#Also it kills me how they're both sort of having the same issues just in different fonts

[saltpepperbeard]

gnawing on my arm because i think there's something to be said about how stede not only dreams about himself with a beard, but ed with his full beard back too. like, the dream seems to be riddled with imagery that he thinks ed would want.

and i say this especially because of how stede reacted when ed had to shave his beard. he freaked out on his behalf. he shrieked in horror whereas ed was entirely unbothered. he feared he had ruined him, had dragged him down to some despicable level, when in actuality, ed was completely content to shed that part of his persona.

and then there he is dreaming about ed with that part right on back.

so there's very clearly still a part of his mind that's convinced that's what ed wants. because why wouldn't he? everyone else seems to. and why would he want the softness and femininity stede had been bullied for his entire life?

which in turn plays into his own imagery too. bearded, masculine, fiercesome, rugged...

because how could someone love what everyone has hated him for? how could someone want what everyone has tried to quite literally beat out of him?

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Been thinking about Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and what makes Death the Wolf such an effective villain, and like… character design and voice acting is certainly doing a lot there, don't get me wrong, but I think there's something else at play.

Death is the most terrifying character in Puss in Boots, because he's the only one playing the genre straight.

The premise of the Shrek films has always been that they're normal, modern people living in wacky fairytale land.

The evil king uses his magic mirror as a dating app. The fairy godmother uses business cards to contact her clients. Her workers consider unionising over their lack of dental plan.

Puss in Boots 1 kinda broke the mould in that— while there are plenty of modern elements to how the characters act and how their world works— it's more specifically intended to be characters from the world Zorro living in wacky fairytale land. But the point still stands.

The aim of the Shrek films and spin-offs is to subvert common fairytale tropes for comedic effect. What if the princess fell for the ogre? What if Prince Charming was an entitled dick? What if Goldilocks teamed up with the three bears and started a crime family?

But Death? Death, for the most part, isn't playing that game.

No character questions why he doesn't just kill Puss outright. There are no gags about him being inconvenienced by Jack Horner losing so many men. Nobody makes any self-aware fourth wall breaking jokes about why he bothers with the whole whistling thing.

We all know why he does the whistling thing. It's the same reason why Little Red Riding Hood has to go through the whole "what big eyes/ears/teeth you have, Grandma" rigamarole. The same reason why the wolf takes care to knock before blowing the little pigs' houses down.

The Wolf is scary because he's the only actual fairytale creature in this entire setting. He's not bound by rules of logic or common sense, or his own will, he's bound by the narrative.

And that's also why he backs down at the end.

The first time he and Puss fight, in the bar, Puss is arrogant. The second time, in the Cave, Puss is scared out of his wits. It's the third time, on the wishing star, that Puss learns his lesson. Of course the Wolf backs down after that! The rules say he has to.

But, on another level, there is also the issue of Puss realising that he wants more from his life than just to be a legend.

They say "legends never die", but the most famous part of any given legend tends to be the story of how the hero finally bites the dust.

And "he was such a great fighter that Death himself had to kill him off, personally!" is just the sort of ending that would fit the legend Puss has constructed around himself. In a sense, the Wolf is giving Puss exactly what he proclaims to want— the chance to go down in history.

Puss realising he doesn't want that anymore is the catalyst for sending the Wolf away. Through his own egotistical and reckless attitude, he turned himself into a story and thus summoned a narrative device. Only by choosing to value his life over the legend is he able to escape that trap.

The Wolf's defeat is both the natural ending of the story that he and Puss have been playing out since the film began, and a rejection of the natural ending to the story Puss has been telling about himself since he first became the hero of San Ricardo.

[voxswifihotspot]

SELF INDULGENT HEADCANONS (mostly qpr radiostatic)

Vox imagines Al comforting him when he's upset (would never tell ANYONE)

Vox probably wishes he was a girl so Alastor wouldn't hate him as much

He definitely has internalized homophobia and assumes Alastor doesn't like him because Al’s straight and that's why he acts so much nicer with girls, because he likes them.

He overcompensates by acting like he wants Al to fuck him because that would be better than admitting weakness (he just wants a really good hug from him) (and yes he also wants to fuck him for sure but let me have this)

Alastor got scared off by Valentino, especially when Vox started picking up Val’s sex joke traits (Al would probably say some shit like ' i miss the old times we had…before Valentino…” when Vox made the third ‘that's what she said’ joke of the day)

Alastor enjoys Vox’s company but they're both so prideful they'd never admit it unless it still felt like they were winning in something

Alastor gets invited to girl sleepovers, Vox has a restraining order from them

Vox is so afraid of thunderstorms he's like a cat when a vacuum rolls by (electricity=hes at risk of getting shocked because he’s hes a tv head and he didn't used to be waterproof either so it's just kind of stuck with him)

Alastor is a mama’s boy, Vox has mommy issues. Full stop.

Vox changes the wifi password CONSTANTLY whenever he gets mad at any one of the vees and it pisses everyone off so much

Alastor is absolutely sex repulsed and it disturbs him whenever Vox makes sexual comments about him (Vox has no idea how to express actual affection and he’s gotten used to Valentino’s situationship, which enables him to not have to say anything)

Vox secretly is a sucker for Alastor’s old-fashioned gentleman shit

Vox and Alastor are kind of good cop bad cop but you literally can’t tell which is which because they switch off every time you talk to them

Vox has a caffeine addiction and Alastor literally never has caffeine (claims it makes it hard to sleep despite the fact that nobody has seen him sleep anyway)

Back before the picture Vox has of Alastor was taken, Vox would constantly complain about how Alastor never was on camera and Alastor thought it was just a really stupid bit until Vox started drunk crying about it (Alastor grudgingly allowed the picture to be taken after that)

If Vox ignored Alastor at any point, Alastor would immediately start trying to subtly get his attention, but if Vox ever pointed it out he would get annoyed and say he wasn’t

Vox talks shit about someone once and Alastor immediately starts insulting everything about that person with a sort of pent up rage as Vox stares in horror

Alastor talks shit about someone and it’s really passive aggressive and then Vox just chimes in with “they should kill themselves” (Alastor tries extremely hard not to laugh but it always catches him off guard)

Vox never initiates physical touch but he loves it so whenever Alastor touches him it’s like a treat

Alastor knows like everything about Vox but he hates when he’s called out for it and pretends that he knows nothing

Vox owns a smart fridge just to piss Alastor off and it made him upset when Alastor left because it's useless and he wasted money on it

Alastor loves spicy food, Vox cannot handle it

Vox actually enjoys podcasts but will never say he enjoys radio even though it’s essentially the exact same

Vox is probably a misogynist and Alastor a misandrist (they balance each other out)

Alastor cares for Vox but thinks Vox is too immature and sexual and everything Vox pretends to be around Alastor. They’re constantly caught in a loop of Alastor being too prideful to admit any affection and Vox being too guarded.

Alastor found himself using Vox’s slang when they were closest, he completely picked up his dialect and vice versa.

Alastor compared Vox off his meds to Niffty one time, genuinely didn’t mean it as an insult but Vox didn’t speak to him for the rest of the day

Vox forgets to do anything for himself, Alastor remembers only because of his mother reminding him when he was younger

Vox tells Alastor everything that goes on on the VoxTech cameras, Alastor pretends he doesn’t care then immediately tells Rosie, it's a full gossip chain.

Alastor thought Vox was trying to buy his affection with lavish gifts etc, it was really just his love language

Vox has a spare profile for Alastor on Netflix in case he ever comes back and nobody talks about it

(Flipside, Alastor doodles sharks on everything because he used to draw them for Vox and he misses it)

Alastor and Vox only kiss in the ‘married couple kiss on the cheek’ way, same with Alastor and Rosie

Vox confided in Angel Dust about like…everything by accident one time

Alastor is very practical, Vox thinks he's very practical

Alastor only agrees to things if he thinks it was his idea first. Vox picks up on this and gaslights the hell out of him

Rosie and Vox run their mouths so hard when they’re with each other, if anyone walked in on them, they’d get top quality gossip that would probably get numerous sinners incriminated

Alastor is an asshole and realizing that he cared about Vox genuinely was a pill he never really swallowed

(Vox is also an asshole but he did realize he cares about Alastor and he hates himself for it, so it’s easier to pretend it’s some weird kink of his)

Alastor loves cooking, Vox loves standing around and narrating the cooking in an annoying announcer voice while pretending he's doing something helpful

Alastor feels comfortable around Vox because anything Alastor’s embarrassed about, Vox has already done tenfold

Whenever Vox does something corny, Alastor makes sure everyone else knows that he would never do that

this took way too long

[dreamcaught]

Fandom has Critically Failed a Media Literacy Check: Thoughts on Ascended Astarion

TLDR: Yes, he's evil. Yes, he's still in love with you.

