#Warning: opinion

[local-space-case]

edit: tagged this post as anti zutara because even though i personally don’t consider it to be an anti zutara thing, a couple people disagree so thank you to the one person who was nice enough to just ask me to do it anyway

prefacing this by saying you can like whatever ship you want so don’t come for me (edit someone immediately came for me). but one of the reasons i don’t like zutara and don’t like that it’s being alluded to in the live action is because i feel like it waters down a lot of scenes they had together that were meant to establish each others individual characters, or rather some viewers water it down. like rather than healing zuko’s scar out of the kindness of her heart, it’s because she found him attractive. rather than returning her mother’s necklace to show zuko is more honorable than he thinks, it’s because he has a crush on her. katara doesn’t save and comfort/thank zuko in the final agni kai because zuko has effectively lost most of his remaining family in one day, its because they’re deeply in love.

i’m not saying these instances and romance are mutually exclusive, but i PERSONALLY feel the scenes are more powerful without it.

it just really feels like it undermines the power of platonic love (and f/m friendships in general) and their separate journeys as characters to find their peace in order for it to be bad boy/feisty girl romance.

[n3felibata]

Just remembered that today is when Hazbin episodes are being released early and it reminded me of a rant I had saved but never posted. Here it is 🥱

People responding to claims of Helluva Boss having sexist writing by bringing up that it's mlm and Hazbin Hotel will be wlw seems like it'd be a valid argument at first... but I can't even begin to explain all the things wrong with it.

Not only has it been comfirmed that will Angel Dust will be getting a love interest, but Vox and Val are also dating. So we have 2 mlm subplots in what's supposed to be a sapphic show, but Helluva hasn't had a canon wlw couple that aren't just background characters.

In fact, Charlie and Vaggie are the ONLY canon sapphic ship in EITHER shows.

I wonder if when Viv said that Hazbin was "female led" that she just meant that Charlie is the protagonist. Because the notion that Hazbin is "women led" the same way that Helluva is "men led" would imply that Niffty will be a more important character than Alastor and let's be so real, that's not gonna happen.

The show hasn't even been released and we already know more about Angel than we do about Charlie, who is supposed to be the protagonist. Both he and Alastor have their own prequel comics and Angel even has a whole music video.

In the hypothetical but very unlikely situation that men in HH *were* written the same way as women in HB, that would still be bad. But since that's not gonna happen, it's even worse since there's clear favoritism going on here. Especially since misogyny is a real issue and men aren't really oppressed by anything that wasn't established by the patriarchy in the first place. The worst thing that could come out of HH being female led is a waste of potential whereas the way HB's women are written can be read as instilling legitimate sexist ideology.

I understand that achillean content would put an emphasis on men. Content focusing on characters of a certain gender isn't inherently bad, or at least not in the context of LGBT+ media, but people need to understand that the problem isn't even about screentime or depth. It's the fact that the women in HB just get treated blantly unfairly and are reduced to the role they play in a man's story. Most of them exist more to accommodate male characters and their stories than to be their own individuals first and foremost. And if you need an example, Helluva Boss has done the fridging/women in refrigerators trope several times (the trope of killing off or injuring women to forward a man's story).

HB being male led isn't bad, but the excuse can only go so far. Even in mlm content, the idea that men come first is still patriarchal.

[i-n3ver-hated-you]

My opinion on Jaren in The Blood Traitor:

Spoilers.

Frankly, Kiva is having a goddamn awful time in the last book.

First of all, she is hooked on angle dust and back in a place she'd thought she'd finally escaped. Not so good. But Cresta is helping her through it. (I love Cresta.)

Then she's kidnapped by Navok, who basically makes her his slave. She's rescued (yay!) everyone hates her (nay!).

When they're in the market and they're trying to get information about the rings out of that seer lady (I don't remember her name, sorry), she gives Kiva two options: kiss Jaren (the person who she is under the impression hates her) or take some angle dust (which she had previously been addicted to, and only recently recovered from). That is such an awful thing to do. The fact that Kiva chooses the angles dust over Jaren shows how much she's doing for him. He hates her. She doesn't choose that option because of that.

Later, she says, half delirious, "I’m in love with him, can you believe it?". I'm not really sure how to put what I'm thinking into words, but you can see what she did for him, right?

