#AT LEAST IMO THAT'S WHAT THAT HEAVILY IMPLIES

[bitbrumal]

regaling you all with another excerpt from dms, this time with @deificdeceit‘s zhongli & my tsaritsa:

bitbrumal:  khioniya's expressionless, sprawled like a warrior queen with one big hand out upon which her prim & proper partner in crime sits. sometimes her stony face splits into this big, fanged UNHINGED grin but it's only bc zhongli said smth out of fucking pocket

[aeide-thea]

literally had some tabs still open from, like, august, which on the one hand yikes but on the other hand sometimes bad takes you vaguely felt as though you should address delete themselves in the interim, so, you know, you win some you lose some…

[zeeboomblebee]

Okay, there are just so many great things about the first season of Dragons Rising and I could spend hours talking about it all. But out of everything I just really, really love and appreciate and applaud this season for the way it really focused on displaying and developing the relationships between all these characters.

Especially since we got so many brand new characters introduced in such a short stretch of time, working with old and new characters alike in brand new settings with new stakes and everything, I think it was such a perfect choice to really spend a lot of time on establishing who these people are to each other.

Arin and Sora have such a clear and beautiful (platonic, as heavily implied imo) relationship, open enough for Arin to openly admit that he loves her. Lloyd, Arin, and Sora navigating a solid mentor/student dynamic. Kai, Nya, and Lloyd spending a good first chunk of the season exchanging sibling banter and working together seamlessly. Zane missing Pixal so much it almost hurts to watch. Mr. Frohicky learning his place as a member of the Monastery. Cole’s found family relationship with Fritz, Spitz, Skulkin girl(?), and Geo. Nya and Cole exchanging soft words and gentle affection. And, of course, Kai and Wyldfire going from barley being able to cooperate together to a solid mentor/student friendship full of mutual love and respect. Just warms my heart, y’all.

When it comes down to it, this is what I love most about Ninjago. Before all of the exciting action adventure sequences that pulls these plots along, the softer, gentle found family dynamics forged along the way make up the core of the show. In earlier seasons, this is what the show focused on a whole lot more and I feel like as we got into the later seasons, some of that message was a little lost, or at least less focused on. With the soft reboot being established, the show needed a solid anchor to build from, and I think they made the perfect choice for what that should be. This is what Dragons Rising did best. So much has changed within the series, but this shows me that this is still the Ninjago that I know and love.

[waffowo]

While Donna Noble will always be my favourite companion in NuWho, Clara will always be the most multi-faceted and complex (as of now). I think that a lot of divisiveness surrounding Clara stems from 5 common criticisms:

1. Clara’s characterisation in 7B and how Moffat treats her mostly as a mystery box first and character second.

2. The length of Clara’s tenure and how some may have been fatigued due to the many times “she should have left.”

3. The emphasis on Clara’s flaws in Series 8 and how it kind of paints her as unlikable over her Series 7B depiction as at least kind.

4. Clara’s departure in Hell Bent as something that ruins her ending in Face The Raven.

5. The belief of Clara as the most important character in the Doctors life inherently devaluing other companions.

I think while I can understand the reasons leading up to these criticisms, I also think that it does help to look back throughout the Moffat and RTD era as it does help explain a lot of these points imo.

Actually, the character Clara most prominently echoes is Rose. Rose, like Clara, helped the Doctor through a time of extreme emotional vulnerability (for 9th, Time War trauma) and developed a relationship of co-dependency with him (as 10th) which never really went away even after Doomsday. Clara had the luxury of time however, and has undergone more events with the Doctor (Impossible Girl, Trenzalore, 50th Anniversary etc) but also how 12th was undergoing an extreme identity crisis of figuring out whether he’s a good man post-Trenzalore and saving Gallifrey. Clara was the one who facilitated his character growth through the turbulence of the arc in instances like Dark Water, Death In Heaven, Mummy on The Orient Express, Kill The Moon, Last Christmas etc and would naturally result in the Doctor developing an extremely unhealthy reliance on Clara as being his “carer,” his anchor to being The Doctor (refer to her whole “Be A Doctor” spiel in the 50th Anniversary). Series 9 already heavily implied the Doctor’s willingness to engage with destructive measures by choosing to separate Clara and The Doctor almost every episode (Magicians Apprentice/Witch’s Familiar) as the stakes rose and cumulated in Face The Raven.

RTD has also once said when paying tribute to Moffat:

“And nestling at the heart of the show is Doctor Who's very own problem category, the Companion, a title inherently subordinate to the Man. Until Clara comes along!”

Imo, while poorly phrased, I think does also hit another nail on the head to explain how Clara can be so compelling to someone like me but also extremely polarising. RTD is talking less about the companion being “weaker” or “submissive” but how Clara is the NuWho companion that wishes to obliterate the boundaries between the power dynamic of companion/doctor. Series 8 for instances plays on the recurring motif of, “Do as you are told” which the Doctor firstly uses to threaten Clara to keep her safe. However, Clara actively retaliates by parroting the phrase back in an attempt to attain parity. This escalates to the events of Dark Water where she attempts to maintain control of her circumstances by forcing the Doctor to be on equal ground with her. What is so fascinating is that Clara while changing and emulating more of the Doctor’s heroism, she equally begins to absorb his flaws which intensify throughout Series 8-9. Clara becomes more deceitful, egotistical, reckless and cunning as she begins to become more and more like him. The means she lies to Danny, her ability to think more and more like him.