Okay so now that I know more about both Spawn and Ascended Astarion from personal playthrough experience, I have to say it's really weird to me how much the fandom is pinning them against each other. In all practicality, they're the same fucking person.

Astarion's non-romance specific lines are practically identical. If you're his friend with high approval, he's pretty badass, if a megalomaniac. His self-obsession and self-importance make sense in context, though, and they aren't even that much more pretentious than his earlier expressions of desire for power. It's just that he has the power now. He says he's happy, is excited to be prosperous in his own way, and continues helping you. He's no more cruel than he was before. I can't speak to low-approval lines because my games will always reach "Exceptional" levels of approval for my favourite party members, but I can't imagine them being any different than low-approval spawn lines.

On Love

When romanced, the biggest fandom criticism I'm seeing is this idea that Astarion no longer loves his romantic partner. I have been looking for evidence of this and can't find anything indicating its truth. The closest thing is a post-breakup conversation which, in my opinion, is a huge cop-out. Even still, it does not say anything about his love for you -- only your love for him.

"Of course I understand love. All too well. The greatest crimes committed in this world are committed for love. A hunger crueler than bloodlust. I know how to play with it, and I can't resist playing the hand I know. I would have ruined your love, used your trust until you were nothing. So, for what it's worth, I respect you for making the choice you did. I never knew you had it in you."

I can imagine these lines were written for a very practical reason: They don't want break-ups to affect game-play. An entirely evil Ascended Astarion would just swan the fuck off if his partner left him, and that's not fair to a player who just doesn't want to be in a relationship in-game anymore. This is different than if the character breaks up with the player, because that usually happens because of some sort of cruelty the player chose. Actively trying to kill him, failing to persuade him after showing support for his ascension, or kicking him the balls after agreeing to be his spawn are all actively mean on the player's part. (Or an unfortunate dice roll, but it is - after all - still a game.)

Having Astarion leave the player after he breaks up with you is a consequence of these cruel actions; having Astarion leave after you break up with him is a game-play issue. They can't realistically account for why the player would do so. So they've thought of a realistic reason for Ascended Astarion to stick around: he respects you.

But I also think this speaks to Ascended Astarion's character.

People like to point out the way he says love in this line, as though it is something disgusting - something beneath him. Yes, he probably hates the concept, hates the feeling of it. But: he didn't like it much when he first fell in love with you either, as a spawn.

And he's only felt it once before you broke up with him, so there's that.

Astarion is insecure, even ascended, and if the player speaks for him - tells him he can't love, says he is too cruel, his actions thereby will only justify those concerns. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy, but that is not a result of him not loving you; that's a result of you saying he can't.

Reflect on this: Of course I understand love. All too well. I would have ruined your[s].

He loved you. He loves you, still. He can't say he doesn't, even if he respects your decision to leave him. However, he also feels that love is ruinous. He has become an even darker, more evil creature than he was before, and he believes your connection to him would be destructive. Consider that you have just denied him what he wanted: you. His love for you has hurt him, so he feels that he would hurt you back. He gave his trust to you, and you broke his heart, so he maintains that the same would happen to you: that he would use your trust until you were nothing, like he is. That is Astarion's nature both before and after ascension, but it is not an argument to show that he no longer loves you. That is an argument to show that ascended Astarion is just as lost, insecure and retaliatory as he was when you first met.

On the other hand, if you do not break up with Astarion, there are copious lines which showcase his love and complete devotion to his partner:

"You sweet, sweet thing. I want what's best for you too, of course." (In response to: "I hope you learned to love me," he says,) "What's to say I don't? I'm willing to share all of this with you. What's that if not love?"

(In response to: "I hope we can work things out and stay together," he says,) "Of course we can. You're the one that I want, the one that I love... My dark consort. My right hand. My most beloved spawn."

("So what would I be? A vampire, or your spawn?") "You wouldn't just be some spawn - you're far more than that to me. We could be together for eternity, ruling this world side by side. We could have it all."

("It sounds like you'd have it all.") "I already have everything. Except you by my side."

These lines come from the conversation before choosing to become his spawn or breaking up with him. All of these responses explicitly demonstrate Astarion's love for the player. Now that he achieved his greatest goal to become his strongest self, his desire is to share his success with you. As a vampire, that means to become like him, to become his. In a very real but evil way, he is very obviously asking you to marry him. And he's being very honest about it.

I've seen a lot of arguments about these lines which pretty much come down to: he's lying. But, kindly, fuck off. That isn't an argument; there is absolutely no reason to think he's lying here unless you have already chosen to think he's lying, and that's just another self-fulfilling prophesy.

Astarion being evil does not automatically mean that he's lying. Astarion's voice acting here does not automatically mean that he's lying, either. Yes, he sounds different: he is more self-assured, more powerful, more arrogant - but he's not fundamentally different in his ideals or desires from his spawn self. There is no evidence to support the claim that Astarion is manipulating you or lying about his feelings to - what? Stay with you? Why would he? It is through this very conversation that he allows you to decide for yourself what you want to happen next, so trying to claim he's manipulating or lying to you here is shallow.

And at this point, people will bring up the wisdom check. Look, I have no idea why this check means that Astarion couldn't possibly love you or respect you. In fact, I argue that it's much the opposite: he respects the player so much that he thinks that they're degrading themselves to be with him. He thinks so little of himself that you are lowering your standards, lowering yourself, to be with him:

He will always see you as degrading yourself if you continue to be with him. But perhaps you wish to degrade yourself. And he knows it.

Your choice to become his consort is beneath you - not beneath him. Your wanting to remain at his side is not what you deserve because he thinks you deserve better: but he knows, at this point, that it's what you want anyway.

Dominant/submissive Undertones

"On your knees, darling." A lot of people feel uncomfortable with the new dynamic created when Astarion ascends. His relationship with the player is significantly more defined than it ever is when he's a spawn. This is true throughout a spawn playthrough, as well: it is only at the very end of the game, in the epilogue scene, that spawn Astarion confirms your relationship as fully established. Whereas with ascended Astarion, he considers you his established partner now - his eternal lover and consort.

The Dominant/submissive undertones created by the master/spawn dynamic makes some people argue that ascended Astarion is abusive, for some reason. But - no, it's not. Just - understand that actual abuse is a sensitive topic wherein claiming Astarion's dominant aspects are abusive is actually offensive to both people in D/s (Dominant/submissive) relationships and to survivors of real abuse.

But a few things:

Astarion is evil. Astarion is always evil. Astarion is chaotic evil as a spawn and more lawfully evil ascended. He is cruel with his words, has a twisted sense of pleasure and pain, acts selfishly and relishes in having power. He "has a casual relationship with murder," genuinely dislikes children/the weak, and legitimately does not care about most people. Ultimately, Astarion craves for control - over himself, over his life, and over others. But as Astarion learns in his own story arc: being evil does not mean he cannot love. These things do co-exist, and you are the exception. Your friends are like salads (side-dishes, add-ons, auxiliaries... they don't really count as much as the main course). So yes: he can be mean and he can be cruel - because he is, from the start, fairly evil. But since that's true for both spawn and ascended versions of him, this doesn't matter. You must accept this as part of his character; if you don't, that's on you, not the text.

Being dominant is not fundamentally abusive. There are countless real life examples of D/s relationships which are based on love and respect. These relationships are just as real and just as valid as any other kind of relationship. They are not based on abuse and should not be seen as such.

This relationship, as degrading and submissive as it is, is still based completely on consent. Astarion never forces you into your agreement, whereas he does thank you for it twice: "You have given me everything. Thank you." and "Gods, you're beautiful. And you will be beautiful forever. Thank you, for trusting me." Many people will see the subsequent inability to break up with him as abusive, but I must insist: he is very clear that this pact is eternal. That this is forever. If you break the consent of forever, then that's you being cruel again - not him.

