#age means nothing in this family

[firebirdsdaughter]

If I were…

… To draw… Er… List my take on the family tree of White Collar:

You have Peter and El as mom and dad and Neal as their son, obvi, and then later Neal II/Jr as well. Peter and El both care intensely about Neal and don’t just hold him to a better standard but completely believe he can achieve it. The most earnestly invested in his future w/out any strings attached—they’re supportive and well intentioned and flawed and loving. They also don’t let him get away with things bc he’s charming.

Hughes and June are grandparents. In different ways and in no way w/ each other, but Hughes is the serious, rule enforcing grandfather who is gruff but reasonable but wants kids these days to appreciate hard work.  June is wine grandma who sees it as her gods’ given right to spoil any and all grandchildren she decides she has, esp when they remind her of her late husband.

Mozzie is somewhere between That Cousin or That Uncle who just. Gets everyone into trouble most of the time but when he comes through he comes the fuck through and he and Neal are inseparable.

Diana and Jones, to me, are more like younger siblings to Peter—he’s the ‘leader’ and ‘older brother’ (answering to their ‘dad’ Hughes), but their interactions have a different sort of tone. Not more ‘equal’ per se, but more in sync? Hard to describe, but they are definitely younger siblings who are sometimes more able to speak ‘young person’ to the adult kid.

And then James is… Well, exactly what James is.

[blueteller]

"Who Broke It?" – TCF Edition

"Just Another Day at the Super Rock Villa"

*broken communication device lays on the floor* Eruhaben: So… who broke it? *silence* Eruhaben: I'm not mad. I just want to know. Choi Han: I. Did. It. I. Broke- Eruhaben: No, no you didn't. Raon? Raon: Don't look at me, look at Hong! Hong: What? I didn't break it! Raon: Huh, that's weird. Then how did you even know it was broken? Hong: Because it's right in front of us, and it's broken! Raon: *glares* Suspicious. Hong: No, it's not! On: If it matters – probably not – but Lock was the last one to use it. Lock: What?! I can't even use magic! On: Oh, really? Don't you regularly train with the Dragon Lord, the greatest master of magic? Lock: I'm only learning the shield arts from her; everyone knows that, On! Choi Han: Kids, don't fight over this! I. Broke. It. So- Eruhaben: No! WHO broke it?! Hong: *glances at Rosalyn* Eruhaben… Rosalyn's been awfully quiet. Rosalyn: *gasps* …REALLY, Hong?? Hong: Yeah, really! Rosalyn: Oh, my God-! *everyone starts arguing* Eruhaben: *smirks at Cale and whispers* I broke it. Cale: …What? Eruhaben: *shrugs* It zapped my hand, so I punched it. I predict ten minutes from now they'll be at each other's throats and going full out with their weapons and abilities on the training field. Cale: *stares at Eruhaben in disbelief* Why? Eruhaben: *sips tea with satisfaction* It was getting boring around here. Cale: … *extremely scared for his life*

[hapigairu]

Some Cyril appreciation featuring his mom:

[batwynn]

All the advertising I saw for Elemental:

Check out this wacky adventure between a fire person and a water person! A Tree Child Flirts with her! LOL! HEY LOOK CLOUD PEOPLE! *cartoon spring and honking noises*

Me: I don’t… want to watch that. Oh well, that’s fine.

Me actually watching it:

Oh wait, it’s a story of an immigrant family who come with nothing and build a community for themselves and their people and the weight of debt you feel to your parents who sacrificed for you to succeed but the way that that success sometimes isn’t what you want and how parental love can feel conditional when there’s a lack of clear communication and—

Me getting to the end: SHE BOWED AND HE BOWED BACK 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭💦💧💦💧💦💧💦💧💦🌊🌊🌊🌊🚿🚿🚿

[derpinette]

i have this "alter ego" that only exists in my head where essentially i am a fat sloppy drunk old fisherman with no loved ones living in misery & isolation & i often imagine myself as him especially in moments of patheticness

[7amaspayrollmanager]

From an israeli newssource. He did not shoot at a synagogue or people leaving from a prayer service

The settlers he shot at are living on stolen land from beit hanina. A village that used to be populous and continously expanding now split by the Wall so one side lives in the "West Bank" and have permits different to the ones held on the other side of the wall in Jerusalem (which means the ones in the WB have to apply for a permit to go to the other side of beit hanina) Beit hanina is surrounded by 4 of these settlements and they are closing in. Suddenly the fig groves u could visit 5 years ago are off limits. Suddenly theres a new fence and now they are taking arable farming land to build a road for new israeli construction. No incident occurs in a vacuum this shooting is a result of decades of land dispossession.

