#while I see a lot of the ships with the other characters

[mythalism]

You seem to be both a solavellan and mythal fan so maybe I won’t get shot for this question lol

Veilguard was my first game. I kept default settings, which meant solavellan world state.

I genuinely wonder: what makes people think Solas loves Lavellan? Or that if being with Mythal possible, he still would choose Lavellan?

He is so clearly not over Mythal. Last game is filled with references to their connection, she herself confirms that both still love each other. He is very protective of her while arguing with Elgarnan. Statues of them everywhere, him painting and playing songs about her, his very own room having statues of Mythal… In the end he discloses he does it all for her, refuses to stop after Lavellan’s appeals, and only does so after Mythal shows up.

In comparison, Solas describes what he had with Lavellan as “entanglement he selfishly grow close to” he both regrets and cherishes. Most of the romance is carried on Inquisitor’s shoulders, as she both explicitly tells what he means to her, reaches out to him and ultimately shares his burden of atonement.

I couldn’t understand why this ship was so popular, so I watched solavellan romance in DAI. And while it was beautifully done, having the context of Veilguard, I just keep seeing Mythal in every “we shouldn’t”/his face after balcony kiss/ultimately abandoning her in the end. It feels almost unfair and cruel for him to enter another relationship while his heart isn’t free. And to visit Lavellan’s dreams afterwards

What am I missing?

a lot of people would shoot you for this. but dont worry i am not one of them. be careful out there tho

i think the first thing i would say is that instead of watching a video, you would need to do play a full solavellan playthrough of the game if you do want to genuinely understand the relationship and why it is so beloved. im not sure which compilation you watched, but even one that includes all their conversations (rather than just the cutscenes, of which there are very few) cannot do the relationship justice. so much of understanding solas as a character and how he loves people, by extension, is wrapped up in how he reacts to the world at large, its people, its history, its institutions, and its metaphysics. assuming you're new to DA and wouldn't know this, solas's romance in inquisition is the shortest, most sparse romance in the game, and was added later in development. as a result, much of his essential characterization happens outside the bounds of romance content, but still adds deeper meaning, context, and depth to the relationship. even in terms of romance specific content, some of my favorite content occurs in banter that probably was not included in the video you watched. the solas romance is less a standalone love story, in the way many of the romances are, and more of a big juicy delicious cherry on top that helps you better understand the overall dragon age solas plot/cake you're eating.

theres a couple non-romance specific scenes that shed significant light on solas & mythal's dynamic from his perspective that i am not sure if you have seen and honestly i wouldnt recommend watching them because, again, i think you should just play inquisition and experience them in the proper context. but solas's companion personal quest is directly about his corruption at the hands of mythal, though we didn't know that until veilguard came out and contextualized it. and this quest pretty explicitly demonstrates how he feels about what she did to him: rage, beyond forgiveness, deserving of death. he also comments on her at the temple of mythal, and his comments are mostly neutral but verging on judgemental, and do illuminate that while he may have loved her, he certainly did not trust her. it is he who first clarifies that she was a goddess of vengeance, rather than justice. which i cant think about too long or else i'll get angry that they ret-conned it to benevolence -> retribution or whatever the fuck and erased the anders/justice/vengeance parallel... anyway

but i think more telling is his absolute refusal to drink from the well if asked, and most telling; how he fears for an inquisitor who drank.

he specifically calls mythal dangerous, arrogant, and fickle, absolutely refuses to submit to her will once again via the drinking of the well, and begs an inquisitor he loves not to do the same lest she suffer the same fate. he loves mythal, of course, but he also fears her. he is critical of her behavior and wary of her motivations. his love for her exists alongside his recognition of what she was.

another fairly vital bit of information is how according to trespasser (cole banter), solas used to wear mythal vallaslin until he burnt it off his own face when he developed his vallaslin removal spell. its how he got the little scar above his eyebrow. meaning, if vallaslin were slave markings, that solas was effectively enslaved to her. this is... pretty important context, obviously. but we never find out what it might have been like for him. veilguard.... didnt forget but rather deliberately ignored this because it wasnt willing to interrogate the issue of slavery which had been vital to solas as the leader of a slave rebellion. ugh. anyway.

this leads into my next point which is that veilguard really drastically changes solas's motivations to be far more mythal-centric than what was set up in inquisition/trespasser. we always knew something was up with them, and people always wondered if they might have been lovers, but veilguard goes in on this idea in a way that many people would actually call out-of-character compared to how he behaves in inquisition. veilguard itself though does present their relationship as rather complex though, in my opinion its one of the best parts of the game. the two moments that i chew on most frequently are the letter from felassan in mythal's weird little dragon pit that reveals how he made that island for her but locked it away when she was killed. and my ultimate fave is how she reveals that in the literal thousands of years she has been sitting there alone since her murder, many of which he was alive and fighting a rebellion partly in her name, and in the 12 years since he woke up from uthenera, he never went to visit her. not once. its giving jane eyre and i fucking love it. in this same conversation, she also says that when he killed flemeth, he wept. this, i think, is the crux of how he feels about her. he can barely look at her. he resents her. he will use her like he did anyone else. he loves her. he feels lost without her. he will never forgive her. he misses her. all of these things are true at once, and mythal seems to feel similarly; she loathes him. she understands him better than anyone. she resents him for betraying her and abandoning her. she calls him a pathetic little crybaby pussy ass bitch. she loves him.