On Possession

Another line he says in this post-breakup scene is this:

"And if we were beholden to each other? Well, how is that too different from being enslaved?"

In my opinion, this line is much more significant than the previous. It speaks to Astarion's tenuous grasp of relationships in general, but also how he views both himself and you when partnered.

Importantly:

"beholden to each other" is not "my ownership of you"

From the beginning of the game, he's using you and he's expecting you to use him. For Astarion, every relationship in his life has thus far been transactional. Every relationship except yours, which is the only one he wants to be real.

If the player breaks up with Astarion, the reality of this relationship is broken. He reflects on it once again as being transactional. He is no longer attached to you romantically, and so he strikes a business deal with you instead.

This devolution of Astarion's understanding of relationships does not happen if you choose to stay with him. He doesn't think of your relationship as transactional at all - in fact, he shows trust, devotion and reciprocation of possession and affection. He considers the relationship to be established and the most authentic one he's ever had.

Ascended Astarion considers his consort his "right hand," "by his side," -- these are just different, fancy ways of saying that you are his equal without saying it outright. He is as beholden to you as you are to him.

Astarion may be more open about his possessive tendencies toward his partner - but saying "my treasure," "my beloved spawn," or any other endearment with the possessive "mine" at the start of it isn't nearly so damaging as some people are claiming it to be. Spawn Astarion's "my love" is really no different. That Astarion is open and vulnerable with these endearments is just showcasing his trust in your shared devotion to each other. Think of it this way: you could very well be calling him something similar right back.

--

If you have not actually played an ascended playthrough - or, heck, if you haven't played the game at all and are making loud opinions about Ascended Astarion as a lying liar incapable of love or of Spawn Astarion being the better choice -- maybe stop. Maybe just enjoy what you like and let others enjoy what they like. Maybe practice some media literacy and note that Astarion is Astarion is Astarion - he's the same character, both beloved and hated by many, with virtues and vices that are compelling and flawed.

The writers have created a rich story. Understand that the story being told is the one being chosen by the player - whichever direction they choose to take it.

[wingedblooms]

Hi, it's me again. Why didn't Bryce meet elain in cc3? Was it some sort of a spoiler for her next book? Was it because she has hidden starborn powers like Bryce and SMJ didn't want Bryce and Elain meeting for a chance that either Elain os Bryce powers will start to glow when meeting eachother? I want to know your thought on this please 😁

Hello again! 🥰 I’m not Sarah, so I can’t say for certain, but I think there are a few different possibilities.

No such thing as bad press. Sarah and BB benefit from the tension among shippers and the mystery of who is next feeds that tension. It creates free buzz for them and helps them make more money.

Maximizing pay off. In an interview with Eva Chen, Sarah talked about planting secrets in acosf that she plans to pay off in the future. While it would’ve been nice to have seen Elain interact with Bryce in hofas, it makes sense for Sarah to save Elain-specific reveals for her book, where we will be able to fully appreciate her perspective and the hidden layers of her character and powers.

That said, we were given important information that strengthens set-up for her story:

Power: We learned that Rhysand is related to the Starborn and in acosf Sarah explicitly told us that the sisters were a match for him in power. That could mean they possess Starborn magic or raw magic that matches it in might, which might explain why they're marked by Wyrd. Elain's gifts (whatever powers she has, as Amren said in acosf) are mostly unexplored and might just be the answer to the plot threads hofas illuminated.

The Mask: Bryce had a Made object on her body and leveled up her Starborn power in hofas, allowing her to activate the magic of the Starborn blades and use the Mask without issue. Even Hunt was able to use the Mask because he had Bryce’s power in him temporarily. But when Nesta used the Mask, she struggled to come back to herself after killing the wyrm. This should prompt a conversation among the IC: Is this because she returned her magic? Or interfered with a bargain? Or does the Mask have some innate, soul-devouring magic that functions like a curse, as Rigelus warned? @offtorivendell pointed out that Cassian questioned the cost to Nesta’s soul when Amren said the Mask made her unstoppable. It seems there’s something to that and since Bryce returned it at the end of hofas, we will likely learn more.

Starborn blades: We learned that while Azriel has been carrying Truth-Teller all this time, he doesn’t seem to know how to activate its magic. And holding both of these blades at the same time seems to bother him. But we did see Bryce use them together without issue (like the Mask) and based on what we saw of Truth-Teller’s magic, it’s even more likely that Elain activated its magic when she stepped out of shadow, out of nowhere, to kill Hybern with it. In other words, if it hasn't been addressed already, the IC should be asking questions about how Elain used the blade to appear when/where she did, and what that might mean for future exploration and use.

Asteri’s secrets: There are more secrets hidden in the land by the Asteri that will need to be uncovered. Vesperus mentioned the sacred sister peaks, so at minimum, we will be spending time mapping their secrets and rooting out the remaining Asteri influence on the land. As @offtorivendell, @silverlinedeyes, @willowmeres and I have theorized, the Asteri's lingering secrets might be connected to Koschei and his efforts to free himself. Not only does this sound like an ideal plot for a gardener, but Elain might’ve been given her vision and gifts for this exact purpose.

Stone Mother: Mother, Cauldron, Fate = Wyrd. We learned that the Asteri warped her Cauldron form into a tool of destruction. Pure life used to blossom from her womb. This could explain why she loves Elain and, at her core, would never hurt her—Elain is a kindred spirit and might represent what she used to be. Wyrd also used to rest in the heart of the Night Court, which is yet another hint that we will be exploring the mysteries beneath Ramiel.

The Helscape beneath: Bryce noticed a Helscape beneath the land in the cavern illustrations, making us wonder just how entwined these two worlds are and hinting at future interactions (via sight or portal) with the Princes of Hel and their creations (yes, please).

I am not sure exactly where Sarah will start the next acotar book. As @silverlinedeyes theorized, it could be a tandem read that includes Bryce's arrival and discoveries in Prythian. I could also see Sarah starting from an IC meeting where the characters are in an uproar and trying to process all that has happened, which might include descriptions and flashbacks of important scenes. Nesta and Azriel interacted directly with Bryce, so they will be responsible for reporting on those activities. It would make sense for those conversations to include what Azriel observed of Nesta's struggle with the Mask, what Nesta observed of Azriel's reactions to the Starborn blades, what they learned about the Starborn, Asteri, Trove, and Wyrd from Silene and Vesperus.

And once the weapons Bryce took are returned (which is fairly quickly, given the short timeline), Nesta will need to share what Bryce said to her. Personally, I imagine a scene in which the IC discusses (or more likely argues about) what Bryce shared, the Starborn blades aglow on the table. During this exchange, Elain is noticeably distracted, her focus repeatedly drawn to the blades until she finally blurts out, "Can none of you hear them? It's impossible for me to focus with their incessant chatter."

And that’s how we learn Elain can understand the Starborn blades and has been listening to their colorful commentary on everyone in the room the entire time.

[sapphic-agent]

Why is Simon able to see Maddie?

I've been thinking about it for a while, and I think I might have an answer.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Let's start with what I don't think it is. I'm 99% sure that it's not because Simon's dying. There's speculation that he has a tumor or undiagnosed cancer causing him to slowly die and that's why he's able to see Maddie. But I have two issues with that:

Why is he only able to see Maddie? If him approaching death is what enables him to see and talk with a ghost, why is that only extended to one ghost? At the very least, wouldn't he have some kind of connection with the other ghosts? Maybe if not outright seeing them, then sensing their presence or something? But he's never given any indication they're there, we've seen that. If he was dying, he'd have a connection to the entire metaphysical plane, not just Maddie.

Why does he only start seeing her at that exact moment in season 1? If he was dying, wouldn't it have been sooner? Maddie was "dead" for three days before Simon saw her. And it was only at this specific time that he was able to do so.

What this tells me is that this isn't possible because of anything from Simon's end. Or, not completely from his end.

To answer this question, we need to look at the only other instance of a living person and ghost interacting. What enabled Maddie to see Janet and Mr. Martin arguing? What allowed Janet to steal Maddie's body in the first place?

I think it's a combination of things. Mr. Martin says to Janet, "What did you feel? You have to tell me." This implies that she did something that was completely unexpected by him. We don't know what it was exactly, but we can assume that it has to do with blurring the lines between life and death even if it was just a little. But I don't think it was just this that allowed Maddie to see her and Mr. Martin.