However, what people (fans and haters) also ignore is how nuanced the circumstances are. While Clara’s flaws become more heightened, it is also a fact that she wants to be like the Doctor because of his kindness and heroism. Episodes like Robots of Sherwood, Last Christmas or even Rings of Akhten reveal a lot about how Clara reveres the Doctor as a mythic and heroic figure. Clara’s attitudes towards the children in Forest Of The Night, Name Of The Doctor and Into The Dalek reveal that in spite of her ego and selfishness, she is someone who desires to help people. Thus, her desire to become the Doctor becomes more explainable. What a lot of people can’t really accept is that she can be both egotistical, reckless and kind at once. Her actions in Face The Raven were driven out of the fact that it came from a place of ignorance and impulsiveness (not stupidity, the Doctor would do something similar, it’s just that Clara did not have all the clues) in what she believed would be what the Doctor would do and that she was confident she could match the trickery of the Doctor, and yet it was also driven by her compassion towards Rigsby and her while impulsive, sincere desire to save her friend.

Clara is punished because of this, she forgets that she’s far too human. The Doctor is less breakable. She pays for it and as Ashildr says in Hell Bent:

“She died for who she was and who she loved. She fell where she stood. It was sad. And it was beautiful.”

She died due to her physical fragility, her ego, her ignorance, her impulsiveness/recklessness and yet she also died because she was too brave, she died like the Doctor, who she loved (literally look at how her arms were outstretched as though she was mid-regeneration and how the black smoke parallels the orange glow of regeneration). However, this leads to the fourth main criticism I prior stated, so how does one answer that in relation to her character?

The answer is what Clara does and what the Doctor says towards the end of Hell Bent. Clara after being extracted and is with the Doctor in the TARDIS, spies on him because she is instantly suspicious of his erratic behaviour. Again, Clara shows how much she has become like him, she immediately picks up that he is hiding something because she has begun to think like him. Of course, the Doctor was planning on wiping Clara’s memories similar to what he did to Donna. But what does Clara do? She immediately reverse the polarity of the device that the Doctor was going to use on her and challenges the Doctors actions. Clara states:

“Tomorrow’s promised to no one, Doctor. But I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that. It’s mine.”

Clara’s language indicates her assertiveness and also a kind of last hurrah in her game of parity. She is refusing to submit to the narrative of being reduced to merely a companion that the Doctor moves away from. But more importantly, the Doctor after pressing the device and is losing his memory, states:

“Run like hell because you always need to. Laugh at everything, because it’s always funny (…) Never be cruel and never be cowardly. And if you ever are, always make amends (…) Never eat pears. They’re too squishy. And they always make your chin wet. That one’s quite important. Write it down.”

I think on initial viewing when the show was airing, this wouldn’t make much sense but this really shows the crux of how Hell Bent completes Clara’s arc and the necessity of her resurrection. In Face The Raven, the Doctor tells Clara that she’s more breakable as she questions why she can’t be as reckless as him. However, now the Doctor is instead telling her what would later be repeated in Twice Upon A Time, his regeneration speech. In his eyes, Clara has succeeded in graduating from the Magicians Apprentice and into becoming the Magician herself. He’s instructing her how to properly be The Doctor. As I said, Clara was also motivated by her desire to be kind when she engaged in her reckless gambit but what is so wrong about the desire to be kind? And why should Clara be punished for it? Thus, while Clara MUST die, her final act of kindness at the end of her arc enables the Universe to allow for Clara’s final transformation into the Doctor.

Clara is still dead, it is an unchanged historical event. However, to challenge the status quo and allow for Clara’s ascension, Clara becomes a fairy tale herself. Her body is caught in a permanent form of stasis, signalling her departure from the limits of her physicality (subverting her physical fragility) but also as seen through her last words to the Doctor:

“You said memories become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of them become songs.”

Clara has successfully become what she admired, a myth, a fable. She has become a symbol in a story, a story that would go on to have an infinite number of other stories. She has become the leaf she raises to the monster in the Rings of Akhten, she sails off into narrative ambiguity but also infinity. Clara is so polarising because she challenges the definition of what it means to be The Doctor on a pure metatextual level. It’s a logical progression from the introspection of the question from the Doctor himself in Series 8. To want to resist, I argue, is natural.

I could explore further about her adrenaline addiction in Mummy On The Orient Express or these traits I raised explored in Flatline which I may do another day, but I hope I have provided a new perspective on Clara Oswald.

[trans-androgyne]

Tumblr's search feature is being finicky, so sorry but I couldn't find your answer again. What were the problems you had with Whipping Girl? I read it recently and found a couple, but I was curious your thoughts.

