around the time they were born. This!! So much this!!

It is EXTREMELY difficult to learn endangered languages, and from experience the people who do know how to speak some of it are extremely protective of it even to others from that same culture! (something that makes me even more attached to the dalish as a peoples sigh)

I would die for the chance to speak my tribes original language but even if I could jump through the hoops to do it, a decade is decisively not. enough. time. to do so. Yet alone to adopt the native cadence of the language. Again even if I wanted too! Which I desperately desperately do!

Lavellan would have to jump through so many hoops that by the time she might be ready to start speaking it regularly (in the context of ancient elvhen) that Veilguard would probably be on the horizon already. That's also given the idea that there are even universities willing to put aside discriminatory behavior twords the elves to provide classes on such specific subjects. AND putting aside the whole 'wow that's straight up the herald of andraste in my Sociolinguistics class' with the problems that would cause.

I mean, I know its a fantasy universe and I'm really projecting on it here but like hear me out- I have a dictionary and a book of stories translated by scholars I will never meet, and a series of audio-files that I myself had to copy convert to a format I could have on my phone and listen to. I'm untrained and uneducated on how to go about it sure but even with my available tools it feels like an uphill battle with every new word I pick out to practice. I sing songs from that book fully knowing Im butchering it the whole time, and try my best to feel connected to something i know I cannot fully understand. And that's beautiful! That;s fantastic! There's something to truly love there! And veilguard doesn't even let us try to explore that idea!

The fact that we don't get to choose whether or not we drank from the well makes this so extremely frustrating. The game gives both the Inquisitor and Moriggan the benefits of the well without ever allowing our input. Because to me the only way that Lavellan could become even partially fluent in ancient elvhen would be if she drank from the well. But then Moriggan is also allowed all types of unlocked knowledge from her deus-ex-inner-mythal shes suddenly alright with having been provided from her mother despite her horror in DAI.

It takes away a huge part of what I think Solas really liked about a romanced Inky, as she was always so curious and open to learning new things about the past- Even when they would clash on certain subjects. It takes away this really lovely concept that even if they are going into the torment nexus together that he could at least be teaching her the language in there on top of it all. He would love her broken annunciations and he awkward cadence, and respond in kind ;w;

I'm super biased about the torment nexus ending because I love the mythological tragedy of it but there should have been so many more choices ugghh. While I would still choose this ending regardless I think the idea that the inquisitor should have been able to have at least an on screen spat between her and Solas, There is absolutely good reason for it all considering.

She should have had moments where she slips in and out of what she had learned from the ancient dialect, Where she goes from in canter to out because of how passionate she might be in that moment. Going from trade to elvhen and back. It would be glaringly obvious that she practiced what she did want to say to him in the final battle and he would be able to tell. It would mean so much more to him than her just magically understanding it all at once.

we could have one of his stupid chuckles with tears welling in his eyes and everything like damn you bioware *shaking fist at cloud*

At least give me some kind of 'a romanced inquisitor convened with spirits to learn' kind of explanation if you're going to magic it into her knowledge I mean please!

Anyway sorry for the ramble, I wouldn't have the confidence to share this if it wasn't for your posts so thanks for all of your lore-dives and analysis posts I do genuinely enjoy all of them.

♥🤝

yeah!! i very much agree. i'm very mildly bilingual (not good at it ahaha) and like... that language is not endangered in the least, half my family still speaks it, and it's still just hard to re-learn on a basic level! and to me there's always that degree of self consciousness and feeling a bit bad about not knowing, when it's a language i feel like i "should" know, as opposed to a fully second language that i'm just learning from scratch. and personally i get stressed and actively worse at it when people expect me to be fluent and get disappointed when i'm not. the social pressure alone removes some linguistic ability, haha.

so i found it sad that lavellan - regardless of the well - gets pushed into suddenly being 100% fluent. she can still be dalish and not good at it! or just not the type of person who'd think to speak in it in front of random people (everyone else standing there fdhjdgd). i thought of my inquisitor as a city elf who was adopted into the clan as a child, and tried REALLY hard to learn elvhen afterwards bc she wanted to fit in. but it's not "natural" to her to slip into it for longer or more complex ideas. and arguably if a lavellan got "woe, fluency be upon ye" from the well, they might actually be LESS likely to use it in speaking, bc it is also a bit of a mind control symptom at that point...

and imo it's actually really sweet that solas falls in love with someone who - at least in dai - is really different from him! on top of being a cringe fail mortal from the world he initially hated, and from a culture that doesn't like him, lavellan does not have to be very in tune with the language or culture as he knows it. he goes for their ~rare and marvelous spirit~ rather than anything else, and is happy to share with them, but it's never like a mandatory thing.