When Maddie describes her altercation with her mother to Simon, she says very deliberately, "She killed my spirit." Maddie wasn't just feeling upset in that boiler, she was broken. A lifetime of being battered down by her mother's alcoholism and negligence and this was the final straw. She wasn't physically dead at that point, but emotionally she might as well have been.

I think that these two things happening at the same time created a sort of passageway between Maddie and the metaphysical plane. The hollowness Maddie was feeling coincided with whatever Janet had done to blur those lines, and that's how Janet was able to push her soul out.

Now, if I'm right about all of that, what does that have to do with Simon?

Well, remember what Simon said to Ms. Fields, "I don't know how I'm going to survive this place without her." It's important to remember that Simon had a feeling she was dead, or at the very least seriously hurt/in trouble. He accepted the possibility of her being gone as fact, which is why he never questions her being a ghost. It isn't such a stretch to assume that he was feeling the same hollowness that Maddie was concerning her mother.

(This also answers why he was the only one. Sandra and Nicole still believed Maddie was alive, they weren't broken in the way that Simon was. And when Sandra did receive the news that there was a good chance Maddie was dead, she was at home, not the school. So her and Maddie wouldn't have been able to connect the way her and Simon did. Also, Maddie's relationship with her mother is very complicated. They don't have anything close to the bond that her and Simon do)

But like I said above, the connection has to be on both sides. Not only did Maddie watch him have this breakdown and was probably feeling similarly to him in that moment, she also had a tether to the living world; her body. So, the combination of their emotional bond, Simon's emptiness when faced with a world without her, and Maddie still technically being alive allowed them to connect past the limitations of death

[comicaurora]

If you've finished The Dragon Prince, S5, what's your opinion? Personally I'm still processing everything and there were a few things I was kind of "ehhhhh" about, but those were just one-off moments and overall I'm satisfied, even though it ended up playing out very differently from how I was expecting (for one, I was certain Aaravos would be getting out by the end of the season).

I liked it a lot!

SPOILERS AND STUFF:

Because I liked it a lot, most of my more specific thoughts are about the few things that sort of jarred me a little bit and felt a little rough or strange. But before I get to that I wanna list some of the stuff I loved:

Soren! My sweet boi has finally gotten the acknowledgement the previous seasons denied him. Soren locking eyes with Deadwood and going "yo same issues" was incredible, and after the last season treated his abduction by and confrontation with his abusive father as 90% comedy funtime hijinks in a nightgown, it was really refreshing to see him get a chance to actually shine in a serious, heartwarming context and be narratively rewarded for it.

In fact, that whole sequence with the pirates was incredible. I knew there was no way they were gonna cleanly outrun the bad guys, but I was not expecting how exactly they would catch up.

They did a lot of elegant work this season setting up Claudia as going from being family-motivated to being anger-motivated, and I like that, because at the rate things are going she's gonna run out of family to be motivated by in T-minus one episode, and if she's going to continue being the main boots-on-the-ground antagonist she's going to need some new motivation to swap out for her dad. Showing her actively reveling in having power over creatures that used to frighten her is a clever way to ease into that.

Viren's arc this season of being forced to confront his own coping mechanism, "I had no choice", was damn elegant. He had to realize he did have a choice the whole time, even if it was a choice between two bad options - he took every step along the path of his own free will, and he can choose to stop walking at any time. I'm not anticipating a redemption arc - my guess is Aaravos is going to let him die and just keep his soul imprisoned with him, "your soul is my treasure" and all that - but it was a very cool way to confront the audience and Viren with his humanity, which is easy to lose sight of when he spends all his time being a horrible dick.

The stuff with the Nova Blade screams "sneaky poetic double meaning" and there's absolutely no way it can actually kill Aaravos. The fact that the novablade and the three quasar diamonds they need to let Ruunan out of his coin after four goddamn seasons are all in the same place called the Starscraper that is so most definitely a boss arena makes me absolutely certain that they won't get there until some sort of final battle or immediately-pre-final-battle confrontation, but it's also almost guaranteed that the novablade is not going to cleanly resolve everything because the characters were realistically sus about that poem but quickly dismissed their entirely reasonable concerns. My guess is the novablade has already stabbed Aaravos once and he's the dude from the poem who was somehow both immortal and "no more," which feeds into the other thing they're 100% setting up, which is that Callum is one thousand percent going to be the one who lets him out in an ill-fated attempt to save his loved ones, which would cleanly make Callum three for three. Which segues into my "things that bothered me a little bit" zone-

Every time there's a story where the heroes are like "we're going to make our way through the incredibly circuitous and hard-to-navigate traps and secrets to finally find our way to the closely-guarded and ludicrously dangerous macguffin so we can take it with us and put it somewhere much less guarded" I feel my investment slip just a little, because how can anybody be surprised when the bad guys then get ahold of it with a tenth of the effort it would've taken them to get through the circuitous treasure hunt themselves? Claudia was not on track to figuring out the secret in time, and Aaravos didn't seem to have a way to tell her directly, and once the deadline ran out she'd have almost no reason to want to release Aaravos anymore. I worry this plotline could've solved itself if the heroes hadn't inexplicably concluded that they could guard a magical prison better than a centuries-deep conspiracy of archmages and archdragons.

The Dragon Prince character writing is usually rock-solid and very good at showing slow growth and development, while occasionally being vulnerable to characters seemingly losing their braincells to facilitate plot points that they would reasonably be too smart to let happen. That happened a few times this season, most notably with Zubeia getting very clearly bit by a shadowbeast - something we know everyone riding on her back saw, because Corvus intervened to get it off her and nearly died in the process, and we later see Soren talking to her about it - which means Amaya at minimum, and probably Callum and Rayla as well, should reasonably be expected to have both the information "a wound from a shadowbeast magically festers and turns the infected victim into a shadowbeast" and "zubeia was injured by a shadowbeast." So it's a bit weird that this doesn't come up and they just leave her alone about it, and only Soren - who doesn't know about shadowbeast stuff - even asks her about it.

I have this theory that there was a draft of the season's plot where the main characters had access to a different space of information - for instance, knowing about Zubeia's wound and its implications instead of her inexplicably brushing it off, hiding its true severity and then nearly dying. The most notable instance of this feeling struck me in the same episode, when right after Amaya's incredibly dramatic "go!" moment and the gang are about to fly away, Callum pointedly looks down one last time, then sees her shove Corvus and herself into the book drop, and he says "they made it into the book drop! they'll be totally fine!" and then they fly away. It feels a little jarring because it seemed like the natural flow of the episode would've been to let Amaya and Corvus's sacrifice play out as expected, with Chekov's Book Drop at their backs to save them as soon as the heroes were out of sight. Then Amaya and Corvus could show back up later in a big heroic moment, possibly even keeping the camera off them until Amaya rides to Janai's rescue a few episodes later - a classic "aragorn goes over the cliff jk he's fine" style reveal.

The reason they didn't do this, I think, is because it would've been hard for the kid heroes to be quippy-fun-time jokey-joking mere hours after losing their last living relative to presumed horrible zombie death. And I get that! But I think that was a notable factor in the way some of the episodes were structured around making sure that the heroes mostly got to spend their time being light-hearted and funny, which meant troubling information was artificially kept from them and encouraging information was shoehorned into their eyeline in slightly contrived ways so they could stay safely partitioned away from the actually heavy emotional implications of their situation. That's why I think the pirate episodes hit the audience as hard as they did, because suddenly the story dipped really seriously into the extremely painful and scary side of this otherwise fun and exciting fantasy adventure, and the characters shone in the unusually serious environment.

I kinda feel the same about Viren, but in the opposite direction. He spent the entire season comatose and safely partitioned away from the other characters, and while his highly symbolic coma dreams were extremely cool and revelatory to see, it feels like a squandering of his character potential to keep him from interacting with anyone but Aaravos - which is why I think they're gonna keep his ghost around at minimum. Hell, maybe Claudia will take a page out of his book and store him in a coin for safekeeping. Either way, they've had no problems sticking Viren on the proverbial shelf for seasons at a time and it seems like it's just too convenient for them to stop now. Viren's inner life is very cool, but I want to see him actually interact with the real world, because he's so bad at it.

