saintheartwing

[saintheartwing]

And it's not EVEN just "Father I know there's good in you", this was also the same guy who was willing to try and talk down not just the Emperor himself, but JABBA THE HUTT, the scummy crime lord who has ONE of his best friends in a slutty outfit in chains and the other in carbonite, and even HIM, Luke's TRYING to do diplomacy at first and violence second. What he did was pure character assassination cuz he WANTED Luke to be in a certain place but that place doesn't make SENSE given Luke's character, so he had to BASTARDIZE Luke's character to get us there.

Star Wars really said "Anakin Skywalker had issues rooted in childhood trauma that was not his fault" but also "Anakin made his own choices as an adult for which he alone is responsible" but ALSO "In spite of the truly evil things he chose to do Anakin was still capable of being loved and redeemed" and I think that's important.

[saintheartwing]

Mostly everyone who’s seriously thought about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has talked about how the game is primarily focused on grief.

But what they haven’t done enough of is talk about the real problem that caused all of this.

Selfishness.

Now hear me out. The Dessendre family are skilled and magical painters. They can literally craft actual, filled with sentient life works on a canvas. It’s a miraculous ability. And the mother and the father wants their son to follow in their footsteps, and he doesn’t need to make a very wonderful canvas that’s clever and creative and pretty and beautiful and vibrant. Even within that painting, though, you see very clearly it’s not exactly what he wants to do. What he would really like to do is Music. That’s what he wants. He’s much better at playing the piano than he is at painting. The paintbrush people, the Gestrals he makes, have a theater. The Grandis don’t like to fight, they like to talk and their method of escape is using a bell, a musical instrument, to do so. When the Expedition sees the boy on his own, the spirit of the real Verso at the time he painted the canvas, he talks about piano and we SEE him playing piano. In fact we see him doing it more then once if I remember right. In fact there’s pianos all over the place! And how does Verso do his combat moves? The “Perfection” style he has is all about parrying in the right spots. Hitting…the right keys…at the right time.

He wants to be a musician and evidently there’s signs his sister did too, why else would Clea’s big representative monster be the Axom known as SIRENE, a siren-like monster who’s all about singing and dancing? But…he had to give it up to fulfill the expectations of his parents. He didn’t want to disappoint them.

Then he died, dying to save his little sister and she survived but is horribly mangled. She can’t really speak. One eye is gone. Her face is burned. And the family only has this painting left of him. But instead of moving on, his mother stayed inside the painting so as to have her son be recreated within it, using part of the soul he put into the canvas. Clea hates her little sister for putting her brother into that position and has gone off to kill the people who started the fire. His father, realizing that his wife hasn’t come out of the painting and is staying inside for what seems to be months, maybe even years, TRIES to get her to leave but she won’t. They fight inside the painting! They’re both trapped and now are monstrous.

And Alicia? Aka Maelle? She just wants her brother back. So she goes inside the painting too but she mostly loses her memory. But it’s probably no surprise that the man she gravitates too looks quite a bit LIKE a younger Verso who even has a very similar hairstyle.

None of them are actually doing right by each other. The parents are neglecting the children they actually have left, especially their youngest daughter who desperately needs it now more than ever. Clea is more interested in getting revenge for her brother than doing what he would have wanted, which is taking care of his little sister. And even his little sister is being selfish at the end, because she’s not considering the long-term consequences of what she wants, while ignoring the wishes of what her brother wanted. And frankly Verso is being selfish too. He just wants to die because he’s lived for so long and has suffered so much, aware that he’s but a hollow slim slice of someone else, a fragment of soul at best.

To be fair to Verso he has grown to love and care for the people in the painting who are clearly alive and self aware and he begs Maelle multiple times to just LEAVE the painting. Come back later! Then things will be fine. But Maelle insists her father will just destroy the canvas the moment she leaves. So she’d rather spend all her time inside this place where she can speak normally and doesn’t look burned.

But this is putting the whole world back at risk again. She’s not doing this for the sake of the world’s inhabitants, it’s because she doesn’t want to go back to the real world and face the grief that awaits her. If she cared about the inhabitants of the painting she would have kept her word to her dad, and gone back after a little while of saying goodbye. Then he’d see that she’s keeping her word and HAS changed and matured and he doesn’t need to destroy the canvas. Then the family can move on and MAYBE one day Maelle can pop back into the canvas and see their friends again. But choosing not to do that puts the whole world at risk.

All of this was motivated by selfishness. A family that can’t put aside their own desires in the name of doing what’s right. They were too blinded by what they wanted. Verso, or the painted version of him, is the only one who at least TRIES to take another option, after all he’s lived in that place for about a hundred years and despise all the suffering at his core was a man who hoped that a Painter could make it into a good and safe world where people could be happy. A feeling that he once had and was stomped out not once but twice by people he held the closest bonds to, first was his girlfriend Julie, and then his sister, Maelle.

Had the family just let Verso be Verso, and if they had just honored his wishes both times, letting him be a musician, and then moving on from his death, none of this would be happening. But their grief made them even more selfish.

