#also for the complex relationships...

[geospiral]

"My god, my universe... where else would you find a paradise as enchanting as this?"

Text from Revolutionary Girl Utena Episode 38: End of the World

[saccharind]

from Prokaryote Season by Leo Fox

[rednightmare18]

It's not even about the vindication of calling a ship, okay. It's that the supposedly anti woke studio wrote about 3 million words of medieval fiction centering the relationship of the two main characters who are in most ways (or in all ways if you follow the obvious canon momentum of the story) meant for each other, as counterparts who help each other survive the great travails of their lives and who challenge/complete the other to become fuller, braver, kinder people. It's so clear these two people are soulmates, platonically or romantically, something observed consistently by the world around them and by themselves.

Except their society (feudalism, Catholicism) dictates that they are intended to be completely incompatible by nature and divine law. Not just for the obvious fact they are both men, but they are separated by what is arguably an even steeper chasm of social class. Their existence even as friends utterly spites, interrupts, and threatens feudal order right down to its theological and philosophical roots. They should not see each other as human and yet.

It's the fact that they do. The fact that the entire story has been about this--that these two protagonists fit together, undeniably, and grow to love each other fiercely (a love that deepens superbly from their knee-jerk playful puppy-friend-love in kcd1 to something selfless and mature by the end of kcd2). And they do so despite the immense opposition by their world, their social circles, their faith, and indeed their fandom.

And yes, it really does fucking matter that all of this culminates into a deep onscreen romantic love (if you get out of the way and allow it to) between two fandom-beloved male main characters (not just side characters rammed in for an optional gay romance but THE main characters of the duology; the "you" as in the player character and your erstwhile dick-jokes bro you have perhaps grudgingly at first been invited as the audience to love) in a historical fiction story that has been wrongly touted by the worst of our contemporaries as the holy grail of cultural conservatism.

Holy shit. Warhorse -- y'all. I'm sorry I doubted you. So few game writers understand how love works and indeed how people work, let alone translate it so well onto the screen.

Calling this an "optional romance" is not technically incorrect, I suppose, because it's true you can opt out and choose to remain platonic friends. But this language feels like a disservice, as if Henry & Hans's romance is a typical RPG wham-bam fanservice makeout with a minor fan fave character who never interacts meaningfully with the player again. Or as if it's a Bioware-style "give this NPC the right gift and do their side quest and you get to see a jankly ugly-bumpin' montage" situation.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is so very much not that. The "main, optional" romance scene in question is just one consummation event of two people who have been growing up and falling in love in front of us over the course of some 200-300 (or god knows how many) hours. The fact these protagonists openly love each other is very much not optional.

This is, sincerely, groundbreaking storytelling in this medium and this genre. How fucking cool that we all got to see it now.

[cybershock24601]

Thinking a lot about post canon rookanis and one thought I keep coming back to is the power plays that would be going on between Caterina and Rook. Caterina is the First Talon, she's been the head of the household for forever and even though Lucanis is an adult, he still yields to her. At least until Rook came into the picture.

Rook's just trying to be supportive of Lucanis and get him to do the things he wants to do rather than the things he feels he has to do and now suddenly Lucanis is telling Caterina things like No (Spite is also trying to do this but is less successful in actually communicating his intent). I feel like one of the first instances of that would be Caterina telling Lucanis he should clean himself up and trim his hair and get rid of the beard and Lucanis decides that actually he's going to keep the beard because Rook likes it. It is in this moment that Caterina realizes what a threat Rook is. Sure, Lucanis didn't outright tell her no in this instance but the fact that he still he has his beard and his only explanation when Caterina questioned him about it was to mention Rook's preference was enough of a red flag for her.

Anyways, I think while Caterina respects Rook for what they've been able to accomplish, like killing two gods and getting together multiple different disparate political factions to do so, and also for standing up to Caterina herself in a twisted sort of way, but Caterina can't stand Rook for how they have disrupted the iron control Caterina has held in her household. Rook went toe to toe with the Dread Wolf and as scary as Caterina is, Rook's not going to back down if Caterina tries to interfere in their relationship with Lucanis or try to dictate what Rook should do as a proper partner of the First Talon (I just know Caterina was a nightmare mother in law and that did not change with her becoming a grandmother in law).