To clarify Khairy did not come from Beit Hanina but a al Tur a neighborhood nearby. Khairy alQam's grandfather was shot to death by a settler in 1998. So did khairy shoot soldiers? No he shot what the western world would call civilians but these are not ordinary civilians these civilians carry guns they teach their children that palestinians are racially inferior they think they have a divine right to colonize palestinian land. They kill palestinians unprovoked and help soldiers in attacking them, cutting down olive trees and like last night in nablus burning and destroying palestinian property. Also importantly they were once iof and maybe some of them were currently drafted when they they were killed (if im wrong id be surprised but im not)

The settler project is not just soldiers (who are settlers as well im just trying to make it easier to understand) it's these settlers who are just as dangerous as the government as the iof and they will not stop expanding their settlements and making new "outposts."

[autumnhobbit]

I’m gonna be real with you guys, I kind of dread the idea of trying to raise any future kids in this church

[apathyfairy]

you are either a girl who is miserable and sad on her birthday or a girl who loves her birthday and there is no in beetween and neither group will ever understand the other

[eoinmcgonigal]

it's really upsetting me so to get it off my chest i'm gonna confess that the positivity posts i saw yesterday really hurt. i didn't realise that was a thing in this fandom, and i wish it wasn't because those things inevitably leave people feeling left out and like their presence isn't worth anything to the fandom (plus readers, rebloggers and commenters are integral to fandom community but don't usually get a shoutout). i'm already struggling because of this horrible trend towards using threads in discord which renders most of the servers inaccessible to me, i feel extremely isolated and alone and unwanted, but i was doing okay muddling along churning out fic and a few silly polls and posts now and then until yesterday. the fic i posted today just made me feel so sad after i posted it. it was a lovely fic :( but like what is the point. if i'm worth so little i might as well not be here. why put the effort into making things if no one notices. i already feel so lonely it's like i'm being torn in two, posting things now and then brought me comfort but idk what i have now

[oddogoblino]

I find it so funny how at first, my mama thought my sister was autistic due to how different she acted growing up compared to me and my brother. Now, upon really thinking things over, she's considering she may have just had two neurodivergent kids that made her neurotypical child seem strange by default.

She was legit worried and trying to find out what she could to make her life easier. Aaand then realized one day when we went out to a loud fleamarket that I, her firstborn, might have just skewed her perception of what typical behavior was. After all her weeks of research, she noticed & told me a behavior of mine was a symptom of autism and suddenly her concern for my sister disappeared since.

In hindsight, it should've been obvious. My sister reached her development goals perfectly on time meanwhile me and my baby brother were late to the same thing.

[katya-goncharov]

my mum just slagged off this christmas dish i made last year that i was really proud of and thought everyone liked, and it actually really hurt my feelings but if i make a big deal out of it everyone in my family will think i'm being a drama queen :(

[lanayrutower]

i'm about to throw hands with this yt poll.

this is the zelda version of that twitter butch post to me.

[beachesgetpeaches]

every few comment sections on tiktok i will see people speculating about pedro's sexuality and god aren't they tired of it? like what difference does it make who he is into, none of us have an actual chance with the man??

(sorry to be this harsh on main but i dont think we do have the chance babes, but thats ok we can always ✨maladaptive daydream✨)

[stockholmgf]

i wonder what it’s like to be genuinely undeniably pretty like whether or not ur actually conventionally attractive is just never a question

[dmclemblems]

I do feel kinda bitter over AG though because of all those things you mentioned since i cant look at AM the same way for not having a lot of those things

I can get that. I feel a little similarly. Overall I like AM more because it really delved into Dimitri’s trauma, but AG definitely handled the Blue Lions’ friendships better. What I didn’t like about AM’s characterizations for Sylvain and Felix in AM is that despite five years having passed, they didn’t mature nearly as much as they should have. In comparison, AG was only two years of a timeskip and it felt a lot more fleshed out with their characters. Ingrid was on a lesser scale, but she definitely got the better end of characterization in AG.

