#my relationship with that show is nuanced and complicated lol

[sheikfangirl]

She was my lesbian awakening 😍

Convention season is coming and it's been a while since my last poster art. Cartoon Zelda was on my list for years. I really drew this for myself and I had a BLAST. I might show pictures of my prints if you are all curious ☺️

[the-awful-falafel]

Decided to share a megapost of my Fake Peppino relationship / character dynamic headcanons! Not comprehensive at all but should give a rough outline of my personal interpretation of things at least

PEPPINO:

Peppino and Fake Peppino's relationship is... deeply complicated lol

It's the focus of my brainrot (and utterly central to how I see Fake Peppino's postgame character development happening) so I won't quite get into all the progression and nuances here, but if I had to loosely summarize it, I'd say it's kind of a platonic slowburn "weird uncomfortable doppelganger housemate/employee" + enemies-to-trucies-to-uneasy-friendship situation. Lots of black comedy and ominous horror stuff too

More will be explained / shown off over time, hopefully!

GUSTAVO:

Gustavo generally seems tolerant or even oblivious to Fake Peppino's weirdness, although not to a Noisette extent

He doesn't get caught up in paranoia around Fake Peppino like Peppino does, although the odd behavior and comments the clone sometimes makes can be slightly unsettling

Gustavo casually calls Fake Peppino "Peppino" to be respectful (something that agitates real Peppino) and occasionally tries to encourage Peppino to do the same

Gustavo acts relatively friendly and encouraging to Fake Peppino-- believing in good faith that most of his behavior is harmlessly weird and that, if he's anything like the real Peppino, he could use a friend-- but he often feels out of his depth interacting with him for too long, so in practice it's more of a "cordial acquaintances" situation

Fake Peppino sees Gustavo as a nice friend/fellow chef, first as an extension of Peppino's relationship with him and then later more genuinely

Fake Peppino strongly appreciates Gustavo's penchant for adventure, and will often tag along Gustavo's adventures without asking and without warning when he's in the mood to forage for new ingredients or simply observe

BRICK:

Brick does not like Fake Peppino and she gets a bad vibe from him

Fake Peppino thinks the big rat looks delicious but politely holds off because he assumes that Gustavo is saving all that meat for himself

PEPPERMAN:

Pepperman is mostly face-blind towards humans and cannot tell Peppino and Fake Peppino apart unless they're side by side, and only then just barely

Pepperman somewhat admires the surrealism and ethical quandaries of Fake Peppino's existence, and rambles about it to him whenever he's around

Fake Peppino thinks Pepperman talks way too much and too fancily, and therefore tunes out at least 90% of what the pepper says

Fake Peppino has secretly stolen / borrowed paint from Pepperman before, and once or twice he brought over his weird Peppino caricature doodles to show him and get "art advice"

Fake Peppino has contemplated how Pepperman is an impressively big pepper, but there's no shortage of peppers back at the pizzeria, plus the smell of paint and ego kinda gets in the way

Fake Peppino is very pleased whenever Pepperman confuses him with Peppino

THE VIGILANTE:

Vigilante has only met Fake Peppino a handful of times and doesn't have a lot of knowledge of him or a strong opinion on him, thinking that he seems strange but friendly enough

Later on, Vigilante's opinion skews more pessimistic and he views Fake Peppino's creation as another one of Pizzahead's crimes that he must be held accountable for

Fake Peppino thinks the "cowboy cheese" is nice and helpful for giving him directions in the tower at one point, even though he finds his arsenal of guns and gruff demeanor slightly off-putting

Vigilante is the most likely of the bosses to go missing if there's a cheese supply shortage

Vigilante is also the most likely of the bosses to teach Fake Peppino what a flamethrower is

THE NOISE:

Noise finds Fake Peppino hilarious, seeing him as a total freakshow that mocks Peppino just by existing and being generally absurd

Noise would occasionally visit Fake Peppino in the tower alongside Noisette, mostly to just gawk and encourage the weirdo to do food crimes

Because of this, Noise also doesn't take Fake Peppino seriously-- an approach that has backfired on him a couple times, although he stubbornly refuses to learn. (Noise is good at using intimidation and startling loud noises in a pinch, but it never scares off Fake Peppino permanently)

Noise, when possible, likes to encourage Fake Peppino's general chaos and torment of Peppino, although it's just as likely to get thrown back in his face

Fake Peppino generally likes Noise because he sees him as one of his first regular customers alongside Noisette

However, Fake Peppino doesn't like how evasive Noise is at actually eating the complicated "pizzas" he orders, so he's increasingly determined to get Noise to eat one of his pizzas someday, even if it requires coercive methods

Fake Peppino can be unexpectedly passive-aggressive towards Noise when Noise is being more of a rude asshole than usual, although it's more in a playfully antagonistic sort of way... maybe

Fake Peppino was very confused by the whole NTV movie situation and went off-script a little too much for Noise's liking, but Fake Peppino still went along with it and got paid via expensive pizza ingredients afterwards (money was not enticing enough for him, for some reason)

NOISETTE

Noisette sees Fake Peppino as a funny guy and close friend, sharing both a goofiness and love for making dubiously edible food, and she is thoroughly immune to / oblivious of the horrors

She befriended him back in the tower via getting lost and obliviously stumbling into Peppino's Pizza 2, and her ditzy friendliness, utter lack of fear or acknowledgement of red flags, and promise to visit again led to a much more positive (and safer) interaction than all the previous customers had

Noisette's repeat visits were both because she genuinely found his pizzas "interesting" (... despite the fact they kept giving her violent short-term food poisoning, she assumed it was part of the Italian food experience and she thinks it's important to encourage his creativity) and because she was worried he was lonely, working so hard in his secluded restaurant all the time

Noisette always calls Fake Peppino "Peppino" and wholeheartedly affirms his identity

Noisette's overt tolerance and obliviousness of the horrors is not always a good thing and can lead to her enabling Fake Peppino's more dangerous and maladaptive behavior

Fake Peppino sees Noisette as his first and favorite regular customer, and he'd consider her his first friend too, although the lines between friend and customer are very blurry in Fake Peppino's mind

Fake Peppino visits Noisette on rare occasions (rather than the more common other way around), both because he enjoys her company and because he thinks studying her likes/dislikes up close and integrating them into his pizzas is key to maintaining her patronage

Fake Peppino will play party games and board games with Noisette and Noise when she offers, but he's kinda inattentive and doesn't follow the rules (it's okay because half of the rules Noisette makes up / doesn't care about either, and Noise cheats)

GEROME:

Gerome doesn't interact with Fake Peppino much, and when he does, he mostly just regards him with either vague interest or pity

Gerome is aware of the cloning lab and Fake Peppino's true nature/purpose, and has had a lot of experience with his brother's clones-- as a result, Gerome is pessimistic about the Fake Peppino's ability or willingness to change from what he is

Fake Peppino sees Gerome as the small stone man who sleeps all the time, and is interested by his janitorial work, but otherwise doesn't have much of an opinion on him either

PILLAR JOHN

John regards Fake Peppino with a similar sort of pity as Gerome does, although it mostly leads to him expressing sympathy and solidarity towards Peppino over both of them being cloned by Pizzahead and having awkward interactions with said clones after the tower collapsed

Fake Peppino doesn't really know John, but he was warned extensively to never touch the pillars holding up each level gate, no matter how tempting it may be to kick one over

Fake Peppino still follows this rule after the events of the game, even though this pillar is now walking around, but his curiosity will probably get the best of him one of these days

PIZZAFACE

Pizzaface has no opinion on Fake Peppino because he's a (secret) robot/mech whose autopilot AI is quite basic and limited-- he's obedient/loyal to Pizzahead and nobody else

Fake Peppino doesn't understand why you would make a pizza that isn't for eating

PIZZAHEAD

Pizzahead is directly responsible for creating Fake Peppino along with all the other clones, and even though the results didn't match his original "Better Peppino" design concept 1:1, he doesn't care and doesn't see it as a failure at all-- he thinks it's much funnier and more entertaining this way

Pizzahead doesn't really perceive Fake Peppino as a person or sapient entity deserving respect -- he sees Fake Peppino more like a fun new custom-built toy, guard monster, and walking punchline of a joke at Peppino's expense, all rolled into one

Pizzahead doesn't openly mistreat Fake Peppino, necessarily-- he's goofy and irreverent towards him for the most part, just like how he acts towards most other people-- but he certainly exploits and manipulates certain aspects of Fake Peppino's behavior for his own amusement, and saw leaving Fake Peppino on the fourth floor with minimal safeguards as the funniest possible thing to do with him. Look and watch the weird freak go! Wooooo!

