#I guess this turned into meta

[ecoterrorist-katara]

Zutara, romance novels, and the female gaze

Okay so I’ve been thinking about the female gaze a LOT so I checked out a subreddit about romance novels, despite never having read one. I came across this meme (which was initially a Tumblr post and then got posted to Instagram and then to Reddit and I’m now bringing back to Tumblr — Internet telephone, pls never change):

And…what is The Southern Raiders, if not a platonic grovel? Katara’s pain is central to the episode. It’s central to Zuko. Zuko asks Katara what he can do to make up for his betrayal; she demands the impossible. He reads between the lines, cockblocks her brother to get the necessary information, and then waits outside her door overnight (which he also did for Iroh, the one person we know for sure he loves). He basically makes himself a receptacle for her rage, and he holds space for her by coming with her on her revenge quest and carrying their bags and not saying a damn thing about what she should and should not do beyond like…asking her to rest. And obviously the grovel works! She forgives him and then they’re thick as thieves, bantering and fighting and saving each other’s lives, etc.

On a different note, I’ve been told that enemies to lovers is one of the biggest tropes in romance novels, similar to YA lit and fanfic. Here’s something else I found in the romance novel discourse:

And…yeah. In TSR, Katara really does show Zuko her worst self, because she doesn’t feel the need to perform for him. She doesn’t feel the need to perform moral perfection OR cold blooded vengeance. She bloodbends in front of him and he just goes with it. She doesn’t kill Yon Rha and he just goes with it. He doesn’t treat her any differently afterwards. Maybe they talk about it off screen, but I kind of like the idea that they don’t, because Katara doesn’t need to explain anything. And it’s so interesting, because some people in the ATLA fandom have a totally different read on TSR. They think Zuko was encouraging Katara to get revenge (by what, keeping his mouth shut?), and that Aang is the one who acts as her moral compass. I believe that either Bryan or Mike said in the DVD commentary that Aang is the angel on her shoulder the entire time. And this interpretation does make sense if you see it from the male gaze, where Katara as an object of affection is acting in an angry, irrational, threatening way. But if you see it from the female gaze, you recognize that actually it’s probably the most emotionally taxing experience Katara has to go through, and she doesn’t owe it to be nice or perfect to anybody. Katara’s formative trauma literally comes to a head, and she has to make a decision — no, a discovery — about who she is in relation to the tragedy that defines her life and even her identity (as a waterbender, as a parentified child who becomes the mom friend, as a genocide victim), and she’s accompanied by someone who trusts her judgement and validates her feelings.

I’m not saying TSR is explicitly romantically coded, but when it conforms so well to romance novel tropes…is it any wonder that so many people thought “yes this is her man?” And then he takes lightning in the heart for her and reaches for her when he’s literally dying, I will never be normal about that either

[little-pondhead]

Your Ancient History, Written In Wax

-

Danny knew he should have put better security around the Sarcophagus of Eternal Sleep. It wasn’t even Vlad who opened it this time! The fruitloop was too busy doing his actual mayor duties because for some godforsaken reason, the man got re-elected.

No, it wasn’t Vlad. And it wasn’t Fright Knight, either. Nor the Observants. Who opened the Sarcophagus, then? Danny didn’t have time to find out as Pariah Dark promptly tore open a hole in reality and started hunting Danny down.

The battle was longer this time. He didn’t have the Ecto-Skeleton, as that was the first thing Pariah had destroyed. The halfa had grown a lot over the past few years, and learned some new tricks, but apparently sleeping in a magic ghost box meant that Pariah had absorbed a lot of power. The bigger ghost acted like a one-man army!

Amity Park was caught in the middle of the battle, but the residents made sure it went no further than that. Vlad and the Fentons made a barrier around the town to keep the destruction from leaking. Sam, Tucker, and Dani did crowd control while Danny faced the king head-on.

Their battle shook the Zone and pulled them wildly between the mortal plane and the afterlife. Sometimes, residents noticed a blow from Pariah transported them to the age of the dinosaurs, and Phantom’s Wail brought them to an unknown future. Then they were in a desert. Then a blazing forest. Then underwater. It went on like that, but no one dared step foot outside of Amity. They couldn’t risk being left behind.

It took ages to beat him, but eventually, Danny stood above the old ghost king, encasing his symbols of power in ice so they couldn’t be used again. He refused to claim the title for himself. Tired as he was, Danny handed the objects off to Clockwork for safe keeping and started repairing the damage Pariah had done to the town. The tear he’d made was too big to fix, for now, so no one bothered. They just welcomed their new ghostly neighbors with open arms and worked together to restore Amity Park.

Finally, the day came to bring down the barrier. People were gathered around the giant device the Fentons had built to sustain it. Danny had brought Clockwork to Amity, to double check that they had returned to the right time and dimension.

Clockwork assured everyone that they were in the right spot, and only a small amount of time had passed, so the Fentons gave the signal to drop the shield.

Very quickly did they discover that something was wrong. The air smelled different. The noise of the nearby city, Elmerton, was louder and more chaotic. Something was there that wasn’t before, and it put everyone on edge.