And unfortunately Verso wasn’t immune to it. The death of Gustave was cuz Verso didn’t interfere in time. He could have saved him but was afraid Gustave wouldn’t have listened to him about the Paintress and the truth of the canvas, wouldn’t have done what he wanted… BUT Gustave was one of the few people that Maelle would have listened to. And because he was such a nice guy, he actually probably would’ve been more likely to listen to Verso than Lume or Sciel. So Verso made a terrible mistake. A shortsighted, selfish mistake. And doing this cost them a good third option that would’ve seen everybody be happy, at least to some degree. 

The big tragedy isn’t just that a single desth tore a family apart. It’s their self-centered refusal to look past the death and the grief it caused that really tore them apart. And it killed a world.

Just a thought.

[saintheartwing]

there are many things tumblr as a whole has to learn but one of them is “someone can reblog a post without them endorsing every action the op has ever taken, we are not beholden to do background checks on the producers of every shitpost on the internet”

[saintheartwing]

“We’re in a fanfic drought” Tell the writers you like their work.

“All Tumblr ever does is write oneshots now” Tell the writers that you’d love to see them write longer things.

“Nobody updates their fics anymore” Tell the writers you love the fic and want to see more of it.

Tell the writers.

[saintheartwing]

That’s It.

I’m tired of seeing everyone repeat the same four points: “1) Nani gives Lilo to the state! 2) Hawaii has a better marine biology program than San Fransisco! 3) Jumba doesn’t get redeemed! 4) Pleakley’s not wearing a dress!”

Those are not the only things that were bad about this remake. You could easily tell it was going to be all that and more beforehand, but most people’s reaction to the trailer was “it’s surprisingly good!” and now they’re acting all surprised. If you didn’t see this coming, enough to purchase a ticket, you’re part of the problem and you don’t get the original movie any more than the people who made this remake did.

So I’m done being quiet, this is the Lilo & Stitch 2025 Takedown Post.

And as usual the only good thing about an attempted-remake is that it gives people a reason to think about what made the original so good.

Let’s go in order. But just scroll down to the Heading you Care About if you don’t want to read all this.

1. Cobra Bubbles

In this movie, Cobra Bubbles is a secret agent hunting for aliens and they have a new character take his place as the state social worker.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With this Change: “We shouldn’t have a black man or a government worker feel like an insensitive antagonist to Lilo’s family.”

That’s a stupid surface-level one-dimensional misread of the character from the original…and it wouldn’t have been hard, at all, for a child to explain to the 2025 filmmakers that Cobra is not an insensitive antagonist in the original.

Cobra Bubbles is not insensitive and he is not in any way portrayed as a bad guy in the original. Nani sees him that way, Nani sees him as antagonistic, because he’s the representation of Lilo being taken away.

But Nani is wrong about him and learns that she is wrong about him by the end of the movie.

Can we please make a list?

Cobra’s first interaction with the caretaker of the child he was being sent to protect was that she ran out into the road, yelled at a complete stranger, and dented his car.

Then he found her locked out of the home and threatening the child inside with a hammer in her hand.

Then he found out the stove was on while she was out, and she’d left a 7 year-old alone.

The 7 year-old made comments about being disciplined with bricks and a pillow case.

The 7 year-old looks like she might be more than a little emotionally unbalanced because she’s figuring out how to put voodoo spells on her friends to punish them.

He still gave that pair of sisters three days to straighten the ship. When in actuality, in 2002, under HRS §587-73, (don’t play with me) the social worker would’ve been well within his rights to remove the child from the home right then. But instead he gives her three days to fix it. THEN

The 18 year-old loses her job.

The family gets a “dog” who he is implied to know is an alien, right off the bat.

The alien is violent and wreaks havoc across town.

The 7 year-old almost drowns while they surf instead of find a job.

He lets the child and caretaker have one more night together to say goodbye, but when he’s on the way to get her he gets a call that she’s being attacked by aliens, hears a chainsaw, and finds the house on fire.

Do you understand what I’m saying.

Cobra Bubbles had NO BUSINESS being as BIG A SOFTIE AS HE WAS for all of the original movie. He was not only well within his legal rights to take Lilo away from Nani immediately, but he was actually required by law, it was his DUTY, to remove her immediately. But he didn’t do that. Why?

Now listen to me very carefully.

Lilo and Stitch is a movie about how “Family chooses to love and commit to one another selflessly, no matter what the other person can do for them or how hard they make it.” The fancy way they say it is just “Ohana means family: family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”

Did you catch that? “No matter how hard they make it.”

Cobra Bubbles was a CIA agent before this. A CIA agent who saved the planet, by doing what? Convincing an alien race to leave them alone. Oh, he didn’t fight them off? No. How? He “convinced” them? He talked it out? Sounds like a pretty compassionate guy, for all his tough exterior. How did he do that?

He could’ve picked any animal that’s actually endangered. The filmmakers chose to make him the guy who convinced aliens to value mosquitos.