Pizzahead is very affirming and encouraging of Fake Peppino believing himself to be really Peppino, mostly to better exploit/manipulate his behavior and to better egg on his established aggression towards "other Peppinos" in preparation for him being sicced on the real Peppino

Pizzahead's inability to take anything seriously extends to even the most bizarre, horrific, and dangerous of his creations, in a way that would probably backfire if it weren't for his power and cartoonish immunity

Pizzahead probably would have gotten bored of and abandoned Fake Peppino at some point if Peppino hadn't destroyed the tower

After the events of the game, Pizzahead is surprised by Fake Peppino's reduced aggression towards Peppino and has attempted to sneakily exploit Fake Peppino's behavior once more to see if he can generate any more funny conflict, but it's not very effective as Fake Peppino has already formed his own ambiguous goals and doesn't really have a reason to listen to Pizzahead anymore-- although he still cheerfully takes the "advice" into consideration

Fake Peppino doesn't know that Pizzahead is responsible for his existence, nor is he aware he was even created in the first place. (Fake Peppino would not believe Pizzahead if he told him, either)

Fake Peppino likes and respects Pizzahead as the tower's owner who pulled him out of the laboratory and gifted him important advice and a restaurant free of charge, but Fake Peppino is otherwise somewhat ambivalent and isn't even particularly loyal to the pizza, instead being obsessed with working the restaurant and working hard at being Peppino

Fake Peppino doesn't quite like Pizzahead's tendency to cartoon-logic grab and deposit him in new locations at random, as he (usually) dislikes being grabbed or touched and Pizzahead doesn't have much regard for his personal space, but it thankfully doesn't happen often enough for it to be a major concern, just an uneasy irritation

Fake Peppino is very curious about what Pizzahead's pizza head tastes like and has attempted to bite it off twice, to no success and Pizzahead barely acknowledging it aside from casually clamping Fake Peppino's jaws shut / sidestepping it and causing Fake Peppino to faceplant

[merinathropp]

okay here's my massive and hugely late Wicked movie review in case anyone is still interested alksdjalskdjaldk bless you all for your patience

Glinda - 11/10 no notes I am besotted. I was so wrong about Ariana Grande, she was pitch perfect and melted into the character. She played Glinda with all the nuance she desperately deserves, she was SO MUCH MORE than just a mean blonde girl, she had a sort of 'spoiled rich girl innocence' and genuine sweetness in everything she did. And the RANGE!!!! Her expressions during No One Mourns get the award for First Thing To Make Me Weep, there was SUCH pain and bitter resolve underneath her composure. Ariana the woman that you are.

Fiyero - I feel like Fiyero is a character who only works if you make him a bit camp and silly and absolutely commit to The Flynn Rider-ness of it all, and Jonathan ABSOLUTELY DID. He was outrageously charming. Love that he flirted with girls and boys and even members of staff, really drove home the whole 'scandalous reputation' thing. Equal opportunity Fiyero Flirting. What a time to be alive.

Elphaba - Okay this is where things get complicated. I really struggled with Cynthia's Elphaba. I totally respect that she wanted to take the character in a different direction, making her more vulnerable and soft-spoken and sad.

It just didn't work for me, because it stripped Elphaba of all the things I love about her in the show: her fierceness, her rage, her explosive nature, her terrible temper. I just adore how messy she is. And I missed that in the movie.

I've seen people talk a lot about how Cynthia's Elphaba is 'internal' - she doesn't let her emotions show, she keeps it all on the inside. Again, this was a choice that really bugged me. So many classic Elphaba Reaction Moments were reduced to Cynthia just...looking?? It drove me mad.

Her vocals were out of this world. She looked absolutely stunning. But I just can't connect with this new version of Elphaba as much as her stage counterpart.

Sets, Props & Costumes - GORGEOUS. A literal feast for the eyes, this is a sumptuous movie and I kept wanting to pause the frame just to take in all the little details. Everything felt so distinctly Ozian, all the bizarre textures and fabric choices and steampunk Victorian vibe...ughhhh obsessed.

Screenplay - I think my overall take for this section is: The additions they made were fun, but if I'd been in charge, I would have prioritised completely different things lol.

With the 3 hour runtime, I guess I just assumed they would put all that glorious extra time towards Gelphie and Fiyeraba? Especially because there are SO many juicy cut scenes from older versions of Wicked (e.g. workshops, San Francisco tryouts), and this was an amazing opportunity to bring some of that stuff back.

But instead, we got like...A Sentimental Man dance break, more dialogue with the Wizard, a big action sequence with Elphaba and Glinda escaping the guards, a new song about the ancient sorcerers of Oz, loads of Pfannee and Shenshen dialogue etc.

Again, I don't think any of this stuff was bad! But I wish the extra time had gone towards expanding the character relationships rather than like...The Wizard Will Dance For You Now lol.

(Not to mention they cut some of Fiyeraba's dialogue - a BIZARRE choice, I scream into the void etc, these two have such limited time together already, Why Would You Cut More Of It)

Misc Things I Loved - Galinda and Elphaba's new little 'signature wave' for each other, based on their Ozdust dance. Destroyed me emotionally every time they used it.

- Popular was a MASTERCLASS in adapting a musical theatre number to screen, I was so worried it would be Too Much but they pitched it just right. It was hysterically funny but still sincere, Galinda was very much 'kid who's had too much sugar at 3am' and she was so DRAMATIC and silly and sweet, I'm besotted fjhakjsdhaksjda.

- ALL THE CHOREOGRAPHY. Bursting with energy, highly musical. I found myself wishing the camera would slow down / zoom out a bit, so we could enjoy it more fully.

- Doctor Dillamond actually saying to Elphaba that she has a friend in him, and gently offering her one of his hooves to so they could 'shake hands'. My friend and I were both like 'we did not expect to get emotional about the goat professor, yet here we are'.

- Fiyero 'yeah I ate grass as a child' Tigelaar. he absolutely did. not a single doubt in my mind.

- The Wizard, trying to convince Elphaba to join him: uhhhh you can even bring your...friend...with you! (I was literally like HAHAHA HE GETS IT oh no. he gets it. oh no. I just loved that he seizes immediately on the one thing that might sweeten the deal for Elphaba, which is having Glinda with her.)

[2manyythoughts]

Arcane S2 Review/Random Thoughts

Look at them. They're so happy.

Btw I'm not familiar with LoL lore so my thoughts are just as a casual watcher of the show. I'm gonna be very critical in this post. Keep in mind, these are just my opinions. If you think differently, that’s cool

tl;dr Arcane season 2 is entertaining but doesn’t carry nearly as much emotional or thematic weight as the 1st season imo

Likes

• Gorgeous animation I mean obv

• Soundtrack is still pretty amazing (besides my unpopular opinion)

• "What's wrong with my pants?"

• I liked the siblings bonding again

• Timebomb. I love Jinx and Ekko. They both can stand alone as characters and the relationship they have adds more to them imo (doesn’t take away from them, unlike another ship…)

• JayVik is cute. Platonically, romantically, whatever. Their love transcends space and time. They are soulmates

•I liked the Ekko scenes a lot in general. I think he was one of the only characters that felt consistent with how he was in season 1. Ekko, Heimerdinger, and Jayce seemed more in-character than a lot of the others.

• Episode 7

•Jinx seems very alive!! I liked the blimp callback to the first season.

•The 3D, 2D, music, character design, storyboarding, etc. artists of this show are all amazing. I can’t thank them enough for bringing us this flawed visual masterpiece.

Dislikes/Disappointments

•Character conflicts were way more surfacey. I don’t recall any being about ideological clashes, which the first season was rife with. The conflict seemed much more physical than ideological.

•The conflict of the story suddenly became large-scale, which was to the story’s detriment. This is a pitfall of many fantasy works. The 1st season was great because it focused on the small-scale, the conflict between the sisters Jinx and Vi. This small-scale conflict was so impactful because it was personal. Also, we understand it was caused by a larger issue, that being the divide between Piltover and Zaun. We can relate the themes of estrangement and classism back to our own reality. There was a shit ton of complex and nuanced ideas in the 1st season. That the desire to help could cause irreparable damage, that people who seem villainous can make genuine connections (show genuine love), that the wealth of one society is built on the exploitation of another, etc.

•And then season 2 was just all over the place. It wanted to do way too much with too little time. It didn’t have a clear focus like the first. Worst of all, it became a “defeat the big bad” type of story in the end, when the first season showed us that it was never about defeating some villain to end all conflict, but about systemic issues and flawed decisions that are almost impossible to prevent and inevitably lead to tragedy. The story of Arcane was bastardized into becoming a near black and white story, when initially it was all about the grays in between.

• Where did the class conflict go? I don’t agree that the conflict was magically solved at the end by having Piltover and Zaun team up, they (tbf, very briefly) showed us at the end that the counsel still showed contempt for Sevika representing Zaun. But then I wonder if their themes about societal oppression were even what they intended to do with the story to begin with. I think it’s wonderful that we could interpret this story as a meaningful commentary about the oppression of the lower classes (and other things), but ultimately season 2 shows us what the writers actually intended. It seems they weren’t ever trying to deliver that complicated a story. Their main goal was to write an entertaining story about LoL characters. So, I personally don’t criticize the show for this, but I fully share the disappointment. We were at the cusp of greatness.