Honestly — I ended up getting too frustrated with how shitty some parts were about transmascs and didn’t finish the rest of the book! So I didn’t find it my place to put a more comprehensive list of grievances together. I also didn’t find it that worthwhile since it doesn’t seem like Julia Serano necessarily holds all these views anymore. But I have severe issues with how non-transfem trans people are portrayed in it, and loathe the way everyone is constantly told to read it without an acknowledgement of those issues.

The biggest thing is that she makes a ton of assertions about trans men and the transmasc experience that just aren’t true or are at the least way overgeneralized by disregarding non-passing trans men and trans men with intersecting marginalized identities. She makes a point about how transphobia most affects trans women by saying “the majority of violence and sexual assaults committed against trans people is directed at trans women” when in reality transmascs experience the highest rates of sexual assault of all gender categories. She says other things about transmascs like how they feel safer walking alone and cry less after transition to contrast them from transfems — but these claims are based on either very few transmascs or sometimes the words of trans women talking about us if you look at her sources. She very notably downplays how horribly masc women, butches, and transmascs are treated for their masculinity. She says that anyone criticizing their masculinity would have to criticize masculinity itself, which is just so not true. Our masculinity is gender nonconformity and we have always very much been punished for it, including being institutionalized, physically and sexually assaulted, pathologized, criminalized, and killed.

She’s also super weird about non-binary/genderqueer folks in it imo. She doesn’t address exorsexism/non-binary oppression but does criticize perceived “binary-phobia” from genderqueer people. She doesn’t discuss non-binary trans experiences as anything but a stepping stone to binary transness. She focuses very heavily on the concept of a “subconscious sex” that she thinks trans people experience (knowing they’re really a male/female) which doesn’t resonate with me at all as a non-binary person. She implied non-binary people are just “partially” expressing their subconscious sex which feels incredibly exorsexist to me. I don’t have a “subconscious sex” and I’m not “partially” male — I am 100% non-binary and expressing that in whole.

It’s a great read if you’re interested in white trans women’s experiences from the 2000s and learning the basics of transmisogyny. But it deeply misrepresents other trans experiences and I don’t think she should have included them if she wasn’t going to actually use non-transfem perspectives. I feel it’s also rather of its time when it comes to its analysis of feminism. I have read more of her recent works and enjoyed them much more.

[thefreshprinceofjunes]

While im a Soriku fan I’m dubious of the idea of it being the endgame because

1. Disney is pretty fake with their progressivism as they care about their bottom line at the end of the day and wouldn’t do anything to risk their profits

2. The 2.8 Credits had a bunch of Sokai moments following the Disney couple section which tells me THAT ship is the endgame. https://youtube.com/watch?v=E9YpdXDrqz4&feature=share9

Your thoughts?

OKAY IM SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO RESPOND TO THIS

admittedly this is the biggest barrier to soriku endgame IMO (besides maybe japanese cultural norms), because disney is definitely Like That (passive progressive). however, they are getting better, slowly but surely, and lumity becoming canon in the owl house (with luz specifically being bi and amity specifically being a lesbian) gives me hope

i see a lot of people point to that credits montage as 'proof' s/k is canon, but there's three examples there that seem... out of place, if that really is what theyre going for

roxas and namine may have been teased in the kh2 era, but since then, the series seems to have WAY more heavily leaned into roxas and xion being far more likely as a couple (even tho i personally dont ship them)

ive never played ff7, but i think tifa is the canon relationship for cloud? or implied, anyway? so putting aerith and him together alongside canon disney couples is also kinda weird

and finally, wendy and peter seem like the biggest clue that something isnt right here.

wendy and peter are not a couple in the original source material at all.

wendy grows up and has children of her own.

when they reunite, peter is annoyed at first that wendys changed, even tho she insists she hasnt, at least at heart

remind you of anyone?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(@skibot99)

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 13 Thoughts: Phone Bug

A big episodes for small reasons. Not much world-shaking happened but just enough was said about just the right things. A lot to get into in this one around the incident. We're starting to have the curtain pulled back. Just a crack right now, but that's just more reason to be cracked.

Spoilers for episode 13, and all of TMA, below the cut.

Not a huge amount to touch on in the date portion of the episode other than a couple of sentences. Yeah, Sam is a gifted burn out that's sad about not getting experimented on. Same old same old. But Celia has a baby. Jack being Celia's kid I wasn't expecting mostly because of how that figures into her timeline. She's very heavily implied to be TMA's Celia but based on what she said if she is then she's been in TMP's universe for at least 4 years. A "couple of wild years" and Jack's "just over a year old". Plus 9 months and it's a lot longer than it might've appeared. None of that stuff tripped Freddy's possible lie detector either that I heard.

If you work under the assumption that the voices are who most people think, and they started roughly when they arrived, then that's a fairly major time discrepancy. The voices are about a year old but Celia has been around for 4.

However, it doesn't strictly rule that out either. Firstly, we know that moving between universes isn't actually one-to-one time-wise. Anya Villette went backwards 2 weeks when she crossed over. So them arriving at different times could support the idea that she's TMA's Celia further. Her general explanation of events could also be explained by this too. If she's not there willingly, or is there willingly but it didn't quite go to plan, a couple of wild years while you get your footing in a world you don't belong to isn't far fetched. If she was there looking for the voices then her showing up so relatively late could be explained by her baby too. So it's certainly not a dead and buried theory yet.