So I think this sort of culminates in a lot of passive aggressive power plays between Rook and Caterina with Lucanis and Illario looking on in awe as Rook politely - or perhaps not so politely - tells Caterina to shove it because you can do that???? It also probably leads to Lucanis getting stuck in the middle of the two of them which Rook is not happy about because Rook would rather engage Caterina directly but she keeps using Lucanis as a bit of a pawn in her bids to retain her ironfisted control over House Dellamorte even if Lucanis is supposedly supposed to be the new head of the house. Rook is all the more determined to get Lucanis the hell out of the Crows and away from his family at least for a while because it is lowkey destroying him. Luckily Rook has Spite to help and the force of personality to bully Illario into assisting as well because Rook is not going to be letting him off easy for the shit he pulled.

[casscainmainly]

In my opinion Duke and Alfred should hate each other. Duke should not be so okay with Alfred manipulating him and his friends into We Are Robin, particularly after Troy dies (and Alfred's weird white saviour-y guilt that vanishes pretty quickly). If Alfred ever found out the role Duke played in Bruce getting over his amnesia, he should be all the way pissed. I also think Alfred never wanted Duke to actually be in the Batfam. In this essay I will-

[miss-americanbi]

lowkey feeling debilitatingly ill over aos kirk. he quite literally can never escape his father’s impromptu captaincy on the uss kelvin. so many of his actions are defined (whether he accepts it or not) by surviving a sacrifice he doesn’t even remember. how does he carry that guilt? jim’s always the first to volunteer for dangerous reconnaissance missions, breakneck retrievals into enemy territory, and targetable distractions, despite his status as captain. does he feel like he has to live up to george’s willingness to make the sacrifice play? or does he feel like he needs to posthumously earn his right to have lived?

and how did jim feel entering combat as captain of the enterprise for the first time, knowing that a constitution class vessel like his silver lady would absolutely be able to hold her own, but what if? or when he was finally outnumbered by krall, having to order the mass evacuation of his crew. was there relief at the core of his fear, that he’d finally made his father’s sacrifice worth it by giving his own life for his crew in turn? or deep down, did he feel ashamed that his father gave everything for him and his mother to live, only for him to go and die at 30? don’t even get me started on how he must have felt post-khan resurrection there’s too much to contemplate.

[jitteryfool]

While I get the intitial surprise and shock that Berenice and her cousin were sharing a sugar daddy and might or might not have engaged in certain activities together with Sterling... I am honestly kind of over all those 'sweet home Alabama' jokes or people just pointing out the incest and nothing else.

Like, yeah. Ok. We all read the chapter. Can we move on from that now? Can we talk about anything else, like maybe what the incestuous element added could mean for Berenice's character and backstory, what it might say about her relationships in life? Were Egaeus and Berenice already in that kind of relationship, or did they only play into it to please Sterling? So many interesting elements to be discussed from this chapter and the revelation of Berenice's life, all shoven aside only for a hundred same bare-bones exclamations of 'they were COUSINS???' and then followed by 'OH but at that time it was seen as normal!'

I'm just. kind of frustrated the mere presence of it is such a big deal I guess? It honestly doesn't come as that much of a surprise because well - it's gothic literature, as the webtoon has clearly established itself. Also, the character is based on 'Berenice' where they are indeed cousins engaged to be married. I would have been more surprised if Egaeus suddenly wasn't Berenice's cousin.

And I just don't see the point on dwelling on it so much for just being there or 'justifying' why it would be there by bringing up how it was different at that time, I guess. It felt, honestly, a little like some kind of moral panic, or more like, a lot of gesturing to make sure people wouldn't think you'd endorse the incestual aspect, even though it honestly isn't necessary because we all already know incest is bad and the story never made it seem like it would endorse it. Also, gothic fiction always had stuff like this, and I would love for people to finally move past the stage of just talking about how it's there and instead start talking about why - story-wise, character-wise - it would be there and what it means or could mean.