• I was all for Caitlyn dictator arc but ig it wasn't meant to be. No, she is simply Vi's girlfriend. Vi's girlfriend who is part of a society that actively oppresses/exploits her people and later gasses them (why was Vi okay with that and why was it just tossed aside??).

• Oh boy, Jinx. I was all for Jinx becoming Zaun's symbol but that was only dangled in front of us and not really fleshed out. In this case, it was too much show and not enough tell. Also Jinx's psychosis just sorta disappeared.

•Don’t get me started on the jail scene. We understand you want your sesbian lex (the scene itself was hot!), but there’s a time and a place. When your sister obviously looks distraught like she’s about to kill herself, maybe don’t start banging your girlfriend.

• Vi. You are a fighter. What happened? Okay, I can understand that maybe it all just became too much for her. That’s why we see her self-destructive habits, like drinking or entering a fighting ring to just punch away her feelings. But none of these moments are significant (the first is played mainly as a joke, the second as a music video montage), nor are they elaborated on. They don’t really develop her character, either. It’s a shame.

• Loris or that guy who looked like Vander. What was the point of him? That he was just a normal guy who died unceremoniously like they do in war with no fanfare? Sure, you can argue that. I still think it was odd how much attention they brought to him only to have virtually no impact in the story

• Viktor went from Hex-Jesus to destroyer-of-worlds way too fast and it felt very out of character

• So Silco knowing Jinx and Vi's mom makes his interactions with them in season 1 retroactively less compelling, especially his interactions with Jinx. I'm just gonna block that out and say he got amnesia

•Practically every character was flanderized and not nearly as complex as in season 1

• The Black Rose plot line should've been cut out. It took way too much time and only advanced Mel's arc, none of the others

• Ambessa and Viktor becoming the big bads was really weak. You had an intricately nuanced and complex plot, what happened

• I still don't understand how Viktor manipulated everything at the end and Idk if I like that plot point anyways

• When I watched the ending, I didn't really feel anything but confused and I wished I hadn't felt that. After I let my opinions stew, I simultaneously appreciated the season more and saw more of its flaws.

Unpopular Opinions?

• The opening was misleading... I'm not a great theorist, but I saw the Macbeth, Phantom of the Opera, and L'Miserables theories and got so hyped but none were fulfilled. I'm actually not criticizing the show for this but it would've been so cool to have those elements.

• The lyrics of Wasteland are too on the nose and the beat is clunky

• I liked Vander being brought back but I feel like he only really was there to bring the sisters closer together and tug at our heartstrings

• Characters acted too silly at times imo

• I could hear the sad music but not feel the sadness (unlike season 1 which wrecked me, “ripped out all my parts”)

• I was only slightly saddened by Isha's death. Imo she didn't have that much development so I didn't feel it that much. I still like her but alas she wasn't fundamentally much of a character

Misc

• Damn the shitposters, fanartists, fan fiction writers (I don’t read those but I bet), etc are cooking

• Violyn is still an amazing ship name and I like it on a surface level (if only the characters weren’t botched and the relationship development was as good as it...)

• "Our Love" is one of the best Arcane songs and I think it's my personal favorite. It's just so cozy and nostalgic

[wyrvel]

hi

I reread the without a softness showing series. It's been roughly 3 years since my last read (according to my bookmarks at least) and God. Do you know the way sometimes you can go back to a fic and it doesn't hit the same? Yeah, none of that. You and Simkjrs both make it so so easy to fall in love with the way you write your characters, and feeling emotionally attached to them.

It was an intimate experience. I genuinely felt a bit like a voyeur, peaking at the events occurring in Izuna's own mind, and into the workings of the Uchiha clan. I think the best way to sum up how I felt by the end of the tulmutous emotional journey Izuna takes us through, is achingly sad. The horrifying experiences of war, and the reality of body-defilement that all the characters living in this world have to endure, most especially the Uchiha clan, that have the threat of bloodline thieves among other things constantly hanging over their heads. The difficult parental relationships, and the complicated sibling relationships too, Izuna's constant need to keep up with all the expectations placed on him as the clan heir, and needing to keep up with Tobirama's monstrous growth rate. The grief, and painful experiences that he has had to deal with, that still have his soul in their grip. Izuna's duty to his clan, the responsibility that comes with being born into power. The depth and meticulous writing of all these issues bring Izuna utterly too life, and convey with them the force of all his strongly felt emotions. The events occurring are full of political underlying forces, and personal aspects relating to each character, and it is so deeply nuanced and tragic that the only word that does not feel too overbearing or incapable of describing the truth of my own emotions is sad. That sadness that comes with the weight of the whole world with it, and leaves pangs of aches. It is extremely hard to not deeply relate to Izuna as a character. The world building in this work is simply amazing. Details for how different clans operate inwardly, intra-clan politics, and intra-clan wars very clearly show how much thought went into fleshing it all out.

Anyways. Moral of the story is I love you, this is amazing and I was writing a much much longer proper review but it got. Deleted. So. Off to write a lil message for Simkjrs. Oh, and I absolutely love Kuroji, and the little interactions izuna had with him at night, and yeah. God I was sobbing. I'll write a proper review again someday.

Thank you for your beautiful message 🥹

Izuna was really a gateway to me for writing really involved character writing. He was conceived as the most volatile possible outsider POV to Tobirama's autism, but once Simkjrs picked up Tobirama, it also became a challenge of making Izuna's behaviour really erratic to Tobirama's outsider POV, particularly Tobirama's very repressed, painstakingly maintained rules and obligations. Trying to make them perfect foils carved new pathways in my brain.

Very little of what Izuna does makes sense, because everything he does is dominated by insecurity and reflexive emotional reactions, and writing a character who is impossible to interpret on the outside that also makes perfect sense to a reader provides you a really awesome pov experience. I highly recommend everyone to try writing an unreliable narrator who's hobby is lying to themselves.

I'm especially touched by how vivid the world is to you because... I did sort of wing a lot of it and patched holes as I went. lol.

[lover-of-mine]

not sure if my ask sent BUT I’m loving people being vocal about the fandom not caring about eddie outside of buddie. it’s been happening since the dawn of time (lol) and there’s a reason so many vocalists about eddie decided to be loud and obnoxious about it (including yours truly). his journey is nuanced and he’s such a good character to explore a straight-maybe to bucksexual love with but it will take TIME for anything to happen because of that journey. still. you said eddie rights and i love that.

This is the only ask I got from you, so it probably got lost in the blue void if you sent something else. But absolutely, something I noticed during the hiatus, because while I have been lurking around the fandom since season 5, I only really started to actively post thoughts and stuff after the lightning, so I spent a really long time observing people even more when I started posting random metas, or just thoughts, people have this almost pathological need to make everything about Eddie about Buck. I legit remember making a post about Shannon and blocking several people because they kept making what happened with Shannon about Buck, and that's not it. Eddie is a FASCINATING character. He is so nuanced. And he is so well written and acted out. Like, I was casual about the show until fear-o-phobia (tbf that was the 3rd episode I watched live but still). Eddie grabbed me by the throat that day. And there's so much that people give Buck a pass that they would NEVER give to Eddie. And there's so much to explore with him. And yeah, I think his queer journey will involve Buck somehow, but because I truly believe that man is demi and I don't care about anything else. Making him have a complicated relationship with attraction as a whole is so much more interesting than saying he's just looking for a beard his whole life. And the amount of people I saw picking fights about people not shipping Buck and Tommy because "they have this need that Eddie should be the only man for Buck" (when literally everyone in the fandom hc Buck 1.0 as having slept with guys too) that are people I had seen saying that Eddie only ever loved Buck, straight up erasing the whole concept that he might've been in love with his wife is wild. If Eddie is not adding something to Buck and this idea that Buck is this baby that needs to be protected and can do no wrong, then he is being unnecessary or ooc or just plain weird and THAT'S WILD. Sure Buck and Eddie have a compelling relationship, and I LOVE exploring the possibilities around how much Eddie loves Buck, but Eddie exists for more than loving Buck and both of them exist outside of each other. Honestly, right now, Eddie needs some defenders because it's rough out here. If people can pick fights about Buck the way they do, Imma do the same about Eddie. If people don't agree then that's their problem.

[ashaflemythal]

I haven’t seen any real critical takes on veilguard on here, so I wanted to add my 2 cents and open up a discussion bc at this moment I would say I’m beefing with BioWare lol.

Firstly, did I have fun playing veilguard? Uh, yes? I guess? Technically? I would definitely say the combat system and a lot of the gameplay itself is far better than it has been in previous games, and made me more engaged.

However, the writing issues at BioWare came to a major head here.

1) i didn’t feel like they went into the political and social implications of what was going on at all?? The elven gods coming back would bring so many other consequences beyond the destruction and blight. We didn’t see how this affected the way elves were treated, especially somewhere like Tevinter.

