#and i suffer the consequences to this day

[melrodrigo]

lunch - t.c. drabble

Tara Carpenter x Fem!Reader

Summary: You want to recreate Lunch with your girlfriend.

A/n: This was purely for my entertainment. Tell me ur favs from the album?

It was Billie Eilish’s fault.

It definitely wasn’t yours, turning on the new HIT ME HARD AND SOFT album and skipping to Lunch for something to listen to while you watched your own girlfriend make lunch. You’d been more than obsessed with the snippet she let out recently, and Tara had suffered the consequences.

The rays peeked through the window and reflected her brown hair, making it a shiny auburn—a color you adored. Tara in the sun was something you couldn’t believe you were around to witness, almost daily at this point, watching as her dark brown eyes sparkled and shone. The tan skin that would turn olive at the right angle, and lips that brightened with the sun.

You couldn’t lie—the vibrations of the music mixed with Tara’s tied up hair and pink cheeks were enough to have you feeling some type of way.

It definitely didn’t help that she was lip syncing and swaying to the song ever so slightly, smirking a little whenever she looked up and caught your eye.

You make your decision in a split second. It’s the easiest thing you’ve ever done you think, coming up with this stupid plan.

You saunter over to Tara, trying to act nonchalant. She eyes you a little but lets it go when she sees you stop at the head of the kitchen table and sitting down.

“If I could, I would totally eat you for lunch.” You lean over to wrap your hands around your girlfriend and whisper in her ear, trying (and failing) to sound sexy.

“Gee thanks, what a charmer you are.” Tara says and hides the soft smile that comes naturally.

Luckily for her, you could only see one side of her face, the lopsided smile hidden on the either side. You let out an unimpressed huff.

“Okay but for real I totally would.” You try again, snaking your head and letting it rest in the crook of her neck, peppering the tender skin with light kisses.

Tara hums a little and continues cooking, continuing to sway to the music. She’s made up her mind already, but it’s nice to see you beg and grovel a little more.

“I love it when you cook.” You mumble against her, gripping her waist and urging her to turn around.

She gives up on trying to make food a few seconds later when she can tell you aren’t going anywhere.

You draw her in, cheeky smile while you stare at her lips shamelessly. Those perfect lips, tasting to you like how ambrosia would to a mortal; it’s near fatal. She fits right in between your thighs, her small frame easy to maneuver.

Tara was insecure about her height. Something you tried to show time and time again was nothing—in fact, you enjoyed the height difference a little too much to admit—always made Tara moody on a particularly shitty day.

“God, I love you.” You tell her, eyes finally shifting up to her eyes. Her eyes twinkle; you know you’re close to getting her to crack.

“You’re so desperate.” She whispers, leaning into you. It isn’t meant as an insult, and you don’t take it as one.

It was merely the truth; and you hated that she knew it.

“You need a seat? I’ll volunteer.” You sing along, letting go of one of Tara’s hands to point to your face, giggling as Tara rolls her eyes.

The sight of the brunette getting closer is enough to get you to stop.

“Still hungry?” She asks, and you think you might just die. It takes everything in you not to salivate openly. She’s tilting her head, a sign she’s decided she’s won.

So maybe you really owed Billie Eilish a kudos, you think as Tara stands up and drags you out of the room.

“Thank god Jojo Siwa invented gay pop.” You say, laughing a little nervous. It was a bad habit of yours to joke when you got excited.

It seems to fall on deaf ears, the girl in front of you not paying attention to any of the words pouring out your mouth now.

“What-what about lunch?” You gesture to her unfinished cooking wildly, knees buckling against her frame pushing you against her bedroom door.

“Fuck lunch.”

[girlactionfigure]

Jewish Defiance

Below is the speech I gave at a tiny, spirited protest of Jews - and their allies - who faced off a vast, snarling, swarm of pro-Hamas racists marching through London. Thank you to the organisers and those who turn up every week to show the indomitable defiance of the few.