And then he kissed her when she was under the influence, half-unconscious and falling asleep?! What the fuck, Jaren. You need the tea talk.

Anyway, after Jaren nearly dies falling off that cliff, Kiva is crying a bit (understandable), but he kind of makes fun of her for it—at least, that's the was I saw it.

Then,

Jaren: You’ve been avoiding me. I have no idea how you feel. So I asked.

Kiva: I’ve been avoiding you because it’s what you want.

Jaren: I’ve been trying to talk to you for days, you know that. It’s been incredibly frustrating. You’ve been avoiding me because you’re afraid.

Kiva: I’m not afraid.

Jaren: You are. You’ve barely been able to look at me for weeks.

Kiva: You’re the one who wouldn’t look at me! You told me you wanted nothing to do with me — so I gave you that!

Jaren: I lied.

He says "I lied" like Kiva should have known that, should have seen through him and talked to him or whatever. It's like he expects, after a whole book of hating—or at least seeming to hate—her, that she accept that he was lying. That it was all fake. I think that's unfair. He's assuming that Kiva is avoiding him because she's "afraid", and completely ignoring his own actions. If I was Kiva, I would also be avoiding him because, know know, he's acting like he hates me.

By saying Kiva is afraid, it's a little bit like pinning all the angst on her. Which, yes, to be fair she did technically steal his powers, but their angsting is on both of them.

I think Jaren has a good reason for hating her. I would to if she'd stolen my magical powers. The thing that makes me hate him, however, and not her, is the fact that after spending the whole book ignoring her, being rude, and implying that he hates her and never wants to have anything to do with her ever again, he says "I could never hate you, Kiva." It seems, to me, a bit like he's gaslighting her.

He proceeds to tell her all the ways it isn't her fault. A good thing, but it goes against everything he's said and acted for the whole book.

I get that they obviously need to make up and stuff, but I think it could have been done better. In enemies(ish) to lovers, it tends to work better (for me) if they do hate each other and don't deny it. It's more like "I hated you before, but I don't anymore" instead of "I've pretended to hate you, but I actually don't".

Because Jaren does have a real reason to hate her. He could have just said like "I'm sorry for being an ass, but I promise I see you are now. And it's not your fault." I think that would make more sense.

Anyway, this is, once again, just my opinion. I'm not trying to be particularly hateful and if you loved this book, good for you.

I hope this made sense, thank you for coming to my TED talk, bonne journee :)

[arcsin27]

Just remembered his initial persona

[geolos]

imo what george did isn't irredeemable like men are idiotic and times are changing and men and older people fail to keep up with the new societal expectations (such as explicit verbal consent)

[person4924]

honestly the only characters that haven’t said something problematic in community is abed and troy (imo)

[melodythebunny]

So maybe the woman kidnap the family and possibly made them apart of the ''show'' just to torment people who have something she doesn't (judging by my theory that she always wanted a family but couldn't have one)

Ooo intresting theory. lover your take on her

Tbh i have one of my own for my own au verse of things :3

Honestly i see Lesley(yea thats her name on the wika) like also eccentric/crazy considering how she is dressed and spebds all her time in her(???) attic playing with her puppets.

When she told yellow he was her favorite one it just reminded me of how we have favorite characters or ocs but make them go through angst and dark stuff. Why? Bc its fun to write and explore possible character development.

The line "you're not my real son"

...so made me think she is either projecting onto him or he was meant to replace her son who is either gone or dead. Maybe she is trying to cope with the loneliness.

Personally see her as choatic neutral for now until the show comfirms or says otherwise. Honestly don't mind headcanons of her being evil since this is a grey area.

[bexisanidiot]

Man I gotta be honest even tho someone would probably hate me for it, buckle up fam-

As we all know I don't believe Mantis is entirely and strictly sex repulsed. But I've seen people scream that Mantis would hate anyone who has/wants sex or has/wants kids, and there was someone (I don't fully remember who) who told me if Mantis had kids he'd be a deadbeat. No hate to those ppl who have that headcanon but that just sounds so wrong even for him-

He's a grown ass man and he knows he doesn't always have a choice, I can get him not wanting people to have kids if they were a bad person but in general he doesn't care.