2) what happened to the Templar/mage conflict? The implications of the elven gods being alive and back are that then the chant and chantry are mostly wrong. There is no “magic was made to serve man and never rule over him.” This would likely make mages lash out at templars for being oppressed over what have turned out to essentially be lies. The templars then would likely split into those that leave the chant and focus on the real threats before them, and those who dig in their heels and decide that mages should still be oppressed bc of the dangers no matter what the chantry says. This would be such an interesting political shift to witness! And I’m sad we didn’t get this amount of depth

3) what happened to Solas’ followers? There was something so interesting to explore about having current elves helping him because they felt he was doing the right thing. We don’t run into any of his followers at all! And elves would definitely have more than enough reason to seek the world of the ancients and return to Arlathan given tevinter slavery and general oppression across Thedas, so what happened to that?

4) the only complex companion relationship that is allowed in-game is with rook and whoever was hardened with the treviso/minrathous choice. Otherwise, you can’t really have an antagonistic relationship with any of them. The only way to not progress a good relationship is to not engage in their content which I feel like is very weak writing. In DAI, you walk in on Cassandra and varric physically fighting and have to side with one of them. You can tell Cullen to keep taking lyrium. You can pick the wrong option in a companion quest and worsen your relationship. Where was that in this game?

5) the roleplaying, or lack there of. Sometimes I would pick the most aggressive option and it would still sound pretty nice, all things considered, where is my ability to feel differently outside of the very narrow window the game provides?

6) the STAKES of it all. The companions all seem very chill about things, all things considered. They are finding out things that would politically turn thedas on its head, and they’re having these calm discussions around a coffee table. I’m currently on my second play through, and it feels like none of these discoveries are given the weight they deserved, after three games of built up lore.

7) the gods’ allies. The motivations of the bad guys can pretty much be summed up by saying “want power” and that creates such shallow villains. Like yeah, obviously they’re bad bc they just want power and don’t care about people, but what about villains that do care about others? Villains that are complicated? I mean hell even though Alexius was mostly like “yes corypheus power” there was that grounding aspect of him wanting to save his son who was sick. I don’t feel like we had anything that tangible or real from major villains in veilguard

Ok, long post, but I do feel like BioWare has started to shy away from nuance and gray areas in a way I don’t like. It is important to show the complicated perspectives of evil people because that is the same thing we have to deal with irl. As an action-adventure game, it’s fine, but veilguard can scarcely call itself a true rpg. I don’t know, my feelings about it are complicated but all I know is that this game was quite disappointing to me especially compared to DAI, and I want to hope for better from the next game but given the way their BioWare’s last couple releases have gone I can’t say I’m expecting a lot. Anyway, how are yall feeling fr?

[micamicster]

HII MICA i just wanted to ask your thoughts in the new season now that youve finished it, especially your favorite moments, episodes, and songs!!

Ok here are my long awaited (sorry babe!) season 2 thoughts! This really got away from me haha but long story short: I loved it ❤️

Long story medium: Nida Manzoor has done it again—beautiful, vibrant, funny, and poignant. A season 2 that succeeds in expanding the world and deepening our understanding of the characters. And the songs are great!

Long story LONG: under the cut <3 (and also I’ve reread this and i have managed to avoid any major spoilers so if you haven’t watched yet this post should be safe!)

I went into this season VERY apprehensive. I think the first season is a practically perfect season of television, and over the last few years I’ve had plenty of time to think of all the ways a second season could fail to deliver. But as the credits rolled on season 2 episode 1 my sister and I just sat there grinning at the screen like you guys we are SO back!!!!

Some thoughts, in no particular order:

The writing: Nida Manzoor has a knack for putting her finger right on the sore spot—right on the place where the show is most likely to receive criticism, and digging in. Not in a gotcha, bad faith sort of way, but by pulling those issues apart and showing how painful and complicated and nuanced these questions of representation and responsibility really are. Not to give too many spoilers but whew. Her episode fives! Other people can speak to this better than me but this seasons episode 5 was raw, painful, pointed… simultaneously a criticism of art and representation as political commentary, and like the only possible political commentary that could be made under these conditions. Fictional battles with censorship, identity, representation, and responsibility meet the very real world, where Nida Manzoor is producing a real show. To quote manzoor herself, “i don’t want to give the answer to the audience because i don’t have it—I don’t want to ever feel like I’m preaching or delivering a sermon about anything; instead, just posing the question.” It’s such a good show guys.

Character Arcs: The arcs given to the band members who were secondary characters in season one were executed beautifully. Getting more insight into Taz, Ayesha, and Bisma (and giving more to do to their incredible actresses!) was exactly what I’d hoped for from a season 2.

God I Wish The Show Was Longer part A: While I loved (and badly wanted!) more time with the other girls, I did miss the tight focus on saira and Amina as narrative foils and drivers of each others character development that season one had. Not just from a shipping perspective! (although we all know I’m guilty of shipping for sure lol). But I did miss their relationship, and a longer season would have given us more time to spare from the other important arcs going on to return to things I loved about season one.

Compared to season 1: One difference I noticed was how the surrealist elements aren’t only contained to Amina/her narration anymore, but that other characters have them or interact with them (Bisma pausing her arguments, Ahsan trying and failing to interrupt the spotlight on Amina and Billy). I thought it was a great way to show how much closer the characters have become (that Ahsan would even notice Amina’s little fantasy!) and also as a way to give narration over to different characters (Bisma being the clear pov in those fights as compared to Amina narrating things she’s only heard about in season 1). Another difference is how each episode of season 1 is so well-contained and precise, while I feel the show sprawls more in season 2 as a result of expanding the world and becoming more of a true ensemble show. This isn’t a criticism—shows need to expand in order to continue to grow! Just an observation, which leads us to:

God I Wish The Show Was Longer part 2: Around episode 4 and 5 I wondered if they were going to be able to tie everything up, given how many complex issues and conflicts had been raised. I had no reason to doubt—Nida Manzoor brought these conflicts and arcs to deeply satisfying conclusions, without feeling like these issues lost nuance or were reduced in complexity for the sake of a finale. It’s incredible what all she managed to achieve in 6 episodes! That said, I would have loved to have been able to see more of the characters journeys, and one or two more episodes would have given things more room to breathe. I would have loved to see more of Taz’s work with other artists, or Saira becoming more comfortable with the idea of herself as a mentor. Bisma’s arc in particular I thought could have used more time, although Faith Omole’s stunning performance of Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood does beautiful emotional work for her arc (and tbh for everyone else’s arcs—it’s a centerpiece of the episode and a great example of what a song can do for character, emotion, and arc in a musical narrative). Which brings us to!

The performances/songs: Putting these two together to say that every actress delivered an incredible award-worthy performance, juggling comedy and dramatic acting skillfully. And the songs! Villain Era is on fucking repeat in this house. Already said Misunderstood is amazing but it should be said again. Nina is pretty much the toughest act in the world to follow but Faith fucking does it. Stunning ❤️ Speaking of Faith her doing the voices in Oops I Did It Again was the happiest I’ve been all year oh my god this show is so much funnnnnnn everyone watch it it’s so! fun!

[aliferousdreamer]

Hi :)! 3, 4, 18 for the blorbo ask game? (from any fandom you like!)

hi, thanks so much for sending this in - you're so sweet and this was fun to answer!! 😊💖

i decided to choose stranger things for the fandom because i haven't really talked about the show much for around a year or two (for various reasons, i've kinda lost my love for the show), with my blorbos being el and lucas!!

3. was there any specific point / any specific moment that suddenly made this character your Blorbo, or did you slowly grow to love them more and more until they became a Blorbo to you?

i actually loved lucas straight away and he was pretty much my favourite ever since i started watching the show. his character was great and caleb's performance really warmed me to him. then when lucas started getting hate for lucas being mean to el i felt more and more protective over the character. hating on my favourite characters is a sure-fire way of getting me to love them even more. so yeah, i've been a big lucas fan from day one and funnily enough my post popular post on tumblr is a lucas post during season 4 - i think it's sitting at 28k notes now, which is bonkers?! - and i wouldn't have it any other way!!

el is a little more complicated... i really, really liked her through season 1 and that's mostly down to millie's performance (honestly she gave by far one of the most impressive and nuanced performance on the show, counting both the child and adult actors). i still really liked her in season 2 and i liked her in season 3 (especially her relationship with max), but something happened after season 3 and i stopped liking her as a character.

i just assumed i was getting fed up of her, but then some time before season 4 began i realised that it wasn't el the character i was fed up with, but rather some of the writing choices around her story. the writers keep making her suffer so much every season and i really don't like the retconning bs in season 4, as well as the fact that she's kept away from the party most of the time so we don't see her interact with her friends anymore.

hopefully season 5 will have more scenes of the core four: el, mike, lucas and dustin (the core group of kids from season 1), so el will bond more with her friends... and hopefully it'll have more hopclair interactions!!

