#who's now everyone's problem forever

[borldwuilding]

Emurl is the Outsider God of Magic

Though he almost always takes the form of a unusually pale-skinned man with tendril-like hair, Emrul is, in reality, a amorphous mass of black tar akin to a octopus without any eyes. While powerful in his own right and on par with the other chief gods, he lacks the same power and experience the elder gods do - a point that ruffles his feathers and that he aims to someday change.

Unlike any of the elder gods though, Emrul has taken a strong stance in the world of Aanrah, and involved and attached himself on a much deeper level than the elder gods are willing to. Since he world’s beginning, Emrul has orchestrated and managed what would come to be known as magic, becoming its chief ‘writer’ and controller. He pushed for such powers to stay among the gods or, at best, be given in very limited, controlled, and known fashions and amounts to other non-divine beings. And this was, for a time, how it went - and he had nobody to blame but himself for it ever changing.

(Cont. under the cut)

His deal with Szaifudrus would eventually destroy the immaculate control he’d kept over magic for millennia, and Yalidil Rana’s interference in tying the rest of it to the moon of Baza finalized that it was truly and utterly now out of Emrul’s hands. Since magic has become wildly available to anyone and everyone, Emrul’s followers have absolutely boomed - which while the power and attention was what Emrul sought, there is no doubt about how bitter he is about the situation.

Emrul’s followers consist almost entirely of magic-users, as one might expect. Almost every mage guild or collage has a shrine dedicated to him, and most wizards might have a personal one at home as well. While his responses are incredibly impersonal and detached, he is known for being a responsive god to prayers and interaction. He is known for having studies and towers on the material plane one might be able to find him at, including one in the northern region of the continent Draakrahlr.

Emrul is a somewhat irritable and vindictive god, and many who have had the misfortune of drawing his attention in some fashion, good or bad, often find themselves at the short end of the stick if they spend too much time in proximity to him. He is known for his aggressively selfish actions among longer-lived beings, and though many wizarding locations may worship him, the wisest warn of what dangers lie in dealing with him closely. 

Those foolish enough are known to seek Emrul beyond his stance in the material world, and seek his power and understanding of reality beyond the current one. While he is much easier to get into contact than most of the other truly Outsider deities, like Kht’oth and Artitengh, Emrul is also known for being much more likely to drive a person directly into insanity just for asking.

[tritoch]

wild to me to see posts like "wow everything in the tempest is named after shakespeare...emet you melodramatic bitch you sure loved theater". because the prospero-emet thing gets played up so hard in the english script and you can carry it so far!

like prospero is an asshole magician who, after being deposed by his brother as duke of milan, settles himself and his daughter on a remote island, enslaves the local spirits using his magic, and bitterly plots to reclaim his past glories. he rules through violence and deceit, and only survives and is reconciled when his plots reach their fruition and his brother is taken to his remote island and plots ensue and everyone decides he was totally right all along and they were huge dicks to him and they're sooooo sorry and he gets to go back and be duke again wow! and it's okay because he's like "i was only doing mean magic to get my rightful spot back and now i'm giving it up because magic is evil. :)"

the tempest is what emet wants his life to be. prospero is not a villain in the text of the tempest. he is barely treated as antagonistic by the text and framing of the play itself. all his abuses, his neglect and control of his daughter, his enslavement of caliban and ariel (local spirits/monsters/people of the island), his deception and plots against his brother, his abuse of magical powers (not awesome, from the pov of the contemporary audience), all that ultimately gets swept aside in the rightness of his return to milan and the warm feeling of the world being set to rights. prospero can't undo the years he spent on the island but they are ultimately a blip in his life before he returns to the rightful state of affairs. his abuse and enslavement of caliban, easily the worst thing he does in the play, is totally set aside when caliban goes "wow now i see how truly benevolent my master is. i love him and see the ways of christian good and i'm so, so appreciative he chose not to kill or beat me even though he totally could have and would have been in the right. he's so just and intelligent." everyone loves and forgives him and they all agree both his management of the island and his ultimate return are so good and so wise and so right.

emet comparing himself to the tempest (or being compared to it, depending on how you want to read the diegetic status of the place names) is absolute wishcasting. it is an attempt to manifest the happy ending he will never, ever get because his sins cannot and would not be forgiven in the way he wants. he wants to imagine himself as the righteous returned duke whose crimes, including the enslavement, abuse, and exploitation of those he saw as his rightful inferiors, were totally worth it, i promise. and if emet is prospero, the warrior of light is his caliban.