I don't really know why the sunfire civil war thing is still happening, and my only theory is that Aaravos is still influencing the bald elf guy he possessed to kill the Queen back in season 3, meaning that these guys will be bolstering the ranks of General Problems in season 6 onward. I don't mind that concept, but I kind of feel like the problem they're running into is they killed their actually interesting Dickhead Royal back in season 3, and without Prince Kasef they have to make do with We Have Kasef At Home, aka Karim, who's not good enough at machiavellian scheming to be interesting and not enough of a dickhead to be fun to watch. They didn't even let Amaya take one of his eyes and make him look cooler, so I can only assume he'll be usurped as the primary threat next season and replaced with someone actually threatening, aka Aaravos. It seems plausible that Aaravos is going to sell both the poison and the cure, promising a way to fix Lux Aurea's corruption, but it's just a weirdly disconnected plot thread at present.

The thing with the ocean archmage felt like a very transparent Yoda homage, which started out cute and then went on about three times longer than I wanted it to, and it kind of highlighted the running theme of how every new character in this story is introduced saying "I absolutely cannot let you do this thing you need to do to progress the plot, no way no how." and then after some arguing and quips and ten minutes of wasted time and optional sidequests they're like "you may now proceed with the story." The ocean archdragon had the exact same gimmick in the opening scene, even the pirates were introduced that way. I think part of the reason the pirate episode felt so different and cool is that it broke the episodic formula in almost every way and highlighted some character tropes that the lighthearted tone doesn't normally allow for, which is why people keep describing it as "like a fanfic, but in a good way!" It took the characters we were at this point very familiar with and put them in a Situation, and fans love it when characters get put in Situations.

Kinda feels like the show only remembers Ezran has geopolitical kingly responsibilities when it's most inconvenient for the gang, and while I find his presence in this season refreshing, it is a little weird that he can just run around adventuring and getting kidnapped by pirates without anyone bringing up how the throne and the crown are burdens like they've been banging on about for the previous four seasons. I assume that'll come back into focus later, but it ties into the same thing I've observed where it feels like the characters are very carefully contextualized to only have to consider serious responsibility things in very specific contexts, usually when it will facilitate actively frustrating character arcs and decisions, so they can just loosely quip and react to things the rest of the time.

Anyway I had a dang good time, excited for more! Harrow is one thousand percent in that bird.

[doberbutts]

Hey there! Before I begin, I totally understand if you aren't comfortable with answering questions about this. Feel free to delete this ask.

Would you mind describing the treatment of animals you saw when you were in Mennonite communities? I've heard Amish and Mennonite communities treat them more like tools than living creatures.....

Yes, Mennonites and Amish largely treat their animals as tools and a means to an end rather than like living creatures deserving of their own respect. Understand that this is very much hard-coded into the religion and culture itself, so it is a difficult mindset to combat. Even Mennonite-adjacent communities often treat their animals in a similar manner, even if they say that they don't like that type of ownership, because of the same.

In the Christian Bible, there are a lot of verses about man having dominion over the earth and nature existing to do two things: worship God and serve Man. And Anabaptists in general believe that the best way to worship God is through hard manual physical labor and rejecting any and all paths that make this labor easy. It's why the Amish don't do electricity, for a rather extreme example, but it's also why many of these communities seem addicted to the ideals of "work" and "discipline" being the way to a Godly life.

So... if animals exist to serve Man and worship God, and the best way to worship God is through hard manual labor and rigid discipline (read: punishment) for anyone who steps out of line, it follows suit that the animals are not treated particularly kindly.

Don't get me wrong. These communities are also filled with horrific human rights violations. From child labor to forced marriage and impregnation to abandonment of the elderly and disabled to rampant domestic and sexual abuse to denial of education and medicine... this is not just an animal problem. I know I'm running an animal blog, but it's really important that if I talk about the way they treat their animals, I also have to talk about the way they treat the women, the children, the elderly, the disabled, and anyone who dares think outside of their strict rules. The care for the animals is just a symptom of the same problem.

It is my experience that the Amish are worse about it than the Mennonites, but they are also sort of cut from the same cloth so various communities of either can really vary widely. Animals are expendable. They serve their purpose and then they die and the owners get a new one. Dogs, cats, horses, livestock, doesn't matter. Most of these animals are not pets and, even if they are, they are not pets in the same way that my dogs are pets. If they get sick, letting them die or killing them outright is usually the path taken instead of medicine. If medicine is used, it's what can be purchased from a trip to the local farm store, not actual doctors and prescriptions.

Unfortunately, pretty much every attempt to fix this problem has been met with "it's my religion" and thus it continues to be an issue. Again, I have to stress, this is a religious problem, there are very specific verses they are using to justify this. It also does not help that their religion teaches that "the world" (anyone outside of their local church community) will try to lead them astray by telling them their religion and religious practices are morally wrong, and so pretty much any "hey maybe don't work the horses on the plow until they literally fall over dead" or "hey maybe breeding hundreds of dogs per year with no vet care or oversight is not the nicest way to do this" is met with "THE DEVIL is trying to tell me THE WAY I SERVE GOD is WRONG, clearly this is an attack directly on my soul" and not like. "Maybe you are right and I should be nicer to my animals and not work them to death and provide vet care when they're sick and injured"

This is why I call both Amish and Mennonites cultists. You have to have experienced the religion and culture firsthand to understand how this all hooks together. It's not so simple as just improving the law because these communities believe they are not bound by the law in the first place.

[slycooperconfessions]

This isn't a confession, I just wanted to have a discussion about this because I'm curious to see if anyone else feels the same way. Does anyone else feel like Sly 4 sort of retroactively lowered your opinion of Sly 3? Because I've realized a lot of the poor writing decisions in Sly 4 stem directly from flaws in Sly 3's own writing. For example, I hated the villain twist with Penelope in Sly 4. But I've actually seen a few people defending it, saying that Penelope was always kind of sketchy with her whole Black Baron persona. And to be honest, they're kind of not wrong. Sly 3 never really did give us much of an explanation for why the hell Penelope acts so different as the Baron. Honestly, as the Baron she's fucking RUTHLESS. She's willing to cheat and kill to win, is capable of fist fighting Sly on the wing of a moving plane, etc. Yet afterwards she acts all sweet, helpless and innocent and gets used as a damsel in distress multiple times, despite us seeing her combat capabilities as the Baron? Begrudgingly, I can kind of see how Sanzaru (or anyone else) could get the impression that there's something "off" about her.

I also hated the Carmelita belly dancing bit in Sly 4 and thought it was fucking gross. But to be honest, Sly 3 itself sort of set a precedent for treating Carmelita this way. "Carmelargea" from the Rumble Down Under level was maybe less overtly sexual but no less gross. They literally had us climbing up her pants for that fight. You can't look at that and tell me someone on the Sly 3 dev team didn't have a giantess fetish. So them skimping on giving Rumble Down Under a proper antagonist just so that they could instead have the Mask of Dark Earth as an excuse to enlarge Carmelita is... pretty sleazy, actually.

Then there was the whole Sly faking amnesia thing. During Sly 4 I couldn't help but feel like Carmelita was being a little hypocritical for her anger at being lied to by Sly. She literally lied too. She lied to someone she thought was an amnesiac about his identity. Which just sort of highlights how bad the end of Sly 3 is. They decided to have Sly and Carmelita start off their new relationship based on lies? Ok then.

I'm not sure if I would go so far as to say that Sly 4 changed my opinion of Sly 3, but there are some valid points here.

As far as Penelope's huge personality shift from the Baron to her normal self, I think it was partly to throw people off of the reveal that the Baron IS Penelope. Hell, Penelope even helps the gang in Episode 3 by defending their hangar from goons looking to wreck their plane, whereas the Baron seems to have no issues with foul play and engages in it often. Thinking about it deeper, the Baron might have become a full-fledged alternate personality for Penelope since she was using the ruse so often and got pumped up by people treating him as a celebrity. When she gets some sense slapped into her after fighting Sly, I think it snapped her out of this pattern and she was able to let it go. As far has how strong the Baron is, there's theories that the Baron suit is actually a cybernetic situation that greatly enhances her physical abilities, which I think holds water because her natural abilities are more tailored to her technical know-how and inventions. Once she abandons the Baron suit, she abandons the raw strength and ruthlessness the Baron gave her. I've held the opinion that her turning more villainous in Sly 4 is not necessarily out of nowhere, it was just written horribly and abruptly IMO. There's nothing we see leading up to it that makes it make sense, it just happens. Had it been handled differently, I think it would have been received much better.