4. what’s the thing you love the most about your Blorbo?

there's a lot to like about lucas, and most of the reasons as to why i've always liked him can be found in season 1. i like his role in the party of being the skeptical, cautious, practical, determined, grounded, courageous, realistic and more down to earth one. i remember when i first watched the show, i found his character refreshing and his personality meshed really well with his friends. plus, this kid was so freaking brave and tenacious that he ready to infiltrate an army base on his own to bring will back, armed with a slingshot, a bandana and a dream lol. keeping with season 1, he was very flawed in the way he treated el but ultimately his attitude was understandable and he was ready to admit when he's wrong and grow from his mistakes. i liked his flaws and imo they made him the most realistic kid out the party. i also really like seeing his warm, gentle and understanding side that we see especially when he's with max in season 2/4. he's just a complete sweetie with a heart of pure gold.

with el, i've always been drawn to her being observant, adaptable, resilient and a lot more intelligent and intuitive than a lot of people give her credit for. from the very beginning we're shown that this girl is a survivor. also the fact that she's suffered more than anyone else on the show and still remained a fundamentally good and compassionate person who chooses to save the people who need her every single time shows her strength. she's so selfless and self-sacrificing character (mostly down to her trauma-induced guilt) to the point where she ends up hurting herself... and to be honest, i don't think enough characters in the show and fans of the show appreciate just how much she does for everyone.

18. do you ship your Blorbo with any character?

yes!! i love lumax for lucas! him and max work really well together and caleb has great chemistry with sadie! i do think the show dropped the ball a bit in season 3 where we barely had any lumax content. season 4 was fantastic for lumax and i hope we get something good for them in season 5. i can definitely see max coming out of her coma and going to the movies with lucas. after everything they went through in season 4 it's bound to happen.

i've also liked henclair in the past and when season 3 was airing i was into byclair, but ehhhhh i haven't really thought about them for a long time.

my favourite el ship is definitely elmax!! i remember being annoyed at the end of season 2 that the show made el be hostile towards max. as much as it made sense, it sucked seeing the only two girls in the party pitted against each other. and then season 3 came around and elmax was born!!!!!! and i loved it!!!!!!!!! max was so important for el and really helped her come into her own person. also, with el max was able to completely let her guard down and actually be a carefree teenage girl!!! sadie and millie had great chemistry together and they're just so cute!!

another ship i like for el is, controversially (at least online and especially tumblr), mileven. i know it gets hated on relentlessly on here, but i simply don't see it as a horrible ship like a lot of fans do and i think it gets ridiculous amount of hate on here. i feel bad for the mileven fans on here that have to sift through huge amount of hate to see any positive content for their ship.

so yeah, i think mileven is really sweet and in every season you can see how much el and mike mean to each other. i liked them best from seasons 1-3 but i didn't like what was done with their relationship in season 4. the more i've thought about it, the more i don't really like the california storyline or nina project storyline, or the "mike struggling to el 'i love you' again" storyline, or mike's character being mostly revolved around el/will, or el being separated from everyone yet again. this isn't exclusive to mileven though, i have issues with a lot of character choices in season 4 which i've disliked more and more over time.

however, i will say that the mileven reunion scene in season 2 is just unparalleled. they spent an entire season apart with mike believing el was dead but still called her every day for a year, him sensing her presence in the void (which is crazy?!?!?!). then in the scene itself, the way they both lose their breath just looking at each other, the way it's shot in slow motion like time has slowed down for them as all they can do is look at each other, the way mike looks at her in complete awe and adoration is just........ peak yearning.

this is one of the best stranger things moments from the entire series.

thanks so much for sending this in!!! 💕

[arvadthecursed]

haven't said anything about it here but. I am very deeply saddened by Liam's death.

I remember hearing "What Makes You Beautiful" for the first time and being astonished. I grew up an ugly duckling with very few friends. And here was a band telling me I didn't know I was beautiful, and that was the reason I was wonderful. It gave me a sense of hope, that maybe yeah, I couldn't see my own beauty but maybe others could.

And, as y'all know, I have auDHD. I didn't have the words to explain how I felt as a kid. I just knew that I felt wrong, like I was an alien compared to other girls. I got picked on a lot and sometimes didn't realize it til after; or sometimes, no one would talk to me because my interests were "too weird." But 1D gave me something to talk to other girls about. We talked about our favorite boys, the music, and yes, the fanfic. I know RPF is often looked down upon now but when I was 11-13, we commonly passed it around. The "kidnapped by 1D" fics were popular for a reason: escapism, which, for hormonal, emotional tweenage girls, is super important. I remember reading Dark (yes, THAT Dark) in 7th grade because the girls were passing it around in FB chats. Now, we shouldn't have been reading that particular fic at that age, of course, but we were 13, of course we were gonna read it lol. We giggled over how shocking it was and showed it to our friends bc that's what 13 yr old girls do.

I made my first real best friend because of 1D. We bonded over watching videos of the guys together, buying J14 and Tiger Beat for the posters we would meticulously put on our walls, listening to the music. We made fanpages on Facebook together where we would write imagines and post pictures of the guys. We called each other our favorite guys' nicknames and hell, my first url on Tumblr was "hayitstommo" after Louis. My first posts on this site almost 12 years ago were 1D related. That friend and I supported each other through tough times; I helped her when her mother was sick, and she comforted me when my grandma died. I won't ever forget that bond.

And I know about the allegations against Liam, absolutely. I believe Maya. I feel deeply for her in this situation as I know she's received horrible vitriol for something that was not her fault. I can't imagine what she's feeling right now.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's this weird grief in me. I am sad for Liam, for his family, for Maya, for my fellow fans. But I'm also grieving that sense of community I didn't really realize I had lost til now. 1D let me connect to others and feel like a girl for the first time in my life, when, as I said before, I had felt like an alien, like I could never belong. The music made me happy. The ability to talk to girls who otherwise would've stuck their nose up at me bolstered my confidence, especially when I felt so wrong inside from undiagnosed neurodivergence.

The emotions I feel about Liam himself are complicated. I know he struggled with drug addition; I know he was an abuser. I know he was one of the guys who gave me my greatest comfort in one of the worst years of my life, when I had to move houses, my grandma died, and then I had to move states. I know he was flawed and I had put him on a pedestal as a kid because kids don't have full pictures of their idols.

I keep thinking about all this. The outpouring of love from Directioners -- even people like me, who wouldn't call themselves that now but certainly identified with the fandom was kids -- has been astounding. I think we're all feeling a very weird sense of grief right now, knowing what we know about Liam, his untimely death, and our relationship with the band and how it's changed over the years. There are fond memories I will always have that were because of 1D. But now that I'm older, I have a more nuanced perspective, and that gives me this weird grief in my chest that hasn't gone away since I heard the news.

Anyway, sorry for rambling. I hope this kind of conveys how I feel.

[theclearblue]

Is it bad that I feel personally victimised by WCI or am I just being dramatic?

I don't think so anon, I think the themes of family in WCI are some of the most personal and nuanced Oda has ever done and while tragic in so many ways, I think results in the best way of conveying how powerful found family is but also how someone can have complicated feelings towards their blood family.

Throughout all of One Piece, you can see this through line of found family and how blood relations isn't what matters in who you consider family (The ASL brothers, Bellemere and Nojiko for Nami, Kuina for Zoro, Zeff for Sanji, Saul for Robin, Tom and Iceburg for Franky, and while not a strawhat, Corazon and Law deeply affected me as well). This is obviously a trope Oda has liked writing for a long time and one he does well, but (with somewhat the exception of Marineford/Post-War arc with Whitebeard and Ace), WCI is the first time he really dives into these themes of what family is, and what I really appreciated, how messy it can be.

(I uhhh wrote a lot after the cut so be prepared for that)

And it's not just Sanji in this arc (I'll get to him though don't worry), from Germa, from the Big Mom Pirates, and the Firetank Pirates, so many characters are acting as narrative foils to Sanji and dealing with family related trauma, and responding to it differently. The ones that really got me were Pudding and Katakuri though, and they're pretty similar to each other as well. I've talked a little bit about Pudding already here so I'll talk a bit more about Katakuri instead, but it hit me really hard when he made a temple for himself, and he lets the rumors fly about "his back has never touched the ground, he's praying to a god of war, no one has seen him eat" and it's just. Him laying on his back, eating donuts happily. And the scene is kind of silly and funny right, but I kid you not my New Year's resolution this year was to just, try to be more comfortable in my living room/kitchen without thinking everyone is going to judge me for, what? Eating? Watching a show I like? Completely normal things, but if you've ever grown up in a house where just, EVERYTHING you do is picked apart and criticized by family, it's easier to just shut yourself away in a room and hide it. And isn't that tragic? Katakuri projecting this image of strength that his family asks of him so much that he feels he has to hide completely normal things like lying down and eating? I could go even deeper into this character but this is just one example of a character's complicated relationship with his family, where he hides so much of himself for them, but also it stemming from a place of love after what happened to Brulee when they were kids.