Clockwork smiled, made a remark about the town fitting in better than before, and disappearing before Danny could catch him.

Frantic, Danny had a few of his ghost buds stay behind to protect the town while he investigated.

He flew far and wide, steadily growing horrified at the changes the world had undergone. Heroes, villains, rampant crime and alien invasions. The Earth was unrecognizable. There were people moving around the stars like it was second nature and others raising dead gods like the apocalypse was coming. Magic and ectoplasm was everywhere, rather than following the ley lines like they were supposed to.

Danny returned to Amity.

The fight with Pariah had taken them through space and time. Somewhere along the way, they had changed the course of history so badly that this now felt like an alien world.

How was he supposed to fix this?

-

In the Watchtower, The Flash was wrapping up monitor duty while Impulse buzzed around him, a little more jittery than usual. The boy was talking a mile a minute, when alarms started blaring an alarming green. Flash had never seen this alarm before, and its crackling whine was grating on his ears.

Flash returned to the monitor, frantically clicking around to find the issue, but nothing was popping up. No major disasters, no invasions, no declarations of war. Nothing! What was causing the alarm?

Impulse swore and zipped to a window, pressing his face against it and staring down at Earth. “Fuck! It’s today isn’t it? I forgot!”

“What’s today?” Flash asked. He shot off a text to Batman, asking if it was an error. The big Bat said it wasn’t, and that he would be there soon.

“The arrival of Amity Park. I learned about this in school; the alarm always gives me headaches.”

Flash turned to his grandson, getting his attention. “Bart,” he stressed. “What are you talking about?”

Impulse barely glanced over his shoulder. Now that Flash was facing him, he could see a strong glow coming from Earth. “The first villain, first anti-villain, and the first hero,” he said anxiously. “They all protect the town of the original metas. They’re all here.”

“Here? Now??”

“Yeah? They weren’t before, but they are now. The first hero said there was time stuff involved, which was what inspired me to start practicing time travel in the first place.”

“I’m not following.”

“It’s okay. We should probably go welcome them before they tear apart Illinois, though. The history I remember says that some of them freaked and destroyed a chunk of the Midwest during a fight with each other.”

“WHAT?”

[thresholdbb]

what's the threshold theory

There was a post about how Tom is the only crew member who isn't really affected by the Borg, and there's a theory that he has so much luck because he saw the past and the future when he crossed the transwarp threshold. He saw the past and the future, all of time and space. There's some subconscious part of him that remembers that experience. In fact, Tom refused to play a part in Chakotay indulging Annorax's temporal incursions, probably because a part of him knew nothing good could come of it.

If we extend that same theory to Janeway, some of her wild luck with time travel and other crack plans starts to make sense. She doesn't verbally hate time travel until after the events of Threshold, since it happens in Time and Again without complaint. Janeway has an uncanny knack for time travel, as evidenced every time she deals with it. She hates time travel, but it might be because part of her knows exactly how to manipulate the timeline. She manages to avoid the "inevitable" temporal explosion in Future's End, saving both Voyager and Braxton. She resets the entire timeline in Year of Hell, and no one else followed her reasoning. She pulled it off flawlessly. In Relativity, she senses the incidents are all related, despite it being just one reading that connects them. By the time she's involved, she has a temporal incursion factor of .0036 and a time travel protocol named after her, even if that may just be Braxton's personal grudge. Then there's Endgame, where she intentionally changes the timeline. Up until this point, she has been dragged into time travel, but for the first time, she jumps in on purpose. How does Admiral Janeway know how to get them home sooner in a way that completely avoids the Temporal Integrity Commission? It's because she has seen all of time, and part of her knows exactly what needs to happen so she can get Voyager home and do it in a way that becomes baked into the prime timeline. Maybe she doesn't consciously remember what happened during her transformation, but the experience lives in her mind somewhere, guiding her decisions.

[solibrie]

something has been bothering me ever since the discourse regarding marcille being conservative ir2 gender started rolling around. it doesn't bother me that it was said; it's obviously true based on the shapeshifters chapters. but people trace it back to her elvish background, and i think this is a sort of misunderstanding of elvish gender?

elves see themselves as androgynous and are interpreted as feminine by Everyone Else. there doesn't seem to be a very strict "feminine" or "masculine" presentation that elves must adhere to- mithrun is a manly ass elf. otta is a masc elf lady. lycion is a fem elf dude. the only thing i can imagine would possibly gender their presentation is their hair length (and boobs i guess? notably cithis and marcille are the only elves i can remember that really have a rack. anyways). this is a gender role in it of itself- androgyny without flexibility can and will be its own shackle. BUT this isn't the gender conformity that marcille reinforces!

marcille's childhood was incredibly lonely, and her closest friends for like 30 years were her parents. her parents, of whom were her tallman father and her elvish mother. her elvish mother who left elvish society to be a court mage for a tallman. her elvish mother who in ALL of her appearances is doing Housewife Things.

as an aside, don't you think it's interesting that falin considered accepting a proposal from someone she didn't even love because she feared it would be the only shot she had at getting married, implying that being married would make her more desirable? don't you think it's interesting how in laios' nightmare, his mother is pressuring him to have children? don't you think it's interesting how it's gender roles that are familiar to us are the gender roles that marcille seems to be trapped between?

marcille's problem is that she's applying that good ol' fashioned elvish superiority to tall-men gender roles.