While Jack isn't Jack Barnabas he and the voices are about the same age. If people want to go rabid over that.

Gwen and Lena's little chat has a similar amount to really dig into. It's nice to see Gwen dealing with it all, and it's annoying we still don't know who died, but Lena does have a lot to say in a few words.

The world is full of opposing forces, some benevolent, most not. In order for the wheels to keep on turning, all these forces need to be monitored and balanced. That is where we come in.

This probably the most information we've had on the OIAR to this point from the show itself. I think most of this was safely assumed before this point. They've been doing a lot of monitoring, categorisation, and the only responses we have seen have been tamping major spikes down. A world of opposing forces is also a given. We are being led to believe that these are analogous to the 14+1 but there being benevolent ones if that's true is a big mix up. If you take the above timeline idea a step further and say the 14+1 arrived much earlier (or it doesn't matter because of how they're temporally weird) the benevolent ones could be native to TMP. They could be all TMP had.

Her assertion that the OIAR is a balance on these forces is interesting. Beyond the obvious stuff it also leans into an idea I've been throwing about regarding Starkwall. In the perception of Starwall might not really be the whole picture. The San Pedro Square massacre could've been an easy scapegoat to pin on them for the OIAR to split with them. A split caused by a disagreement in ethics. Starkwall thus far hasn't been shown to have an incredible disregard for human life based on Ep 7. The OIAR definitely has been. It could just be a PR move because the massacre was too big to contain but that feels like the least interesting way to handle this. A faction that's all in on monster hit men splitting with a faction who is against it has more room for interesting drama and worldbuilding IMO.

Balance was also a very large aspect of TMA in the end. The OIAR working towards that balance isn't as noble a goal as it might sound. Or it at least has the potential to be an incredibly misguided goal.

Okay, with all that mostly out of the way onto the incident itself. I enjoy this one a fair bit. Very different to what's come before it but with another recurring theme. We're starting to see a couple of patterns emerge now although it's too early to start naming things. I don't think there is a lot to really get into but this one was written by Alex, had a new VA, and was a recurring idea. Which does all point to this being quite important as these things go. All the episodes will likely tie up quite nicely in the end but this one seems quite relevant currently. In any case this was a fun one and I'm kinda curious how some of the elements within it will tie together. Mainly the gambling and insects.

Also, super weird they went with Zorrotrade for this. Because that's a real thing. Or was a real thing? It might be dead now, but still.

Post-incident chat has nothing I really want to comment on. More Alice and Sam is always good, even if Alice is trying really hard to not seem very upset.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet

DPHW Theory: 4622 doesn't seem particularly noteworthy. It's interesting from a thematic angle how this differs from Rolling With It. Both obviously very linked to gambling but this one lacks the compulsion elements. Which is a good indicator that H is linked to that sort of thing. Not that I need to convince myself of that further.

CAT# Theory: 3. Insert screams et cetera, et cetera. More seriously there still isn't a convincing pattern to this. Although I might be swinging back to my original tria prima and/or triple deity interpretation.

R# Theory: B is where I was thinking it'd end up while listening. So that's nice. Not much to add to this. Much like with DPHW the more information that lines up with the theory the less there is to talk about it because I've already done the hard bit.

Header talk: Gambling (Application) -/- Murder. Other than Application being a pretty weird Subsection I'm not sure there is much to dig into here. Although it does likely confirm he's dead. Which does make it a little strange that his statement wasn't read by one of the Freddy lot.

[spaciebabie]

As a certified Springtrap simp, which backstory for William do you prefer: one where he was a good dad driven mad maybe by jealousy or the loss of his youngest child, or one where he was always an abusive narcisist that cared for nobody but himself?

i feel like the, "im evil so i must also abuse my creations and/or children" has been really overdone. like idk im just tired of seeing it personally. and the whole "haha!!! im craaaazy!!" thing we get in the comics also rubs me the wrong way b/c. thats not. how he's portrayed in the games at all. esp hearing him in sister location he feels like he would be a calm sort of madness. he seems like a rational guy. he doesnt talk like that. he doesnt act like that. it seems really contradictory

i feel like him being a good dad (or at the least caring deeply for his children) gives him more urgency and like,,,,makes sense w/what we're given. it aligns the most w/the theories we have asta why he started killing etc. i also just enjoy the tragedy of it. he started out as a good guy w/good intentions and then was twisted inta something unrecognizable b/c he was so focused on tryin ta reach his goal. personally my hc is that he was jelly of henry and then the death of crying child tipped him over the edge and started his whole killing thing. imo its better than, "hee hoo i was evil FOREVER!! im PURE evil and have always been EVIL!!!" like. okay. wheres the subsistence?? give him depth dammit

why would he build a robot for his daughter if he didnt love her. why would he tell crying child he would put him back together if he didnt love him (not really cemented as something he said, but i mean who else would say it?? certainly not michael he was a boy. i think as a fandom we assume its heavily implied). it makes the afton kid's deaths so much more impactful. the prospect of this man losing pieces of his life bit by bit and being driven insane by it is enthralling

i love a good chaotic descent. i love thinking abt him being consumed w/a need ta revive his own son becoming obsessed w/life and death as a result. oh the irony of loving your own kid so much you would take others children away from them, knowing how losing your own felt. and the twisting of emotions as he sees his son michael someone who he would've died for, try ta stop him. b/c hes not understanding, they need ta b together again. thats all hes tryin ta do. get his family back tagether. and all these fucking obstacles are in the way of his only goal. and the manifestation of hatred of his own son b/c of this. b/c hes getting in his way. like, talk abt juicy. i want that man ruined. it just adds a layer of psychological torture that i just adore. william fucking ruined everything. he ruined his own happy family, he ruined his own life, and if he actually mourns that? chefs kiss.