And now to talk about Sanji. Ohhhh where do I even start with this guy. As kind of a sidenote, if you've seen any of my posts from Thriller Bark through Punk Hazard, I was really struggling to like Sanji as a character and I didn't make that a secret. Which was upsetting to me because, from Baratie-Enies Lobby (and really good moments at the end of Thriller Bark and Saoboady) he was a favorite of mine! And at times I thought his character was done pretty dirty where he was stripped down to a singular gag and Oda leaned into it way way way too hard. But it's immensely satisfying to me to see all the little seeds Oda planted for so many years come to fruition in Zou and WCI, to the point I think he's turned from being the most one note strawhat to the most nuanced and layered in the span of a singular saga. And that was incredible to see.

I think what really captivated me about Sanji from the beginning were how strong and rigid his convictions are, and that even though he's kind of a rude brat (I say that with love lol), he's so undeniably kind, even to a fault. And with his first backstory we see how a lot of his rigid rules he's made for himself come from, it's from Zeff. He doesn't hit women, he'll feed anyone who's hungry no matter what, and he learns to fight to protect people he cares about, but he isn't really a fighter in the same way Luffy and Zoro are, and that's made clear in his desire to protect his hands in a fight so that he can do what he really loves, and that's to cook. A lot of what makes Sanji who he is today is shown here, but Oda was smart in showing aspects of Sanji that clearly don't stem from Zeff without telling the audience why for the longest time.

He shares the dream of the All Blue with Zeff, but where did it come from? Zeff is kind of similar where he has this hard exterior but underneath is kind as well, but it's taken to another level with Sanji where it becomes self sacrificial. Throwing himself down the mountain on Drum Island, taking the lightning bolts from Enel for Nami and Usopp on Skypeia, boarding the water train alone to try and get to Robin, and most prominently, at least for me, him trying to take Luffy's pain at the end of Thriller Bark instead of Zoro, where he very clearly places more value on Zoro's dream and life than his own. That was the moment to me that made me really realize he does not see value in himself, unless he's providing something he deems useful. And if the situation calls for it, he'll throw his life and dream away if that makes him "useful" not realizing that the crew don't see him as this dispensable thing like he sees himself.

And all of Sanji's strengths and flaws as a character just come to make this perfect storm and mess that is Whole Cake Island. And the kindness that is Sanji's most definitive trait is so clearly not in this family, at least not seen at first. His brothers are made to have no zero empathy and beat down on him constantly, verbally and physically, and Judge just watches and doesn't care, eventually just hides Sanji in a cell and pretends he's dead. Because he was physically weaker and human. And yet he continues to cook because he loves doing it, he remembers his mother's kindness, and his dream of the all blue is formed in a small dark room and just. This got to me big time. Not to get too personal but the set of expectations put onto Sanji by his family, ones he can never live up to and finding passion in something his family finds to be worthless and a waste of time. Finding an escape in books and finding his dream there even though everything around him is hell. Slowly realizing the extent of cruelty that his father will go to as he grows up. Very unfortunately for me this might be the most relatable character I have ever come across in regards to my own experiences. I'm someone to voice my thoughts on things even if nobody else cares (hence why I've been liveblogging on here since Drum Island I think lmao) but while watching Sanji's backstory it affected me like nothing else ever has. It's not even something that made me cry really, I was just in shock after watching it for awhile. And Reiju saying to Sanji, "There are people out there who will accept you for who you are, you need to get out of here" which is so similar to what Saul said to Robin and even similar to what one of my sisters said to me growing up. Yeah. I also felt personally victimized by Whole Cake Island lmao.

But the end result of Sanji's arc is so beautiful and amazing. Sanji putting on this act of looking down on Luffy, and once again trying to sacrifice himself to protect those that he cares about, but Luffy just cuts through the bullshit because he knows that isn't really Sanji talking in that fight. Luffy's speech as Sanji is being driven away where he says that he can't become the pirate king without him by his side. This isn't an original thought but Sanji and Zoro both kind of represent different aspects of Luffy's dreams. Zoro with a seemingly impossible ideal and putting 100% of yourself into it. "I will become the greatest swordsman." "I will become the pirate king." But Sanji's dream of finding the All Blue reflects Luffy's dream of finding the One Piece. They both don't know if either of those things are even real (the audience at this point knows the one piece is real, but to my knowledge and where I'm at, Luffy doesn't). Yet there's this childlike wonder they both have about these dreams, because, what if it is real? Luffy knows that Sanji is irreplaceable because of the ideals that they share, not because of what Sanji can provide or be "useful" as.

It takes so much for Sanji to go running back to Luffy, and even when he does, he obviously gets insecure again and starts listing off reasons why he isn't worthy enough to go back to the Sunny and to the crew. And God is it satisfying to see Luffy absolutely rock his shit for saying that and asking him to just SAY what he really wants. And Sanji breaking down and saying how much he misses the Sunny and the crew and also airing out how he feels backed into a corner and doesn't know the way out, that he wants to help his family even though he doesn't consider them family and he KNOWS it doesn't make sense, he is being kind to a fault again. But Luffy smiling at him and saying "Well, that's just how you are. Let's go crash the wedding." That's when I started sobbing lmao, because there is such unconditional love and kindness in that statement that Sanji has so desperately needed ever since his mother died. Someone who just accepts him and all his faults wholeheartedly, and is that not the most beautiful representation of family??? His relationship with his blood family is so messy and complicated and full of mixed feelings(and that's very common), but his feelings about Zeff and Luffy and the rest of the strawhats are so clearly full of adoration and unconditional love for them, and they feel that same love for him as well! How lucky all of them are where they found their people, and how everyone else in this world has that opportunity to find the space and people they truly belong to, not tied down by blood. Whole Cake Island's themes on family were so well done and also fundamentally changed me as a person I think.

[gillianthecat]

Honestly, the relationship I'm most interested in right now is Joe1's with Joe2's mother. This orphan boy suddenly gets a mom! Except that she thinks he's someone else and he has to pretend to be that other person. Joe1's entire personality is based around his loneliness and his desire to have someone and now he's been dropped into this loving home but he's still all alone in it. There is so much there! And I feel like Poom is conveying these complicated feelings with his body language. But i suspect the show won't really explore it :-/

My Stand In... is not working for me as much as i would like it too. There are a lot of interesting threads, the cinematography is beautiful, and my adoration of Up has expanded to include Poom, but it feels underwritten to me. I want to love these characters, but I'm finding the behind the scenes clips more compelling. Ming is so awful and fucked up and I wish they would really just embrace that and go full out thriller/horror story. (Maybe the will! Like I said, I haven't read the synopsis. But currently it feels like it's trying to be romance.)

Poom and Up are both good actors, and I enjoying watching them, but neither are quite good enough to overcome the limitations of the script and make their characters fully coherent. (I am pleasantly surprised by Poom, who looks like Pond to me so I mentally placed him in the pretty-but-can't-act slot. But he's very nuanced and expressive! Not convincing as a stunt double though lol.) I don't feel like they have tons of chemistry, which actually works for me so far, because their relationship in Joe1's lifetime was built on assumptions, pretending and ignoring reality. They were playacting a relationship, not actually in one. I don't know if that was a deliberate choice, and they will show better chemistry if/when they fall in love for real, but it kudos to everyone for that subtlety if they do. Everything about their first encounter was perfect.

Are we going to get any explanation as to why Ming is the way he is? Because I love him, but nursing an unrequited crush on his sister's famous boyfriend, even through 4 years on an entirely different continent, is not an explanation for his behavior, merely a symptom of whatever the hell else is going on. And I really wish (hope) we get a chance to dig into that mess. Up can carry it.

[carriehobbs]

I saw you tagged Ellery Wiseman on that poem and am dropping into your inbox to ask for anything you'd like to share about your Button!! (Do you have more than one? Who do they romance? How is their relationship with Nick?) -wayhavenots

omg pd tysm for asking!! 💕💕 there is absolutely nothing in the world i love more than having an excuse to talk about my ocs

i (with some rare exceptions) am the kind of if player that makes a new oc for every romance route i play, so i actually have 5 buttons 🫣 (technically 6, rip elliot wiseman who was from my very first mind blind playthrough, when i just wanted to see if i liked the game. you were very depressed and never became a fully-realized button, but your sacrifice is remembered and your name is retired out of respect). i have a page with very, very brief details on my buttons (and also my detectives for wayhaven) and links to their tags here, but if you use tumblr mobile you've probably never had the opportunity to see it.

this got so very, very long, so the rest is under the cut

my 5 buttons are: ella, ellie, elle, ellis, and ellery (can you guess what naming convention i lifted from the game's default names? lol). what's universally true for all 5 of them (though with some nuance, they all have slightly different feelings about their relationships) is that they're as close as they can be with their parents (because i like john and hope as characters and i find "i really love these people but our relationship became incredibly complicated and we now have to find ways to reconcile our disappointment/anger/etc. with our love for them" to be really compelling. i love mess) and with nick (because i'm a middle child and i accidentally projected my feelings about my siblings (and especially my older sister) onto the button&nick relationship. i physically can't be mean to nick because i cried for about 45 minutes the first time i read the end of chapter 3/chapter 4 and for the first time really considered my sister's mortality, and that changes you).