i dont think anything you said in your message is necessarily wrong. i do think he loves mythal still. i think he always will. i think mythal is valid when she says that they have a bond that no one will ever understand. i agree he is protective over her. i also interpret their relationship as romantic though a lot of people do not. i just love drama. but i think you are misinterpreting his reluctance to be with lavellan as coming from his attachment to mythal as a person, rather than his attachment to his duty to what mythal represents - the world he ruined, everything he's ever done wrong. to say that solas would actually consciously choose mythal over lavellan if they were the final two contestants on the bachelorette is honestly, absurd. sorry. because actually he would choose neither, he would dramatically let the rose fall to the ground and run off to restore the elven people while chris hansen (felassan) dramatically runs after him. both women are secondary to him when it comes to the good of the entire world, and fixing what he broke. he has had plenty of moments to choose mythal and run away with her if he wanted. he has literally had her bertha-ing out in his crossroads attic for 10 years. he also literally does kill her via flemeth. which isnt to say that he wouldn't kill lavellan if forced to, i think he would. but the point here is that its not mythal vs. lavellan. its mythal vs. the world, and lavellan vs. the world. he should have chosen the world over mythal. he didnt. he created the blight instead. he destroyed everything. he cannot make the same mistake again, so he will choose the world every. single. time.

regardless, every time solas turns away from lavellan in the romance, he is not thinking "i wish you were her". he is thinking "if i do this to you, i have become her". prioritizing his own desires over the good of the world, stringing her along, using her as a tool to do his bidding (getting the orb back), are all things mythal did to him. he told her he would follow her anywhere. and when he begins to realize that lavellan would follow him anywhere (as she says in veilguard), he freaks out and has to end it. he knows he will have to continue to kill and cause destruction to bring his world back, so if he did allow her to join him in walking the dinan'shiral, or did anything other than break her heart and leave her, he would be corrupting her the way mythal corrupted him; a weapon to achieve his goal. but he refuses. in his mind, he already destroyed the world for love once; at mythal's behest. if he abandons the world for lavellan, he is destroying the world for love again, and making her an accomplice. so, every time he leaves her it is an act of love.

the way the inquisitor is the driving force of their romance is partly just... gameplay lol but its also consistent with the overarching theme of consent in a relationship that is fundamentally unethical and unequal. lavellan has to be the initiator or else solas becomes a predator. some would say he is anyway lol, but its clear much of the writing was designed to avoid this with the way he is constantly denying himself, backing away, trying not to give in. it might have been juicy, but for him to knowingly romantically and sexually pursue a young woman 10,000 years younger while lying to her about his identity and using her for his plans would make him an entirely different character. a character that would be a hit on romantasy booktok, but not solas. consent and ethics are so central to not only the relationship thematically, but to solas himself, and some of that is because of mythal and the inequality of their own past dynamic. solas is so passive in the romance not because he doesnt like this weird clingy bitch who wont leave him alone, but because he does not want to recreate the same dynamic that corrupted him into pride and uhhhh literally destroyed the world. i'll leave you with another essential quote that you may not have encountered yet:

Cole: It isn’t abuse if I ask! Solas: Not always true.

in trespasser, solas's duty to bring down the veil was more unambiguously to the elven people and the alleviation of his own crushing guilt, while mythal was collateral damage in his way and he used her like he would use anyone else (including lavellan loool) as a tool to achieve his goals. we see this when he kills flemeth and takes mythal's power. in veilguard they had to obscure this slightly to make him "less sympathetic", to use the devs own words. and they did this by shifting the crux of his motivations to mythal. i dont think his lap dog devotion is out of character, i adore it, but i hate that it came at the expense of his more complex and sympathetic motivations of saving the elven people and spirits from the damage of the veil. as a result, when looking at his behavior in the context of inquisition + trespasser + veilguard, i interpret it as mythal being symbolic of the destruction of the world at his hands. and not to toot my own horn but trick's interpretation that they shared on bluesky does support this, when they said that to solas, mythal represents the past and lavellan represents the future. ive written about his statement that it was all for mythal, and the tldr is that i think it is also supposed to be interpreted as symbolic and reflective of his psyche. but even if he did do it all for her, i dont think that necessarily negates his relationship with lavellan. he needs mythal to break the cognitive dissonance, alleviate his guilt, and release him, because she is the source of all of those things in the first place. lavellan could never break them because she is frankly irrelevant to those things. he is so caught up in his sunk-cost fallacy that he feels the only way is through. lavellan may not be able to break the hold the past has on him because she is separate from it, but she can offer him another path once it has been broken, a fork in the road he thought was straight; her, their future.

i think to say solas's heart is not free is a misunderstanding. he denies his heart's desire over and over, we see this clearly in the letter he sends to lavellan in veilguard that expresses how badly he wanted to put down his burden and stay with her. in his expressed reluctance to leave her in crestwood, how he refuses to lie and tell her it meant nothing. in "no matter what happens, i want you to know that what we had was real". his indulgent final kiss in trespasser. in "i will never forget you". its especially apt that you worded it this way and that vhenan means "my heart". if anything, his heart is the most free part of him. it is everything else that belongs to mythal: his body, created at her command. his path of destruction and ruin, which she set him on. his purpose, which she distorted from wisdom to pride. she, then, is the only one who can give it all back to him. and as soon as she does, he is free to prioritize his heart. and he quite literally does.

tldr; play inquisition <3

[evellynssocbrainrot]

Something that always irks me is when people create an imbalance between Kaz and Inej. What I mean by that is... Kaz is not superior to Inej, but Inej isn't superior to Kaz either. Which is something a lot of people tend to believe. Neither one is more superior to the other. On the contrary, they are equals. They have always been equals, and that is one the most beautiful aspects of their relationship.