my thought is, why even have him have a family in the first place if they're just there ta demonstrate he's evil? seeing the afton family purely as a plot device, we already know afton killed kids. one can assume a person who kills kids is a bad person (maybe? see this is where the juiciness comes in w/him caring for his children. is it really bad from his perspective if hes trying ta save his kid? or is it noble?) so we dont need ta b demonstrated ta that hes a bad person again. if hes just pure evil from the get go it doesnt make sense ta me ta have the afton kids be prominent in the story (besides michael, but even then he could probably be replaced by one of the victims family members) when you could illustrate the same point by focusing on the kids hes killed and their families. why do the afton kids matter if he treats all children the same. why are we focusing so much on the afton family and what appear ta b major story beats in their story, especially since the children he has killed do not get as fleshed out as the aftons do. i feel like if his family wasnt important ta him we wouldnt hear abt it at all. you could achieve the same message by making him single and childless.

do u kno how many stories there are of "Righteous Child Of A Horrible Guy Who Hates Everything, Even Their Own Family, Goes Out Ta Stop Their Parent And Save The Day" there are? its b/c its too easy!!! its too easy for u ta assume that a character is the worst and has been the worst forever!!! its too easy ta assume that an evil character would abuse their family!!! its too easy ta assume an evil character wouldn't have traits besides jealousy, hatred and narcissism!!!!

[hoplesshipper]

This is just a rant but sometimes I just want to gatekeep mxtxs works, especially form western fans.

Like ik that's not fair and everyone has a right to read anything they want but the way people misinterpret some pretty basic things and spread false information about the "canon", which influences fics, and fanarts, and others things is AKRHSKJ.

Like I keep seeing very western notions and takes about what x or y means and I just want to throw someone out the window.

Ik everything looks different depending on the cultural lens and again, that they can't help it, and I don't go out of my way to correct them because I don't want to appear rude but sometimes they'll just say something so wrong(especially if you look at mxtx's whole writing career and not just one novel as an isolated incident) I just have to ask for clarification because did we even read the same story at that point.

At least say it's a headcanon, but saying "it's heavily implied" when it's NOT is just so frustrating imo. Like why are you lying. It's so clear youre misremembering and confusing the novel and AO3, too(that's kinda real of them tho)

No I won't be elaborating on this or the specifics, but it's been something that has been bugging me a lot for a while.

If someone wants to tell me that they're just stories and not that serious kindly keep it to yourself :)

[solradguy]

Mr. Badguy I have a question as a guilty gear lore baby. I have been told sol/ky is problematic and I do not know why I fear. Could you please explain

Oh boy. I'm probably not the best person to ask about what ships are and aren't problematic because I honestly... just don't have the energy to care about it that much, it's like infinitely easier to block/blacklist and then move on. I don't know how people have the free time to get as worked up about it as they do.

Anyway. So, Ky's age before Missing Link (the earliest in the timeline of the games' stories) is generally the biggest problem. He was 20 in ML and a teenager through the Crusades. I think he was probably at least 18 near the end of the Crusades right before Sol left but that's pushing it. Anything with Ky and Order Sol's bad weird. I won't argue that at all, Ky was a kid and Sol was very much an adult, on top of the physical and mental power imbalance between them. Not good. Luckily, I really only see HOS/Ky stuff from the really early fandom (<2006) and IIRC their ages were still pretty vague back then so I'm just gonna chalk it up to no one knowing, especially in the EN fandom where it was a lot harder to find/get official information.

Between Missing Link to like late GGX/early GGXX I don't see what the problem with shipping them then is; they were both adults at that point and there wasn't even the power dynamic between them that there was during their Holy Order days. This, I think, really just comes down to personal reasons for not liking it. Which is fair.

After GGXX it gets... complicated.... Ky marries Sol's daughter but it's vague on when exactly Sol pieced it together that he even had a kid and that it was Dizzy, of all people. Ky definitely did not know she was Sol's kid until at least like partway through Xrd, when they both kind of put the pieces together and had a crisis over it. So shipping them after this point, between the timelines of Overture through Strive, you've got the issue of Sol now being Ky's father-in-law.

But the canon never straight up says Dizzy is Sol's kid (it is VERY HEAVILY implied though) and Sol and Ky both end up being dads together for Sin...?? It's like ASW is playing gay chicken with whether or not Sol and Ky are still shippable from an ethical standpoint lol Whatever that saying is about having a cake and eating it too, etc.