In part I think this is also because the writers have had time to decide on some things. When they made Houses, it was a new game. With Hopes they were working with pre-existing characters, so it was probably a lot easier to flesh them out and change their behavior. It just feels weird to look back at Sylvain from a five year skip and see that he hardly changed, but with a two year skip in an AU he’s a much more mature and composed version of himself.

AG also gives us the possibility of having Rodrigue to the end, and I’m wondering if that was a decision the writers made because they saw how he was received and decided to swap his position in the story with Gilbert who was a less popular character. Having the possibility of losing him is like a callback to AM, but we at least have the option this time. There’s also the chance for us to get supports for him with the characters that needed to be more fleshed out in their relationships with him.

Granted, in AM Rodrigue died because that was the final nail in the coffin for Dimitri’s mental state. He needed to have that moment where he gave up entirely and stopped caring about everything, planning to just go out and kill Edelgard or die trying. Byleth was also able to prevent it because they spoke with Rodrigue the night prior and could bring Dimitri to his senses through what they learned when speaking with Rodrigue. In that sense I think it was too important of a scene to leave out, because if not Rodrigue, I don’t believe any other death could have impacted his story to reach that point.

For example, in Ailell Dimitri behaves the same way to everyone around him. When they meet up with Rodrigue, that’s when his manner of speech starts to waver and he is, for the first time in five years, scolded and essentially told to shut up and listen. With Rodrigue being, as Dimitri literally says pre-skip, a second father to him, he didn’t treat that situation as he would have with anyone else, ending it with referring to Rodrigue as his friend (which is more than he did for anyone else by that point, too paranoid and being unconvinced that everyone wasn’t his enemy. The one person he knew would never be his enemy was Rodrigue).

Since the stories are vastly different in both games I do get why things were altered. Going back to AM will just be unfortunate that Rodrigue fans can no longer use him as a playable unit or get all the character lore we got in AG (which was a whole lot tbh for the parent generation, as well as his relationships with the people around him). We also have things like Gilbert coming back to the Kingdom much sooner and thus mending his family relationships, bringing back the old Gustave who is fiercely protective of his family to the point he won’t tolerate any enemy laying a single finger on his daughter and brother. I love seeing him in SB as an enemy and getting to see how aggressive he really is when someone tries to harm his family. To me that shows us who he used to be before Duscur.

I guess in the sense of like, for the sake of fanfics I’ll probably love keeping both stories in mind and mixing the two for things like characterization. Like I said, I understand that they were reusing already established characters so it was much easier to create new situations and improve the characters (to which tbh I’d say was usually hit or miss, like how I can’t even begin to imagine what they were thinking when writing Caspar for Hopes but they did so, so good writing for Lorenz).

Really I guess it’s just kind of what happens when they use existing characters and improve upon them when the original story was already so good. I’m going to hate going back and not having all the Rodrigue content because he’s one of my favorite characters in the franchise itself. On the other hand I’ll like returning to all the sides of Dimtri’s character, because having that aspect of such severe mental illness I think is really important to use in media, particularly in our modern day where that’s a big and largely important topic in our society. While I’d say they also made the attempt with Takumi in Fates, at this point Fates is not a very well loved game and due to how it was handled overall, I think a lot of the attempt at mental illness and suicidal behavior went over people’s heads due to of how poorly the rest of the game was received by players (and admittedly the writing wasn’t nearly as clear with Takumi as it was with Dimitri).

Houses kind of has the vibes of like... a whole lot of “what if” situations that AG used to show the answers of that. SB is more of like... another rendition of Edelgard’s story with not much changed except that we get to actually fight Thales instead of the characters defeating TWS post game. GW is the total opposite of VW, so rather than creating it as a “what if” timeline like AG it’s more of a “what if they went the opposite path they took in VW”. AG focuses more on the possibilities that existed in AM and builds upon those, rather than SB’s choice of the same route but handled differently and GW’s choice of seeing what it would look like if VW was turned on its head (no upside pun intended...).