MOSQUITOS. Creatures that give nothing, only take. Ugly little bloodsucking monsters. That’s the creature he convinced them to care about enough to save the planet.

NOW do you have any trouble understanding why this is the specific social worker who would give an alien-infested dumpster fire of a dangerous home a chance when two sisters are about to be torn apart?

Do you see that Cobra is just another example of the grace that the movie is always talking about? The love that transforms someone from bad to good simply because it refuses to give up even when it gets nothing out of it? I’m repeating myself because I want you to see why he was a well-done character who NEEDED NO CHANGE.

Cobra Bubbles’ character is not an insensitive monster who doesn’t care who his actions hurt as long as he gets the job done. But you know who that does sound like?

2. Gantu

Gantu is not in the remake at all.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “It’s going to cost us upwards of 1.5 millions of dollars to design, sculpt, rig, animate, and render a character this big in addition to finding a suitable voice actor to play the part.”

This is a really dumb choice for several reasons. A. Without Gantu, there is no “stakes-raiser” to Lilo and Nani’s story. The movie has no climax without him. For the first and second acts of the movie, it’s about a grieving pair of girls trying to prove themselves to a social worker while the story-equivalent of Beethoven the Destructive St. Bernard wacky Jumba & Pleakley antics get in their way. But when a 40-foot tall alien stomps into their lives and abducts Lilo & Stitch in a spaceship that careens around the island during an explosive sky-chase scene, now you have a high-octane, somebody-could-die climax.

B. Without Gantu, Stitch looks weaker. The climax gave Stitch a reason to come out of the wackadoo puppy he’s been posing as and suddenly remind everybody that he’s a lethal weapon who can survive thousand-foot drops, lava, and astronomic explosions—and a giant alien’s Thanos-dwarfing fist. Take him out and who do we have as a match for Stitch to go up against, even for a moment, and prove how much he’s changed to be willing to risk his freedom and fight?

C. Without Gantu you have no villain to reflect that STITCH is no longer a villain. (So they substituted Jumba.)

But the reason this character is really worth millions is, again, the theme.

I told you Cobra Bubbles was a character who did not put “duty” or even “convenience” or “position” over the real lives of Lilo and Nani. He saw that there was love there, and in his own way, he gave it a chance. And even when he chose to take Lilo away, he did it carefully; he gave them time to say goodbye.

GANTU IS THE OPPOSITE OF COBRA BUBBLES.

Gantu is the insensitive, uncaring, unyielding Captain whose commitment to duty turns into rage and cruelty. Not Cobra.

Nani thinks Cobra is walking in a threatening to tear apart their family in a display of government judgement. But that’s what Gantu literally does.

His first reaction to Stitch is to call for his destruction. Without even waiting to see if “it can be reasoned with” like the Grand Councilwoman suggests. He’s merciless. He mocks Stitch when Stitch is captive. And he knows that he caught Lilo, a human, along with him. He doesn’t care. He even suggests that Stitch eat her as a snack.

There are only two other characters who laugh at others’ misfortune in the movie. One is Stitch, the original villain. Then love changes him. The other is Jumba, who made Stitch. Then love changes him. But Gantu never gets changed. He’s only concerned with his job, and with personally annihilating the flaws he sees in Stitch.

Gantu is unyielding, ungracious, and cruel. And he’s big and powerful enough to be a test for Stitch to prove he’s changed. For the benefits he brings to the story, he’s worth 1.5 million and more. But they cut him anyway.

3. Jumba

In the new movie, Jumba is a villain through-and-through with designs on overthrowing the Galactic Council using Stitch, and instead of being redeemed, he’s sentenced to prison.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “We can’t spend money on our real villain so we’ll just keep Jumba evil.”

The reason this is dumb is obvious. They created their own problem, and the ‘fix’ makes the movie weaker, not stronger. But here’s how.

In the original, Jumba is introduced as trying to self-protect. He’s on trial, and he lies. But when Stitch is revealed, he’s genuinely passionate about the thing he’s created. And he cares about image. He prefers to be called “evil genius,” and he hates the headlines labelling him “idiot scientist.”

You have to remember he’s part of “Galaxy Defense Industries.” They had him making weapons of destruction anyway. He just got too into it with his genetic Experiments, went a little insane.

I’m not downplaying the fact that Jumba is evil at the start of the movie. He is. It is evil to be outcasted from society and then respond to that with, “well, if they’re going to treat me like an idiot, I’LL SHOW THEM, I won’t care about anything except my passion for mad science!” That’s evil.

But it also explains a lot.

I said it in another post. Jumba’s whole utility as a character is that he knows who and what Stitch really is, better than anyone. He made him to be a monster who can’t belong and wreaks havoc on everybody else’s ‘place of belonging.’ Jumba is the audience’s insider’s perspective on what is going on in Stitch’s head, at first.

But when he’s redeemed, it happens fast. And why? Because that’s how plain and simple Stitch is, as a character. Jumba knows Stitch is a disgusting little monster with nothing inherently loveable about him, and no “greater purpose.” So when his disgusting monster is loved by someone? When his disgusting monster is willing to ask him, Jumba, for help? Something totally outside his programming, totally not what Jumba thought he’d ever be capable of?