I saw the email for this ask this morning and I presented the Sol/Ky situation to my mom as if they were real people (she doesn't know anything about GG) and she was like, "That's a hell of a love triangle but I guess if the guy (Ky) and the daughter (Dizzy) got divorced and the daughter is alright with it, and it's consensual between the men, then it's weird but it's not as bad as some other relationships I've seen."

That's kind of how I feel about it too...? It's messy as fuck lmfao But I guess if there's a way to like write it so that Dizzy doesn't end up needing lifetime therapy then like... go for it....? I guess....???

I don't ship Sol/Ky because I think their dynamic is WAAAYYYY more interesting keeping them as rivals-turned-friends, and I like Dizzy too much; there's too big a chance of her ending up getting completely devastated by it. But as far as "problematic" Guilty Gear ships go, Sol/Ky's in the like... "People are wasting time arguing about this?" tier, imo. It being Thee biggest GG ship throughout the series' entire history is something to be considered, too. It's unavoidable, even the official art contributes sometimes. I often wonder why they decided to make it weird by throwing Dizzy into the mix because I know that, from digging through old forum archives, that change made a lot of people furious hahah

Disclaimer because the reading comprehension on this website is abysmal: I DON'T SHIP SOL/KY. IT'S FUNNY AS A JOKE BECAUSE IT'S AWKWARD BUT I DON'T SHIP IT IN SERIOUS CONTEXTS BECAUSE IT'S JUST NOT THAT GREAT A SHIP AND THE FATHER-IN-LAW THING MAKES ME A LITTLE UNCOMFORTABLE.

[karamazovanon]

Do you have any thoughts about Alyosha's momentary crisis of faith? Because I understood why he had one, but not so much why he was immediately ready to drink and go see Grushenka. Interested to see if you've any opinions on the matter, either regarding Grushenka or just in general.

OOOOOO this is an interesting question and my answer is going to get kinda long, warning you now LOL

i think alcohol & drinking in general is often a big part of "the karamazovian nature"—fyodor pavlovich and mitya are open alcoholics & hedonists, and ivan's heavily implied to be an alcoholic as well by his delirium tremens at the end—and more generally as one of the wordly temptations that human nature as a whole is susceptible to (tangent, but this is also really interesting when you keep in mind ivan's cup analogy!! drinking & cups are tied to living & life so often; mitya chooses to "fill" his cup/life with alcohol, ivan drinks in secret until he throws the cup/life to the ground at 30 in rebellion, and alyosha instead chooses to fill his cup/life with god. one of the schiller verses mitya quotes in the ardent confession chapter even says "To the soul of God’s creation / Joy eternal brings her draught, / In strong secret fermentation / Flames the cup of life aloft")

and the common denominator is that they don't believe enough to overcome the natural urge to indulge. mitya does believe, but he can't stop himself and reproaches himself for it; ivan doesn't believe despite wanting to and that contributes too imo. but alyosha doesn't drink and is an ascetic for the most part bc everything for him is based off of his unwavering faith—and so when his entire worldview and moral system is shaken by both ivan and father zosima, he questions EVERYTHING and begins feeling detached from reality when it doesn't match up. without his bulletproof faith intact, he no longer has the external ruleset to dictate his behavior, and the karamazovian desire to ease pain with alcohol wins for a moment without being able to trust his prior moral compass

(on rereading for this post, i don't have a formulated thought on it but it's interesting that he agrees to rakitin's initial offer of vodka even though they end up having champagne instead—there's probably some connection there between vodka and worldly/russian baseness vs champagne, which while not communion wine is still wine LMAO)

this quote from the onion chapter is what stands out the most to me, bold mine:

"Alyosha cried out with a wail in his voice. ‘I speak to you not as a judge, but as the least of the judged. What am I before her? I came here in order to be destroyed, saying: “Go on, go on!” – and that was because of my cowardice, while she, after five years of suffering, no sooner did someone come and say a sincere word to her, forgave everything, forgot everything and cried! The assailant of her honour has returned, is summoning her, and yet she forgives him everything and hurries to him in joy and she will not take the knife, she will not take it! Oh, I am not like that! I do not know whether you are like that, Misha, but I am not like that! Today, the moment I received this lesson, I … She loves in a way that is loftier than yours or mine … Have you heard her say this earlier, what she said just now? No, you have not; if you had, you would have understood everything long ago … And let the other woman, whom she offended the other day, let her, too, forgive her! And she will forgive her, if she learns of this … and she shall learn of it … This soul has not yet been reconciled, we must spare it … This soul may contain a treasure …" (tr. mcduff)

when he loses his infallible external/divine guidance, he has to turn inward/to the world around him instead, where he finds guilt and the human urge to self-destroy (as well as the influence of rakitin & his schadenfreude) and as a karamazov, it naturally comes first in the form of alcohol (women, too, but alyosha never really shows any desire on that front) when he sees grushenka's kindness and forgiveness, he snaps out of it and his faith is reinforced (while he believes he's a sinner and unworthy, he sees in her christlike forgiveness and is reminded that although he has these karamazovian urges, giving in to them entirely isn't the answer etc etc im not a theologian and have been writing too long anyway)

this has been such a long ramble with so little structure but this is SUCH an interesting plot point, thank you for asking my thoughts on it!! :D