Kaz and Inej are both severely traumatized

They are both flawed characters who make bad decisions

They both have questionable coping mechanisms

They are both closed off from other people and tend to share little to nothing personal about themselves

They are both violent and vengeful

I bet you Inej has killed as many people as Kaz

One helps the other feel less isolated

They both help each other's trauma (Inej's voice grounds Kaz when he is drowning and Kaz's ability to always "see" Inej helps her feel present)

They are both so devoted, supportive and protective of each other, but simultaneously, are also able to pick up things they do that are wrong

Kaz shedding enough blood to paint a barn red = Inej wanting to kill a whole room full of people for Kaz

They are crime partners, confidants, and best friends first and foremost

Kaz trusting Inej enough to expose 1/2 of his skin in her presence = Inej trusting Kaz enough to let him stand super close to her while her arms were exposed (chapter 26 of CK)

Kaz calling Inej an investment and joking about Inej being at the Menagerie due to bad luck = Inej being slightly insensitive about Kaz's trauma at the end of SOC (the "gloves on, fully clothed" line) and joking with him about having to limp down the stairs

But Kaz and Inej making up for these things in CK by Kaz admitting to Inej that she matters more than her skill and that he would come for her regardless, as well as selling every asset to pay off her indenture while Inej reflects on what she said to him on the boat and beginning to be more patient and considerate with him, not wanting him to immediately remove his gloves, loving him regardless of the things he's unable to do currently realizing that she struggles as well with intimacy and telling him that she would return to Ketterdam

Kaz and Inej healing together and finding happiness and love with each other

You see? They are equals. One is not better than the other. It's one of their defining qualities and also proves why Kanej is the best ship to ever exist.

[jingyichickenwings]

This is less of a Deep Cut and more of a case of schadenfreude, but I love when various members of a creative team are messy in public about their high budget group project. Reality TV for nerds. It speaks to a profound lack of media training or fucks given. You guys realize that future employers can Google you, right? Unintentionally hilarious.

Linke and Yee were told in no uncertain terms that their season 1 storyboard was shit, so they hired Overton, who hired half a dozen actual writers, and they did basically a full overhaul. The script was objectively much better. But this was Linke's baby, and several years later you still see signs that he is Big Mad that he didn't get his way, and that he doesn't know or care about what actually became season 1 canon. I'm sorry that your Jewish stereotype villain didn't get to be a pedophile, I guess? Idk. Yes, yes, I am sure your version of Svengali is really innovative. Maybe someday, buddy.

Meanwhile they start writing season 2 in early 2020, while the season 1 air date isn't until November of 2021. So, they don't have public feedback on the script yet, just, yanno, actual writing professionals. Anyway, according to Overton, they needed to fire the non-management part of the writing team because of the pandemic?! Lmao babygirl you do your best and I respect commitment to the official PR excuse but nobody sensible believes this. Netflix writers average 110k/year, and you needed six or so from season 1. That is not a big part of the overall budget. Also, y'all could have saved money with Zoom meetings.

So the very thing that saved the season 1 script got line-itemed "because of the pandemic". That sounds like an extremely convenient excuse for Linke to be like, no, fuck you all, we are going back to Plan A, the rough draft of season 2 based on his shitty version of season 1. Honey. That ship has sailed. You already lost this argument.

So presumably some combination of Linke/Yee/Riot/Netflix was like, it's important that we have at least one actual grown adult writer on staff. So Overton gets to keep her job.

Now, I want to preface this by saying that season 2 would have been even worse without Overton. That being said, there is a reason they needed a deeper bench of writing staff. Overton and Linke over-connect with the characters Caitlyn and Jayce respectively, to a degree that they frequently forgot to evaluate how other characters would likely behave in certain situations. It led to contrivances, plot holes, etc. There is a lot I could add here but tbh go read any of the meta already out there.

In addition to the Mary Sue type behavior, Overton thought it would be Neat to make the writing more like Avengers, like multiverse time travel fuckery is a shiny beach pebble and not narrative napalm. What in the ADHD was she thinking? Even if they had the run time to world build enough for this, there was nothing in season 1 to even suggest this as an option. And let's be fucking honest, multiverse a lot of why Marvel is on a downward spiral. If Viktor can go to Build-A-Bear Workshop and 3-D print a million Jayces, why should I give a shit about his kill count? He can just be kind, rewind, and try again. Actions are decoupled from consequences.

Anyway, moving back to the topic at hand of the Arcane team. Apparently, Overton, Linke and Yee only half-wrote season 2?! Linke said something about how they "extensively collaborated with Fortiche on the story"? Which, it's not inherently a bad idea to get creative feedback from your art team, but ummm, maybe the writers and Fortiche should have worked to a point of agreement on basic story beats. Based on a lot of what Fortiche has said, the art for season 2 passive aggressively advances what they wanted the writing to be against Linke's wishes. They literally have just been straight up disagreeing with Linke and getting paid for it. Which, to be fair, I respect the sheer pettiness! Linke can't write his own damn show but wants to slow down the very expensive art team? When the actual writers that got fired "because of the pandemic" would have caught a lot of the season 2 issues?

So post airing of season 2, Overton is all about that girlboss copaganda, Linke is having multiple public meltdowns and getting fired by Riot(?), and multiple voice actors and artists at Fortiche are being like "yeah, we actually wanted something else so there are now multiple competing narratives for season 2". Which is hilarious. The way in which the show is messy is the same way in which the creators are messy. These bitches are a cautionary tale about hubris and the need to engage in team-building.

[germesthegenie]

Actually had most of this done for a while but wanted to wait until I finished Arc 7 and had time to type out all of my thoughts, which can be found below

Settling into a rhythm of doing 2 arcs per one of these post

Arc 6

Nice to see the Undersiders in action again + Vista

Will say Victoria’s fights, while still good and interesting in things like Aura and the careful use of the Wretch, doesn’t have the same variety and fun stuff as Skitter. I do get that it’s kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum from Taylor’s “How do I use my ‘weak’ power (her words not mine) to take down this stronger foe?”, instead being more of a World of Cardboard situation with less control / mental stability. Tradeoffs I suppose, there will probably be some stuff to help it shine in its own right (Victoria’s internal monologue after accidentally hitting someone too hard with the Wretch in 6.4 was good)

That said, the rest of the team has a lot of fun stuff going on with how they can use their powers. Kenzie even got to drone strike Mama Mathers, which is perhaps the funniest way for that fight to be resolved

The fight with Cradle and Operator Red was neat. I mean, not for Rain, but at least that meant we got to see Scapegoat again- oh hes Fallen? Huh.

