firwhorl

[firwhorl]

bro i just watched AoT for the first time and am in the process of sorting it, and you NAILED my thoughts on eren (and armin). just wanted to let you know <3

<33

[firwhorl]

the bear doodles

[firwhorl]

go get the gun, levi

[firwhorl]

i wanna second really liking roy's family's background!

roy feeling like a chore to his mom is. Yeah. it corresponds so well to both what we see of him in the show and the self-hatred from him in your fic.

and it's easy to make the leap that 'his mum is frustrated/dismissive when he shows emotion -> he learns to feel that his real honest self is Bad and Inconvenient and to lean on achievements instead', but the fact him repressing his emotions was met with frustration too - he had no way to win?? i'm not even sure how that affects a person. i guess him feeling that he's a shit person no matter what is an effect of that

i'm so angry for roy that he was so dismissed and misunderstood, and that she still does that now 😭

also roy's sister!! you said that she 'bears the brunt of being held against a lot of their mum’s unfulfilled emotions and mistakes' - firstly i wanna clarify what this means - is it that their mum projects her wishes onto her, or blames her for those things? i might not understand it bc english is a 2nd language for me

and either way i'm really interested how that looks and the specific expectations/resentments she has 👀

(feel free to take my questions as rethorical interest if you either don't feel like answering, or don't want to spoil ogyggiyhnbgl)

Waaah, thank you so much! I tried to keep the part about his sister a little vague so I wouldn't ramble about too many things, but I'm more than happy to share more headcanons about it!

(like the previous Roy's parent's posting, a lot of these are specific to what's going on in OGYGGI(YHNBGL) and are in no way the only headcanons I accept)

Roy’s mum made of his sister a mirror. Finally, someone who would help shoulder the weight of all that emotional labor. Finally, someone who would feel the same frustration she felt at the men of the family. Finally, someone she could share looks with across the table, looks of loving resignation and mutual support that said, ‘Could you believe what we put up with?’

Finally, a girl

Except Roy’s sister didn’t turn out like that

Roy’s sister, who in this fic is named Sarah. If anything, she takes after her dad. She’s fiercely independent. She’s stubborn as a mule. She processes so much on the inside that sometimes it appears like she’s not concerned with anything that happens in this family at all. Like Roy, she’s sensitive, but she’s sensitive in a way that wants to fit in

So she sees her family, her family that’s made up of a majority of people who keep things to themselves, and that’s what she models herself after. Outside of the house she’s gregarious and playful - a lot like Phoebe - but inside the house she’s content to mind her own business the way everyone else does

This makes her mum, who expected support, feel more than a little betrayed. When Sarah hides herself away, it feels like she’s purposefully being withholding — like she’s trying to hide her emotions on purpose. So her mom pushes her to open up. She needles her for being evasive and secretive. For not doing her part to help

When she’s younger, Sarah takes this to heart. She feels like she’s done something wrong, gotten in trouble for keeping secrets, so she tries to share. She tries so so hard to make her mum happy, to be more outgoing and happy the way she wants. She shares all of her secrets, with a sort of aching desperation that never gets filled. Her mum and her are close, but even when she's little there are times where she's sort of aware that it's not necessarily a safe close

As she gets older, her own resentment grows. Deep down she hates it. Sometimes she feels like her mum wants her to follow a script she doesn’t know, but she won’t tell her the words. She feels the tenor of her mother’s disappointment keenly and often

She misses being younger, when she didn't notice it. She misses the idea of who she thought her mum was, compared to the cracks she's started to notice in the patina

At some point she figures out that if she turns it around, if she asks her mum what she thinks, her mum will fill the void instead of expecting her to spill her guts. Just as quickly, she finds the flaw in that tactic. Listening to her mum doesn’t feel good, the way she complains about everyone Sarah loves

Sarah loves her dad. He’s distant, but he’s gentle. He’s never expected anything more from Sarah. He doesn’t prod her into anything. To her, he’s the quiet stone that keeps the family grounded

(She doesn’t really remember their grandad. He died when she was super young.)