[theinnermechanismsofmymindtdp]

On one hand its pretty understandable that Rayla is ghosted, even before she discovered Zym’s egg, she gave away the assassin’s presence by sparing Marcos. From this perspective she has committed a wrong by: revealing their presence (and guaranteeing their deaths), and fully showing her inability to take a life (literally her main job).

This imagery is so strong and so sad because despite what they were going to do (you know …….killing a child) theres something to be said about your betrayal and reluctance ending in the deaths of four separate people in your village. Each of them with a family and possibly their own respective Ethari waiting for them at the Silvergrove. And to have them all placed before you staring at you silently in their absence?

If theres anything these past seasons have taught us, it’s that Moonshadow elves value duties, promises and oaths over anything….even their own children and soulmates, so it stands to reason that what Rayla has done is considered especially reprehensible.

Now on the other hand….Rayla’s actions have saved the Dragon Prince, which if we’re being honest would not have occurred if she gave the egg to Runaan, who was immediately captured after Harrow’s assassination and was barely able to shoot an arrow (let alone carrying the egg ALLLLLLL the way back to the Storm Spire). Because of her actions, she bridged the way for peace between the Human and Elven kingdoms by providing some kind of recompense for past misdeeds. This isn’t even getting into the fact Rayla was a literal child when her adoptive father decided to send her on a mission to murder a monarch and 10 year old when presumably there were more than 6 assassins in their entire village.

The trial to be unghosted however will likely hinge on how Moonshadow culture and ethics view Rayla’s actions. Will a society that values conformity, oaths and roles be willing to forgive someone who has forsaken all of this by forging her path (forsaking her oaths) and falling in love with a human?

And what is the secret the Keeper holds? Is it relevant to what happened that night at the castle?

(Basically I have a hard time thinking the Silvergrove will unghost Rayla but also its a kid’s show so will they really allow a protagonist to be socially exiled for the remainder of her life for saving a baby’s life…idk…)

[troius]

What we learned from the war

"Endings are hard" is a something of a truism, but it's borne out in Bleach, where every story arc besides after the first two stumbled at the finish (even the endings of the first two arcs don't really "end" so much as continue into a new story). In the Arrancar arc, the number of characters and plotlines got so overwhelming that an ending that had to be rushed if it was to arrive at all. In the Lost Agent arc, the characters were pared down, but the ending wound up thematically inconsistent with the story anyways, possibly due to real-life circumstances. And the Thousand-Year Blood War somehow managed to have both problems.

The change in direction from "tightly focused character drama" to "sprawling cast of soldiers" meant that it was unlikely to ever give us the development of our protagonist that we craved, and that lack of focus was only aggravated by the widely-reported health problems of the author. And yet, perhaps because we don't get that, because so little of this arc is filtered through Ichigo learning about himself, we get a much clearer statement of the values inherent in the work.

This is most evident in our antagonists for this Arc. Yhwach and the Wandenreich don't really have the relationship with Ichigo that previoius antagonists had. He never knew his Quincy heritage, never identified with their ideals, and so feels very little conflict about opposing them. He doesn't ever develop his Quincy powers, at least beyond integrating them with his already existing powerset. And he doesn't take much of a personal interest in Yhwach, who in turn, doesn't seem to think much of him when he's not directly in front of him.

But for all that Ichigo doesn't end up having much of a dynamic with them, the Wandenreich still manages to maintain a unique character. Every antagonist has a priority, something that they are willing to do great evil for. For Soul Society, it's its own existence, the continuation of the system they've built. For Aizen, it's his own self-aggrandizement. For the Fullbringers, it was simply living another day, screwing over others so that they can't screw you first. But the Wandenreich has no such priority. They simply want it all to end.

That's most obvious in Yhwach's ending monologue, but you can see it from the very beginning as he kills Yamamoto, the man who tried to move on from his bloody past being slaughtered by the man who would absolutely not let it go. Yhwach shows more emotion towards the skeletons of Argola and Huberdt, his dead soldiers from a war long lost, than he does towards any of his living subordinates. And his subordinates follow his lead in showing no love to one another, happily stabbing each other in the back without even the Arrancars' uneasy level of camaraderie. Their movement has no future, and neither do they, so nihilism is the only recourse.

Most of the time. I think it's important to note that every time a member of the Wandenreich expresses positive feelings towards one of their comrades, it's immediately followed by them turning on Yhwach. Liltotto, Bazz, Giselle, eventually, in her own twisted way…even Jugram, at the very end. Sure, Yhwach kills them for their impertinence (he is the bad guy), but he also massacres the Wandenreich faithful en masse. There's no salvation, only death, and he'll enforce that state on his followers rather than allow them to discover any alternative.