As far as giant Carmelita...yeah, I got nothing. Probably a case of the "writer's poorly disguised fetish" meme because I remember being 11 years old thinking "This is...odd." But by then I had also developed an attraction to both Sly and Carmelita, so I rolled with it lol.

What do y'all think?

[stainedglassthreads]

Theory About Who Has the Gnosis

My theory about who presently has the Hydro Gnosis, and who the true Hydro Archon is, is that it's...still Furina, actually. Just not the Furina we've been interacting with so far.

"Okay what the hell are you on about now, Glass--" So glad you asked, dearest darling readers!

So one thing I've been utterly obsessed with in Genshin is how every Archon(except Zhongli) has a dead doppelganger that makes them depressed. Venti has the Nameless Bard(modeled his form based off them), Ei has Makoto(identical twins), Nahida has Rukkhadevata(used the same model when they finally got to speak with each other, adult Rukkhadevata looked like an older Nahida)

So this sets up for Furina, Murata, and the Tsaritsa possibly having their own doppelgangers. As such my theory is that Furina's doppelganger is actually currently still alive, and is the holder of the Gnosis. Furthermore, it is actually Furina's memories of the Gnosis and certain knowledge required for being and acting like an Archon 'given consciousness'. This other-Furina (we'll just call THIS one Focalors to prevent confusion) is probably also the one who's been gathering Indemnitum and figuring out plans to deal with the Prophecy while our Furina keeps the populace calm and entertained, hence why Furina is so confident that she can deal with the prophecy, to the point the Traveler doesn't think she's putting on an act anymore, but can't actually answer any of Arlecchino's questions during the Archon Quest. That was her 'original, complete self' briefly shining through.

As for how such a thing is possible...Furina actually strikes me as pretty competent, if anxious and insecure, when she sets her mind to something, and seems to have some sort of specialty in information gathering. She's good enough at it that she's the first Archon to figure out where the Traveler is going, and set agents to inform her of our arrival so she can make a grand entrance literally minutes after we entered her nation--without Archon powers. It's also very interesting how, despite how Makoto and Rukkhadevata have left things behind, the things they leave behind tend to be restricted to their nations. They even both died within their nations But the place where Egeria died...is in Sumeru. Just within the border, yeah. And it does do a lot of work in setting up Fontaine lore to hype us up. But...it feels a little weird to me that Egeria didn't die within Sumeru.

I wonder if it's a hint that shortly after becoming an Archon, but before Rukkhadevata's death, Furina asked Rukkhadevata to use the Irminsul Tree to help her with something--namely, to help her pull off the ultimate performance. I think that Furina might be the ultimate method actor--what better way of hiding one's Gnosis and disguising one's true plans, after all, than wiping your own memories so that, even if someone interrogates you you can't give up your Gnosis' location or what's necessary for your plans, and even if you're killed by an assassin capitalizing on the opportunity, 'another you' can keep working away at all the issues, and everyone now knows there's someone after the Archon/Gnosis.

Of course, this does mean that Furina's plan may have backfired a little. If this is true, then she's a great decoy...but she's also got a self-inflicted inferiority complex, and is so afraid of admitting that she's weak, confused, and helpless that she can't even admit to Neuvilette someone made an attempt on her life.

I already talked once about Furina, Ei, and Nahida all being foils for each other, where they end up isolated due to being in the shadow of their predecessors, and feeling they're not equipped to do a good job. But if this is true, and Furina created a Focalors-doppelganger, then Furina is also standing in the shadow of her own self. It'd also be incredibly interesting if, while Nahida had to erase memories to move out from Rukkhadevata's shadow, Furina has to regain them--and it'd also have some interesting implications about why Rukkhadevata chose to erase herself, too. Because maybe she got the idea from someone else...

"This is all well and good, but wait, where's Focalors then?"

Ah, this one I actually think most people have already guessed correctly. What's a machine that creates and gathers indemnitum, that's powered by a belief in justice, which Furina supposedly built but doesn't seem to understand(anymore), which apparently spoke to Lyney when he tried infiltrating the Opera Epiclese to examine it, and which Neuvilette ultimately chose to respect the judgment of when it gave a verdict different to his?

Suffice to say. Much like how Elynas chose to appear as a Melusine and Rukkhadevata appeared as Nahida...I think we'll get to chat with the Oratrice in a dreamspace and it will appear as Focalors.

[saltpepperbeard]

I cant stop thinking about the end of episode 6, specifically the Stede and Ed of it all.

Just the look on Stede's face when he pulls Ed in kills me. I need to know everything in there, in words.

Also, what do you think wouldve happened if instinct hadnt taken over? Would they have actually talked it through (as a crew?) Or would Stede have just brushed over it again and Ed accept it?. This is pretty much the only time he tries to actually help stede like this.

Also, because im rambling, why doesnt Ed defend Stede properly when people insult him? does he think it just doesnt affect him or something?

Pardon the tardy answer on this one, anon! I was in the void, only to get decked upside the head by Leslie Jones once I crawled out of said void lol. BUT OKAY OKAY-

*rubs hands together like a fly*

This face absolutely kills me too. And I feel like it says so much without saying a word at all. I feel like it says, "I'm so happy and relieved to see you right now because the true torture of the night was seeing you get threatened." And, "I love you so much for checking up on me, but I don't have it in me to use words right now, and can't really express what I'm feeling any other way than through actions." And, "I'm so terrified after what just happened, but having you here is such a grounding force."

Like just...the glassy sheen to his eyes but the relief to his overall visage...Mr. Darby I'm billing you for damages <3 sdjksldls. I think he was just so so happy to see Ed in that moment, and so relieved to have him after nearly losing him again.

And as far as talking things through goes...I honestly feel like Stede still would have stayed clammed up. I have a feeling it would have been like how it was when he initially opened the door, ie Ed doing the talking/leading the conversation while Stede stays quiet. Maybe Ed sharing such deep feelings and vulnerability would have eventually pried his shell open and gotten him to express a few fears? But idk, because at the same time, Stede witnessed Ed's bathtub moment, and it didn't really shake any of his own personal walls.

I just think he has such a complicated thing going with his own self-image, masculinity, and trauma, that it would have been very very difficult for him to openly admit to pain/terror/etc etc—especially weakness. Especially the thing that earned him vitriol and stones and death threats. And especially not to the man he respects and looks up to so much.

And SPEAKING of which, in regard to your last question, I think Ed doesn't step in to defend him for two reasons. One, he's the protector against physical abuse, whereas Stede is the protector against verbal abuse. This lovely post here [x] explains it beautifully; "they're both protecting each other from the dangers they know." Ed acts very quickly if some sort of physical harm threatens Stede, whereas Stede acts very quickly if some sort of vitriol threatens Ed. Neither of them want the other to experience the pain they're so acclimated to, and subsequently are each other's defender from such.

And two, sort of along those lines, I don't think he recognizes the hurt that can come from it, just as Stede maybe doesn't recognize the hurt that can come from all the violence. Maybe he doesn't realize how deeply it has cut Stede, just as Stede doesn't really recognize how deeply violence has cut Ed. I don't know how to word this properly lol but like...they view what hurts the other as almost a non-issue.

You can see their varying reactions and differences a few times in episode 6 actually. When Ned is physically torturing them, Stede doesn't really react when Ed is burned, but Ed reacts strongly when Stede is burned. And when Ned is flinging vitriol about prior to the violence, Ed doesn't really react to it, but Stede scowls and fights against his restraints.

And then when they're on deck, Stede doesn't think to take cover when the attack is starting, but Ed immediately flings himself in front of him. And when Ned is trying to goad Ed into getting upset, Ed doesn't take the bait whatsoever, whereas Stede steps up and gets upset on his behalf.

Not to mention also, Stede being like "Haha escaping violence? Not bloody likely" the morning after. I know that's episode 7 lol, but my pOINT STILL STANDS. They both expect those things respectively—Ed expects insulting talk from other pirates, and Stede expects violence in their line of work, but they're actually rife with trauma for the two of them.