Sarah also, she’s decided, loves her brother, who she rarely sees, but who when he does come home, the few times a year that happens-

God, he’s bright. He’s so alive, full of blazing emotion and sarcasm and strong opinions that he’ll argue with her at the drop of a hat. He brings her gifts, and he’s patient when she talks, and he makes fun of her and he laughs when she makes fun of him back and he smiles with his eyes and then he leaves

He’s like the best parts of both their parents combined, and she never gets to see him

She loves her brother so much it hurts

At the same time, the older she gets, the more she realizes that fuck, she’s their mum’s favorite, isn’t she? And she can’t even really blame Roy for coming home less often every year (but she does)

[firwhorl]

ridiculous that there are fifteen million angsty h/c jamie tartt fics but not the one i SPECIFICALLY want, which is a glacially-paced, dialog-heavy missing scene collection from dr. sharon’s perspective from the moment keeley dumps jamie into her office. she’s an extremely good therapist but he is also jamie tartt

[firwhorl]

I think Roy sends really ominous text messages without meaning to. He's not even trying to scare people ominous and foreboding is just kind of his default state

[firwhorl]

i think in shc system eren easily has both lion primary and lion secondary!

lionpri is about ideals being your main motivation and they're decided mainly on vibes, which is veery eren. this is what eren and armin bonded over, they both have this ideals based motivation/understanding of the world, only armin's is consciously constructed (birdpri)

and i hear you that later on eren betrayed what he seemed to stand for, and that he prioritized himself + his close loved ones, but i think the lionpri sorting still stands. if he was secretly snakepri all along ..firstly i couldn't see that happening because it'd seem inconsistent with his characterization before, but let's say it did happen.

i imagine s4 version of that looking like this: eren realizing that when he has to choose he's fine abandoning those abstract ideals and just protecting his loved ones and maybe himself (with obviously still some angst about doing horrible stuff), and him maybe being pretty miserable over having to separate himself from people close to him to do his own thing in marley, but there'd still be this 'do what needs to be done' vibe

and this kind of does describe what happened (though i imagine eren being less depressed in that version), and eren does talk about his own motivations like this and maybe even believes it himself, but imo it doesn't touch the heart of it. which is that his worldview has collapsed and he's taking it hard. he can't trust himself and his own instincts anymore and doesn't have a way to look at the world that makes sense to him.

all that stuff about freedom - that if they aren't confined to the walls/reach the sea he and humanity will be free, that it's good to fight for what's right, that black and white understanding of people (anyone who does horrible things isn't even a person, like reiner berthold and annie), none of that makes sense anymore

in the final convo with armin he even says that he misunderstood his own motivation and he wasn't doing this for people close to him at all. (also this is a lionsec thing, but not being able to express himself freely and spontaneously and having to follow some script was very unnatural to him too and contributed to him being depressed as fuck)

if we're asking what he'd be in actual hogwarts there's more room for interpretation, since that seems less exact? i could see him ending up in slytherin just because he 'becomes evil' at the end of his character arc. but i think him being in gryffindor makes more sense, bc [waves hand at everything eren is as a person]. apart of the whole very direct and brash way he acts, he has this. both very strong want to do the right thing and this deep conviction that what he thinks is right is actually right (think hermione)

i’m really interested in y’all’s takes (and if this is popular /yall are are interested i might make polls for more characters)

below is propaganda for what i think/what im tied between (very long)

^this is mainly the inspo for everything i wrote

so a decade ago when I made my original Hogwarts au i felt so sure of my placements. but then as the characters became so complex and more was revealed, it’s obviously more nuanced.

lion was clearly my choice at the beginning. he’s an impulsive, reckless, strong willed, bold, determined, passionate and selfless person. because he was fighting for a cause we agreed with, he was heroic. he exemplified the good parts of gryffindor; following his morals and what he believed was right and driven towards his goals for freedom. he had such intense personal justice and morality to the point that he believed that those that took freedom from others deserved to died.