Technically it’s not bad in and of itself for them to have written SB and GW in those ways, and that’s not to say AG is just absolutely the best because of it. It comes down to personal preference and I saw a lot of people saying the same thing that they see SB as more of a retelling but altered CF, which at that point it’s up to the individual if they prefer the new or the old. GW’s plot in and of itself wasn’t an issue, but it was the treatment of its characters and how the plot wasn’t focused on the characters but instead focused on altering its characters to the plot instead of the characters being what made the plot (ex. AM being written to follow Dimitri, not Dimitri written to follow AM).

Following that thought too, AG follows the formula of its characters being the story itself because in SB and GW, the characters go here and there and everywhere and they’re dragged along. In AG if you try to suggest that you go west during a civil conflict, you’re basically told no, we can’t afford to do that and have to stay here where we already are to deal with this problem and we can head west after that. You’re in one place and kept in that place until the conflict is resolved, rather than being pulled west and then having to go back to where you already were.

In some ways I guess you could say AG was written too well, because now when we go back to AM we’re missing all those improvements on the writing. I do prefer chapter 19 to chapter, what is it, 9 or 10? with the way Claude allied with Dimitri because it felt way more natural in AM and was rooted in a trust that was forcibly finnicky in AG because they were trying to sneak in concepts of GW Claude and how he wasn’t someone people ordinarily trusted. Instead of writing him as just a different path Claude, they tried to keep aspects of him that applied to very different routes and it wound up feeling wonky. AM was much more rewarding, and even more so because Gronder had already happened. Comparably, AG Dimitri and Claude had not even fought each other and yet everyone except Dimitri (and presumably Seteth and Rhea based on the dialogue when they all met up) was highly distrusting of him and treating him like he was some infamous slimy plotter who was going to jeopardize something. It was very forced and kept trying to nudge at GW/SB Claude, so for me that was extremely awkward to see considering in AM, nobody really highly distrusted Claude when he asked for aid. They’d never even fought or had problems in AG, but for some reason most of the cast didn’t want to trust him.

Regarding Thales though, for sure AG did handle it way better. I don’t really like Edelgard’s story in the second half of AG since I prefer AM’s ending for Edelgard (and it makes more sense because she was hellbent on fighting to the end, even if her path killed her. Dimitri gave her a final chance to end it alive, but she willingly chose her death and for her that could’ve been a matter of pride which is more in line with her character, but AG took her character away entirely so that just wasn’t a possibility). Thales imo should’ve been the final boss in AM too, having escaped as Arundel in chapter 19 and fighting the Kingdom later on. Considering how deeply rooted in Dimitri’s entire backstory Thales is, it’s kind of insane to me that he wasn’t the final boss. He has the least connection to Claude but is the second to final boss in VW instead.

For me the perfect ending would’ve been like... a mix between the two, where Dimitri had to come to his senses because Rodrigue almost died but he survives just barely. Perhaps he can’t fight for the rest of the war, thus rendering him unplayable as a unit and making sense as to why he couldn’t be playable from beginning to end. Sylvain, Ingrid and Felix would have grown into who they became in AG when you get to the five year timeskip in AM. Obviously Dedue would keep his story about saving Dimitri with others from Duscur, but then maybe soldiers from Duscur continue to fight with the Kingdom army the way they do in AG. We’d have AM’s version of the Alliance getting the Kindgom’s aid, and we’d have Thales escape as Arundel but fight the combined armies later on. Maybe while they were allied, the Kingdom gets news that people from the Alliance, maybe even Holst, located TWS’ base (since they’re near Goneril territory I think?). Since they were basically one big army, Dimitri could defeat Edelgard as we know their battle to happen in AM, but then they could travel to the Alliance territories with the war being over now and from there, fight Thales and have Dimitri learn the truth. Maybe Rodrigue joins as an NPC in the final battle so that he can be present against Thales, even if he’s not fully recovered because he feels he has to be there since it’s the battle for the truth that he’s been waiting on since he lost his best friend and son.

Whether or not Nemesis would be at the very very end idk, but I think Thales at least should’ve been the final or second to final boss like how he was the latter for VW. I think it would also be nice if Claude hadn’t left right away and instead joined the joint armies, even if just as an NPC since in this case you’d be traveling through the Alliance to fight TWS, and since they’re in Alliance territory I think it would make sense for the Alliance to be much more invested in that fight. It would give Claude the truth he’d be seeking in VW, thus giving a nod to his story in his route, and would give Dimitri and everyone else the truth about Duscur. It would be a complete story imo that way with all loose ends tied up, and if they had Duscur soldiers show up with Dedue in the timeskip then they’d be there too maybe as some NPCs in the final battle, so their story would be concluded too with the truth proving their innocence. Imo it would be a perfect way to resolve the whole Duscur storyline.