[rapidhighway]

[scabbardsystem]

sure sucks that faucet doesn't like people talking about [ ] because [ ] has the objectively coolest pronouns out of all of us hkjgh

[byfulcrums]

To add a little more to that post about how peaches represent SWK and Mac's relationship:

In the mountain, Macaque is the one to crush the peach in his hand. He offered it to Sun Wukong, and when he didn't accept it and instead yelled at him, he destroyed it and threw it on the ground

In the end, it was Macaque who left first, not the other way around. Now, their broken relationship isn't completely his fault, but he did play a part on it

SWK screamed at him when he tried to mend their friendship, so instead of trying again, he left. That's what broke their relationship for good. Not Sun Wukong yelling, not Liu'er Mihou not looking for him, but Macaque leaving and (as far as we know) not coming back. La gota que colmó el vaso, we could say. Stuff had already been going on between those two. SWK never seemed to genuinely listen to Macaque and his promises of staying forever were empty (he never would've been able to stay in one place for so long) and Macaque never even bothered to communicate his negative feelings over this, so when he warned him he was ignored

Sun Wukong left again and again and again, looking for more power to "be strong enough to protect them", and eventually he lost sight of why he was doing it. But no matter how many times he left, he came back. Macaque didn't

[shopcat]

there is, Obviously, fundamentally a difference between headcanon and an analytical reading of text, and treating the two as exactly the same is not only wrong but devalues both, but funnily, i've found people tend to forget that both of these things are the product of referencing our real life experiences and applying them where we see fit to make a more interesting way to interact with media. and you can't just like, forget that it's not JUST about headcanons and meta analysis and whatever, because people in real life also still matter. and in real life, there are different stakes and EXPERIENCES, and those experiences lead to thinking the way we do because that's how you Be a goddamn person, which is why it's ironic is all 😭

like, saying zuko atla has to be cis in order to be "properly" gay in order to be Truly Compelling narratively is fucking ridiculous. textually, zuko is not actually gay. he never was intended to be, he never will be intended to be, he was never even subtextually. the assumption otherwise is already rooted in fantasy, and the tongue in cheek assertion that it isn't, which means it has more credence, is ... dumb? childish? admitting to at least yourself that the things you talk about wrt character analysis aren't the intention of the creator is literally half the point of doing said analysis – you're MEANT to throw away the intended interpretation in order to give it a new life through different keyholes without entirely divorcing itself from the text. (in the same breath, insisting the creator truly meant One Thing when they absolutely would not have/don't care at all, and ignoring that the people who made the piece are going to put their own biases and experiences and background into the media itself and actually MUST be taken into account for things like this is just ... well. Stop That.)

i've personally never been someone to ever claim that The Writers All Along INTENDED to do something that they obviously didn't, like make a character from a 2005 cartoon lgbt+. this doesn't mean that reading doesn't have any substance or cannot possibly hold any meaning, or that it's wrong. if you can't be objective about your own readings what's the damn point... leaning into it being fiction, which changes just by being observed by a different person, is why it's fun or interesting to do in the first place. and yeah there are some basic cookie cutter headcanons people like to fling around, and there can be criticism for that otherwise, but claiming headcanons themselves AREN'T an offshoot of this way of thinking is fucking stupid. like it's plain wrong.

our own thoughts on why a character acts, what they do, what their presentation is, why their personality is what it is up to and including their sexuality, gender identity, religion, JOB, whatever, are made to fill the gaps the text can't or won't provide, and in the case of lgbt ones as long as it's not actively harmful (as in like insisting a lesbian character is bi or something) it is literally harmless seeing as it is fairly solidly a "won't", along with a whole bunch of other hc material that usually don't see the light of day on-screen nonstereotypically. people seeing themselves in characters isn't new but more than that, saying that you know this but then pushing it aside because The Analysis Means More when it's Realistic And Plausible is fucking dumb. and rude. bc the entire point of drawing the line of connections this way is how WE see them. being all like "oh well, your own personal identity is still valid otherwise, don't get your feelings hurt bc it doesn't matter," is moot if you've already asserted there's only One real way to be... plausible 🤨. which is to be NORMAL ! duh.