That proves to Jumba, in an instant, that there’s love out there that transforms. And creates a place of belonging.

There were already germs of that, a desire to belong, a compassion, in Jumba after he reached earth.

He doesn’t try to get Nani fired, he offers an explanation for Pleakley’s swollen head.

He claims he won’t hit Lilo (why would he care about collateral damage?)

He sounds sorry for Nani when she’s upset about losing Lilo, and tries to keep Stitch from bothering her.

My point is, Jumba’s redemption isn’t important because it’s cute or because we need to set up the big happy found-family trope everybody loves.

Jumba’s redemption is important because it is just one more PROOF that what’s happened to Stitch is so incredible. The love Jumba finds transforming his monster is enough to transform Jumba, too.

But sure, fine, whatever, make him a soulless one-dimensional talking head. Whatever.

4. Stitch’s Design

In this movie, Stitch is cuter than he is ugly, and he’s half Lilo’s size.

The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “Ugly-cute doesn’t come across as well in ‘live action’ animation. And all the Wal-Mart moms remember Stitch as ‘cute.’ Plus we’ll save about 15% in rendering the animation.”

This is crippling to the characterization of Stitch.

Stitch is supposed to be an echo of who Lilo could become now that she’s lost her parents and may be losing Nani. This scene:

Where Jumba points out that Stitch has nothing, and destruction is his only purpose, is the evidence for that. But Chris Sanders, who made this whole story, also point-blank said it. Stitch is a future Lilo, if she loses her family.

So that’s reason number 1 that he should be her same height. But also, practically, no iconic pair of best friends, yin and yang, have visuals where one is smaller than the other. Especially not if one of them is supposed to be disguised as a pet.

The point is, Stitch is not LILO’s pet. He is her best friend, her other half. But between the muzzle-muscles they worked into his upper lip and the darkened dog nose and the butt-scooting across the floor, the remake is trying to make him more pet-like in relation to Lilo.

That’s not what he is.

I said this in another post. But Stitch is supposed to throw food to the back of his head like a gator—his lips are not designed for forming words. His gums and teeth are supposed to look like a shark’s. His nose is supposed to be too big, stamped into his face. His ears are supposed to be like bat ears, not bunny ears. He hunches forward, instead of bending at the waist like a toddler. His eyes can narrow to lizard slits.

He has to look like he can believably be a disgusting monster. Yes, he can also be cute. But he has to first look like a monster. Because that’s what he really is, in the story. If he isn’t, then LILO’s love for him doesn’t look as powerful.

It is easy to love a cat even if it scratches you, because it’s cute. It’s harder to love a life-sized spider that keeps knocking you down and eating your prized possessions and laughing when you get hurt. Stitch is supposed to be closer to the second one, so that Lilo’s love shines brighter.

But also, practically:

She can’t look him in the eye for emotional shots when he’s that short. He’ll always have to awkwardly be standing on a box or a chair or a bed.

How is he going to scoop her up, hero-style, and leap off of an exploding spaceship with her in his arms, when he’s half her size? He could do it: it’ll look stupid, though. So they just don’t have that part in the movie.

She can pick him up. That alone is demeaning and again, the visuals are silly. Not what we’re going for.

5. Lilo’s Personality

In this movie, Lilo doesn’t like weird stuff, and she screams when she first meets Stitch. There’s no problem that this solves. It’s just laziness and a lack of care about the characters.

I would like to remind you that the original Lilo:

Made her own doll that looks like a shrunken head and pretended a bug laid eggs in her ears.

Makes up stories about a fish that controls the weather and actively deep-sea dives to bring it peanut butter sandwiches.

Has a knee-jerk reaction of using practical voodoo spells on friends who wrong her.

Listens exclusively to Elvis Presley.

Fills baby bottles with coffee.

Believes Nani’s manager is a vampire.

Has fishing nets and seashells in her room for decoration.

takes safari pictures of overweight bleached tourists.

meets a social worker and her first impulse is to ask if he’s killed someone.

Nails the door shut when she’s mad at her big sister.

She’s not friends with pound dogs in that original movie; when they first get there she acts like she’s never been in the kennel before, and originally wants a pet lobster.

I know that we all love that little girl they got to play Lilo, but if you were really being objective, you’d acknowledge that she’s a little girl. She’s not Lilo. She’s a cute little girl.

They did not write Lilo into the 2025 movie. They wrote any old little girl.

You should have known, from the moment she first sees Stitch and her reaction is to scream in the trailer, that THAT IS NOT LILO.

Lilo had a very specific set of characterizations. She was a character with a personality that exploded out of the screen. Every other character in the movie meets Stitch and reacts with disgust.

But not. LILO. She’s the only one to react to him like THIS:

She is literally not like anyone else. She’s doesn’t care that he’s ugly. Or weird. Or blue. Or even bat an eye when he can talk with all those shark teeth.