I like Chicken Little, even with just the bit we see. Lets hope third times the charm, Lisa.

Super Magic Dream Parade is… certainly something. Might go into the “niche characters to draw” pile

I like the subversion of what they thought was gonna be them destroying the portals and instead expanding them. The separation of humanity to different Earths felt like more of a backdrop/flavor so far, hoping this means we get to see more of the variance between the worlds

Arc 7

What felt like 3 arcs in a trenchcoat, this one took a long while to get through (partially because of school starting up again midway through)

I like the little mini trials as a sort of epilogue to the past 2 arcs in what is for the most part a transition period before I assume is the next big event with the group behind the portal attacks. Nice little moments for Rain.

Yamada’s missing after the portal incident? Damn that sucks hope they can mamage without her- RILEYS MISSING TOO WE GOTTA GET THEM BACK

Jokes and blorbos aside, those two being missing are pretty bad for a lot of reasons, both within and outside Breakthrough

Victoria’s meeting with the other therapist was rough, though for understandable reasons. Never really thought of the implications before on her being potentially Ship of Theseus’d from stray cats

Victoria getting to see a bit more of the ugliness going on in Breakthrough, starting with Chris lashing out. Completely reasonable for him to, but damn went right for the gut with the Amy mentions

Speaking of things tied to Amy, hi Marquis! I just drew you! I can’t tell if he was doing it on purpose or he just did the equivalent of accidentally hitting every negative dialogue option but damn

A lot of buildup towards what I can only assume to be Teacher’s Cauldron making a play, especially with the Nieves interlude. Not sure what his goal could be supporting an anti-parahuman movement, other than ig weakening his main enemies in Citrine and Tattletale.

Eclipse

As someone whose first experience with Worm was making a character who was a former Boston Ward, I was excited for an arc that was at least in part all about Boston

Ashley’s trigger is tragic. I had a feeling any trigger involving pure destructive power like that was either bad leading up to the event or in the direct aftermath, and that was both.

Interesting to see how many different players there were in the Boston Games, as well as the more familiar faces like Accord and Blasto. I liked the bits of their dynamic and personality in Worm, and was glad to see more of that and how their rivalry started here.

Look. I still hate Carol. But I can’t lie, some of her lines during New Wave’s fight with Damsel were kinda cool. Now just keep that kinda cold energy for villains and not, y’know, your daughters.

Poor original Damsel, fought like hell against heroes, villains, and her own powers half the time, and didn’t even get a seat at the table. Not to mentioned played from the start by J. Maybe. Never did get confirmation he was actually a spy iirc.

Oh hi Jack! And yay Riley! Nice little tie in back into the Worm timeline. Well, nice for us, horrific for Ashley. Again, poor original Damsel.

Also intro to the other Ashley clone, neat! Also interesting stuff at the end with the mystery memory.

Kenzie Interlude (bc this also deserves a whole section)

irl was doing some labwork and decided to put this behemoth of an interlude on the audiobook to listen to in the background and that was a wild experience

The dinner was just painful to listen to. The way the parents were more focused on themselves or how things looked vs their daughter literally bleeding… like I wanna say it bordered on over the top but like with the bullying in Worm this kind of stuff and worse does happen. Glad she got out of that… right?

The little callback to Victoria doing the whole crisis point thing in Arc 2 was nice, though

Everything was going so well with the foster parents and then… that. Honestly didn’t fully get it at first until reading the comments on the website and… yeah. It’s not her fault, she was 8, she was traumatized and afraid of being separated from them and then the poorly worded search. Keith could’ve handled things better but it was also traumatizing on his end. Just an awful situation overall.

How does it keep getting worse

I’m gonna be real I went into this thinking the parents were gonna be robots or holograms with AI like she had in Glow Worm and it was gonna be sad as like a pretend of what should’ve been but… no I could not have predicted any of what was actually going on whatsoever.

Gonna need to remember to not draw Kenzie smiling if shes meant to be happy damn

[stradakiev]

Ok I’ll talk about it

I love this idea and agree with it soooooooo much and it’s my favorite Martha take ever

From Martha’s first story Smith and Jones she is figuring things out as if the doctor would without first seeing the doctor do it. She talks about how the windows aren’t exactly air tight and that there must be something keeping the air in. She figures out the genetic transfer, gets the Jadoon to catch the plasmavore, and brings the doctor back so he can fix the scanner. If you want to dig deeper with this episode the doctor is not introduced as his character he is John smith and Martha is studying to be a doctor. Foreshadowing she will play his role at the end of the season.

We don’t see much of this in the second episode because it her out of here element for real this time and she’s taking it in but still a very active character in the story.

Gridlock we get to see Martha separated from the doctor and kidnapped onto the highway. Martha is the one descending to the lower lanes and learning the stories of the sounds at the bottoms and putting the pieces together. It’s her quick thinking to turn the engines off to save them until the city was open by the doctor and they could drive up.

Daleks take manhattan and evolution of the daleks is when we see Martha start to boss the doctor around. Unlike other companions we’ve seem Martha spends a lot of her initial time traveling with the doctor actually away from him. When the doctor wants to just go off and see why the daleks changed their minds she asks if he’s just going to leave Hooverville to die. She is the one thinking of how to keep people alive like a doctor like the doctor. I like to think that the doctor hiding from the daleks behind Martha is symbolic of the doctor hiding from his grief and in many ways responsibilities and becoming more reckless while Martha holds things together.

The Lazarus experiment- the only part of this episode I want to focus on is the ending. The doctor suggests “one more trip” and she tells him she’s not going to keep doing it like that and that it’s either a full time passenger or good bye and the doctor agrees to it. Her being the one to have the power to chose to travel with him and be a full time companion makes her fulfill the role of the doctor as she decides who will be traveling in the tardis and he agrees like a companion typically does to an invitation.

