#I personally don't agree

[foryoupeko]

Genuine question to Mahiru fans

Would you be okay with a comic that explores Mahiru's UNREQUITED crush on Peko?

I have two comic ideas but I wonder if I should put them in the vault along with my Chihiro Pronoun comic. I feel like ppl are gonna either be mad or misinterpret it.

The two ideas under the read more if you want more context:

Mahiru tries to get Peko to smile. They go to all the cast members for advice but it's all futile. At the end of the day Mahiru is walking alone to her room. She didn't get Peko to smile but she's glad she spent the whole day with Peko. She stumbles on a secret meeting with Peko and Fuyuhiko. Peko has a soft smile (a smile that Peko herself doesn't realize she has) and Mahiru takes a picture. Mahiru looks at the picture in the camera; clearly mixed feelings.

This takes place after waking up from the NEO World Program. Peko and Nagito woke up after everyone else and is resting in the MedBay. Mahiru comes to visit. Peko tries to apologize but Mahiru stops her. "It's not your fault. From what I heard, you didn't want to hurt me. You were just a victim brainwashed by the Kuzuryu clan. But it's going to be okay! I wanna help you distance yourself from that life and watch you grow as your own person". Nagito butts in explaining that Mahiru is dehumanizing Peko by taking away her involvement in the decision. "You weren't there at the end of the trial so it's not your fault but we all decided that Peko did that on her own accord outside the Kuzuryu's influence. I know you don't want to be mad at Peko but you can't just erase her decision like that. Don't you think it's cruel to perpetuate this notion that Peko can't do anything for herself?" Mahiru grabs Nagito's shoulders and expresses anger that he'll never understand. Girls are just raised to take care of men. That standard is unfair but how are girls supposed to know that's unfair when society enforces it so much. It's not Peko's fault that she thinks this was okay! She doesn't know how else to live! Peko had only the illusion of choice but in reality there wasn't. But Mahiru can help her heal! They can have a normal peaceful life outside of violence! Hajime comes at the end, scolding Mahiru she wasn't ready to see Peko yet. Mahiru leaves revealing Hiyoko was outside. Hajime asks Hiyoko why she didn't do her job of keeping Mahiru out. Hiyoko just shrugs, clearly dejected that the girl SHE likes is much more interested in her murderer than her best friend.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hey now, Let her cook!

[descendant-of-truth]

Shipping is fun and all but I swear every single time someone makes a comment, whether as a joke or in a legitimate analysis, about there being "no other explanation" for a pair's interactions, I lose just a bit more of my sanity

Like, no, you guys don't get it. Romance is not about the Amount of devotion, it's about the COLOR. the FLAVOR of it all. a character can be just as devoted to their platonic friend as they are to their romantic partner, and they don't love either of them more, just differently.

But because the majority of people still have it stuck in their minds that romance exists on the highest tier of love, I'm stuck seeing endless takes that boil down to "these two care about each other too much for it to NOT be romantic" as if that's the core determining factor to how literally any of this works

In conclusion: stop telling me that I don't understand the story if I don't interpret the leads as romantic, I am TIRED

[goryhorroor]

horror sub-genres: lovecraftian/cosmic

[jamesbranwen]

this is not me trying to defend nintendo's business practices or say that either of these games don't have flaws, but I think a lot of the comparisons people are making between breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom are a little unfair and don't really take into account that they are different games with different purposes.

"breath of the wild feels so empty compared to tears of the kingdom" ... yeah? with breath of the wild, one of the game's main themes was isolation. you wake up in the future far after the apocalypse you were trying to prevent has already settled. you have no memories, very little strength. just like hyrule, just like zelda, all you have is your will to continue. breath of the wild is the quiet moments, the secret spaces, the weight of the world that has continued to turn without you still resting on your shoulders.

tears of the kingdom is not like that. hyrule is no longer the wild. it is no longer quiet and lonely. there's community. every sidequest is intertwined. your friends fight alongside you. this isn't "fixing" breath of the wild, this is it's natural continuation. as time goes on the world continues to heal and rebuild. if breath of the wild was clawing hope, tears of the kingdom is direct action.

like yeah there are things tears is doing better and (imo) things breath of the wild did better. but i don't think either one is a replacement for the other.

[bixels]

I'm not explaining why re-imagining characters as POC is not the same as white-washing, here of all places should fucking understand.

[notbecauseofvictories]

so my aunt is turning 70 in a couple weeks, and I've planned a blowout birthday for her---rented a lake house, invited every member of our family and also some of her friends; I have delightfully kitschy decorations (including a glittery BIRTHDAY QUEEN sash and paste-jewel crown, thanks for asking); my freezer is full of cakes, frosting, and cookies, so all I have to do is defrost, assemble and serve. I have been working on this since February, and I plan parties like a quartermaster just before the army decamps---there are a lot of lists involved.