From Moment One, Lilo chooses Stitch. She chooses to love him. Regardless of what he can do for her. Regardless of how many times he pushes her over or rips up her house or makes her relationship with Nani harder. That is the number one thing about Lilo.

She is desperate for people to stay, but she chooses to love Stitch even though he’s a monster. And she tries to make him better. And her love succeeds in transforming him when nothing else could.

Lilo’s personality traits all mean something in the story. (I.e. she likes Elvis because she’s clinging to the past, she snaps pictures of tourists like they’re safari animals because they’re inherently people who LEAVE and she has issues with LEAVING, etc.) But the thing I think that was so obvious that the moviemakers missed for 2025 is she has to be weird. If she’s not weird, there’s no reason for her not to have friends. And if she has friends, what does she need Stitch for?

But also, Lilo’s personality in the new movie is just boring. Cute. But boring. Cute’s not that great of an accomplishment; any 7 year-old is cute.

6. Nani

I don’t think you guys need to know this. It’s not just that Nani leaves. It’s that “take care of yourself” is the exact opposite of the selfless message of the movie.

In the beginning, Lilo literally argues with Nani after being told she’s “such a pain,” and goes, “why don’t you SELL ME and buy a RABBIT INSTEAD?”

And then breaks down and cries at the thought of Nani wishing she had a rabbit instead of Lilo, later.

Because Lilo is afraid of people leaving. But Nani won’t leave her. Nani loses her job, her own life, because of Lilo. But she’s desperate to keep Lilo anyway, because she loves her. Don’t you understand? The message of the movie was about self-sacrificial love. A love that doesn't care what I get out of the relationship.

Nani starts it. But you know what, David loves her like that, too. And then Lilo transfers it to Stitch, who shows it off to Jumba. It’s a chain reaction, but Nani is spearheading it.

You realize that when their parents died, Nani already would’ve been in high school? With a whole life of her own? Her own friends, her own potential boyfriend, a job she went to, surf competitions (the trophies are in her room.) Lilo would’ve been well aware that that was the status-quo: Nani has her own life. And even a seven year-old can see that that life is being put on hold, but maybe the big sister wants to go back to it, at every turn.

The fact that Nani never does that, never expresses a desire for that, only ever expresses a desire to keep Lilo with her, is huge. It’s the core of the movie.

I don’t think that needs any more explaining.

We could talk more. Like about how Lilo needs to see that Stitch is an alien, because that’s the ultimate test: he’s one of the monsters who destroyed her house, he’s been lying to her and using her as a human shield, he’s a criminal—but she still winds up giving everything up to protect him.

Anyway. My neck hurts and I don’t want to type anymore. But we could talk about the music, the social worker, the grand councilwoman—it just doesn’t matter.

Ya’ll had more than enough details in the trailer to be able to not go see this movie because it was obviously going to ruin everything. But instead you chose to make this twisted corpse “the highest-grossing movie of any Memorial Day.” You bought tickets because they ruined a perfect movie and slapped together an uglier package for you.

Whatever. It was my favorite movie today, it’ll be your Treasure Planet or Tangled tomorrow. Keep riiiight on giving them your money, and keep letting influencers regurgitate the same four obvious facts to you over and over, because they paid Disney to make a talking-point for their content benefit. Whatever.

[saintheartwing]

Well, the Soul clearly TRIES to talk to Susie and Noelle during Chapter 4, it tries to contact them. Once it realizes that Kris is clearly up to something and isn’t trustworthy it tries to speak to the more “innocent” characters that it thinks it can trust.

After Chapter 2, it couldn’t quite SEE what Kris did, it had been stuffed into the couch, but it had a suspicion no doubt considering a dark world literally popped up in the living room! But at the end of chapter 3 it realizes that Kris is up to no good when Kris has a chance to go into the bunker or tell Susie but…Kris doesn’t. Or when it BOWS before the knight.

So by Chapter 4 it realizes Kris is untrustworthy and perhaps working with the knight! So it tries to reach out to Susie and Noelle. The Soul after all wanted to make its own body to inhabit and the first gift offered is kindness. I’d like to believe it wanted a body to be able to help the people of this world. It wants to be kind, because in Undertale being kind shows you the best outcome, and because people in general are kind. Folks WANT to save the world. Folks WANT to be heroes, to be good and decent. It wanted that too.

But now things get…complicated…

ermm

[saintheartwing]

I guess it has to be said every time because people are addicted to outrage but saying “Kamala would have been better than this” =/= saying Kamala would be perfect. “Biden had better policies” =/= “Biden’s policies were perfect” “Trump is demonstrably a detriment to our country” =/= “everything was fine before he came along” “Trump is escalating police brutality and ICE raids” =/= “there were no unfair immigration policies before Trump”

Pointing out that things have gotten worse specifically because Trump was elected is not rose colored glasses about the Biden Administration. It’s hard fact. The only reason to deny that is if (1) you support Trump or (2) you deal in unrealistic absolutes that were pushed on you by people that specifically want you to not vote so people like Trump win.