like, the read that zuko IS gay (and cis) relies on extracting parts through the lens of our own gay perceptions and is why cishet fans don't pick up on it, but you can ask pretty much any other lgbt fan and they'll agree. zuko's narrative arc IS compelling with the read that he is gay, from the way he is ostracised by his family, neglected and abused, the "punishment" he receives and then continues to become his own warden of, the order of his death and the banishment itself, sozin criminalising homosexuality, his inability to connect with others especially his own age, his inability to seamlessly interact with girls, his literal externalised viewing of seeing himself as someone with Two Sides, them being good vs evil, realising he can change the damn world through love and acceptance, striving for peace, being the face of change for his nation, relearning what it means to be who he is once he is free from his past, the shame and humiliation rituals, the claim of his father that he is worthless as a prince and person, AND MORE... and i cannot express enough here how fucking little it matters if he's specifically gay or WHAT THE HELL EVER 😭.

to claim in no small way that it's impossible for a trans person, or a bisexual person, or anyone else lgbt, could ever line up his narrative with their own personal one is so beyond ridiculous it gives me a headache. no, "plausibly", i don't think zuko is like, transmasc. yes, plausibly, he could be gay. plausibly, he could be amab nonbinary but no one seems to actually give a fuck about that for some reason (i wonder!). nothing would change in both cases, because he's not actually either, so i really don't see the point in making fun of or being frustrated by one to lift up the other because you want cisgender boot soles to brush the back of your throat THAT badly. the implausibility of thinking any way about a fictional character should be taken into account to an extent, sure, but at the end of the day neither of us are doing anything truly worthwhile, and no one is claiming that it's the intent from the beginning to say otherwise, so what's the point here. why are we doing this. let's go skip in a meadow together before i kill someone with this rock.

[bylertruther]

i don't like season three when viewing it as a continuation of seasons one and two, but i do very much like season three when viewing it as the prequel to seasons four and five... hmmmmm.

[boypussydilf]

its kind of funny that ppl are talking like Literally Everyone is Actually saying or implying they would rather have the ice king than simon that. seems like an exaggeration. the only people who say anything of the sort are astrid, who wasn’t even born yet while simon was still ice king and just thinks of him as “cool wizard” and “wrote some fun books”, and fionna & cake, who have seen approximately 10 seconds of ice king in a moment where he’s not doing particularly bad, and who have only interacted with simon at literally the lowest point of his entire life so far. what finn & tv say in ep2 reads as them hearing the conversation and assuming its more along the lines of “simon being embarrassed by work he thinks is bad” than “simon trying to avoid this thing because it is associated with a traumatic part of his life”. and prismo is just like. a little peeved that he can’t access or control his own creation anymore. Like, the Points people are generally trying to make when they bring this up are not without merit, and you could say that’s the message simon got from the last couple of days but. unless i forgot something there is absolutely 0 indication of any person who met ice king saying anything that remotely actually implies they enjoyed having ice king around more than simon. we just have a handful of people saying they happen to like One Thing ice king did. the people of ooo did not undergo a wave of selective amnesia about the ice king

[iknowwhereyousleepatnight]

do you ever have a house full of people that all resent each other but will never talk it out so it just makes everyone blow up at random which makes everyone else mad which makes everything worse and it’s also 10am

[sapphic-schizo]

god the culling game sucks ass just end this shit already i don't care about randos from 1000 years ago why can't shounen manga ever just focus on the main characters instead of bringing a bunch of new randos into the mix and shoving everyone's favs into the void never to be seen again

[chiistarri]

what if instead of messaging me in the middle of the night about your stupid fucking girlfriend and your stupid fucking problems with her you actually act like my fucking friend and message me like how you message everyone else in our group

[the-gayest-sky-kid]

like im just saying they should invent a family that doesn't make you want to kill yourself

[thebleedingeffect]

.

[gifti3]

Im cursing [REDACTED] right NOW

[blujayonthewing]

two of the dnd campaigns I'm in right now have significant Panopticon Problems and y'all I am. fuckin tired

[hollypunkers]

I have now twice started a long long fic with an amazing plot/premise and stellar writing only for it to devolve, for no goddamn reason, into a 100,000 word ‘interlude’ where the main character gets hyper-omniscient therapy that somehow fixes everything and nothing matters anymore