42 her and the doctor are again apart for most of the episode and once the doctor has saved Martha he is possessed for the rest of the time while Martha cools his temperature and ejects the fuel from the sun saving both the day and the doctors life. So again companion doctor reversal once the doctor has saved her from imminent death.

Human nature and the family of blood- do I need to go into it? The doctor literally turns into a human and leaves everything up to Martha so she is the doctor for the episode and is the only one using the tardis (we’ve never seen her touch the console this much).

Blink- my man isn’t processing his grief with rose and now is separated from his ship. I can only imagine how much he was struggling. Martha was keeping them afloat with her job in the shop.

Utopia and the sound of drums!!! You can see Martha this whole episode just process more and more how poorly she’s been treated by the doctor by the way he interacts with jack and the stories of rose. She moves the story around narratively with the watch which. From here to where he family is kidnapped in the next episode (and we get the iconic scene of her yelling at the doctor) she is transforming herself through her actions until when she finally uses the vortex manipulator (the first type of time travel she has used by herself) she becomes the doctor.

Last of the time lords Martha is fully acting in the doctor role walking the whole worlds by herself without a weapon spreading a message of home. Her message is the doctor but in that moment she is the doctor. She embodies everything he is while he is removed from having control in the story.

I think the sound of drums/last of the time lords is Martha’s version of dark water/death in heaven. Martha is a lot more emotionally healthy than Clara and also has a live she has dreams for on earth so she chooses to leave. Martha has to cope with the consequences of becoming the doctor so she becomes a unit soldier I think to cope with how she has changed fundamentally but it also nicely brings those two lives together for our successful Queen. Whereas Clara becomes the doctor and no longer has anything or any dreams connecting her to earth to she toxically spirals out until she dies and then becomes not human so we love our toxic queen too

So basically I like to call season 3 the season the doctor was numbing his grief with reckless decisions, straight up not existing, and he’s classic running from it with adventures bc they have a savior complex. He got away with falling apart this much for a whole season bc Martha is a queen and held shit together.

Clara becomes the Doctor but can we talk about how Martha is also the Doctor. Besides being an actual doctor, she also becomes a soldier and tries to justify it to herself. She went through hell and saved the earth and bore that weight alone, and was never thanked for it. In the Doctors Daughter she is forced to watch as her Hath "companion" sacrifices themself for her and dies horribly, and she has to leave them behind. Is this thing on

[toyanova]

no hate to anyone who thinks this because i understand that sometimes people just don’t Get a ship and that’s cool, but i think it’s a shame when i see someone say people only like lottienat because both characters are hot. like there wouldn’t be anything wrong with liking a ship for that reason alone because we’re all here to have fun, obviously

but i just think it’s a shame that all of the tension and subtext in the adult timeline was there for milf lottienat (and their daughter lisa) and then it was ignored how that could have implications for their specific dynamic in the teen timeline too.

like nat even saw lottie when she died. lottie, plus everything she represented, was a cornerstone for nat’s life and her ‘purpose’. and the believer and non-believer situation, paired with how they both have always had a certain level of emotionality/softness to them in contrast with the other girls, makes their connection really fascinating. because they have the ability to understand each other while also remaining on opposing sides in a sense. they both challenge each other in the society they created. lottie wants to push past nat’s refusal of it in order to make her feel included and cared for

both trying to give her ‘blessings’ (😭) in the teen timeline and when she saves her life in the adult timeline. both of these things are simultaneously well meaning and completely fucked up. the whole thing lottie is doing with the wilderness and her blood is messed up and to some level she should be held accountable (her behavior has been leading to people being hurt, whether it was directly intended or not. the shrooms night was pretty bad though), which nat does. and then she stalks and kidnaps nat in the adult tl, which is fucked up, but she also does save her life. and this kind of sums up their connection and it’s just interesting because all of the girls have done horrible things with a mixture of good and bad ‘intentions’… but despite nat hating the cult and everything that came of it, she also understood to some extent how it worked and why it had to work. this is also why she’s able to still have a functioning, to some degree, relationship to shauna despite their power play conflict. nat is extremely multi-faceted and able of having a lot of empathy, which i think someone like lottie craves, while also holding people accountable for their bullshit at times

there’s so much here to be loved and the chemistry they had as adults was insane. so i just wish it wasn’t so popular to dismiss the ship as them just being hot

[longagoitwastuesday]

I'm three interactions away from spreading my Ijichi/Gojo agenda

[touchoffleece]

The people fighting tooth and nail to justify the extra hate LIS:DE got in the comments because they felt exploring Max's trauma by solely focusing on Max by exploring a path without Chloe there in the narrative (while leaving things open ended to bring Chloe back, mind you) to distract from Max being the sole Main Character is sending me as it really does highlight and prove some fans who ship pricefield only care about or strongly favor Chloe. LIS1 Pricefield was amazing, but one of the major points in the storylines was the abuse of young women, and due to how the game ended we didn't really get to see Max properly deal with her abuse and trauma. Not even in the spin offs because it focused a lot on Chloe and Rachel. So here's LiS:DE letting Max get the storyline that does explore that unfinished plot point of the Main Character's trauma and most ship fans are kicking up dirt because to explore that story the Devs chose to remove Chloe (and it was an open ended removal too.). The crazy thing is that I have seen this happen in another wlw ship and it drives me crazy because here we have a enthralling sapphic ship that in part is so captivating because the characters can stan by themselves removed from the ship (Seen in the Chapters in LiS where Chloe and Max were separated), but people just want to reduce these bad ass complex characters into a couple. And I feel like part of that is because people don't realize they start ignoring the character of one of the characters making up the ship for the sake of making it more possible to self insert or focus more on the other character that makes the ship at the cost of ignoring said character (in this case Max getting ignored to favor Chloe).