Plus if he had kids by accident or smth he wouldn't be a deadbeat, he'd wanna be better than his own dad. Which is being involved with the kids life and not hating them, probably not super affectionate ofc. Plus I have a headcanon if his afab partner ends up being pregnant, he would let them decide if they wanna abort it or not since they would be the one carrying it the whole time and not him, along with being supportive of the decision and process.

No hate to those who have the headcanon of him being that sex and kid repulsed but to me that feels very immature and wrong for him

[twistcmyk]

twitter's in flames so i posted a cartoon butt over there and figured it's only fair to share with the rest of the class

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

Wayne Family Adventures literally had 2 entire seasons worth of healthy dad Bruce who sits down and talks with his kids. He brought Jason down from a nervous breakdown. He got Damian a dog. He told Tim that it's Batman who looks out for Robin. He felt incredible guilt over missing even one of Cass' recitals. He plays with the kids, he takes care of them, he talks with them about family and what they mean to him. He puts in the work.

And yet we still have people coming out of the woodworks to claim that being an asshole is "integral to his character" the one time he says fuckshit to the kids.

Look I came from from multiple abusive households (yeah that's right I'm pulling this card). I know what that looks like. This ain't it. What Bruce said is fucked up, no doubt about it. But this is after potentially years of kindness and heartfelt discussions. Saying something fucked after all that healthy behavior isn't abuse, it's a call for help. And that's what the kids are trying to do. He's scared. He even admitted to Damian that none of it matters as long as they're safe.

This arc isn't to point and go "oh look at how horrible Batman is and how he treats his family". It's showing how grief and trauma can twist the people you love into something that hurts, and the effort and pain needed on both sides to fix that (like in the Jason episode, how he lost control and almost hurt Dick and then told them to take care of Bruce). Keeping this idea that violence and abuse is integral to Batman and his relationships is the same mentality that has kept main timeline Bruce in that behavior for the last god-knows-how-long.

[dendroaspis-viridis]

I'm begging you, BioWare... Learn from the mistakes of Baldur's Gates past...

[lyrashifts]

is anyone else excited to shift to a reality where phones don't exist? like i see people on tiktok and such giving advice for scripting phones and devices but i'm EXCITED to no longer have a phone. as convenient as they are i feel like they really take away from really connecting with people and, quite honestly, have really lowered my attention span (a big thank you to social media). like i'm not going to pretend i don't love my phone but i just feel like i'll be a much happier person once i don't have it with me for days if not months on end in the future.

[sephirthoughts]

Vincent’s lingering obsession with Lucrecia is excellent drama, but their story is not a doomed romance.

This is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think Lucrecia deserves nearly as much pity and excusing of her actions as she gets. This is not character-hate post, it's an analysis of a character I think gets short shrift as a Mother-Mary in a bell jar, and deserves better.

Lucrecia is morally grey. Charcoal grey. I love complex, morally grey characters, particularly when they're women, since usually women are relegated to roles that infantilize and objectify them, particularly in video games, which have historically been a very backward, androcentric medium. I strongly dislike brainless victims, subject to the whims of the male characters, without much agency, and Lucrecia was not such a character.

Lucrecia was an adult with agency and brains. She was a grown ass adult. She was a brilliant scientist. She made decisions with her eyes open, and even sacrificed her unborn child to her work. She is a very interesting character. The fact that she didn't idolize motherhood as the end-all of female existence, and that her obsession with her work was stronger than her desire to be a 'good mother' makes her far more interesting than otherwise. The fact that she regretted it later and wanted him back doesn’t magically make her a good person, or change the choices she made. It demonstrates guilt and remorse, which are part of character development. The bottom line is that she committed atrocities in the name of science, then felt guilty about it later, once she realized how devastating the consequences were to her personally. To say she didn’t know what she was doing or Hojo manipulated or controlled her is to infantilize and disrespect her character. She’s not some sacrificial angel who was a victim of circumstances; she was a willing participant in her own downfall.