for a (not really that brief, whoops) rundown of my buttons' whole deals:

ella: equally humorous and confident, very high insightful stat, romancing ambrose. she's independent, intelligent, ambitious, loyal, great at compartmentalizing, and, quite frankly, arrogant. she can be really abrasive sometimes (while she can be a kind and compassionate person, most people don't get to see that side of her and so she can come off as really rather unpleasant - think that know-it-all kid in your class that everyone kind of hates). ella naturally is rather funny/confident/intelligent/etc., but i think, after the incident with hope, she ended up amplifying these inherent traits of hers and making them into a sort of armour that keeps her safe, but also isolates her. i think she's afraid of showing weakness and i think she feels this subconscious need to prove to everyone (including herself) that she's capable. her relationship with nick is the worst out of all of my buttons (but is still incredibly high, think 160/170-ish approval), mainly because she and nick clash the most. she's very independent and knows what she wants and will pursue it (even if it's a boyfriend her brother doesn't like or a career her parents don't want for her) no matter what anyone else thinks, and nick can be a little hover-y (though this improves over the events of the game). she does really love nick (and does actually care about his approval, even if it won't stop her from doing things she knows he won't like), even if she finds him kind of annoying sometimes. she views the incident with hope as a horrible accident that wasn't anyone's fault, and i think she sees better than my other buttons how everyone in the family was affected by the fallout. fun fact: several years post-game, she and ambrose have identical twin girls (ella jokes that she wanted two kids so she and ambrose had twins because "we're efficient". they have girls because ambrose is a girl dad. i am not accepting notes) that share a birthday with nick (because i need ambrose to be forced to participate in a large yearly party that at least partially involves celebrating nick. do you know how many years nick rented a bouncy castle and then proceeded to bounce on the bouncy castle with the girls? it's every year until they decided they're too cool for it. nick's heart broke that day)

eleanor/ellie: more humorous than confident (with confident stat increasing through the game), but has a decent morbid stat too, very high insightful stat, romancing grayson. ellie fulfills my need in every if game/rpg i play to have at least one character who is so, so nice to everyone (my detective alina fulfills this need in wayhaven). she's kind, considerate, forgiving, has a strong sense of morals (except at work, where she's very expedient), and tends to blame herself when things go wrong. she really feels just unbearably guilty about most things: the incident with hope (if she'd acted differently, if she'd been different, etc., maybe it wouldn't have happened), nick's accident in chapter 3, nick having to take care of her through high school... she really struggled after the incident with hope because she needed nick and depended on him so much, but then hated herself for how much she needed him and feeling like she ruined his life (she did project this onto gray when he started hanging around, which is why she didn't like him at first, but over time she realized it wasn't his fault and moved on. and then she got goopy feelings for him). she's not blind to nick's faults, but she adores him (200 approval easily). i think a lot of her growth over the course of the game comes from learning to trust herself and to believe in herself. fun fact: she once made a joke to gray after they started dating (in front of nick and sally too 😬) without thinking about how there'd be "no kids or dog until we have a house". it was way too early in the relationship to be making a joke about having kids or a house. they didn't even live together yet. she's still a little mortified that she said that

elle: confident, very high insightful stat, romancing kent. i love elle because she's kind of relentlessly forward-thinking. she doesn't really dwell on the past except to figure out how to improve the future. she believes strongly that it's what someone does that matters. she's my button who's the most interested in trying to get herself into the npo program. like ella, i think she views the incident with hope as a horrible accident that isn't really anyone's fault, and i think she really makes an effort not to dwell on it or assign blame for what happened. she also has terminal foot-in-mouth disease (talking about bondage with kent in front of your brother, best friend, and instructor after revealing that you'll probably get tortured together, anyone?), which is the bane of her existence. while i think all my buttons struggled with some agoraphobia post-the incident with hope, i think elle really struggled with it: she loves dogs and used to volunteer at an animal shelter, but had to stop because she couldn't handle being outside of her home without sally or nick (she could go to school if she spent the entire day with sally, and then would go straight home) and it took several months for her to feel like she could go places without one or both of them again. once she was able to leave her home independently, she started volunteering at the animal shelter again, and is still there. fun fact: post-game and further into their relationship, she ends up accidentally moving in with kent. it starts by just spending a lot of time at his place because it's so close to nick's (i think a lot of her and kent's dates just involve hanging out together), then more and more of her stuff migrates over, until one day she realizes she's been there for two weeks and all of her clothes are in kent's laundry. she formally moves in after that. she's also my button who's most likely to elope!

ellis: humorous-morbid (slightly more morbid than humorous), tentatively more innovative than insightful (i keep swapping the stats), romancing sally. he's "just some guy" (affectionate) to me, if "just some guy" had gallows' humour. he's been kind of desperately in love with sally since he was 13 and figured out what love was. ellis is the kind of person who looks fine on the surface but really isn't. whereas elle doesn't dwell on the incident with hope because she wants to move forward with her life and not have this one event define her, ellis doesn't dwell on it because doing so will wreck him. he was the closest with hope growing up, since they shared a sense of humour and he felt that she really understood him, and it profoundly hurt when she started to pull away as he got older. he trusted her more than anyone growing up and it hurts a lot now to think about how the people he relies on most now are nick and sally instead. he's not as forward about the guilt he feels and how it affects him as ellie or ellery are, but it's still there. he's also very close with nick and really admires him: nick is ellis's model for what it means to "be a man" (more so than john, but i don't think ellis is really aware of this). ellis also views gray as a sort of quasi-older brother figure and is actually more likely to ask gray for relationship or life advice than nick (mainly because he'd feel a little awkward talking to nick about stuff like relationship advice - also look at nick's relationship track record, gray's probably the safer bet). fun fact: ellis is either the same height as nick or one inch shorter than nick (i can never remember), so if they're out together and the topic of height comes up, he tells people that he's at least two inches shorter than he actually is. this is because nick will lie about his height to make himself taller if given the chance, so ellis gets there first and forces nick to be 5ft9 for an evening (nick hates this).

ellery: humorous, higher insightful stat than interpersonal stat, romancing (m!)glitch. she's such a smartass. she's all jokes and has a quip ready for any situation, but, like ella, i think these are inherent characteristics of hers that get amplified as a defense mechanism. i think it's in chapter 1 of the demo that there's the line that says it's better to have people laughing with you than at you, and that really fits ellery. ellery blames herself for really everything to do with hope and nick, but if she brushes it off with a joke she can pretend to be fine (she's incredibly not - her guilt defines a lot of her relationships with other people and how she views herself). she's also incredibly devoted to her family (to the point where she can't listen to someone criticize them professionally because like. that's her dad. this sometimes causes issues in her and glitch's relationship, because glitch is unafraid to criticize unity when appropriate, but they figure out how to manage it over time). speaking of glitch: she is such a loverrrrrrr 💕💕💕 they really are intolerable together because they're that couple that's just all over each other. everyone around them hopes they'll tone it down after the honeymoon stage ends but they do not 💕 i imagine them moving in together incredibly quickly too. i don't know the exact timeline of the game so far, but even this early on, ellery knows that he's it for her. ellery makes me think the most about what it would actually be like to not only grow up with people who are able to hear your every thought but to never live with someone who can't read your mind. i always imagine ellery as being very comfortable communicating telepathically when she chooses to (she almost got held back from preschool because she didn't speak until she was 3/4 - not because she had speech or language delays, but because why would she speak out loud when she could communicate telepathically? eventually telepathic communication had to be (temporarily) banned in the house to get ellery to speak verbally, and once she did the ban was lifted). telepathic communication also means an entirely different way of communicating between people: visual jokes, jokes where the comedy isn't in the punchline but in the way the joke is constructed before it's been told, being able to rely on the person you're talking to picking up subtleties from your thoughts if you're having trouble expressing yourself in words, etc. and glitch is the first person she's ever lived with who can't read her mind (sometimes she'll be in another room half way through a conversation with glitch in her head and she'll ask him for his opinion on something she thought, only for him to have to remind her that he cannot hear her. luckily glitch finds this funny when it happens and lightly ribs her about it). she gets incredibly frustrated with herself sometimes because she doesn't know how to explain to him how much he means to her or how much she loves him. she tries, but she never feels like it really encompasses the depth of the feeling (it's the one time she wishes he was a ment, so he could hear it). fun fact: about a year into their relationship, ellery wrote glitch a really bad love poem to try and express her feelings for glitch in a way that's meaningful to him. glitch loved it and insisted that it was beautiful, but she thinks it's amateur and is kind of embarrassed about it because he quotes actual love poetry to her all the time. this poem does actually exist because i wrote it to try and get in her head space and figure out what she'd say, and it's mid at best (i am not a poet)

[obscurecurse]

Are you still taking questions about your fics? 🤓 Of you are, as my most favorite Kimchay fic from you is The Dreams I Still Have (Start To Change How You Look), I would like to ask #4, #5, and #8~

getting the long answers, ren, ilyyy

#4 - favorite line of dialogue

“Have you considered he might give this to you if you asked him for it?” the demon asked, “Once you cut a man down they’re all the same. I don’t suppose he’d turn you away…”

fav because i don't actually know, if chay went to kim and was bluntly like, "hey. can we fuck, like, one time so i can get over you?" if kim would allow it? their relationship feels too complicated. (i have thought about writing this exchange to try to unpack that, actually.) i like the thought that the demon is either Just Saying Shit, or maybe it's speaking about all its other customers? it's cut so many men down that it reasons they're all the same. demon lore. it's also sort of taunting chay, as if asking, "why did you come to me for this when you could easily get it from the person you so desperately want it from?" if it's all knowing, it knows what kim wants, too, doesn't it?