TLDR, they balance each other and ground each other so well, but imagine how much more they would if they shared all these deeper thoughts. I'm still holding out hope that Stede will have his bathtub moment in season 3, or even just show a lick of vulnerability around Ed. Maybe the domesticity/concept of marriage will scare him enough into opening up a bit more/talking things through, or even just settling into a more mature relationship with Ed will give him the grounds to do so.

REGARDLESS, they are just a broth that's....*Roach voice* beautiful, complicated, balanced...

[coraniaid]

The other thing Gingerbread and Helpless have in common, of course, is that they're both about Buffy's parental figures: her mother Joyce and her sort-of father figure Giles. More specifically, they're about her lingering insecurities regarding these parental figures: the fear that Joyce will violently reject her having found out that she's the Slayer, the idea that Giles only cares about to the extent that she is the Slayer and isn't interested in her as a person at all.

I've complained before about how differently the fandom treats these two characters, so I won't repeat that argument here, but I think it's fair to say that I don't think either Joyce or Giles are acting particularly in character in their respective episodes (Joyce is explicitly being influenced by a demon for at least part of her episode, and while the show doesn't give Giles the same excuse it kind of stretches belief to imagine that the Watcher of Prophecy Girl or Innocence or Lie To Me or Dead Man's Party knew about the upcoming Cruciamentum or would go along with Travers' plans for as long as he does).

There is also essentially no follow-up on what either Joyce or Giles does. While both episodes do have long-term ramifications (Amy's transformation into a rat will be a recurring subplot for years, as will the much more hostile relationship Buffy has with the Watcher's Council after Helpless), they do not meaningful change how Buffy relates to either her mother or her (now technically ex-)Watcher. Gingerbread doesn't even bother to address the issue of whether Joyce remembers trying to kill her daughter (although it at least hints that she doesn't, by telling us that Willow's mother has forgotten). And the one time the Cruciamentum is brought up again (in Season 5's Checkpoint), Buffy will act as if it was something that Watchers others than Giles did to her. This is because (at the risk of stating the obvious), Buffy the show is not really about Buffy's mother or her Watcher except insofar as they relate to Buffy herself.

That's why I think it's more interesting to think about these episodes as not telling us new things about Joyce or Giles (and things which, if we took literally, would largely suggest Buffy is better off without either one of them) but as telling as things about Buffy herself. Not necessarily new things, of course. Buffy was afraid of her mom finding out she was a Slayer for two seasons, and it's safe to say that Joyce hasn't really done a great job of dealing with it to date (her talk of "marching in the Slayer Pride parade" notwithstanding). Meanwhile Giles spent most of the first season not just ignoring Buffy's personal life but -- between his reaction to her trying out for the cheerleading squad in Witch and her attempts to go on a date with Owen Thurman in Never Kill A Boy On The First Date -- actively telling he she couldn't have one. But in these episodes the fears become a bit more literal.

I think we actually get a much more representative idea of what Joyce as Giles are `really' like (to the extent that means anything, of course) by considering them in each other's episode: looking at Giles in Gingerbread and Joyce in Helpless. The Giles of Gingerbread is hardly indifferent to Buffy's wellbeing or uninvolved with her personal life (witness his post-Band Candy awkwardness around Joyce, for example). Similarly the Joyce of Helpless seems quite proud of Buffy's slaying ("oh, she was very clever") and, far from trying to hurt her, is abducted by Kralik exactly because her first instinct on seeing somebody she thinks is Buffy lying injured outside is to run out to help her.

So, to me, the point of these two episodes is less that Joyce is a bad mother or that Giles is an inadequate father figure, but more that Buffy herself has these very real fears that her competing parental influences will find her to be not good enough. Not normal enough a daughter for her mom, who very openly still wants her to have the sort of life that Buffy's already decided is all but impossible for her, and not dedicated enough a Slayer for her Watcher, who only a few episodes ago accused her of having no respect for him or the role he carries out.

And this is, perhaps, another reason why the episodes work without Faith in them. A key part of Faith's characterisation is that she is intensely jealous of these parts of Buffy's life ("You get the Watcher, you get the Mom," she'll complain later this season, "[...] and what do I get?").

Maybe Faith wouldn't be quite so jealous if she'd been around the time Joyce led a mob of angry parents to try and burn Buffy at the stake. Or if Buffy ever told her that Giles was secretly drugging her so that she wouldn't be able to defend herself from a vampire he was going to send her to fight. That stuff makes the way Gwendolyn Post treated her look ... well, okay, what Mrs Post did to Faith still looks pretty bad.

[smartwatermagic]

AITA for inviting my archenemy and his (ex?) girlfriend on a date the same time same place?

So some background info, I (17M) joined Ls (M 19 at the time) fight against his ultra neglectful father and extended family when I was 12. It was an easy decision considering they also neglect my mom (∞F) and I was tired of the disrespect she received and is still receiving. I just want to make her proud and get her some acknowledgement for all she did for them through centuries, you see. The fact that the summer camp they run made me and a lot of other kids sleep on the floor also helped.

Long story short, we lost horribly. L got killed at age 23, most of my friends died when two people from the summer camp exploded our main base ship and the neglectful parents™ killed my siblings (admittedly because of a wrong decision I made), twisted my mom's arm to stop fighting and kicked me out of the summer camp for life.

Now, this left me immensely angry at my archenemy, let's call him P (17M) as he was one of the people that blew up our ship, the leader of who we were fighting against, and as I suspect, responsible for Ls death so I swore vengeance to avenge the deaths of the people I loved.

Now the problem is, P had broken up with A (17F) as the amount of power he has scared both of them and he didn't want to hurt her. Apparently it happened at an unplanned trip to Ps uncle Hs (∞M) basement and my previous boss Ks (∞M) jail. I have no idea how they even ended up there. Despite my murder attempts P had been incredibly kind to me and denies that he killed L/K. I CANNOT put my undying hatred for this man into words but after a few unintentional date nights I think I have fallen in love with him.

Around this time A found me. One thing that I and everyone around me know is just how protective A and P are of eachother. One time my late friend E(17M) tried to stab P in his weakest point and A took a poisoned knife for him. P broke his nose in retaliation, I think if E hadn't escaped P would've killed him right there. Anyways, A is also very possessive and didn't take being broken up out of nowhere very well due to her abandonment issues. The thing is, she, like me, also looked up to L and we used to be friends when I was at the summer camp. After some mental warfare, a knife fight and some crying about L, one thing led to another and we ended up going on dates.

Neither A and P are aware I also meet up with the other but from what I've heard from them, they sound like they were a very dysfunctional and codependent couple. I feel like they're just using me to fill up their loneliness and as a person to vent up about their increasing resentment towards the neglectful parents™, almost like a pet passed between two exes.

I talked about this with Es ghost, who called me an idiot, and my mom and adopted dad (40+/dead,M) both pointed out I was as lonely as A and P.

So Aita for inviting both of them to the same date because I want to sort things out?

I created a side blog for this because of self consciousness, lmao, hi mutuals this is for you/hj

[kozuki-hiyori]

The One About Law and Zoro

LawZo, ZoLaw,,, there's so just much to say about them

Okay, so I've talked about Zoro (saying WAY to much oops) and Law (I swear to god, I hope those links work)

These two seemingly cool and smart and put-together swordsmen, who in reality are just complete dumbasses of the slightly petty variety (Law) and the you-must-have-guardian-angel-watching-you-because-seriously-how-are-you-not-dead-yet variety (Zoro... actually, both of them, technically, but Zoro in the dummy sort of way, like damn, stop putting yourself in such situations. Or do, I guess, whatever, character and all that, plus I'm having fun hehe >:) anyway)...

Honestly, they drive me insane... every time they're together, I just...

Okay, sorry, sorry.

Anyway, the world's quickest summary of the first two posts:

Zoro -> requires trust, protective instinct (to protect himself (emotionally) and others)

Law -> fueled by spite, protective of others

Now right off the bat there's a lovely little parallel here and that is Zoro and Law both being very protective of those they love. Neither one is going to protect themselves, but each other... >:)

(Like legitimately, if they were together, talk about "to the ends of the earth" hehe)

The one issue to this little coin of familiarity I've placed them on is in how they differ. Zoro has an absolute need for trust, because he needs people to rely on him. He needs to be able to protect the people he loves and needs those people to know that he can protect them. He needs absolute transparency and trust, and when he doesn't get it, he pushes them away (at least verbally, he tries to tell himself he doesn't care) in a bid to protect himself.