I imagine the lesson, and the general attitude of the Wandenreich, was not lost on Uryu Ishida. Even in his relative paucity of appearances, it's he who is at the moral center of the arc. His culture, which he had thought was nearly entirely dead, turns out to be alive, and out for vengeance against the people who exterminated them. It's something he probably fantasized about growing up, and I don't blame him for joining. How could he not?

But at the end, he makes the very easy choice. Calling it a matter of "life and death" is a little on the nose, but it's morally quite black and white. Yhwach has no hope for this world, or for his people within it, or even himself. He lost a war for the nature of existence to a monster a thousand years ago, and never got over it. But Uryu has the strength to look at the horrors of this world and yet hope for better. Because he has people he loves in life, and who love him in return, he can dream of a better tomorrow.

And that's what the ending is all about. Yhwach loses to Ichigo, and it is very much "good guy beats bad guy". But he also loses to Uryu, and to "I hope to have a family with my girlfriend who I love so much" Renji Abarai, and to "I have a tremendous amount of hope to eventually make myself king of everything" Sosuke Aizen, and eventually (in a way I'm still confused about mechanically) to the child Ichigo and Orihime will eventually have, the literal embodiment of the potential of the future.

The final villain of Bleach is not society's tendency to preserve itself at any human cost. It's not individual selfishness, or manipulativeness, or any of the many vices we saw embodied in the hollows throughout the series. It's despair, the idea that life might not be worth living even through all the struggles and horrors our protagonists have endured. Sure, it will always raise its head, sometimes at the most inconvenient, or ill-fitting times. But having its reincarnation be blown away by the supernaturally normal lives of our cast…well, that's as clear of a message as I can imagine.

[loaflovesdoodling]

It's done, people.

"I saw you come to this world, pesky knight. I RAISED you. I am your true father, unlike that 'Aeon' weakling.

You belong to me, Meta Knight."

A traumatized borb with daddy issues </3

[you might notice his heart skipping a beat or two if you pay close attention to the audio.]

On another note, here are some cut out sketches under cut (see what I did there??)

TRIGGER WARNING: BLOOD/SCOPOPHOBIA!!

[yudrein-aile]

Keilusa giving Kishiar a hero welcome from the return to the west... reminded of that meta you wrote about him settings things up so that Kishi can be next emperor instead of Katchian...

I am vibrating out of my skin. Yes!!! Keilusa is SO setting Kishiar up for it. Like I’m still waiting for that one meta on Inella to properly jot down my thoughts but

Kishiar received the same education as Keilusa for at least the first decade of his life

It is commonly known that the Emperor dotes on his little brother

Kishiar went “I want to start a new military organization” and Keilusa was like “okay” and didn’t even fucking ask why and just have him supreme authority over all Awakeners (!!!) in the empire

Every time the Cavalry/Kishiar does something great Keilusa is like “we must celebrate this even tho I am dying”

Keilusa giving last names to everyone in the Cavalry who didn’t have them and bestowing the title of “Sir” on the Red Stone Retrieval gang

And a couple more things that would be spoilers for you so I’m not gonna put them under spoilers at the bottom!

But like yeah. Damn. Keilusa is really out here using every resource to make it clear to everyone that his baby brother is the most perfect candidate actually and they should endorse that. But yeah that’s actually also why I love Keilusa so much. Beyond the fact that I think his interactions with Yuder are also hilarious, my guy just really loves his family

The way they deal with the whole divine sword announcement

The point where Faria straight up says “yeah Keilusa has been trying to make him crown prince”

Chapter Thousand motherfucking thirty. Giving him a title of the first emperor. Formally re establishing his right to inherit. Granting him a residence in the capital,,,, Keilusa was SO smug and happy in that moment

[hella1975]

i cannot stand the aot fandom this is not a new take at all they are universally intolerable but oh my dayssss u are FORBIDDEN from making ANY take about the show it's actually insane to watch. 'aot is perfect' no show is perfect. 'tell me you didnt get the show 😂🫵' people have different opinions/interpretations about things. 'eren is a good guy they could never make me hate him' i think there's actually 4 seasons and two movies explicitely using him as a tool to show that no one is 'good' or 'evil' they are only trying to survive. hello. the fandom r all so far up aot's ass that they actually discredit its writing in the process and it would be laughable if it wasn't so frustrating

[raayllum]

i think one of the main reasons i can't shake the "possession is not how callum is going to be play into aaravos' hands" (or at least not solely, i.e. doing something vile or dangerous in the name of love that leads to a renewed possession) is because like...

listen, as much as it'd be kind of weird for a "Master Manipulator" like aaravos to reveal his final play two seasons in advance from a character standpoint, it absolutely make sense from a story standpoint. you couldn't just whip that out of nowhere in a plot relevant moment without having your audience feel cheated, so it had to be established earlier on. now instead of surprise, you get to cultivate a nice feeling of dread. (although i've said before that there were other ways to cultivate said feeling of dread / set up the possibility of possession, i.e. callum learning that its possible out of a book when he was canonically reading about dark magic, him having nightmares or premonitions that aaravos is tethered to him, etc. it didn't have to be so blatant so quickly.)

those are, however, neither of the points i want to get at today, because like - if it is JUST the possession, and there is no choice that leads to it directly before or after in regards to helping aaravos...