but without a doubt, that was twisted when we realized the traits he had were not necessarily for humanity but for his own selfish desires. which showed his true snake nature. he only cared to protect himself and his loved ones. he didn’t care about anything or anyone else in the end, and maybe he never did. all he cared about was his own personal freedom being taken from him and he would do anything to get it and punish those that stole it from him.

he didn’t know why but he wanted to destroy everything. is that more lion or snake? he’s such a simple minded character. sees everything in such black and white, me vs them, extreme to extreme, killing himself for humanity or genociding the world. and he was prepared to and did do extremely unethical and manipulative things to get what he wanted. he cares about his people and will destroy everyone else. that’s so key to being a snake. but being single-minded is also like key lion trait.

i’ve noticed that the line between lion and snake is very thin. and so is badger and snake surprisingly.

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also to those who are curious how he might fit into the other houses:

with badger, his loyalty was and is a key component of his character. he wanted freedom, he didn’t want to die, but he could not kill his friends. he could not escape his main ties to his friends. a badger’s entire basis is about care for all people, however a badger can decide who counts as a ‘person’. he has no problem killing titans at the beginning but then decides to spare the one on the floor. he dehumanizes those who take freedom from others and makes it in his head that they don’t count as ‘people’. which culminates in him wiping out everyone who is not ‘people’ to him.

but i think this exemplifies snake traits more

with bird, it’s hard to explain bc im seeing it in the sorting hat chats pov (the link i put above) but they say that bird’s main driving force is systems and the system they have crafted must be followed. most birds change the system and make it more complex as the learn more. but stagnant birds are those that refuse to change. when his need for freedom conflicts with his knowledge that everything is predetermined and he has no real choice, his system breaks and he becomes depressed and is consigned to suicide.

tho …i don’t know. he’s like the least bird person ever. he is impulsive and reckless. he only starts to be calculating in the end of his life in an extremely snake way. he doesn’t systemize his morals or views of the world or is in pursuit for knowledge and truth. rather he is very dead set on one goal and commits even when he knows it’s wrong (which a bird would never think) also bro is not wise or creative or any other characteristics—

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So now with all the propaganda out of the way, I’d love for you to write your explanations for your choice! (long or short)

also i wanna do a poll for armin, mikasa reiner and jean bc those are alsao characters who i feel like have such nuances to them that id love to hear input:))

[firwhorl]

i watched Ted Lasso. there were a lot of things i really enjoyed, but i'm still untangling some thoughts about Nate specifically

one moment that i liked a lot was that part where his dad said that being humble is thinking about yourself less. because it is a really accurate observation about Nate's problems! and a completely wrong thing to say nevertheless

it shows so succinctly that it's not that his dad isn't paying attention or doesn't know Nate, you can love someone and understand them really well, but to be close with them or to have a chance to have positive influence on their life you also need to just ..like them, unconditionally (more or less). which is ofc what Ted is all about

[firwhorl]

Let's try this again

[firwhorl]

For fellow video essay enjoyers; an excellent and relatively short (about 15min) breakdown of how Viktor's villain arc makes perfect sense for his character. I had my rambly meta posts about how I base my Viktor analysis on the idea that he was never being directly controlled by anything and everything he did was his choice, so of course I love stuff that backs that take up

[firwhorl]

Inspired by (x). Quotes and caps chosen by mayakyaa

[firwhorl]

i saw encanto again and i still like it so muchh

firstly it was such a good choice to push mirabel's character arc beyond 'she learns that she is special and valuable even without a magical gift' (presumably she went through that whole thing sometime during the timeskip), and have her already be trying to live based on that while other people aren't willing to budge from the established dynamic and explore her dealing with that

another thing was how there was this one idea - that people here are expected to be special and perfect and useful -, and it's overarching and pretty thoroughly explored: how this would manifest in different family members in different situations and with different personalities, in people outside the family, how this situation came to be and how it reinforces itself, what sort of person it takes to break that dynamic, etc.