Lucrecia is a tragic character, but she's not a romantic lead. Except in Vincent's head. After all was said and done, she had one of those too-late changes of heart that make tragedy so emotionally impactful. She had a human reaction to Vincent's death and felt terribly guilty for her role in all of it, as she should. That doesn't mean she loved him, it means she wasn't a monster. She lost her son, and gradually, Hojo's callous inhumanity and her inability to escape the net she wove with her own hands closed in on her. Did she deserve to never hold her baby son and never see him even once? No. But she caused it, with her own actions. That's tragedy. She was miserable, bereft, and riddled with guilt, so she made a last-ditch effort to make something right...by doing more insane science shit that turned Vincent into a monster. Seeing that she'd only made everything worse, she tried to kill herself, but was unable to, and thus ran off to become a crystal statue in a cave (this is a trope that I dislike, but that's the story, so that's what we've got).

Vincent is a bad judge of the circumstances. Vincent persists in seeing her as a lost love, and someone from whom he was unjustly separated by circumstances. The fact that he is so blinded by his feelings for her that he places her on this pedestal and can't blame her for what she did is excellent characterization, and I love it, but it's because he’s wrong. He loved her. She didn’t love him (I think she was in love with his father, but that's just icing on the tragedy cake, at this point). His lingering attachment, not to the real Lucrecia, but to the idealized version of her he has in his mind, is a very sad reality that adds so much delicious pain to his character. In the end, he is unable to blame her, because he loved his image of her (and Hojo is a way easier target for anger, because he's literally the worst), which speaks far more to his personal bias in the situation than to her actual role in it. She’s not moustache-twirlingly evil like Hojo but she’s not Vincent's star cross'd soul mate tragically torn away by cruel fate. Lucrecia was her own person.

In summation. Their story is not a doomed romance, it's a complicated, messy, ugly tangle of thorns, and one of the best written tragedies in a game that literally bleeds tragedy from every orifice. It's got one-sided love, obsession, mad science, betrayal, jealousy, fetal experimentation, murder, corpse reanimation, and a guy who can't die, and is left to deal with the consequences of everyone else's actions by himself forever. No one is innocent and no one comes out unscathed…strike that. Vincent is innocent and Hojo comes out unscathed. But still. Lucrecia is not a holy mother, she's not a brainless victim, and she's not Vincent's lost love. She's a person he loved, and who didn't reciprocate. Most importantly, she's a person. A whole-ass, complex, morally grey, fully developed person, who made terrible choices, then made even worse choices, and in the end, couldn't escape the fate she wove for herself.

And then wound up encased in crystal so she could be a pretty statue forever cause the game devs just couldn't help themselves I guess.

[anghraine]

I love that Elizabeth and Darcy are so ready to effectively tell each other they're full of shit. This happens a bunch of times, but I was re-reading their conversation at the Netherfield Ball and they're both kind of refreshingly Done.

[Darcy:] “Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?” [Elizabeth:] “Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together; and yet, for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible.” [Darcy:] “Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?” “Both,” replied Elizabeth archly; “for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the éclat of a proverb.” “This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure,” said he.

It's also pretty funny, because I suspect Darcy is thinking of this sort of thing in a later conversation at Rosings:

“You mean to frighten me, Mr Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me. But I will not be alarmed, though your sister does play so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.” “I shall not say that you are mistaken,” he replied, “because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know, that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which, in fact, are not your own.”

[arcsin27]

Rare p4 w: the heaven arc. It’s immaculate. The music the drama the angst the mystery the everything. Yeah the yosuke deescalation scene is tedious and annoying from a gameplay perspective but OUGH the ANGST. AND NANAKO DUDE. I hate that they ruined it with a literal “somehow palpatine returned” esque moment but besides that it is PERFECT. DOJIMA COMES IN LATE DUDE YOU CANT MAKE THIS SHIT UP. AND THEN HIS VOICE ACTING??? The ANGST dude it’s all about the ANGST

[geolos]

agree. he made a mistake, admitted to it, and was remorseful 🤷‍♀️ there’s not much else he can do right now but promise to be better! and twitter is acting like he’s irredeemable but people that actually use critical thinking know he isn’t. he’s just a guy that misread a situation. doesn’t make him a monster, just a human being

exactly most men have probably done the exact same thing and not have even been aware of it. i can only hope him and his circle (and even people outside of it) keep this in mind when perusing someone because the conversations about consent have drastically changed in recent years and a lot of people, especially those who aren't so online or so young, aren't aware of what's expected