[saintheartwing]

dess is the knight. here's why

so, i keep seeing people arguing and being unsure who/what the knight is. lots of people saying that it's carol, or that it's actually none of the holidays and is just connected to them somehow. meanwhile i'm 99.99999999% certain it is in fact DESS. and you know what bumped my certainty levels up from like 75% to that 99.99999999%? gerson.

the dark world was able to use his dust to revive him for a time. he was perfectly himself, and he was in this sort of... limbo state of being a darkner and a lightner. but his funeral rites were followed correctly, minus actually burying his urn. so let's ask ourselves: what happens when the funeral rites aren't followed correctly?

what if they CAN'T be? what if the death is so sudden and horrible and her dust is lost? ... what if a fraction of her dust attaches itself to an object that does not correctly resonate with her soul? what if that's all that you have left of her? this incongruent amalgamation of her-but-not-her? do you throw the object away? no, that's your daughter. your childhood best friend. you're going to cling to the little bit you still have of her and try to bring the rest of her back. let the world end if it must; she's more important.

knight carol immediately falls apart for me for two big reasons, and one is simply that this is not what a lightner would look like in the dark world.

this is a lost, twisted being. this is the other side of the scale gerson was on, of near-simultaneously being a lightner and a darkner.

the other reason i can't buy into knight carol is that the knight was already waiting for susie and kris in the dark world while carol was at home grounding noelle. can the woman teleport? exist in two places at once? no. it's just not her.

anyway, plotholes in knight carol theory aside, there are SO many visual clues that the knight is at least a fraction of dess. if you weren't paying close attention - and good chance you weren't because you had bullets to dodge - you might have interpreted the knight's sword as just a sword. and then later, in noelle's house, you run into carol's katana and it's like, woah wait a SWORD?! that is intentional misdirection. the knight's sword is not a Sword. it's a bat.

here i have a handy and very painstakingly detailed chart just for you

real life + in-game katana vs the knight's "sword" vs real life bats. note the bottom of the knight's sword jutting out in one direction and how the real life black bat does the same thing.

katanas are also not wielded with one hand. the correct posture is with two

now, look how the knight swings her "sword":

if you manage to "win" the fight in chapter three, susie attacks the knight head-on, and chips the sword

and, oh, huh would you look at that-

interesting coincidence. also, the knight turns into a baseball-looking ball multiple times

one more thing. this stained glass window design in the church. it's dess standing below the titan she now shares a body silhouette with

(pardon the shaky outlines i refuse to turn on my tablet right now but hopefully that helps you see what i'm talking about if you couldn't at first)

and this isn't even getting into how dess's song is incorporated into the knight's battle theme. we finally met our girl, guys. it's her

[saintheartwing]

This person in the middle, the one with a purple icon, is BadEmpanada. He's not a good person. He doxxes people, he's been encouraging folks to call Child Protective Services on Ethan Klein and his wife because he disagrees with their stance on Israel, he thinks every single Israeli (evidently) is a valid military target cuz there are no civilians...

He has frequently praised Hamas and the Houthis and Hezbollah, and he's just a real cruel person. He's also directly encouraged people to take violent actions as in f--king shoot people.

Also evidently he denied that Turkey did the Armenian genocide...

And has called Ukraine a fascist state.

He's just a horrible person. Avoid him and his content like the plague.

For real.

[saintheartwing]

Deltrarune Prediction

Okay, I'm making a prediction based on what I've played now of Deltarune.

SPOILERS. SPOILERS UP THE WAZOO!

The Knight seems to be either Noelle's mother Carol Holiday herself OR a direct creation OF her given how deferential Kris is to her and how, in the secret Chapter 3 Boss fight Kris just KNEELS when the knight puts its sword at their shoulder. Kris doesn't even TRY to fight back. On top of that, if, by SOME MIRACLE you actually get to the Knight the FIRST time round in Chapter 4...Kris doesn't so much as SLASH at the thing. They stay silent and just stands there. They and the Knight are basically kinda working together to a large extent.

Now...why? Now, this is JUST A GUESS, but...given how we saw with...say...Gerson, a person who was dead can be "alive" again even if dust within the Dark World. It's quite likely that Noelle's mother Carol Holiday wants the Dark World to spread because she wants her daughter Dess back to life. Her making a spot in her own home would be useless, it wouldn't be the same. She'd have to hide a giant obvious dark smokey thing in her home, people would pick up that something was up, especially her daughter or if he gets better, her husband. BUT...if the WHOLE WORLD'S dark...then Dess can come back without an issue, nobody will care about one girl suddenly being alive again when the whole world has changed.

And I'm ASSUMING Kris promised to help because if I had to guess not only is Kris not really much of a person WITHOUT the Soul and has been seen as kind of just that creepy kid next door...and perhaps isn't even a real human but human parts patched together and given life...but also THEY cared about Dess too. It's clear from Chapter 2 and 3 onward that the happiest memories they have are when they, Dess and Asriel and their parents were all together and a "proper" family.