(for me it's way too common to take a while to warm up to a new story and be interested in what's happening, even if it's something i end up loving. and an obvious concept like that being explored and tested in different situations did a lot to keep my attention)

then the 'house = family relationship/dynamic' motif(??) is so satisfying. both ends of it logically hold up because the house is literally magically connected to the family relationship, and lots of details regarding it tie up really nicely, like:

sometimes not everyone sees the cracks, like mirabel was the one to see them when she was being left out because she knew that it's not right, but when she tried to point them out to everyone else and they didn't see anything even mirabel couldn't see them clearly anymore (but sometimes the rift in the family is so obvious that even outsiders see everything)

bruno the scapegoat keeping the house functional by fixing the cracks behind the scenes

mirabel pointing out the truth causes the house to collapse completely (but it actually being a needed thing, despite it being scary and even dangerous in the moment - it has all those cracks, it's structurally unstable!)

then even beyond the house that event opened up a crack in the mountains that beyond providing safety in the past also functioned as a firm wall too keep a traumatic event of her husband being killed out of abuela's mind, and the other family members were never physically there = never knew the (emotionally) real version of what happened, and revisiting that was needed

the only major thing that didn't really work for me was the ending, technically all the right things happened, like the house being rebuilt, everyone regaining their gifts, mirabel seeing herself too, but it just didn't really land emotionally for me

oh another thing that i really liked was that it was never explained why mirabel didn't get a gift. i think i saw some theories when the movie first came out, but none of them felt as satisfying as shrug, sometimes random stuff happens in life and nature for no real reason and people are left to deal with that and tend to attach their own narratives and judgements to it.

[firwhorl]

The secret sauce of my Viktor takes is: I like to go based on the assumption that nothing was controlling him. He wasn't brainwashed or manipulated or being piloted around. I thought it too! To be fair Season1 made it weirdly up in the air that the hexcore had its own sentience and that was...never really followed up on. I think that's definitely a valid take, bc the show does a weird bunch of sort of saying it but then landing on "Viktor's always wanted to fix things and make things perfect" which more indicates that it was indeed all Viktor (yeah they...coulda maybe had More Time to make that more clear)

And I think all the steps and choices Viktor made were 1000% Viktor. Sure, it was Viktor after he got a magic traumabomb dropped into his brain that accelerated him into a speedrun arc of feeding into his own worst traits and thought patterns. It's one he would not likely have fallen into if he had NOT had a magic traumabomb shoved into him.

But that potential was always there. His compassion and drive to do GOOD was always also going to be the potential for his greatest evil, which is a thing he straight up monologues right at the viewer before he went and did just that.

[firwhorl]

What's your take on Jaymel? I've tried understanding and appreciating the pairing, but always end up coming short when I do. Nothing about them seems natural

When Mel first ropes Jayce into the council he gets so close to calling her out for her ways, then almost immediately does a 180 after talking to Amara, flirts with her, then acts surprised and hesitates when she comes onto him.

Mel pressures him to weaponize hextech, but then acts horrified when Jayce gets the same ideals in his head and wants to attack Zaun with their arsenal

There's more that's frustrating and confusing to me, but a lot of it just seems like Mel saw Jayce as a pawn until her mother showed up and then felt guilty he was exposed to Ambessa, and felt forced to protect him as a result

Jayce/Mel is interesting to me because it's a very complex, adult relationship the likes of which you don't always get to see even in live action prestige TV. In that they have come together over politics/manipulation and some attraction, grow closer, part ways to embark on their own adventures and growth, and reunite to hash out their grievances and then part ways amicably.

I think there are a few things that need to be factored into a fair reading of Mel/Jayce.

Mel was initially conceived of as a villain. Or, at the very least, as an antagonist in what I think was meant to be a much more generic story about Jayce being pulled between science/Viktor (his good side) and politics/Mel in a standard corruption story. The bones of that plotline are still there but I'm so, so relieved they made it more complex.