[chocolate-milk]

this is siffrin and this is their boyfriend isabeau and this is isabeaus partner loop and this is loops gossip bestie mirabelle and this is mirabelles qpr siffrin and this is siffrins situationship loop and this is loops qpr odille and this is odilles ???? siffrin and this is all of the past mentioned peoples child; bonnie.

[deadpoets]

GILMORE GIRLS 1.06 | Rory's Birthday Parties

[ulteri0rm0tives]

I still think about my mutuals tag where he said that he thinks Johnny feels so much and so deeply that it literally drove him crazy. And yeah. Just think about it constantly. It's. The statement I associate with him. The first thing I think of when I think of him.

I really, really, really dislike when people paint Johnny as this totally unfeeling asshole. Or at least, I heavily disagree with it. That's not to say he isn't an asshole, he 100% is. He's a jerk to the people around him, and of course there really is no excuse for how he treats people. But explanations =/= excuses.

I feel when people try to paint him that way, it comes from a place that lacks understanding or even an unwillingness to understand. This goes hand in hand where I'll see these people call him an unfeeling asshole while using terms associated with cluster b disorders and using the social weight they carry to demonize him, a very prevalent problem reflected in society and internet pop psychology culture.

They'll take the fact he's a 'narcissistic junkie', and not only at the same time use it to demonize people with NPD, but also drug users. It's just a very lazy way to paint a picture of his characterization, by using loaded terms as a crutch and letting their social weight, using yours and others people's biases, do the job for you. Like man, if you're going to make a critique of his character can we at least actually put some effort behind it.

Like. They think he's a user who's an unfeeling asshole to people just for the sake of being one. They see him engaging in these self endangering, self harming, self sabotaging behaviors and brush it off as nothing more than him being like that simply because he likes it, that he relishes in it even. Simply because he wants and chooses to be like that.

They don't see him using as a way of numbing himself (this especially with the fact drugs are the first thing he goes for when Alt breaks it off with him). They don't see that constant toxic push and pull in his relationships as self sabotage. They don't see the fact him going on that OP was a suicide mission. Literally.

I truly believe he never intended to come back from that mission, evident in his last exchange with Kerry, evident in a LOT of his own lyrics. (Black Dog, Ballad of Buck Ravers.)

Johnny clearly is passionate. He clearly has things he cares about. He clearly feels.

I'd even go so far as to say he genuinely does care about the people in his life, he just simply doesn't know how to show it properly or in a way that's healthy for anyone involved. Even when Alt breaks up with him, and he pushes her away for it, he still ends up chasing after her before she's even left the venue. He still tries to protect her. When Alt gets abducted, and yeah, he's being a leadheaded stubborn idiot about it, he still goes after her.

And even if it's self aggrandizing in a lot of ways, he still cares about her life enough to raid a whole fucking tower for her. Even if it's more in the view of what Arasaka took from him, than what it did to her, he still cares about her in his own way. He still grieves her. He's still broken up when she dies right in front of him, and he still acts out even if it's violent and angry. His grief has ALWAYS manifested this way.

When he sees the headlines about Kerry, he asks V to check up on him, to visit him. He even asks Kerry about it because (I think) it came from a place of genuine worry shown the best way he can show it, a straightforward question and dropping it when he gets an answer, no matter how truthful the answer is. When Kerry gets the idea for a one time reunion, Johnny agrees to it because he thinks 'Kerry needs this'.

I also think people see that he's a very angry person and attribute 'unfeeling' to that. Because to them, to a lot of people, anger isn't a valid emotion nor one with as much value as happiness or sadness. That's it's something less than. Even if anger was all he felt, it's still a feeling. He still feels it. He still feels.

His anger, though it's execution is obviously a problem, it's extremely fucking justified and valid. It's born from the mistreatment of a system that only destroys people's lives. Born from a system that only knows how to take, how to hurt, how to kill.

The same system that took, not just a literal piece of Johnny, but so many pieces of his identity and his life that he literally tries to project himself as an entirely new person to escape this.