[the-last-dillpickle]

an early defining Winn moment, imo, is at the end of s2e03, when Kira and Dax bring in proof of the Cardassian's involvement with the Circle. Up until that point, what we've seen of Winn is that she's powerhungry and willing to kill rivals and participate in a coup to get it. We know Jaro has already promised her the Kai-ship, (and it's heavily implied that they're fucking as well.) So at this point, all she really needs to do is sit back and voice her support when it's asked. But she doesn't. As soon as Kira shows up with the proof and Jaro scoffs and tries to have her taken away, Winn stands up and says ‘no we need to see this’.  Winn might have a lust for power but (at this point of the series at least, when she doesn’t feel her gods have abandoned her yet), it’s not all consuming and not beyond reasoning.

[scintillyyy]

trying to articulate in my head why i get bothered by super evil irredeemably abusive jack and janet drake (aside from how out of character it is) and i think it's because by giving them only (1) character trait that is Bad Parent then basically every parenting choice they're shown to be making is then cast in the light of "well this is what abusive parents do, clearly" even if the choice itself is not inherently abusive, especially when contrasted with the batfam/the waynes who are shown to be the one "right" way to be a family.

like i just feel like there are outside factors that contribute to the way that janet gets cast a lot in the role of "had untreated ppd/post-partum psychosis and was incapable of loving her son", "she didn't want to breastfeed/chose formula/gave him straight to a nanny and went straight back to work", or even that the drakes are shown having a nanny (at least, at first) because they "don't want to take care of their son", both shown going back to traveling/work as soon as possible after he was born, or missing holidays in a way that makes me a little uncomfy because it starts to tell a story that those choices are objectively wrong and abusive choices when in reality they're not necessarily. so when those traits are consistently used to prop and give credence up the "they were awful, bad, irredeemable parents" narrative it just is a little sus imo. whereas the "good family" would never, ever do any of those things. so when it becomes so ubiquitous that the drakes do those sort of things as parents it starts to place a value statement on those choices themselves, that those choices are what make you a bad parent, versus meaningfully interacting with the ways that the drakes did struggle as parents.

like why is it that bruce never has to prioritize work at WE or as batman over family stuff sometimes in these works? why does bruce never miss holidays (when he's far more likely to)? why do the drakes always prioritize work over family stuff when they're home? i think it's very, very telling that the drakes are shown to be constantly neglecting tim even when they are home to work instead (when tim canonically mentions that when they were home they did a lot with him/tried to include him/seemed to prioritize spending time with him when they could) when the truth is they could spend they entire two weeks home they had with tim and still be neglectful overall! they could come home and make sure to spend christmases with tim and still be relatively inattentive! but since only "good parents" do these things, we can't give those traits to them, we can only give the trait of constantly working to them because "bad parents" have to work instead of spending all their time with their kids. and then it starts to have some offensive implications imo, because you're consistently associating parenting choices that are not inherently abusive with abusive parenting which heavily implies that those choices are the "wrong"/bad choices and you will ruin your kid forever if you do them. which. is not true.

[percabeth4life]

You said ares was pretty great as a parent, unlike what Rick did?

Did I miss something? Or was that just referring to how Rick writes him?

Lol yeah I'm referring to how Rick wrote him both in the books and in the show.

In the books he's heavily implied to be physically abusive and is at least emotionally so, on top of the general Godly neglect all the kids get (which is a different matter imo).

In the show he outright states he doesn't like his kids.

So yeah- not how Rick wrote him lol.

[toddhewitt]

do we think “where else would you wake up in the morning and matter” actually struck a nerve with silver?

from what i’ve seen, the majority interprets his reaction as genuine, and i do like this interpretation because it adds a double meaning to the scene, but i don’t think it’s unquestionable.

slightly paraphrasing and expanding on the tags i once put under a gifset of that scene: “silver knows he’s gonna get his share of the gold, but to do that he has to act as though he thinks he won’t be getting it. to be believable, he gets angry with flint (not completely falsely; and still for the reason that flint won’t put the gold first), and then flint needs to convince him that silver needs to stay on the crew. but here’s the thing - silver also needs flint to need to convince him, so that silver can have a reason to stay on the crew that would be convincing to flint (it’s necessary that he stays on the crew so it won’t be suspicious that both he and the gold are gone at the same time). and then flint says ’you walk out on this and where the fuck are you going’ and silver looks stricken - and it’s EXACTLY the result that silver needed. he needed flint to provide a reason for him to stay so he could continue playing his role, and his reaction to it just might be a false one and it just might be a true one.”

if silver isn’t truly affected by those words then the look on his face is just another mask, and it doesn’t have its double meaning, and i love the possibility of the double meaning. on the other hand, as he proves in the rest of this episode and in general, he’s definitely capable of looking like it affected him while it didn’t really, and i can’t find much evidence that “mattering” is something silver pays any mind to. personally i find it fitting if he doesn’t, or at least didn’t up until that point, care for it.