I feel sorry that you got jumped just because you agreed with the obvious fact that Max gets overshadowed in her own game and reduced to just a part of a ship.

If people like Max and care about her as a complex character like they argue, there would've been so much more deep discussions about her arc in DE rather than the majority dismissing the whole game because a certain character isn't in it.

I didn't see fans review bombing Before the Storm in masses because Max is barely in the game and "Life is Strange is about pricefield" that's all I'm going to say.

its okay anon the amount of times ive been jumped for having an opinion thats a bit unpopular plenty of times 😭😭😭😭💔💔💔💔💔

and you are so right people never have shit to say about bts which solely focuses on chloe/chloe and rachel's fast developing relationship, which reenforces my belief that i donf think pricefield fans care about the both of them, they just care about chloe. when max is shown to have a personality that isnt revolving chloe like in de people apparently cannot take that (which is embarrassing)

another take i fully believe is bullshit is that lis is about pricefield which.. no. their relationship is definitely important especially back when it was first released in 2015 but to say that the ENTIRE game is about them is insanity to me. i don't feel like i should have to say this but the game is about violence against women. jefferson is committing violent acts against young women. i dont see how people play the entire game and run with the idea that pricefield is what the game is about.

[zukkaoru]

could you tell me more about why you dislike femskk?

okay disclaimer before i begin: this is not meant to be a dig on every person who enjoys femskk. the biggest reason i don't like it is honestly because it's just not my cup of tea and honestly it really makes no difference to me if other people like it. but beyond that my biggest issues with it are

1. the phenomenon of fans "yuri-ifying" the most popular m/m ship and then using that to prove they like female characters and f/f ships. this is not a bsd-exclusive thing; it happens with stsg too and i don't like femstsg for the same reason. but there's a big difference between actually liking female characters and just genderbending (or even making transfem) the big m/m ship. i literally went to the f/f category in bsd on ao3 the other day looking for fics and about half of them are skk fics instead of fics about like. the actual female characters in bsd. who i was looking for fics of. similarly, there have been some redraw trends going around twitter - specifically the i prefer girls cover redraw - and i have seen. i don't even know how many femskk redraws of that (along with a couple femfyolais and a femrimlaine) but only one redraw with actual female characters from bsd. same with the scene 14 redraw that was going around, and while that one wasn't originally two female characters, i have still seen significantly more femskk (and femsigzai, femsigchuu, femfyolai, etc) than i have ships with even one character who is female in the source material.

and imo this phenomenon is made even worse in the bsd fandom bc so many fans just see bsd as the skk show. so of course they're writing off the actual female characters; they literally don't care about anything besides skk. and obviously i can't do anything to force anyone to care about other characters but like.... bsd has so many other wonderful characters and dynamics (both romantic and platonic) that a good half of the fanbase won't even glance at because they're not skk. i do like skk, but bsd is about so much more than just them. they are, objectively, only one small part of it. like if you only care about skk, then just be outright about it and don't pretend you're "proving" you like female characters and sapphic ships bc you like femskk too

2. of the fans who only like skk and nothing else about bsd, most of them. don't even characterize dazai and chuuya correctly? i think the some of the best skk characterizations i've seen have been from people who actually like other characters and ships too, and some of the worst skk characterization i've seen has come from people who literally don't care about any other ships or characters. this isn't a hard and fast rule obviously but even with 30k skk fics on ao3, i have struggled to find ones that actually feel true to their characters. and the characterization seems to only get worse when it's femskk. if you're just going to turn femdazai and femchuuya into two completely different people, what's the point in it even being skk? why not write k.ousano or h.igugin or even a ship with one canonically female character? if you have to change the core characteristics of both dazai and chuuya... do you even really like them?

3. about femdazai: i actually don't mind the transfem dazai headcanon in general but most fans get her wrong. i made a post about it here but basically so many times i see femdazais that are just. completely unrecognizable as dazai. you can't strip away core aspects of dazai like idk the fact that dazai doesn't show any skin from neck to toe just because you made her a girl. i have seen some femdazai that's good! but i have seen so much that is just fundamentally wrong for dazai's character as a whole. mostly on twitter.

4. about femchuuya: i really truly just don't get femchuuya. i THINK the hype here is probably bc lesbians seem to get attached to chuuya (which. valid. i am also a lesbian chuuya fan.) and so they want to draw a chuuya they can be attracted to (i.e. femchuuya) which like. cool whatever i'm not here to judge. but looking at it from a "would this character actually identify as female" perspective, i don't actually think i can picture that for chuuya. maybe it's just because i so strongly hc them as nonbinary? idk. this one is honestly just a neutral "i don't see that but you do you"

tl;dr: from what i've seen, femskk is often mischaracterized, and genderbending the big m/m ships in a fandom is often a way fans "prove" they like the female characters and f/f ships while not actually caring about anything other than their main m/m ship

[valewritessss]

What are some fanfiction pet peeves or icks?

I specifically had percabeth in mind but other ships or fandoms is fine too

[prince-kallisto]

☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆ Ahhh thank you very much for your reply! You worded a lot of things I was trying to say much clearer- so thank you lots 😆💖

It’s very funny how some parts of the EN fandom has such strict, self-imposed views on the Yuu’s, and the “canonicty” of…OCs lol. When TWST is honestly very freeing with their gender norms and their MC. Honestly, I feel bad for the future Pomefiore MC already- I feel like no matter what, there would be no winning -v- But I’m really excited for their future concept!!