They made it more complex by making Mel a good person with complex motives of her own. She's not just a swanning villain helping the boys break in for selfish ends. She's not even promoting Hextech weaponry for purely selfish reasons, it's entirely practical to pursue given the circumstances (and an oversight by the boys that they didn't recognize the potential if they're against it maybe don't start with CRUSHING GAUNTLETS and a LASER BEAM).

They made Mel the pursuer, which works in a simpler story, but then she seems 1) taken aback by Jayce's physical affection the next day 2) slowly warming to him.

I'd also argue that while I think she always had sex with Jayce on the table as a manipulation tactic, the moment she goes for it is I think based on genuine attraction, when he expresses a desire to help others and she realizes how different he is from the warmongers of her family and home country of Noxus. She is genuinely charmed by him there when she makes her move.

But with all apologies to sincere MelJay shippers, those two were never the fairytale. I mean, do think there's a potential universe where they settle down to be a political power couple with astonishingly unfair good looks, but I think Mel was never seeing him as a long term prospect and Jayce, in my opinion, was actually an innocent who was genuinely responding to someone flirting with him and taking an interest. He's shocked when she kisses him, then clearly thinks about it a bit (IMO, reassessing if he has a chance with Viktor and sadly coming to the conclusion that he doesn't, Viktor isn't interested) so figures, why not? She's beautiful and interested and smart. Maybe they're not forever perfect or long term compatible (I think domestic Mel/Jayce would have led to Jayce driving her crazy with science talk in 2.5 weeks at most, and vice versa with her sincere interest in politics boring Jayce to death), but they can be Mr/Ms Right Now to each other and strengthen their political alliance too.

As for the actual beats of their story: yeah, Mel was manipulating Jayce at first. I wrote a longer meta about why that justifies him breaking up with her later. That manipulation is why they can't be together long term, because once Jayce gets wise to it in the cave, he's furious, and hurt, and he's lost all trust in her even though there's still some affection and care for her as a person. She's not bad but she did hurt him irrevocably with her actions.

I also saw a rather nice point that they're kind of living the relationship in reverse from each other, which is a tragedy. Jayce warms to her right away and then comes around to the fact there was manipulation at play. Mel starts out with intent to manipulate and then slowly warms to him. So when they both come back from their respective ordeals, Mel is looking for comfort from a person she cares for while Jayce has reassessed her role in his personal tragedy of Hextech and is ready for a fight. He eventually realizes it's not all her fault, he and Viktor are to blame too, but the relationship is over.

I hope this addresses your question at least a little?? Thanks for the chance to ramble!

[firwhorl]

’cold showers are actually much better for you’ I don’t care if they gave me the power to manipulate time. you can pry scorching hot showers out of my dead hands. and even if I got time manipulation powers I would just use them to take more hot showers. btw

[firwhorl]

"too sweet" being at least partly inspired by hozier waking up late, still drunk from the night before, realizing he was running late to the airport and running into a wall and falling over, then getting on the plane and realizing he was bleeding profusely from a head wound sustained from his fall earlier that morning, only to look up and see famous irish actor cillian murphy knelt down beside his seat talking to him is the funniest thing i've learned all day.

[firwhorl]

(Critique) Mel Medarda Should Have Known About Her Latent Magical Ability

Overall, I have very little to complain about with S2 of Arcane, but there's a couple very, very small fixes I'd make as a writer to bring it more in line with how tightly written S1 is. Personally, I think the Arcane team either 1) opted for pacing over exposition in S2, which is a completely valid choice or 2) had some limitations in S1 as far as background lore (they hadn't decided how much to tie it into League yet as canon or as an AU) which is why some elements which are teased in S1 (the Gray, Mel's powers) don't get named or explained.

The reason I think Mel should have known about her latent magical powers from the beginnings is two-fold and based almost entirely in writing principles:

Audiences should be given the tools to at least have a chance to solve the mystery at the same time the characters do

It's more powerful when a character's fate is decided, directly or indirectly, by their own deliberate choices

In the case of point 1, we never really get a hint about Mel having any sort of power until the very last shot before the rocket hits her, there's a slight glow which could easily just be artistic flare.