i expect i might see a point being made about silver sacrificing his leg for the crew but that’s another reading that isn’t unquestionable - personally i’d argue that he didn’t do it for the crew (certainly not solely and imo not even primarily, possibly not at all). that’s a whole other discussion i could expand on but it’s not exactly the topic here so i’ll say that the gist of it is that silver obviously noticed vane’s guy’s keys are missing and knew the crew would come to save him, meaning he only had to stall until they did; plus, he couldn’t betray them because if he did and then they got free and realized his betrayal he’d be as good as dead.

looking for other occurrences of silver interacting with the topic of “mattering”, the final episodes give us something interesting: there’s silver claiming (and to me, his belief seems genuine) that he has no story and that his past doesn’t matter; on the other hand there’s flint predicting his “casting about in the dark for some proof that you mattered”, and while we don’t have a lot of evidence of the effect this would have on silver, it is very heavily implied by both the show and possibly treasure island that it would be effective.

besides those, i can’t really recall any other instances where mattering was something silver pays any mind to, but i might be missing something. and if this is truly all the evidence, it’s not really enough to judge either way.

another way i like looking at it is that in their argument in 2.07, flint created the notion that “mattering” should... well… matter, in silver’s mind. this is mostly supported by the fact that by all appearances (though appearances are not the whole story of course) it wasn’t something silver cared for before this conversation. more than that, i adore the thought that flint didn’t create that idea in him in their argument in 2.07 but rather in their final conversation in 4.10. i base both of these readings on the fact that the most notable instances where silver does seem to care about it are when flint is the one who claims so. it also beautifully matches silver’s belief that flint conjures realities, and the whole deal of silver not having a story before flint, silver seemingly not having existed before the start of the show.

it just seems odd to me to treat the assumption that he cares about it as a given, as silver’s cold practicality is one of the most important aspects of his characterization, especially considering the way it contrasts flint. i acknowledge that another important aspect of it is that he contains multitudes and inner contradictions, so it might be that he cares about “mattering” despite the lack of evidence of it, but even so, i believe that’s not the whole truth of it.

it’s possible there isn’t one clear answer here - maybe it’s one of those cases where the story allows for more freedom of interpretation as it doesn’t point strongly to a single reading. i’m just curious to understand why the common reading is that it must be important to him, even if the reasons are as simple as that it’s narratively satisfying or that silver’s manipulation of flint worked too well on the audience.

[ari-a1357]

I was bored so I did this for vanlock lol

In summary, these two are polar opposites in most areas, so they complement each other quite well IMO. If you wanna see more of my brainrot, read my vanlock fic on AO3 :D

For explanations + extra headcanons, keep reading (MAJOR SPOILERS FOR DGS2):

Barok being 4 inches/9 cm taller makes me think that he has to be the big spoon by default, at least most of the time. That’s also why I thought he was slightly more likely to lend his clothes to Herlock. Also Herlock likes to steal Barok’s cape and pretend to be a vampire.

Herlock canonically calls Barok, “Mr. Reaper” in the games. I don’t know if that counts as a pet name, but it’s the perfect mixture of playful and insulting which I think encapsulates their dynamic pretty well.

One thing some people might not realize is that the original depiction of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle is canonically queer. Yeah, it’s explicitly stated that Sherlock isn’t into women so none of that queerbaiting shit with Johnlock (looking at you Moffat) which is pretty progressive for the late 1800s. Many people speculate Sherlock to be aroace, and since I’m aroace, I like to believe Herlock Sholmes is also on the spectrum.

Obviously, the previous point ties into the horny levels. In my mind, Herlock constantly craves affection, both emotional and physical, but that doesn’t always translate to desiring sexual intimacy. It shifts frequently, much like his moods. Hence, the aceflux orientation. Barok’s horny level is more straightforward, which is the only straight thing about him lmao.

Barok gives off the vibe of a deeply repressed homosexual man with religious trauma, you can’t change my mind. That played a factor into some of my decisions with the sliders, especially his little relationship experience and dislike of PDA.

They’re from Victorian era London there are no cars lmao

I think it is canon that Herlock sucks at cooking or at least it’s heavily implied by the fact that his ten year old daughter does all the cooking. But he’s gotta be somewhat better than Barok who was raised in nobility and has likely never touched a stove in his life.

Barok isn’t scared of bugs (he’s been through much scarier things) but he also doesn’t like squashing them because it gets his expensive shoes dirty. Herlock screams about bugs not because he’s scared of them, but because he gets excited and wants to use them for his inventions.

I think some people might assume Barok is more overprotective since that’s what his character archetype typically falls under, but I’d argue that Herlock is far more overprotective, even to a fault. I mean, he kept so many secrets for ten whole years just to protect his daughter from the pain of knowing her biological father was a mass murderer. Also, he went all the way to Asia to prevent Kazuma from getting assassinated even though he’d never met the man. I rest my case.

The awkwardness level could be changed honestly. While Barok is an introvert, he’s also a highly skilled prosecutor so he is good at public speaking. On the other hand, he is probably terrible at socializing beyond polite conversations with coworkers since he likely doesn’t have friends other than Albert. Meanwhile, Herlock does and says a lot of awkward things, but he isn’t embarrassed about it in the slightest.