This is a nice day out, isn’t it? What a lovely day out? Isn’t it nice to shlep into London when we could be doing anything else? We all really wanna be doing this on a weekend, don’t we? It ain’t what I want to be doing with my life. I don’t want to be here. I don’t think any of us wanna be here. These idiots are making us waste our time. But you wanna know what’s even more stupid? They’re wasting their time because they are not going to win. The State of Israel and the Jewish people are not going anywhere. We haven’t gone anywhere for three and a half thousand years. We’ve seen off the Romans, the Babylonians, the Nazis. We’ve outlasted all of them. And we’ll outlast these schmucks. Because antisemitic movements don’t have a long shelf life. History is not kind to the antisemite. And neither should we be. Any antisemite who transgresses should be made to suffer within the full scope of the law. They should be made to suffer consequences, socially, occupationally, legally.

Let’s be clear about who they are. We are not the same as them. They are fakes and frauds. Their calls for “ceasefire” aren’t about peace? You’re not for peace if you’re for globalising the intifada. You’re not for peace, if you’re calling for a Palestine from the river to the sea. You’re not for peace if you ignore, justify or excuse Hamas and their rocket attacks and their acts of terrorism against the Jewish People. You’re not for peace if you don’t condemn Hezbollah for firing rockets. You’re not for peace, if you don’t condemn the theocratic, Mullah regime of Iran and their complicity in all of this. You’re not for peace if you haven’t been calling for the complete and unconditional return of the hostages since day one.

If these liars on the streets of London were for peace they would be marching with Palestinian AND Israeli flags. But they aren’t. If they were for peace they would be screaming for the end of Hamas - a criminal rape gang of Islamic fundamentalists dedicated to jihad and the total extermination of all non-muslims. But they aren’t. These liars, these frauds, these Jew haters feign their tears and call for a ceasefire when the rapists Hamas are under the cosh, but they cheer when Israel is attacked. Sod them.

We on the other hand ARE for peace. There is no Jew that doesn’t want a world of peace and love. But you can’t shake hands with someone who’s trying to punch you in the face. And that is all our enemy does. Since Israel’s inception we have extended our hand in peace. But we have been met with punches, and knives, and rocks, and bullets, and car rammings, and rockets, and bombs, and rape, and torture, and murder and kidnapping. And if the world just expects us to take that. And to smile. And to say thank you world for allowing us to be murdered - then sod them. We are not the world’s punching bag, and we will not be sacrificed because of the non-Jewish world’s problems, or because of a superior, supercilious and utterly misplaced notion that they somehow own us and can dictate to Jews who we are, how we must live and how we are to die.

No one else decides our destiny. We do. When our destiny was in the hands of the world - the world bullied and slaughtered us. Zionism liberated us from the shackles of an abusive relationship with the world. And no one gets to tell us we go back into that relationship. The dynamic has changed. Get used to it. Zionism is the self-determination movement of the Jewish people. It is OUR liberation movement. Not yours. It is OUR civil rights movement. Not yours. The minute a non-Jew tries to define who the Jews are, or define Zionism or control our story - they prove exactly why we need Zionism - to liberate us - from them.

And like an abusive partner, many in the world can’t handle us being free. They can’t handle seeing us happy, thriving and getting on with our lives. Antisemites in Europe and America can’t handle seeing a Jewish minority making choices for themselves when they believe that they, the oh so cultured and civilised non-Jewish world, knows best. And antisemites in the muslim world can’t handle seeing a Jewish minority thrive outside the totalitarian confines of Islamic theocracy.

And so they come after us. Wanting to enslave us again. Not gonna happen. We will never be second class citizens or dhimmi again. And if you don’t like it that we fight back - good. I’m glad you don’t like it. Fuck around and find out. We’ll go as long as we need to.

And let me reiterate here: Jews don’t want violence. There are a million things we’d rather do. You are stopping us from achieving our full potential by making us have to fight you. We don’t want to spill blood. Jewish laws reiterate relentlessly the sanctity of blood. And then there was King David - who wasn’t allowed to build the Temple, because his hands were tainted with blood and the wars he had to fight. We are Jews and we wanna do good shit. We want to make advances in art, science and medicine for the good that it brings and for the joy of simply enriching our knowledge of this world.

Jews do not want war. But be under no illusion, if you bring it to us we will give you a war. Because there IS a time for war just as there’s a time for peace. And the time for war is when THEY come to kill us. Don’t fuck with Israel. Because our ancestors weren’t just shepherds and prophets and judges - they were warriors. And what was in them is in us. And just as they gave hell and triumphed over their enemies - we will give our enemies hell and we will triumph and we will win and then we will laugh and we will sing and we will dance - and with a bit of luck - we will make love and create more Jewish babies.