I mean, I know its a fantasy universe and I'm really projecting on it here but like hear me out- I have a dictionary and a book of stories translated by scholars I will never meet, and a series of audio-files that I myself had to copy convert to a format I could have on my phone and listen to. I'm untrained and uneducated on how to go about it sure but even with my available tools it feels like an uphill battle with every new word I pick out to practice. I sing songs from that book fully knowing Im butchering it the whole time, and try my best to feel connected to something i know I cannot fully understand. And that's beautiful! That;s fantastic! There's something to truly love there! And veilguard doesn't even let us try to explore that idea!

and this is exactly it!! i think that experience of slowly picking up things and figuring out how much you can learn is really important, and they just skipped over that entirely to "lavellan is now suddenly fluent in elvhen. yay!" which kind of elides how much work that is, how or why they would've done that, whether they would've wanted to...

like that's a whole character arc that seemingly just gets skipped offscreen and made mandatory! and it's not bc the writers are saying anything really deep and meaningful about cultural reconnection, but bc i think they were likely not ever in the position of having to think about those types of decisions themselves, and uncharitably, were like "ok. solas is super elfy, right. so to make it more romantic, make lavellan super elfy as well! yay! Problem Solved :)" when that was never a problem. ;-;

[callixton]

i think the thing to understand abt martha jones is that even after she leaves she is five seconds away from dropping everything and traveling with the doctor at any given time. bc that itch to blow everything up and damn her personal duty to hell in search of a higher call never leaves her. but martha is smart. and rational. and has spent a long fucking time needing to keep herself safe. (bc he comes when she calls but never before.) and so she has gotten very good at keeping herself on the right side of those five seconds. but i do think if ten was a different person (if he could acknowledge how much he needed her instead of just how much he liked her) (if he didn’t feel this righteous martyrdom when it comes to being left alone) (if he cared enough about her to beg. if he cared enough about himself.) i think that her answer no would come crumbling down pretty quickly is all.

[whos-tanya]

Very few things will be quite as chilling to me as when Will hides in Martha’s closet — only to emerge with “The name is Lila.” I cannot describe the amount of confusion and fear I felt hearing that voice during my first playthrough.

[clay-pidgeon]

its honestly fucked up that "bimbo" holds such insanely strong derogatory connotations (Because Of Misogyny) but "himbo" is just a sort of silly, usually explicitly positive little epithet to use to Praise men for being stupid. to remedy this we either have to start genuinely supporting stupid women with our hearts and souls or slutshame men more

[deepseawave]

obsessed w the tags on ur last reblog

Omgg, thank you haha, it was a quality post so I just had to appreciate it in full force 😂❤️

Can‘t believe someone would actually enjoy my yapping :,D

[noramoon]

need a song for what i’m feeling rn bc what on earth is happening 😭

[prismit]

oh yea another fun thing about dead cells for me: being the closest i've ever come to properly experiencing a castlevania game, it's kinda funny to fight those bosses and then think back to completely different game i've played and go "THAT BOSS WAS AN HOMAGE TO CASTLEVANIA THE WHOLE TIME????"

[friend-of-a-cat]

The Gender Crisis™ is still Gender Crisising™ but I don't have time for that right now lmao.

[embv]

my body doesn’t Hate me, per se. It just Loves being an annoying little shit

[callixton]

i don't know like. maybe i am actually just really repressed and emotionally guarded and this will change at some point in my life or maybe this is just how i am and will be but i simply cannot imagine the appeal of being in a romantic relationship. why would u want that. how is it better than having good friends and getting laid regularly

[fruiteggsaladit]

CW talking abt rape, violation of bodily autonomy rights, and in a fictional work in an unserious manner

thinking abt koorime and how god-awful it'd be to live in hyouga, abt how their myth of a conception by penetrative sex would automatically lead to "evil, violent, genocidal demons" and "there's a mysterious phenomenon that happens every 100 years in which Hyouga is invadable and the narrative is really subtle abt an invasion like that leading to rape and thus conception of said evil, violent, genocidal demons" are really good excuses for why some koorime would disagree with their elders and government, and why the rest of their fellow citizens would believe and encourage the extermination/exile of them

Repeatedly I've thought abt how there must be birth control, I refuse to believe in a society in which anyone can get pregnant and they genuinely do not have technology for detecting or aborting such a process, or have actual preventative birth controls, especially if the elders genuinely believe in their superstition, but if they truly believed that, would they not encourage and employ said preventative birth control? Not for bodily autonomy no, it would 100% be to control their population bc they have 0 respect for anyone younger than 10,000 (or this anyone could be 10,000 years old but they're disabled, I'm basing this on the koorime already in canon being eugenics-supporters that I do not think they'd respect someone w a disability)

And then I finally remembered sterilisation.