So Kris wants that back. And to do it, they have promised Carol Holiday and perhaps the knight that they will do ANYTHING they want, no matter how scummy or cruel it is. They only NOW are having reservations cuz they have gotten close to Ralsei and Susie. Realizing that if the plan succeeds, it means their friends die if the prophecy seems to mean what it implied in Chapter 4. And while Kris may not care much about THEMSELVES...they HAVE grown to love THEM.

But...well...Kris can't ignore the promise they made.

And if I had to guess, Asgore has probably done something similar. It's why he's got a Black Shard. I imagine he tried to use a similar power in the name of protecting the town, saving lives, but it backfired, and people got hurt or died, which is why Toriel divorced him. In fact for all we know, DESS died because of that. It's certainly a possibility.

Anyway, just my musings. Great new additions to the story, BTW.

[saintheartwing]

[saintheartwing]

No way im missing saying, "Deltarune tomorrow!" by being a nothing blog rn. so...

Deltarune Tomorrow!!!!!

or today depending on how late i finish this

And uhh... more Twin Runes fanart in some sense i guess... so uh. hi again @akanemnon?

(This is some weird karmic retribution for those garfield comics i did perfectly b4 isn't it)

[saintheartwing]

Okay, so. Star Wars has all these concepts that weirdo New Left boomer George Lucas tosses in there but because of storyteller limitations it would kill the plot to fully explain them all, so later writers have to come in for the spin-off materials and bat clean-up to fully explain all this crazy crap. And I would like to talk about something that made me actively angry at first, but which I now adore. And that is the Naboo.

So much about Naboo culture is infuriating from a logical standpoint. They have a queen, okay. A constitutionally elected queen? Weird, okay. Don't know why they'd do that but... She's FOURTEEN? Excuse me? Is it a ceremonial thing or, oh no it's not? Legit head of state? Why does she dress like that? Why does she talk like that? I'm so tired.

Here's the explainer. Let me go cook.

There's this joke in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where the last living human goes back in time and finds out humans aren't actually from Earth, but an alien culture that tricked all the middle managers, pedantic weirdos, and other infuriating folk into getting in a space arc which they gave the wrong evacuation coordinates to simply get rid of them. The Naboo are like this but they're all artists and poets and hippies, but like classy ones. They fled their home planet during a war and crash landed on Naboo, then did a colonism to the Gungans because, hey, they were fleeing a war and it was do or die. This spiritual rot in their creation story is later rectified by Padmé. But it's super important to their cultural psychology. They're hippies, but will subjugate if needed. They are "peaceful" but I guarantee you every single one of them has a tiny extremely shiny pistol up their sleeve and they will draw down on you if backed against a wall.

The scene that I think says it all is at the end of Phantom Menace when Padmé is surrounded by Nute Gunray and his droids, they've got her dead to rights, but Sabé her double creates a distraction so the queen can make it to her throne. This one piece of furniture is the Naboo in a nutshell. It's richly carved with artistic details, it has two seats to the side so the queen's handmaidens can read the lips of people in the back of the room and use hand signals to communicate with the queen while she can remain focused mostly on who is speaking to her. It is hundreds of years old. And it has a secret compartment in the armrest that is FULL OF GUNS. Layers of artistic opulence hiding their true intentions.

The Naboo were created to be backwards compatible with Princess Leia. They're compassionate pacifists, but they will shot you if needed.

Why do they elect teenage royalty? It's a little creepy. It's giving "age of consent is emotional maturity". It makes no sense.

The explanation they give outsiders is they want youthful idealism untainted by cynicism. What they don't tell you is that they take kids with stated interest in politics and put them in an advanced highly competitive Leadership Academy which is like Model UN mixed with Battle Royale. Well, they don't kill each other but it's intense. It's like what the clones went though just all diplomacy training and tea ceremonies all the time. Which is crazy but so Naboo.

Oh, and all the delegates for the royalty election run using pseudonyms for security. Imagine voting for the head of state but you can't run a background check. It's so crazy.

Why does Padmé dress like that? Well, fashion is one of Naboo's major industries so it's like she's wearing the entire Fall line catalog at once. To advertise not only the talent of her people, but to show how much they favor her. BUT that dress has multiple layers of padding and resin armor. And aforementioned spots for those little silver blasters. And it breaks up her silhouette making her harder to shoot. And it's so elaborate you pay more attention to the crazy dress and not if the person wearing it is really the queen or a decoy. Everything about Naboo is like this.

Queen Amidala has that weird accent while Padmé does not. Because all her handmaidens helped create the accent together so they all can imitate it. It's like if you gave girls at a rowdy sleepover the job of federal counterintelligence. That's what they came up with.

The handmaidens wear colorful identical clothes so you can't tell them apart, hoods to partially conceal their identity, and they don't wear the queen's fancy makeup. So one of them can be the queen and spy on people in the audience. Because the Naboo don't trust shit for shit.

Their public face is so silly to hide all the truly weird shit they do behind the scenes.