Johnny cares about how the system treats people, especially people like him. How it uses people and chews them up and discards them when it's taken all it can from them. Johnny cares so much he becomes not just a voice, but thinks he is- and in a lot of ways he does really become one- a symbol for people like him.

That OP functioned as another rescue mission for Alt, another statement for his ideals, and his blaze of glory to go out on his own terms.

Johnny cares about things. Johnny cares about people. He has feelings. Complicated, convoluted, deeply traumatized feelings. Feelings that are so intense, that it harms him. Feelings that are so intense, that it bleeds from him and harms others, too.

And honestly, I'd say the one and only person he stopped truly caring about was himself. A long, long time ago.

[gunstellations]

In the world I love

_

In a different world

[box-dwelling]

So can we all just sit here and acknowledge the subtle homophobia I think intended with "unsanctioned erotic entanglement "?

Like Burt and Ivring never even kissed. They literally just held hands. The feelings were clear and genuine but none of that would be considered erotic.

Except, they're gay. So it is considered erotic. Because even the most chased displays of queer romantic affection are treated as deeply sexual. But got fired for that but mark hasn't even been reprimanded for fucking his subordinate who then turned out to be his boss. Like Milchick called him out in the elevator but that wasn't in anyway official. Ther3s obviously complications there with Helena and Cold Harbour but still right?

[deadpoetsandlivinglegends]

Something something every time Charlie isn’t fighting to be the center of attention, he is always looking around to others to gauge their reactions and silently observing them all something something he is searching for connection, to fit in and be loved but he doesn’t know how to ask for love so instead he gains their attention by acting out in ways he knows they’ll notice and tries to pretend their attention and love are the same thing

[milkamel]

Are there any facts regarding the Slumbering truth? I'm quite interested. How did Shadow treat Healer after realizing that he is getting attached?

Hmm I should start from the beginning here I think-

At first Shadow Milk was far from being nice towards Healer, treating him like entertainment and a toy, wishing to break him down or just venting out his frustrations (basically veeery toxic, poor Healer). Cause hey, this is someone who 'stole' his soul jam. And now this 'thief' is pathetic, weak and without memories, it'd be a shame to just crumble him or not play around with his prey. And Smilk still needs PV's memories back to have full powers, but he doesn't want to do it the boring way. He wants to see what his other half is capable of even in this weak state.

But of course, he got attached. Healer has struck something within him that no one dared to touch before, they had some things in common, Smilk started to see himself in that sweet Healer. And Healer started to act a bit differently too, instead of fearing him he'd smile at him, talk to him with genuine friendliness and even playfully smacked him with a staff a few times when he tried to intimidate him, the audacity! The lack of fear or blind obedience intrigued Shadow Milk until he realized he didn't even want that power so much, he liked Healer's company even if he found his kindness naive and foolish. He liked Healer a lot more than he dared to admit.

He didn't want Healer to regain his memories anymore. He didn't need the soul jam that much, his own half was more than enough to use his powers. After all if Healer remembered he'd surely leave him and he'd find out what a terrible beast Shadow Milk was. There's no way he'd be so kind after that and would be willing to stay, he'd most likely try to seal Shadow Milk away again and Smilk would be stuck for another millenia again. And Smilk already shared way too much about himself than the other should've known.

So he decided to act in the only way he knew, manipulate Healer into staying, trying to make sure Healer avoided anything that could trigger him to remember or make his soul jam resonate. He'd manipulate his current memories, make his dreams into nightmares just in hopes of making him stay. It should've been easy with how vulnerable Healer was to his influence.

..Unless Healer is not so innocent and oblivious as it might seem? Who knows..

[what-even-is-sleep]

Love the Danny Phantom phandom because there could be a bajillion posts in a row stating: ‘here’s this kid who’s struggling with the multiple facets of himself. He has visible and invisible problems.’

and I’d reblog them every time. I just eat it up.

[p1ctur3]

@octdl-lee

Random captive TDL au lore dump and some behind the scenes stuff since you asked so nicely :]

Dark in captivity

victim did use dark as a way to train and get the mercs and him used to the box

victim and agent (i would probably explore their dynamic in this au also, mitsi would haunt this narrative because yes)

some behind the scenes things

additional art