In the case of point 2, Mel's bloodline is what makes her magical, a choice entirely out of her hands.

Personally, if I could do a few small tweaks to sort of bring Mel's story into focus, this is what I'd do:

Make Mel aware since childhood that she is a bastard who was conceived specifically for magical ability that her mother hoped would give House Medarda the edge against their mage enemies.

Have Mel's abilities not develop when she was a child, thus leading her to believe that the reason she was banished from House Medarda was because she failed her mother and her House (rather than to protect her, which was Ambessa's true goal).

Have Mel's banishment encourage her to become skilled in many other areas, like diplomacy, but still keenly feel the inadequacy of not being the weapon Ambessa wanted. (That way, we the audience have some prayer at correctly predicting what's going on with the glow of her tattoos in the last shot of S1, that she has finally come into her power as a mage during a moment of crisis.)

Make it clearer in the flashback to her childhood that the people Ambessa was fighting then were mages. Then, when the young girl (the "Symbol of the Old Regime") is killed, Mel will feel keenly how it is only her own bloodline that keeps her mother from killing her as well, making her question her safety and loyalties.

Let her talk to Jayce about how she grew up believing she had magical abilities, only to never have them develop. It would give her and Jayce one more thing to bond over, since he almost certainly wished he had innate power too after the Wizard saved him, hence why he turned to artificial means to develop the magic he could never develop genetically. (And oh, the irony of the fact the Wizard didn't have it either, it was always Viktor and Jayce gave him that power.)

Have Hextech be the thing that awakens Mel's powers. This one in particular drives me crazy. Mel is the first investor in Hextech, the first believer in it besides Jayce and Viktor. Have exposure to Hextech be something that magically changes her too, because of her deliberate, purposeful choices. Have her choices be why she is "touched by the Arcane." It's heavily implied but never stated or resolved that Hextech is wearing thin the veil between Arcane and reality in Piltover. Mel's close involvement with it should be the thing that triggered her latent powers, because then it's a deliberate action on her part that leads her to being kidnapped by the Rose once her powers awaken. It's no longer a coincidence caused by Jinx's rocket that developed her powers all at once.

By having proximity to Hextech be the thing that awakens Mel's powers, it also brings her story in line with the themes of the show, "Everyone's choices get them what they wanted, but not what they needed." All her life now, Mel wanted to develop the power her mother literally bore her to have. Now she has it and it's horrifying, and alien to her, and has changed the course of her life. In the end, she becomes Head of House Medarda with all the innate power she always dreamed of and it tastes like ashes in her mouth, because she needed to kill her mother to achieve it, and she must leave the city she loves and the independent life she crafted by her own hands behind, in what becomes a tragedy rather than random chance.

It also makes the mirrors and foils of Mel vs. Viktor much clearer. Jayce, in his desire to become the Wizard who saved him as a child through artificial means, has instead turned his two closest loved ones into the powerful mages he wanted to be. As it is, it seems coincidental that Jayce happened to pull two godlike powerful beings, which is unsatisfying, rather than it being the product of all of three of their deliberate choices to become involved with Hextech and how it changes the trio as a result.

It also reframes her support for Hextech weapons at first and then her opposition to it and her mother using Hextech as a weapon. At first, Mel wants to be a Medarda and make her mother proud, she feels keenly her own lack of magic and her inability to be the weapon her mother wanted, but Hextech promises to give magic to the people in a way she and Jayce both keenly feel because they can't access magic genetically. But once Mel develops her powers because of her exposure to Hextech "radiation", and learns how dangerous Hextech/magic can be through conversations with Jayce and seeing its impact on Piltover, she can now, as a mage, change her mind on the subject and decide to stand in opposition to her mother because this power is too dangerous to weaponize.

Again, I think the reason they didn't make this through-line more obvious was because they probably just didn't know what direction they wanted to take Mel in in S1, and then they decided to give her powers as well and it had to be some big secret birthright that got sprung on her to explain why she didn't know in S1. But it makes the story just a smidge less satisfying because the characters feel moved about by fate instead of by their own choices.