Then why the absolutely, continually ramped up Viren-Callum parallels?

Cause like, as of S5, absolutely none of this is Necessary. Callum doesn't necessarily have to exist as a contrast to Viren at this point, given that Viren himself has changed his mind and disavowed dark magic and Aaravos; Callum finally freeing himself from Aaravos (and dark magic?) will likely now have more parallels to Viren's arc, rather than the two being disparate. He'll be following in Viren's footsteps, but in a positive way.

None of this is required for the possession plot line, either. That got kick started all the way back in 2x07, like, seasons ago. If anything it'd be kinda more 'tragic' if Callum really had never touched or been tempted by dark magic again, but he couldn't (or wouldn't) take back his prior choices. A consequence of being controlled by forces well beyond your conceptualization and a price you had no choice but to pay, literally, if they're going the removal of agency arc (which has its own merits) / leaning into the eldritch horror aspect of it all.

Like if it's just possession... Callum does not have to be like or be compared to Viren, in either similarities or contrasts, like - at all. Viren and Callum are both characters who have a relationship with destiny (Viren tended to believe in pre-determined destiny, but Callum decidedly didn't as of S2; even if that still started to change in S4, that alone is not enough of a singular parallel to warrant all the rest) but they're not the only ones, nor is that exclusively related to Aaravos - even if their parallels between each other are constantly circling him, their families, and dark magic / justification(s).

Which makes me think there's two main avenues they could be taking this with:

1) S7 endgame is Callum walking Viren's path regarding the rise, but in a more literal, dramatic sense. Again, Callum proving that he's not like Viren doesn't really need to happen as much now that Viren is 1) no longer a villain and 2) will be a parallel for Callum's positive growth as well. So it's still about similarities, but positive ones: "No matter what you've done, no matter where you are on the path, every step forward is a choice" (cue Callum literally regaining agency) "I am free, and so are you." This is also the avenue where it being mostly just the possession > a choice that leads to Aaravos getting out (choice made before that leads to possession, or choice post-possession) would make more sense, but just the Rise doesn't account for the well, ominous foreboding of all this, lmao.

2) S6 and S7 are working together with S6 being Callum mirroring Viren's Fall (whatever you want that to constitute) / helping Aaravos regardless of the possession - taking an understood risk for love that leads to the possession, or post-possession due to another form of coercion/susceptibility - and S7 being the Rise. It gives the ominous foreboding of it all, particularly highlighted in S5 / 5x02-5x04 and 5x08 somewhere to go, while also providing Callum with a balanced negative and ultimately positive character arc. It ties in the possession then as a plot element / vehicle to explore their similarities and differences but keeps everything tied together with choices/agency (rather than solely removing it), which is what Viren and Callum have both reaffirmed ("No choice? You made the choice you always have" etc) in S5 in particular. It also explains why and how all these forces - the parallels, the patterns, both their individual arcs, and their connections to Aaravos, his plans, and the possession plot line could be brought to fruition, and why they've all been included.

[waitmyturtles]

Okie-dokes: I'm very late to reporting on Dangerous Romance, episode 3, and listen -- listen. A lot of you know I'm in a compromised life state at the moment, --

(I'M MOVING. HOW. IN THE HELL. DO I OWN. SO MUCH. JUST. FUCKING SHIT. HOW DID I FIT SO MUCH SHIT INTO THIS PLACE THAT I AM LEAVING. OH MY GODDAMN WHAT THE FUCK. LET ME BECOME A MONK AND GIVE UP ALL THIS CRAP.)

-- yes, compromised life state, lol, and can't give too much thought to good meta at the moment. (I had to pause Not Me for the Old GMMTV Challenge because even just three episodes in, I knew it was SO GOOD that it deserves my undivided attention.)

So, yeah, brain is out of service at the moment, and then we have THIS episode of Dangerous Romance, and let me just note: y'all, Dangerous Romance was trending on Tumblr even through Only Friends Saturday last weekend (with Only Friends NOT trending, mind you). DR is clearly serving something (.....sigh, ships) that OF is not giving the fandom girlies, and man, did DR just lay it on THICK this week, huh?

I will admit. I'm a touch bummed. I LOVE PERTH AND CHIMON. I LOOOOOVVVVE THEM, YER HONORESSES! UNABASHEDLY. Yes, I love their faces. I DO, NO SHAME. I love their acting, too! I love them, like ::waves hands in circles:: all of it, all of them. I was hoping they'd chomp into a meatier show.

This is not that show. The puppy music, the reeeeeally fast swings into sympathy and "oh, you're my tutor now, bro, and I will spill all my feelings to you," IN ENGLISH AND KOREAN -- and just a touch of a class division conversation by way of Kang homey buying Sailom homey an extra dinner to-go. Sailom is now Kang's... confidante? Kang wants to make someone, anyone, proud, and it looks like Sailom is the guy.