😆💖🐦‍⬛ I’m a Crowley yume, and I’m always gushing over ever line he says and taking it romantically. But that’s just me, and I know the game isn’t an Otome. It may feed us some fanservice both in and out of game (ie merch), but it won’t be an Otome. So it’s upsetting that a small yet vocal portion of the fandom are demanding it to be one for their one ship, while also disrespecting their fellow male and NB shippers in the fandom 🤷 female, male, or NB Yuu is still Malleyuu- but again, it’s for our imaginations, not a romance for the official manga to depict. It’s…ironic that a lot of these same exact accounts were criticizing a small group of BL fans who complained a “girl Yuu was getting in the way of their ship,” while they turn around and demand a girl Yuu for a “valid” Malleyuu lmao

😆💖 if you ever write an essay, I’d love to read it! I almost wanted to rant about it myself, but I knew I’d get off topic if I rambled too much in one post 🤣 I don’t understand why conversations about more diverse romance are always shut down. We ARE making our own- it’s just a shame that’s there’s very little support for them from bigger communities! And even in communities that are kinder, whenever a male or NB fan asks for recommendations, we’re always directed to completely non-romantic games just because the player character is neutral 🤷 while I’m grateful nonetheless, it goes to show how little there is out there for us male/NB fans of romance or “otome” style games. I really love the many routes, art styles, and types of romances in Otome, and I’ve yet to seen in replicated in a more gender-inclusive format. Maybe one day! 💖

I think in regards to fanfic, the main issue I have with self-insert or gender neutral fanfics is that there’s often still descriptions of a character left behind, usually afab descriptions. When everything is fully tagged, I don’t mind as much, but it can be a whiplash otherwise. This can also happen with descriptors in a self insert like…blonde hair or something, which unless it was tagged, is certainly NOT a characteristic everyone has

😭 ANXJHD. Yeah the whole Yuuka situation is so odd. I remember a lot of excitement when she was first revealed because, girl Yuu. But now that YUUNA is released, well I’m seeing some amazing yuri fanart between the two 😆💖🌷 but again, I’ve seen several cases (surprisingly???) of Yuuna being put on a pedestal for “being more of a woman” compared to Yuuka, which is so icky. I’m happy for the femme rep, but PLEASE do not equate this to the “first real girl” rep 😭😭😭😭😭😭 I tend to lean towards a femme style for myself irl (I like to be cute 🫡), and I think I just got so upset over the situation not only for the Yuuka treatment but the sudden dysphoria LMAO 😭😭😭

Ahh random note, but I’m always very fond of the Harveston event lines about Epel. A picture of his grandma in her youth looked EXACTLY like him- just in a dress. And all the other boys complimented the photo, mistaking her for Epel. When Epel was confused about what photo they were talking about, I believe Jade said “the one where you’re wearing a dress.” There was never any blubbering over the mere idea of Epel wearing a dress- it was just a charming photo that they thought was Epel in a dress 🤷

Idk it’s just moments like those that really make the twst world feel comforting that way 😆 the world is very diverse and lively, and that fact is cemented in the way that the game Yuu is genderless. All these “rules” and expectations in the EN fandom are completely contrary to the spirit of the game.

I loved reading your ramble! It was super enlightening and it made me happy to read- thank you for reading my long rant as well! ☺️💖🐦‍⬛ I’m really grateful that me and my nonbinary sona has been really accepted in my local community, I’ve never once felt unwelcome in these spaces. But when I gaze across the vast desert that is the rest of twst social media…I learn that even a cool girl like Yuuka is controversial 🤣🤣

Ahh these are the sort of topics I don’t know how to word well in English , so forgive me if I have roundabout explanations for things 😆 this is a bit of a vent, I apologize again for any mistaken words on anything 💦

But I guess I’m just a little disheartened by the EN fandom- particularly with the whole manga Yuu situation. I adore all the Yuu’s, I love all the Yuu OCs that this amazing and creative fandom has designed.

But I’m seeing an…over exaggeration? Or pedestal put onto the Scarabia Yuu, Yuuna Oujou, and the way some people have discussed the manga Yuu’s have made me a little uncomfortable.

I’ve seen some people be like “finally! A girl Yuu for the manga!” Or “finally! A Yuu who presents herself as a woman!” (This is way different than a celebration of a femme Yuu btw).

? Yuuka, the Savanaclaw Yuu, IS a woman. Some people have been claiming that she’s “hiding her gender” in the all-boy’s school, or “downplaying” her gender, and how they’re so happy that Yuuna is “unapologetically a woman.”

But Yuuka, even in her previous world, has ways presented as a bit more masc- a very bifauxnen, cool girl type of character who is resolute in her strength because of her judo experience. A translation of the manga I read even has her referring to herself as a “ordinary school girl.” It’s just her own personal style of presenting herself. She also exercises in a sports bra! The only troubles she has is the troubles ALL Yuu’s have: that they’re magicless and aren’t meant to be here at this school and this WORLD.

And frankly, it’s uncomfortable that I’ve seen so many people in the fandom act as if feminine style is the only valid way to present as a woman, the implications that Yuuka is not a woman from the way she chooses to dress or cut her hair.

I’m so so happy that people find joy in a very femme presenting Yuu- I love Yuuna just as much! But when the conversation begins turning into…implying femininity is the only way to be/present as a woman, that’s not…it just feels awful. Yuuka was our first girl Yuu, Yuuna is the second. They present differently, but neither of them ever once worry about having the “hide” their gender. Please celebrate Yuuna’s style if that’s what you mean, instead of the “true girl” Yuu.

And on another note, there is the very popular and so far very likely theory of a “boy-girl” pattern in the manga Yuu’s- especially since all the Yuu’s so far have been the opposite gender as the Disney villains of each dorm. Meaning, the theory is that a male Yuu is likely for Diasomnia.

And I’m seeing a very vocal crowd dismissing the idea of male Yuu in the Diasomnia arc, that they want a girl, they’d hate a male Yuu, “Malleus forgot it’s not an Otome so it has to be a girl Yuu!”, they want a girl to be with Malleus “because [we] want Malleyuu.”