My most recent task is assembling a guest book, filled with both blank space (so people can write nice messages) as well as all the photos I could get from family members. There's something almost meditative about assembling these pictures---here is my aunt as a teen, standing awkwardly next to her grandmother; here is my aunt as a grown woman, admiring a niece or nephew's sloppy Christmas present; here she is on vacation, or with a friend, or at the interminable succession of Sunday dinners, birthdays, and graduation parties that are the fabric of our family life. Despite having no biological children, she's so involved, she's so present---and this is just what we could grab from phones, my personal photos, facebook!

(She maintains the family archive, so I can't ask her directly.)

I don't know if I have a firm conclusion here. Just that---well, may we all be blessed with more photographs of ourselves than will fill a scrapbook, and a niece who will spend 6 months thinking about how to gently bully you into celebrating your birthday.

[arotechno]

these tags have been bothering me for a few days now. i understand wanting some private time at home with your partner, but can you not see that this is EXACTLY the attitude i'm talking about?

does your third housemate ALSO get an allotted time where you and your partner have to leave, or is it only for you? is this something you coordinate on days when your housemate is already independently making other plans, or are you just expecting to be able to kick them out of the house at will like this is a college dorm room?

this isn't a situation where you are three equal parties building a life, this is you and your partner treating someone else like a third wheel you wish would go away and a money bank to help you pay your bills. if that works for all parties involved then it's no skin off my nose, but can't you see that this is literally not at all the situation that i was describing? i'll make a very personal post about how it hurts when people act like my housemates would be justified in trying to get rid of me and alloromantic people will literally be like "this sounds great—as long as i can get rid of you!" like do y'all hear yourselves. do you actually see the words when aros post or is it just static for you.

this is the way people talk about their children, how they want their children out of the house so they can have some alone time. not the way you should be talking about a fellow adult who literally pays for and whose name is on the deed of the house you all live in. aro people aren't housepets.

[suffersinfandom]

Controversial opinion (?): the Kraken Era wasn’t all that dark.

There’s a lot of meta and fic out there that portray Ed as a bloodthirsty, hyperviolent monster, and when that portrayal is challenged, the rebuttal is usually along the lines of, “I’m just doing what canon did. Did you even watch the show? It's racist, not me!”

I did watch the show, and honestly? I went in expecting far worse based on meta and fic I read during the hiatus. When I see people say they didn’t think Ed did enough to redeem himself or that he went past the point of no return, I just don’t understand.

I already went into this in my way-too-long meta about Ed and abuse, but I do think it bears repeating (in a shorter post) because it seems like Ed’s actions -- more than the actions of any other character -- are scrutinized and discussed outside of the context of a comedy about pirates. There’s tons of casual violence in Our Flag Means Death. Sometimes the violence is even funny! 

So what does Ed actually do in the first episodes of season two?

We see Ed directly harm someone twice in the first two episodes: first on the wedding boat, and then when he shoots Izzy in the leg. Kind of unimpressive numbers, yeah? I'd expect more out of a heartbroken Blackbeard.

The first instance involves Ed shooting a man during a raid. That man has a sword through his chest before Ed fires, leading me to believe that Ed’s still following his season one pattern of keeping himself a step removed from murder (technically, the sword killed that guy). We also don’t see the murder happen; the man tumbles offscreen before Ed shoots. This makes the action less brutal. If the writers wanted us to be appalled by Ed’s violence, we would’ve gotten a graphic kill or several.

And the second instance is Izzy. Ed shoots Izzy in the leg after he suggests that the shitty atmosphere is because of Ed’s feelings for Stede. Hot take, maybe, but I don’t think that was entirely out of line. Ed’s feelings for Stede are not the only problem; a significant chunk of the problem is Izzy. Izzy called in the navy and led to their capture. Izzy threatened Ed back into the Blackbeard persona the last time Ed tried to talk things through, and that was without an audience of potential mutineers.

We’re also told that Ed has taken more of Izzy’s toes between seasons. This isn’t cool -- bosses definitely shouldn’t be asking for their employees’ toes -- but there is a precedent for it. In season one, Ed told Stede that he used to feed people their toes for a laugh (yuck). For a laugh. This, to me, implies that it’s not a huge deal. It’s certainly not completely unexpected pirate behavior, and it seems more lenient than a keelhauling or a whipping. I think both of those things would've felt far more gruesome and dark.

As far as violent actions go, that’s not a lot. Like, numerically.

Things get darker in S2E2 when Ed becomes increasingly desperate for someone, anyone, to send him to doggy heaven. He’s unhinged and working his way up to a murder-suicide before he’s stopped. He hacks the wheel right off of the ship and threatens to shoot the mast. He orders Archie and Jim to fight to the death. He ignores anonymous crewmembers as they’re swept overboard in the storm. This is bad! It’s self-destructive and selfish! But it's also tragic and human and understandable.

In my opinion, the worst thing Ed does in these episodes is force his crew to do violence for him -- not because it’s violence (again, they’re pirates), but because the violence hurts them. THIS is what traumatizes them. Their trauma flashbacks are scenes of them hurting others, not of Ed hurting them directly. Ed didn’t physically torture his crew (with the exception of Izzy, and that’s complicated). His crime was driving them to do one violent raid after another, killing and plundering without any joy or theatrics. Ed feels trapped in the role of Blackbeard -- the role that he’s been desperate to escape -- and, in his heartbreak, he opts to trap his crew with him. 