I mean, this episode was all over the place, but....

Forgive me, meta angels, because this is EXACTLY what I need right now, omg. I'm mentally done, I'm toast! Not to say that I'm not going to enjoy Only Friends tomorrow! I am going to totally eat OF up.

But I will ROBUSTLY ADMIT to ALSO being okay with PerthChimon fan service at the moment. Unfortunately for any of my hopes of them being in a more dramatically complicated series: they still have hilarious chemistry. They're actual real bros in real life (Papang smh lol). They're clearly having fun doing this together, like OhmPerth in Double Savage. Chimon's facial expressions are outta control (that look on his face when Perth/Kang accelerated the bike? I cackled).

This is fluff! As @lurkingshan noted -- a recalibration of expectations is in order for this show. I'm taking this show right now as 100% fan service from my PerthChimon wub woobies. Perth and Chimon (and really, the co-director of this show, Lit Phadung of SOTUS and SOTUS S) -- these dudes know the score. Perth and Chimon have been around for a minute. You need two dudes to dial up to 10 on fluff BL? They have those tropes so memorized that it's burned in their bones. Put 'em in coach, they're ready to play.

If I take this show on THAT tip, then -- as an aiming-to-be-classic romance BL, then it's doing something.... if not right, then at least aligned to some tropes simply by mood. I'm curious about Sailom's flashbacks to Kang's bullying, but I don't have the strength or mindpower to read into it. If a reference back to the bullying comes -- or not -- then, whatever. This show is clearly, at the moment, trying to achieve a more simple goal than I expected of it, but I'm not gonna write it off. I'll thoroughly enjoy Perth and Chimon being poodles to each other -- gimme.

I was wondering to @lurkingshan and @neuroticbookworm earlier today that I had previously wondered WHY GMMTV would air Dangerous Romance during the Only Friends run, especially with ALL the marketing hype around Only Friends before it premiered. At the time, it seemed to me to be a pre-emptive gong strike on Dangerous Romance. Now it makes me wonder -- did GMMTV want to cover its bases by placing a classic fluff BL on air, to protect the network from losing fandom points through Only Friends? I can only wonder. If some ships are exploding through OF -- then the network can hand PerthChimon over and say, hey, we haven't forgotten our shipping roots, girlies.

Kinda makes me think. In any case -- Shan is right. I'm recalibrated on Dangerous Romance, I'm watching this literally to see PerthChimon ham it up, annnnnddd yeah, that's about it! At this point, give me the make-out sessions, give me pool time, gimme. I unabashedly stan and simp. If we get some real drama out of this show -- it will be a wonderful surprise. I just hope the show doesn't veer into totally unwatchable territory.

[existencebringsonlypain]

alright, so if we do end up fighting Kris in the last chapter of Deltarune, we will most certainly win. For we are the player, and we have the power of saving and loading. Debatably, Kris has this too, but either way the end result is the same- This will be a fight of iteration and endurance.

I hypothesize that this fight will have two (or three, depending on how you look at it) endings: You persist, or you relent. Persistence would likely look like a LOT of grinding, figuring out which actions in what order will allow you to "win" and take control back over Kris. And relenting, or perhaps convincing them to relent, would look like A: fleeing or mercy, or B: the same thing as persistence, but choosing to pursue mercy. The third option would be death, and subsequently giving up.

Now, we must remember that Deltarune is a 2018 video game developed by American indie developer Toby Fox. Deltarune originally came from Toby's fever dream portraying the ending of a video game. So there's every chance that rather than having the option to either fight to achieve mercy or simply give up and die, you can only die. That IS the only way to free the game from the player. Any other way, and you'd still be in control.

This option also would align with Toby's "there is only one ending"- The ending is persistence, and taking over Kris again. The other "endings" are just death.

This alone makes me inclined to believe that that's exactly how it's gonna go. The only thing that makes me doubt this is how Deltarune is a commercial venture, and that's a pretty unsatisfying "ending". But I could absolutely see Toby doing it anyway.

For we are the player. And if we fight for it, we WILL win. But winning means making Kris suffer, and the only way to avoid that is to no longer fight.

[bthump]

lmao also speaking of freudian analysis, how about guts saving casca from rape while depicting his sword as if it's the penetrating object instead

i mentioned guts cutting off wyald's dick in that post the other day, but man i should've reread the actual scene bc this goes a step further, especially as a prelude to the eclipse. like this is not disabusing me of the impression that the eclipse rape is all about cuckolding lol, and that guts' interest in casca is largely predicated on affirming his own masculinity.

cut for topless casca and also being a potentially triggering if non-graphic sexual assault scene obviously

[marvelstars]

The Persona/Shadow or Anakin vs Vader

This is just my HC but given how much inspiration Lucas got from the old stories of Samurai Warriors whose code of honor meant everything, to built Star Wars and the Jedi order as well as oriental philosophy and Calr Jung psicology, my take on the duality between Anakin and Vader is similar to that between the Persona and the shadow, the shadow being:

The Shadow acording to Carl Jung: is an unconscious aspect of the personality that does not correspond with the ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow, leading to a conflict with it.