And again. It just feels so…alienating. Malleus and Malleyuu personally isn’t for me, but I’ve spent many years hopping around Otome and romance games in the past, and male and NB fans of these genres are frequently told that they don’t belong in the fandom, that these games cater to women.

But most conversations bringing up the possibility of romance games bringing in he/him, they/them or even customizable pronouns for the player are often shut down in most community spaces. Games like TWST, with an ambiguous MC and individual interactions with a character of your choice (ie the home screen voicelines)- or even games like Obey Me or the Arcana, are a rarity have made me really happy and feel really comfortable in the fandoms. Even if the game’s audience is mostly women, the MC/Yuu has *always* had an open identity.

So…the concept that Malleyuu is only WANTED by a portion of the fandom ONLY it’s a girl Yuu just brings back those same feelings again. Of course you may have whatever Yuu you want in your own personal Malleyuu ship!! But one girl Yuu can never represent the whole fandom, one male Yuu can never represent the whole fandom. So it’s strange there’s this complete outcry at the idea of a boy, and in turn of non-het Malleyuu ships in the fandom.

The manga and the Yuu’s have never shown a romantic relationship towards any character- any fanservicey moments still remain from the game, no matter the Yuu it’s aimed towards. And not just from Housewardens- all the characters have their bits of fanservice! But it never goes farther than that in the main story especially.

With the reveal of Yuuna, the EN fandom has been celebrating the diversity and openmindness of the world of twst, and how customizable your Yuu’s truly are. Yuu is…you! Yuu can be whoever you want. But it all falls apart when a portion of the fandom see Yuuna as the only valid girl Yuu, when the mere idea of a male Yuu for Diasomnia or for Malleyuu is bashed and hated.

Or you know what- the idea of male or even NB Yuu is bashed entirely every single time there’s a damn announcement for the manga. A while back, the Scarabia manga announcements were mistranslated in English, and the gender ambiguous language for Yuu was accidental turned into he/him (which turned out to be Yuuna). And the level of vitriol I saw over the idea of a male Yuu was so fucking disheartening. And now it’s happening all over again with a future Diasomnia manga.

Is the manga and their Yuu’s really a celebration of diversity in the EN fandom? It doesn’t feel that way, at all. Perhaps I’m just being self centered about this, but I’ve found myself increasingly upset about how vocal these two issues have been, and I wish some people could be more mindful about it

Apologies for my incoherency in this vent 💦💦💦💦💦 this is NOT hate toward Malleyuu or Yuuna fans as a whole- or towards anyone in fact. This is just a vent and a slight critique just certain parts of the fan bas

[cable-salamdr]

Can’t wait for Roby to show up only for him to be

A. A very minor role who gets like three voice lines total

Or

B. Far older than we thought and thus make everyone who was making fanart of him and Wyldfyre as a pair mildly scrambling (because of the whole. “Wyldfyre gets a bf” and people assuming that will be Roby)

[x-adoringvoid-x]

A couple of rodents

[purplecelestial-buddy]

Despite much convincing from my peers I've decided that: 1. No, I'm not watching haikyuu 2. Despite that statement, Miya Atsumu is my favorite character

[jackass-jones]

My madoka magica hot take is I like sayaka/kyoko as a ship more than madoka/homura

[sovietyaoi]

I am quite sure my reading comprehension skills are totally fine and I have better things to show for it than arguing on the internet. I also don’t think I’m misunderstanding anything or taking it out of context. What I think is that you refuse to engage with my arguments, which I don’t really care about, because as I said I just wanna talk about crowferi.

Just because Ferid thinks about how he yearns for desire for women and strength doesn’t mean that it was his strongest desire as a human. Vampire’s yearn for many forms of humanity, for example death (like Ferid getting suicidal or Crowley being glad his life ended). Also Ferid isn’t getting stronger just for the sake of it but to carry out his plan. If he was, he wouldn’t have agreed to work with Guren, who now appears to have some type of authority over him. In the chapters where Ferid’s time as a human was showed it was quite clear that he was mostly interested in finding the reason for living. He was studying philosophy and he killed his parents not to gain more power but so that he could travel the world and learn more.

And your way of “explaining” vampire relationship was basically repeating your point and not engaging with any of my arguments against it. I don’t “absolutely know that it’s right” because when I entered the fandom I have already read Vassalord and knew about IWTV so I perceived Ferid’s and Crowley’s relationship the same way I did to characters in that works, I’ve never thought of them as brothers and I was surprised when I found out there are even people who believe so, as I stated previously, because there have never been claims like that in fandoms of any other vampire media I had been in.

I’ve never said their relationship wasn’t abusive, but it doesn’t change the fact it was meaningful. If you go outside you’ll notice that people aren’t perfect and do bad things to others. A ship doesn’t have to be perfect and sanitized to be good, if you can’t handle it don’t think about it, it’s really that easy. And me shipping crowferi doesn’t invalidates people who have been abused because, setting aside everything else, Ferid and Crowley are in fact not real.

I’m real tho, which may seem absurd to you, and so are most crowferi shippers, that is people who you enjoy telling to kill themselves, over the fact you disagree about something. You seem to be very keen on assuring yourself that you’re a good person, so I’m going to tell you one thing. Dehumanization is the first step towards not being in fact a good person, because if you’re ready to dehumanize a person, even over something you think is completely reasonable, eventually you’ll fine with anybody being dehumanized.

Also just because somebody can see that two characters relationship isn’t sexual doesn’t mean they can’t write smut about them? I’m pretty sure that’s how a lot of fanfiction was created, as a matter of fact. This is what transformative works mean.

The comment about being a non-religious person and saying omfg is so random, like I’m pretty sure it’s religious people who usually shouldn’t say god’s name while swearing. I’m non-religious too but I say it all the time, which I probably wouldn’t if I was religious because in many religions it’s forbidden.

And anyway tysm, I would actually love for love like crowferi to find me!

kami's rage