Yes, Ed is messed up in the first two episodes of season two. I don’t blame the crew for almost killing him; it’s what needed to be done. I think that Jim, Archie, Frenchie, and Fang had every right to want Ed gone after Stede’s return. 

But I don’t think that Ed was a super violent monster who tortured his crew and murdered his way through his breakup. He engages in very little onscreen violence, and the person that most of his violence is focused on -- Izzy -- is the same person who told him to be violent. I think that anyone who says that Ed’s actions in the first part of season two are extremely dark is either looking at them out of context, misremembering what actually happened and just recalling the dark tone, or working with some kind of motive.

In conclusion: Ed is a man who, at his very darkest, was still operating pretty firmly within the bounds of "stuff pirates do" (but not stuff Ed has historically done, presumably).

Also look at him. Thank you.

GIF by unearthlydust

EDIT: Read the reblogs for some amazing and more nuanced additions!

[coquelicoq]

as a huge unreliable narrator enjoyer i love the fact that the raven tower is narrated by someone who cannot lie. so the narration is not unreliable, and any kind of uncertainty is always couched in "here is a story i have heard" or "i imagine", but it scratches the same itch as unreliable narration because the evidentiality of the narration is still so central, just in the opposite way. stories that don't care about where the narrator is getting their information or what biases are present in the way that information is shared with us are on one end of a spectrum, and stories that do care about those things are on the other end, and the raven tower is firmly situated alongside the unreliably narrated stories even though the whole point is that the narrator is as motivated as it is possible to be to never say something that is untrue. and it's fascinating to see how ann leckie manages to build suspense and subvert expectations without really at any point deliberately misleading the reader. every time i reread one of her books, the bouncing of the dvd screensaver in my brain gets a little more frenetic. how does she do what she does. ann leckie what is your secret.

[uncanny-tranny]

The bourgeois or "exploiting class" doesn't inherently include the person who gets their nails done biweekly, or the disabled person who has a carer, or the guy who got a $70 video game for full-price, or the person who relies on medication (yes even the ones you don't think they "need"), or anything else like this. None of these people will, on average, have the ability to exploit workers by means of ownership or whatever.

While you are busy fighting with fellow workers, you are still being exploited by your boss, by capitalism, by (potentially) not having healthcare, by being overworked and underpaid, and so are they.

[mewtwo24]

Not to be That Guy but like.

Am I the only one that can't stop thinking about how Tianlang-Jun says about Luo Binghe that he pretends to be cold-hearted like his mother. The hint of fondness there, the heartache in that utterance.

Like it drives me absolutely insane. Imagining her putting on a front of strength, cold and driven and unrelenting. Why does TLJ say that about her. Did she secretly look for solutions that meant reconciling with demons instead of hurting them when her sect wasn't looking? (I wonder this because I feel like his weird fondness for SQQ would lowkey track if it's connected to the woman he once loved.) Did he mean that she was tasked with basically assassinating him and she fell in love with him instead (re: failed step one)? Did he mean that she was fond and doting in her own way (e.g. conceding he was attractive, paying for his exploits and humoring him)? Did he mean that, like LBH, she thought that power would be the thing to protect her--and that it was disguising a person who was deeply and privately wounded? All four????? I don't need sleep I need a n s w e r s

Did she know about the Huanhua Palace Master's skeevy ass intentions before she met TLJ? Or did those only come to significant light after she fell in love with TLJ? Is that why she never anticipated that level of betrayal, because initially she had no intention of being with anyone romantically? And HHPM just assumed she would be under his thumb forever?? Was she furious at her own indiscretion or did she try to use the pregnancy as a bargaining chip, a way to try to stop the immortals of Cang Qiong Mountain from attacking TLJ (plus the bonus of marriage entrapment no takesies backsies this is where LBH gets it from)? Did she try to use that claim on her to dissuade HHPM from his covetous advances, framing herself as tainted so that she could finally escape? Did she dream of a life by TLJ's side, far away from Cang Qiong Mountain?

Like. Literally every single permutation of what this could mean guts me to hell. Do you ever just cry about tianxi because I--[loud bawling noises]

[swordfright]

As long as you're not a cdream apologist/dreblr you're OK in my books i guess /not prev anon

dreblr isn’t some secret evil coven, it’s just a loose collection of c!dream fans with a wide variety of differing (and sometimes contradictory) opinions on the lore.

i’m not a c!dream apologist but i’m def a part of dreblr! tbh it’s been one of the best fandom experiences i’ve ever had. ppl are super welcoming and kind, and there are tons of great writers and artists. i’m happy to be here.

[turquoisemagpie]

Appreciate the little things.

Not to ignorantly deny all of the big bad things in the world, but to survive them.

[violent138]

Love that the Batfam consistently ruins and is largely incompatible with any and all of Alfred's attempts to nuclearify the family.

[canisalbus]

Of course Machete brings Vasco closer to god. That may have been a sex joke but like, definitely. It’s the best line in the entirety of Les Mis!

To love another person is to see the face of god.

.