I know they were probably going for an imperfect ending in AM in the sense that we can’t have everything, but the only problem with the way they wrote that out was that Duscur was the focal point of AM. At the very least I think they should’ve tied up that entire story from beginning to end, concluding it with everyone learning the truth and Faerghus finally being able to heal when the truth gets around that Duscur’s people didn’t kill their king. Not only do the characters we’re familiar with have resolution, but the actual story we’ve followed right from the start is finished in full.

The problem with ending it with Edelgard for AM is that Edelgard... wasn’t really the true enemy of AM as a route. She was Dimitri’s personal enemy and conflict and he would have to fight her if he was going to end her war, but with the way the actual plot goes, Edelgard should have been AM’s penultimate battle, exactly like how Dimitri is CF’s penultimate battle before she reaches her actual enemy and goal, Rhea. Edelgard’s war was most specifically against Rhea, thus why her route made Rhea the final battle and not Dimtiri. AM should’ve followed that same formula, because Edelgard’s overall gripes weren’t Dimitri himself. Similarly, Dimitri’s story and the plot itself was centered around Duscur and the truth, which defeating Edelgard doesn’t solve a single part of. It concludes Dimitri’s personal arc with his step sister, but it resolves absolutely none of the plot of AM. While it resolves a character arc within the plot, the plot itself remains unfinished.

Like I said, I get the whole idea that we can’t get a perfect ending, but in this situation I don’t think it’s even about a “perfect” ending anymore. You could argue that this ending still should be present even if Rodrigue still died. AG is in a better position for the plot because it actually thoroughly explores the true plot of Dimitri’s background as a character. AM is a character centric ending, but AG is a plot centric ending, and I hate that we don’t get both in either of them. We either get a very good character heavy story, or we don’t get the full depth of the characters (ex Dimitri’s mental state not really being a problem in AG and is only sometimes given a nod to) and have a completed plot.

Hence, I feel like for fic’s sake and headcanon’s sake I like to think there’s more to the point of the Alliance fighting alongside the Kingdom as one army and that the plot related final battle would be against at least Thales if not Nemesis (since Nemesis himself isn’t relevant to AM’s plot or any of the characters, but Thales is deeply involved in multiple characters’ lives). Also, it could maybe give resolution to Dimitri’s personal story with Edelgard, learning that Arundel was killed and that was why he stopped donating, and realizing why Edelgard changed so much post her stay in the Kingdom. Just a final battle against Thales alone would conclude both the story and character plots and make a full, true ending. AG technically has a full, true ending to its story since Edelgard wasn’t in a position to continue her war, so whether she lived or died becomes irrelevant at that point since what happened to her, whether we enjoyed that aspect or not, did resolve that particular conflict. In that sense, yeah, AG solved pretty much everything in one shot.

So yeah, I totally get why you feel bitter about it. AG had an actually conclusive plot while AM was just left hanging as an incomplete story. CF was “complete”, i.e. TWS was defeated post game, and VW was a fully complete story. Instead in Hopes, GW is left a huge question mark and incomplete and SB is still basically complete unless Edelgard continued her war for conquest, so that one is more like... complete(?), with that question mark being necessary. AG is basically complete, since what happens to Edelgard doesn’t really affect the plot which was finished.

Considering TWS is the center of AM’s entire backstory and Dimitri’s most intense trauma, you’d think that would be much more important to the story in AM and that Edelgard wouldn’t be the end of the game. I wish they were still making DLC or updates or something for Houses, because it would be so great if they added that as a late attachment to AM (like how, if you know Tales of Graces, the game ended up releasing and then re-releasing with an entire post game arc added, though in that case it was more of a remake because it was titled differently, adding “F” to the end of the title to indicate there was an addition to the game and changes made/added).

[omarfor-orchestra]

Ok però dopo aver passato tutti gli stages of grief ed averne creato un altro chiamato "sarcasmo" sono all'accettazione. They would make a good couple.

Spoilers in the tags