The Persona: literally meaning the Mask, that which is our conscious personality and which determines how we deal with the world.

Persona is contrasted against the shadow. Jung regarded the shadow as unconscious—id and biography—suppressed under the superego's ego-ideal, the way the superego wants to be.

Anakin tried to suppress those aspects of his personality that made him uncomfortable for many years trying to become what he was told was the "ideal jedi" like he suppressed his worry for his mother, his anger at slavery, his anger at being separated from her, his sense of isolation, his sadness for not fulfilling his dream of freeing Tatooine´s slaves, his guilt over abandoning his mother to her fate, his guilt over killing the tusken raiders, his fear of losing his loved ones to death, etc.

This lead to him developing increasing ideal ego characteristics that he could not realistically aspire to, he could not stop his mother, friends, soldiers, wife from dying, he knew that but if he was the chosen one then how could he not save people? how could he not save his mother, his fellow padawans, his master, ahsoka or padme from dying if he truly was the chosen one? for what was all this power for then if not to save people? wasn´t he supposed to be the hero of the galaxy? wasn´t he meant to help everybody? that made him uncomfortable.

Then he was send to a war in which he felt every soldier, fellow padawan and civilian die in the force and he could do nothing but see it, he probably told himself well, at least I can keep some of them safe.

Until his master apparently died, ahsoka had to leave because he could not protect her, his soldiers were killed by a fellow Jedi while he wasn´t there to help them on Umbara and then Padme becomes fearful of the "shadow" growing in him and ends their relationship for a while before coming back.

Then he is sent to war for months without an end until he comes back, Padme tells him she is pregnant but his dreams that told him his mother would die, told him as well Padme was fated to die on childbirth and the shadow/dragon/vader slowly starts taking control until he falls, in the middle of a psycotic break, on Palpatine´s office he is sent then toattack the temple and save the one loved one he can save, then he attacks his wife, he attacks his master because Sidious told him they were traitors, he attacked and killed the very people he sought to protect, keep safe and keep alive,until he is left alone burning alive and there is only Sidious at his side.

Anakin´s fight was with death itself, he wanted to defeat death for failing to save his mother from it and he was willing to use the darkside to do it, that was his tragedy, and it is very sad that Vader´s mask is meant to be similar to a mortorious mask, he killed the people he cared the most about, he killed Padme, he killed his child, he killed himself, his ideals, his dreams, his goodnees and all there´s left is the shadow, "all he has left is death, all he is good for is death, so death he became" he only added his loyalty to the Empire, to the Emperor and his wish to keep order to give meaning to his actions, to give himself a meaning to the little life he had left. "All I am surrounded by is fear and death men" he wasn´t trying to be poetic, he literally saw his life as Vader this way and the only peace he would get was death.

This is also why Luke´s existence(and Leia´s) is so important, because their mere existence meant not everybody was dead and not everything was lost, he didn´t have to belong to the darkness forever but just as the shadow took time in getting control, it took time for this to truly help him control of his old self. That maybe he wasn´t totally death/evil/maybe there was something worth in him left/something good.

"The boy was good, and the boy had come from him–so there must have been good in him, too. He smiled up at his Son and for the first time loved him and for the first time in a long time loved himself as well. (ROTJ NOVEL)

Those were Anakin´s/thoughts as he laid dying at Luke´s side and he still saw his goodness in past tense but he was whole, the only way to heal the shadow and the persona was to accept them both and becoming whole once again, seeing him accepting both sides of himself in Ahsoka series felt healing for Ahsoka but it was also healing for him, in spirit he is no longer separated and he is stronger because of it.

This is my take on Anakin and Darth Vader duality and yes this is why he makes me so sad, because all he wanted was to help and Sidious used this very same wish to do good agaisn´t Anakin. Like a classic tragic character his character flaw grew out of his virtues.

[thefreshprinceofjunes]

that soriku and the little mermaid gifset is killing me bc like

we have parallels between all the disney princess couples in the games and soriku???? i think??????? not just one but ALL?????????

like

snow white: probably weakest, but snow white ‘dead’ (asleep) and the prince saving her with love (ddd)

cinderella: also weaker but uhhhhh at the very least theres fairy godmother sending cinderella off to the ball to fufill her dream (MoM). and prince charming desperately looking for her is kinda?? soras journey in the first few games?????