...

Like at an individual level, the koorime genuinely believe they can conceive evil-to-the-bone people who can't be reasoned with by having the wrong kind of sex, and they're already effectively immortal barring murder and so producing new generations is unecessary, why would they leave that option open. Worse yet, on a societal level, why would they leave that option open.

Well 1) reproduction is a human right no matter what, not just for termination but also for conception and for carrying to term. Or 2) Not only do koorime generally believe that sometimes they can give birth to babies that should be killed as soon as possible, they also don't believe in abortion or birth control.

Edit: coming to the back of my mind while reading this, a person from a documentary I watched as a kid abt reproductive rights said something like, "no one has ever had an abortion they didn't want" - which, not to imply I was clever or intelligent for having the insight, but I thought about how that statement didn't seem right, bc if someone can be forced to have a pregnancy they don't want, surely they can be forced/tricked into terminating a pregnancy they do (or at least are willing) want to carry to term

[evilkitten3]

this is an interesting concept but i'm going to disagree.

madara doesn't really talk about izuna ever, he keeps that to himself. madara kinda just…. doesn't tell people stuff. he didn't even tell obito he had more than one sibling.

moreover, i don't think madara really thought extremely highly of izuna's abilities - not bc he thought izuna was a weakling or something but bc his view of strength/genius is pretty much based around hashirama, and anyone who can't measure up to that had to do serious damage to him to even really register as an opponent at all. and izuna could have only ever really been his ideological opponent, and since madara took the side of izuna and his clan when it came to peace, that never played out.

almost all information we have about izuna at all comes from people who aren't madara, all of whom gave that information to the audience for the sole purpose of manipulating another character (almost exclusively sasuke) - that is, itachi, obito, and hashirama. we have no idea where itachi got all of his info from, presumably a mix of obito and whatever was accessible to him in the clan, but we know a good chunk of it was bs from the beginning, and itachi is both a known liar and also frequently just wrong about shit. obito actually got his knowledge straight from the source, but we don't know how much of what he was told was the truth, we don't know how much of what he told sasuke was what madara told him, and the only thing we really do know is that a good chunk of it was straight-up not true at all.

our final source is hashirama, who's probably the most reliable source regardless of his own agenda in his storytelling bc most of what he tells us about izuna is from having actually met the guy, but even then he's more focused on how izuna's existence affects madara, and all we really get from him is that izuna was actually killed by tobirama, it was izuna and the uchiha clan rather than madara himself who opposed peace (possibly also the senju clan; hashirama didn't really seem all that interested in what his clan thought about it lol), and presumably gave his eyes to madara willingly (which isn't nothing, especially since it kind of renders both itachi and obito's accounts of izuna devoid of much actual info on izuna himself).

what we know from madara is that he views izuna's eyes as the last remnant of izuna that still exists, and that he's willing to use those eyes to achieve his own ends in ways izuna likely wouldn't have been ok with (tell me he would've been down with his own uchiha eyeballs in an uzumaki's skull. look at me and tell me that. it's bs). what he told hashirama about izuna when they were kids was pretty much just "i have one brother left and i will protect him no matter what", which.... doesn't really speak to madara viewing izuna as a brilliant genius who could take care of himself (tho again this is in large part due to madara being so stupidly strong that most people are basically just not really going to register to him as threats).

in my eyes, madara's hurt over the clan's rejection of him was more due to how said rejection reinforced the deep-seated trust issues he's had since childhood (madara's relationship with trust is weird as hell, but i'm pretty comfortable saying he honestly didn't trust izuna all that much. not in a way where he thought izuna was going to betray him or the clan, but in the sense of not really thinking he could rely on him to support him, which. he couldn't).

madara is a character whose struggles with communication are readily apparent, but while i think he does resent his clan to some degree over their turning away from him, he's also aware that it's in part his own fault (tho i think his reasoning as to why is incorrect, or at best deeply flawed).

none of this is to say that madara didn't love izuna, bc of course he did, or that he wasn't proud of him (i assume he was, tho it's hard to be sure), but.... i really don't think there's anything in the manga that supports this theory; most of what i recall (can't get up to check rn bc most of my volumes are at home and also my cat is sitting on me) actively contradicts it.

[callixton]

i forget what all of my plans for tonight were and also i don't know how it reached 1 am

[the0ther-side0f-dawn]

my controversial opinion is that despite any logic, based mainly on vibes/intuition, that piercings are somehow less permanent and less commitment than tattoos