And Law (the dummy /affectionate) in comparison pushes away those he loves in the hopes of protecting them instead of letting them in on what is happening.

Basically, those two would be so insanely dedicated to each other... and by god would a fall out be insane (now that's an idea) (also not that either of then would show that dedication, they're both quite reserved/stoic, haha)

(Sorry, but it's just so interesting, like, if they were together, and Law did one of those self-sacrificial going off on my own things, like how would Zoro react to that?? Zoro dedicates himself so wholly to people, would he try to shut himself out, just "accepting" it?? Would he forgive in the aftermath? (I feel like yes, given his track record, for all that he holds on to goals, he doesn't seem to really hold grudges at least against those he loves?) To what extent? What would the relationship look like in the aftermath of that... okay I'm like two seconds away from closing this and writing a fic, I need to stop)

Anyway, anyway, they just fit so well together. The same (surface) laid-back attitude (and absolutely insane underneath), the same protective drive, Zoro and his loyalty (fitting just perfectly with how loyal the Heart Pirates are...), if Law is surprisingly bloodthirsty, actually and I don't think it really needs to be explained that Zoro is as well

(Cursed swords, swordsmen, earrings, the fact that Law calls Zoro, Zoro-ya, like fuck off seriously, my poor heart)

They really do complement each other so well T-T

(No, actually, who approved the Zoro-ya, who, please, why, why, are you trying to kill me 😭🫠)

[gentil-minou]

So, I have this one friend who's Jewish, and pro-Israel. They're not thrilled about the civilian deaths in Gaza, but not overly bothered by them either, since according to them most of them support Hamas, and to blame Hamas for all the civilian deaths in Gaza for using Palestinian civilians as human meat shields, and that almost all humanitarian aid to Gaza is just going to go to funding Hamas. That doesn't really sound right to me, and I've tried pushing back a little, especially on the "blame Hamas for anyone the Israeli government kills in Gaza while trying to destroying Hamas" front, though honestly most of it sounds pretty off, especially with how dismissive it is of Palestinians' plight and just seems to write them off as acceptable collateral damage to get at Hamas. So I'm trying to push back on those talking points without pissing them off too much, though I don't know enough about the humanitarian aid part to counter it.

It's just really weird right now, because I know several people who are Jewish and even some with Israeli relatives, and then several who are Muslim like yourself, and I'm getting VERY different narratives from both. Though uh. The pro-Israel stuff tends to be really dismissive of Gazans caught in the crossfire to the point that I'm pretty suspicious of it. I feel bad for the Israelis impacted by Hamas's initial attack last month, they didn't deserve to have their loved ones kidnapped or killed, or to have their homes and community attacked so they don't feel safe returning. But that doesn't mean doing that to Palestinians is justified either, and that's the narrative I tend to be hearing from the pro-Israel side of things.

My advice to you is do your research. Look into what's going on, and not just what's going on now but what has been happening for the last 75 years. That's your best tool right now to figure out what you believe because this is the nature of narratives, they are in essence a story and a story is told through different perspectives.

By researching yourself and gathering information by yourself, you can form your own opinion.

Israel is banking on people sticking to the narrative that "it's too complicated" and that people will fall back on that instead of researching and learning more.

And the more you research this, the less complicated it becomes and in actuality the answer becomes really really obvious. A lot of it revolves around ugly truths about humans, but we need to see the ugly to challenge ourselves to do what's right.

I made this post a while back with some of the videos I watched at first just to get an idea of what was happening.. I want to STRESS that these are not the only things you can research for more info. There are documentaries and books and all sorts of information from people who are living through this. This is just where I started a month ago when I was like "Is it actually that complicated?" I learned within half an hour that no it really isn't.

But the one fact I keep going back to through out all of this that no narrative can deny is that this has been happening since 1948, not the October 7th Israel wants you to focus on. For me, that seals it.

Re the humanitarian aid: Israel controls the borders and crossings where humanitarian aid can go through. Israel is bombing the aid that does go through (including trucks of water this very day). If Israel were really concerned about humanitarian aid, could they not follow the trucks and deliver it themselves in their big fancy tanks? Or are they only going to use those big fancy tanks to bomb civilian vehicles that are trying to retreat?

Also important: this has never been a Muslims vs. Jews issue. There are Palestinian Jews and have been for centuries living with Muslims and Christians alike in peace. Some of the biggest protests have been organized by Jewish groups. Western Media wants you to think this is about antisemitism and they want Jews vs Muslims, but that's simply not the case. This is colonizer versus indigenous people issue. This is a US-funded and approved Israel committing genocide because of vested interests in the resources that Palestine provides issue.

I will say you questioning it at all is a good thing. Because your gut is telling you something isn't right. Listen to that gut. Let it guide you in learning for yourself rather than what they want you to believe.

And keep pushing back.

[modernghostfare]

Hello.. can we get more ghostmace headcanons. If you ever wrote any pls link them too...

:)c YESSS i love talking abt maceghost.. i know ive made a bunch of sporadic posts about them but i havent done a like dedicated hcs post. i feel like often im struggling to understand the narrative of their past but generally i keep the same vibe to it all.

mace is for sure the more level headed of the two only because relationships and love freak ghost out. ive mentioned on a post like years ago hes traumatized by watching his mother stick with his father and i still believe this. hes like scared to be in a position where something Isn't working anymore but hes too emotional to cut it off so he self sabotages the relationship so mace will get pissed and stop talking to him.

in the past (as i mentioned in another post) mace Did also feed into this. he had a good home life but his own personal issues and anger at more outward issues caused him to like. seek an outlet for this sort of petty squabbling. and he found it in ghost. until he got tired of festering and being pissed off all the time and decided to actually like Do Shit he feels good about. and he broke up with ghost.

now in modern times where theyve caught up with each other it's like a weird mash of their past and them both being more mature. ghost struggles more because hes very adverse to actually improving himself and how he feels about himself bc hes like. hes Given Up on being a person. while mace has done a lot of healing.

like the toxic factor of maceghost Is Ghost at this point to me. but theres a lot of love there bc theres a lot of mutual respect and, like, easy familiarity there. mace understands how ghost works at his core.

so like. when ghost is being Normal and not anxious they literally just. like. Click? mace can extremely put ghost at ease with just his presence. and mace in turn rly enjoys his company bc a calm ghost is actually just sort of casually funny.

and ghost does like making mace laugh i imagine mace has a really beautiful smile bc he has resting bitch face so when it lights up it's very special.

ghost also i think would be 100% willing to take his mask off in a room of just him and mace. no special occasion needed he's just comforted. mace has already seen it over many, many years.

because they're like an Old couple i think theyve been on and off since their mid twenties for ghost and late twenties for mace. WHICH is another reason mace like wont entertain the childish picking ghost does theyre literally too old.

but he does play along a little. sometimes. old habits die hard. if it's petty mace will have a back and forth w ghost for old times sake its just how ghost communicates sometimes. emotions are just hard for ghost mace understands this. to put all of this simply.

i will say tho if more comes out and they end up more antagonistic than my current read i will still be a huge stan i love when dudes try to fuck and kill each other 💪🥰💕

speaking of fucking tho. tw for implying sexual assault also i just got kinda nasty sowwy.

LIKE we know ghost has a complicated relationship w sex a lot of his past history w it is like traumatic. i think he was already promiscuous as a teen bc he already had issues from his upbringing so hes like. well experienced. and he likes sex. and he likes fucking mace bc his dick is thick, hes good with his hands, and he's not afraid to be rough with him and take their time bc mace likes to be edged and when ghost is rly into it he Likes it to Last esp if he can cum more than once. he likes when his pussy is sore.

BUT ALSOO theyre both like. verse esp w each other. ghost likes topping more tho. he likes fucking mace for being a little bit vocal and just. like. huge. ghost loves bending him over and watching his fat bounce. ghost would blow off any task and anyone to go fuck him.

but also, bc its ghost and i think if the wrong buttons get pressed in the wrong order and it goes sour he gets quiet and, like, disassociates. and mace keeps watch for that bc he doesn't want to put ghost in that state. its not fun