sleeping beauty: ditto only true loves kiss breaking the spell (ddd) and also, aurora having a connection to prince phillip through her dreams (ddd/re:mind)

the little mermaid: ariel wants to leave the ocean and go explore another world. followed by eric looking for her, but shes been rEPLACED BY SOMEONE ELSE (VANESSA AKA NAMINE) WHOS USING SOMETHING OF HERS TO DISGUISE THEMSELF (ARIELS VOICE AKA THE METEOR SHOWER MEMORY) OH SHIT I JUST REALIZED THIS RIGHT AS IM TYPING THIS OUT WAIT WAIT HHOLD ON oOKAY okay im good im good now.  and then heres the gifset that started this all of course (kh2/re:coded)

beauty and the beast: right here babey! (kh1/kh2/ddd/com) + also this (chi)

aladdin: jasmine rebelling and sneaking out of the palace to go see the world. and this is from tvtropes but, ‘When Sora calls out for Riku after the second battle with the Parasite Cage, the staging of the scene is identical to when Aladdin called out for Jasmine after defeating Jafar in Agrabah: the Hero frantically calling out for their Love Interest as the room collapses around them while their allies drag them to safety.’ theres probably more with them but idk and its 4:30 am as i type this (kh1) ETA: aladdin and jasmine are directly compared to sora and riku in recom!

mulan: here + here >:^) (kh2 novel/ddd)

tangled: rapunzel wanting to leave her tower to see the world (kh3 novel) + this, after eugene is brought back to life with the power of true love (ddd)

and then frozen world doesnt even HAVE a couple BUT it does have anna and elsa! who are DIRECTLY compared to sora and riku!!! using the word love in english!!!! and the word used previously to describe rikus precious person in japanese (taisetsu)!!!!!!  here + here + multiple taisetsu links here

also uh???? anna frozen in ice??? sora frozen if you lose the yozora fight in re:mind???? hello???????????

ETA: okay wait there are some kristoff and anna parellels i forgot about/didnt think about IRT soriku LOL

(thank you @nobodyriku​)

literally the only disney princess couples (from the official disney princess lineup) that arent paralleled with soriku are pocahontas and (blech) john smith, and tiana and naveen. and thats bc those worlds arent in the games.

and HONORABLE MENTION goes to herc and megara. like even besides the taisetsu parallels, in the original movie theres herc diving into the river styx to save megaras soul. 

you know. like sora literally breaking time and space to save his friends, which starts with him following rikus light through the tunnel. where it kind of looks like hes swimming through water?????

and riku is the first one he finds

in. olympus.

like. do you see this. are we all seeing this. because holy moley, when you put it all together, its a lot

[hellsing5-0-blog]

Touya was never a masterpiece even now but no one is. Every one of the Todorokis isn't perfect or have the perfect quirk. I don't know why there is such an obsession with wanting Touya to be the masterpiece and everyone else failures while it's more like they are all masterpieces because they are all perfect not just Touya or they are all flawed including Touya because no one is perfect,

Hi Anon, 😊

You are perfectly right and I agree with your take!

It's not really that Touya was meant to be a masterpiece, that was more of an Unhealthy Family Dynamic within the Todoroki Household. ENDEAVOR was the one who constantly upheld this Toxic trait where Shoto was the Masterpiece whereas Touya was the Failure. None of the Todoroki are like that.

Rei never uses this dynamic. She just wants to protect her family and what little happiness they can have...

Natsuo never uses this dynamic. He only says it once as a jab to Enji for how they were cruelly treated from this mess.

Fuyumi never uses this dynamic. She just wants a normal, happy family and salvage whatever she can.

NOT EVEN SHOTO uses this dynamic. He's the one who DESTROYS this dynamic.

Only Endeavor does. And he twists EVERYTHING to be self-centered around HIM

As the patriarch of the family who has full control over his household and their members, Endeavor created a dynamic where they all have to listen to HIM and cater to HIS needs and standards. He's the one who's OBSESSED with Masterpiece and Failure and it caused a massive rift.

Touya always wanted his father's attention. He was too young to realize how toxic this mindset was.

To little Touya, it was never about being a Masterpiece or surpassing All Might. All he ever wanted was his Parents love. Rei flat out says that he just wants his Father to look at him.

So why didn't Endeavor look at him... because he was too OBSESSED with getting a MASTERPIECE that he instinctively labeled Touya a FAILURE!!!

If Enji just gave him a chance, just looked at him, JUST encouraged him not as a hero, but as a Father, ALL OF THIS TRAGEDY COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED!!!

When people previously theorized that Touya had an Ice quirk, they weren't theorizing due to being obsessed with him as a Masterpiece and others as failure, but because it felt like an logical conclusion to an obvious foreshadowing.

(Aizawas said that quirks are a PHYSICAL FACTOR, so obviously Touya had an Ice quirk which is why he gets burned. Dabi doesn't overheat and can fight LONGER than Enji and Shoto, so obviously he was using his "secret" Ice to cool himself down)

Shoto flat out DISPELLS this dynamic in his final fight with Dabi, pointing out that he (Shoto) could NEVER BEAT his older brother alone and NEEDED HELP FROM HIS ENTIRE FAMILY!!!

It was never about being obsessed about who's the Masterpiece and who's the failure when ALL OF THEM ARE IMPORTANT REGARDLESS!!!

It was about the cruel irony of an Egotistical Man who destroyed his Family over petty pride and had the Child who could have fulfilled his dreams and desires if HE! JUST! LOOKED! AT! HIM!