#5 - hardest part to write

the end. it was hard to stop. i had soooo much more to say. lol.

#8 did any real people or events inspire this? Short Answer: Bexless & Being Sent To Catholic School Long Answer: there is a prolific series in Bandom called Unholyverse. in one of those installments Person A (who is a fucking PRIEST btw) has been possessed by a demon and the demon is trying to convince Person B to fuck them - since that's obviously not something a priestly body should do. Person B has been in love with this priest for A Long Time. It's mutual. It's tragic temptation. They are able to talk their way out of it and it, i guess, demonstrates that their love is deeper than physical intimacy. (They fuck about it later on, don't worry.)

Truly the plot of a Christian mind lmfao. I was raised in an Atheist household but sent to Catholic school long enough to develop a fear of hell as a kid... lol. I've pictured it plenty. I have always been obsessed with the "conversation with the devil" trope. The idea of an "all-knowing" evil who can basically recite your desires back to you is very classic Catholic shit. It's so juicy, the idea of a demon using something this guy wants against him by offering him the most morally grey/fake version of it?

(Also maybe messy to apply these concepts to Thai characters? Thailand is majority Buddhist, with minor but significant proliferation of Islam as well. They go to Temples in KPTS but religious background isn't really addressed in the show, I think? Or if it is, it's nuanced and I missed it. But these common religions in TH, while they do not so directly have "hell" or a "devil," do have depictions of evil, sort of. I tried to make it a bit more vague as to the origins of this demon for this reason. Chay literally goes down to the bus station and schedules it through a Consulting Office he'd heard about. It's more akin to doing business - perhaps Mafia???? ohhhhhhadkajshdsake. The real evil: a capitalist society which perpetuates the necessity of crime to survive??????? lmfao. I DIGRESS!)

What's special is that Chay brings it on himself. I took that idea of a demon reciting his desires to him, but instead of it being so "good" vs "bad," Chay knows it's fake. He asked for an audience with this demon himself. He is basically ready to die or otherwise accepting of some other "irreversible change." Is it still evil if Chay is in on the joke? It's kind of anti-thesis to Love Conquers All. It speaks to the depth of his own pain, not the depth of his love for Kim. Veryyy character study. Point being: I took the likeness of that fic, and the childhood fantasy of hell, but changed the message.

(Also, I credited Bexless in the plot notes on that one, because Unholyverse changed me.)

[leahrocky]

man, im rereading dm and the hounds with my bf so i can talk to someone abt it but like - my guy, tysm for how you right your girl characters. like nell ofc is super fleshed out and its clear you put a lot of care into her character but like all of the girls in your story are super characterized/actually have a personality and goals and flaws and things they dont like abt themselves and ways they need to grow and i just - its just so refreshing bc thats not super common in either fantasy or fanfic (the latter mostly bc it usually has a heavy focus on m/m ships). but like the care you put into nell and her as a character really was what got me out of my art block so in summation tysm. also i hope ur having a good day etc etc

omg :'''''')))))) thank you SOOO much for this message. This is so so so sweet of you to send in.

Like, for one, the fact that you're rereading the story is just incredible in and of itself!!! I'm so glad you've enjoyed it enough to read it twice <3 genuinely.

And ahhhh I'm so glad you like how I write the girls!!! It's like 100% something that is *vital* to me. Like... I love queer stories so much, but I don't just want to write queer stories that are solely like m/m stories, ya know? bc I love girls lmao I love women. I want to represent them in my stories as well, and I want to give them as much depth and nuance as boy characters usually receive. I agree completely that like women characters can often be sidelined in favor of the men characters, and it's something I never wanted to do in my own writing, so it really means a lot that you've sent this!!!<3333

It was a big part of the reason why I chose to have Nell's mom be the Death Eater instead of her dad. Even though William's character is like very dear to me lol, I wanted to give the nuanced and complicated history to a woman (especially bc canonically, I think Bellatrix and Alecto Carrow are the only female death eaters??? which is nuts????) (Narcissa is never shown to be a Death Eater, just Lucius's wife, from what I recall).

But yeah. I wanted Nell to have a complicated relationship with her mother in particular as a way to represent the very real complicated relationships that daughters can have with their mothers in the real world. I also wanted to show like a nuanced portrayal of a mother that would always be in a perpetual state of moral grayness.

And like with Daphne--- a lot of her character was sort of my rebuff to how JKR writes feminine characters in the original series. Like the fact that the only girly characters are like Lavender Brown, Umbridge, and Fleur (and more I'm probably forgetting) --- and all of these characters are portrayed as silly and vapid... I wanted to contradict that directly with a character who is extremely girly, and also brave and complicated with her problems. Which was part of why I had Nell dismiss befriending her so quickly in the first installment, bc I wanted Nell to be wrong about Daphne to emphasize this sort of automatic dismissal that happens for girly characters. And then like show that there's more underneath the surface for Daphne, but that her femininity and softness *is* always there too.

nywayyyyyy all of this is to say that your message was so wonderful to receive so thank you so much for sending it. I agree completely about how unfortunate it is that women characters get sidelined so frequently, and it's something I hope to never do in my writing <3

And I hope you're having a good day as well!!!!!! <3

[kazumahashimoto]

He held off the two biggest, baddest war machines BY HIMSELF that one time as if it was a regular Tuesday.

He's a giant hypocrite and a goofy dad.

He's the only one who looks at himself becoming a monster and goes "someone should stop me" instead of going psycho.

He's Angeal Hewley.

Uh anyway, um, an ask...

How many times can his farm boy muscles bench press Sephiroth before he gets tired?

well firstly i'd like to apologize for the wall of text i'm about to give you but unfortunately you HAVE just activated my trap card by calling angeal a dad. i feel strongly about this o7

angeal is, plain and simple, not old enough to be zack's dad and i truly feel like that is an important distinction. angeal is 25. he should be at the club joke. but literally like, he is far too young and zack is too old for this to work.

besides that point, i feel like slapping the Dad label onto angeal is reductive not only of his character but also of his relationship with zack. "dadgeal" is a quick and simple, small quirky way to describe their relationship to one another. not saying you constantly have to wax poetic about them (the way i like to LOL) but it gives them a certain flavor they simply do not have.

the relationship between zack and angeal is a complicated one. and it's not that i can't see the paternal aspects of the way angeal treats him, but at the same time it's so much more than that. like i think i said this somewhere a few months ago but to me the paternal aspects of angeal are more like, accidentally calling your teacher "mom" because as a kid at school a teacher fills a similar role in that space, or a teacher referring to their students as Their kids, because at school they might as well be. but kids don't generally Really see their teachers as their parents, or teachers viewing students as their actual kids. there's nuance. and with angeal, especially from zack's perspective, they have more than just a student and teacher or mentor and mentee relationship. they also have something different from a father and son relationship.

even for me as someone who enjoys viewing them in a brotherly fashion, i think one of the most important pieces to understanding their relationship is when zack is knocked out after falling through the church's roof, imagining talking to his mom, when he says, "i want to help out a friend."

a friend. not something vague like "someone important to me", or even something more distant like "my mentor", what he calls angeal is a friend. despite the fact that angeal is nine years older than him, is higher ranked than him, and is in a direct position of authority over him, zack first and foremost views him as his friend. this shows his innocence he still has, it shows how deeply he cares for angeal in such a simple yet important way. zack sees angeal as his friend before anything else.

this is where i think the paternal aspects really reduce their relationship, trying to fit it into an easier box to make cheeky jokes about, rather than acknowledging how, especially on zack's end, he does not view angeal in that way.

and i don't think angeal views zack as being his son either, at least not seriously. like, i can envision him referring to zack and others as "son" that way older men do with boys just cos he feels like the type to try and Act beyond his years, but he's still just 25. he's not gonna see a sixteen year old as being his kid like that.

it's kind of late rn so i feel like i'm losing my train of thought here a bit but the bottom line for me is that zack and angeal just don't ever treat each other like father and son. they're obsessed with each other and thinking about each other constantly and angeal wants to protect him and zack looks up to him, but that doesn't make them father and son, even in a cute quick jokey way. they are friends. zack does not just see angeal as a figure of authority over him, he sees him as his friend. no need to replace that with a different type of authority figure.

anyway, to answer your question, theoretically if sephiroth were to allow himself to be bench pressed, i think angeal could do it long enough to have me staring gayly at his arms the whole time