They use their reputation as artist hippies to conceal multiple layers of subterfuge and disguise their methods of self defense and assuage their paranoia due to wartime trauma and their disturbing colonial past. All of them are completely off their rocker even by Star Wars standards. And I love them so much. They put on a show so everyone thinks they have them figured out but what they have going on is far more weirder and more sinister than meets the eye. You know how catty, neurotic, and competitive art school students stereotypically are? Yeah, planet art student. Love them!

There you go, @charmwasjess

[saintheartwing]

Reblogging this warning

Just a reminder for any bloggers that are unaware—

The following blogs are spam blogs, all pretending to be Palestinians needing help in Gaza. They are mass flooding tumblr inboxes with identical text + emojis in order to ask for loads of money, some up to $90k USD. But even if you block them or DO send them money they will then use a side blog to send you seemingly infinite anonymous asks, and THEN change the sending blog when you block THAT one! At least 2 of these blogs have been confirmed by @gazavetters to be spamming blogs.

Here is the list of their names at the moment:

mosabsdr

abedmajeed, which is now both aboodfmly and derawi1994, and which is also known in tags and/or blogs as:

Abdelmajed (tag)

abedmajder (tag)

familygaza5 (blog)

derawigaza (blog)

derawifami (blog)

(All of the above under aboodfmly link to the exact same chuffed fundraiser.)

nasergz

sajagz

abd20001

nasr-daher

Note: mosabsdr has a note in gazavetters' official vetting Google Doc to warn others of the spam behavior, since they are violating rule 2 (do not spam supporters or non-supporters).

Also, most or all of these blogs have replies turned off, so it's virtually impossible to message them directly and ask them to stop sending asks. So, please block, delete asks, and do not engage with THESE blogs.

To block anonymous asks: you have to wait until you get one, unfortunately, but you can then hit the 3 dots on the top right and then block the specific anon that sent you that ask. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. If you DO want to donate to the Palestinian cause, I'd recommend this World Food Programme link.

[saintheartwing]

Thinking about Lilo & Stitch makes me really appreciate certain things about the original + the series. Almost every single named [human] character in the movie isn’t white: the only exception being Mertle, y’know, the bratty little girl we’re not supposed to like.

Besides all of the racial representation, Lilo herself is very much a neurodivergent icon, and her portrayal as the protagonist is amazing considering how characters like her are typically either sidelined or depicted in ways to make them less sympathetic/human (modern media does at least a slightly better job at adressing that kind of thing tho).

So all of that is great, but to anyone that hasn’t seen Lilo & Stitch: The Series, it also does some extremely refreshing stuff.

Pleakley gets tons of validation to dress in drag, everyone always referring to Pleakley as “she” when dressed up as “aunt Pleakley.” There’s even an episode that tackles Pleakley dealing with the pressures of his family that wants him to marry a girl and settle down to have a “normal life.” After the episode's shenanigans, there's a realistic depiction of the misunderstanding of a heteronormative/traditional parent with their non-traditional child: Pleakley's mom says that she just wants her children to be happy, but when Pleakley says that he is happy, she thinks he's only trying to console her as she insists, "How can you be happy? You aren't even married." But Pleakley finally gets it through to his mom when he says, "I don't want to be married, mother! I'm happy just as I am."

After getting to meet all of Pleakley's ohana throughout the episode and hearing from Pleakley himself -after all of the previous misunderstandings- that he really, truly, is happy, she's finally starting to understand.

Even though his mom comments as they leave that she wants him to “try wearing men’s clothes more often,” she still does walk away accepting that she simply doesn’t understand her son's way of thinking. It’ll definitely be hard for her since she’s so much more “traditional,” but she’s finally coming to grips with the fact that her son is who he is, and likes being that way, so she’ll love him regardless. She's trying her best.

The portrayal of people with physical disabilities is also great. It’s not because there’s one recurring character with some condition, but almost because there are non-recurring characters. It isn’t in every episode, but here’s an example: they want to show someone at the park playing fetch with their dog for just one shot. They could very easily have it be any a random person, but they decided to make it a lady in a wheelchair. There's another episode where Nani's friends from highschool show up and one has forearm crutches, but not just because she had some recent accident. No one in the episode questions her condition or feels the need to point it out, the only comment on it being that the friend will use the crutches to lightly bonk the others' arms, and Nani jokes, "You are still deadly with that thing."

The fact that they include characters with disabilities when they "don't have to" makes it that much more normal. These people aren't some special case or the main highlight of the episode, they're just another person. They're normal.

There's so much that all of the original Lilo & Stitch media did right, but now the name will forever be tainted with the association of the remake, which I'm sure will have absolutely none of the tasteful writing and ideas of anything prior to it.

[saintheartwing]

This baby is the most active but gets sleepy so fast too 😭

[saintheartwing]

Gonna Be A Rough Few Months

Weeeeell...I had THOUGHT my tax stuff was all settled but...NOPE! Got a CP14. I owe money on unpaid taxes. I had, at least I thought, set up a payment plan that would take money out of my checking account to pay the taxes back. BUT, unfortunately, the payment plan didn't process.

So now I have to start paying Uncle Sam about 1075 bucks.

So...yeah. This is gonna suck.