Look at the idiots out there who want to destroy us. They have to sing repetitive rhymes en masse - like morons in a cult - because they’re scared to be individuals. They’re scared to think for themselves. Scared to speak for themselves. They’re scared to be different. They’re scared to stand alone. They need nursery rhymes because they’re scared to engage in the complexities of an imperfect world. They’re morons.

Look at the numbers they have to gather in to feel brave enough to chant what they think? To shout that they want jihad and to kill every Jew between the river and the sea?

People who gather in that volume in order to shout at Jews are scared of Jews - and they should be. Because we’re fucking awesome. Being small in number is not a weakness. It is our superpower. It’s always been the Jewish superpower. It gives each of us ten times the resilience of those who rely on numbers. Never forget, no matter how surrounded you feel, strength is not in numbers, it is in your soul, it is in your heart and it’s in your resourcefulness. And we’ve got all of that. We are small in number but the things we’re each capable of are mighty. So go out every day and be mighty.

And don’t ever forget what Hamas did and what these people support. Darkness. They support darkness. There has never been more moral clarity to a fight than the one we face. What Hamas did on October 7th - demons from hell would ask them to be their teachers. And Hamas promise to do it again and again. A ceasefire is not peace. It’s a downpayment on future blood shed. It’s an investment in future war. The first step for the Middle East to even have a chance of peace is for Hamas to be gone.

Hamas are not the same civilisation as us. No peace can be made with them or anyone who thinks like them.

Our civilisation is worth protecting because it offers something good. The next time you’re in Jerusalem go and visit the Kingdom of David and you will see how precarious our origins were and how miraculous it is that we are still here and the responsibility we have to protect ourselves. David’s Kingdom was tiny. A tiny hillside that offered something new. A small outpost of light in a sea of darkness. It offered a revolution. It rejected what surrounded us. And what were we rejecting? We were rejecting the cruelty of those who engaged in child sacrifice. We were rejecting those who worshipped Moloch and set their own children on fire.

Now look at what’s happening today! Nothing has changed.

We’re facing an enemy who still sacrifice children. Deliberately. In Hamas we have an enemy who encourage their children to die, to blow themselves up, to set themselves on fire, to become so-called martyrs and shaheeds. We face an enemy whose parents praise Allah if one of their children blows themselves up with a suicide bomb to kill other children. We face an enemy that teaches their children in kindergartens, in schools, in mosques and in the home to die. We face an enemy that deliberately hides behind its own, and prevents them from seeking safety, so that they can be harmed in a war that THEY started. We should have no ambiguity and no doubt that we are on the side of good, and that good must triumph. Not just for us, but for this planet, lest that the ancient darkness faced by King David conquer every hillside and plunge the whole world into a night without end.

I want to leave you now with something important. The most important thing. What’s going on with our cruel and wicked enemies is deadly - but it’s also theatre. It’s designed to be a spectacle that scares you. It’s designed to make you crumble inside, give up and walk away. But it’s clear from your presence here today that you will not. And that none of you ever will. I wanna say that you are all fucking brilliant. All of you. You don’t even realise how brilliant you are. Seven months into the most disgusting war against us and here you all are standing tall, not backing down, ready to go on for as long as you need to. You are epic Jews, equal to any Jews of the past.

And don’t let the world spin your heads. Because mark these words: this is the best time to be a Jew in 2000 years. It is the best time to be a Jew in 2000 years. Because we’ve always had enemies. There have always been those who’ve risen up to kill us. But this time, this time we have the State of Israel. The Jewish People are home. They are in their indigenous homeland and they will never be uprooted again.

And because we have the State of Israel we will never be as vulnerable as our ancestors. As bad as things sometimes feel we will never know how vulnerable they felt when the rug was pulled from their feet. And they would be SO happy for us. We are the luckiest Jews in 2000 years. With Israel we can defend ourselves. We can fight back. We have an army. We have infrastructure. We have technology. For the first time in 2000 years the Jews can truly fight back. And if our enemies wanna bring it, they will know we can fight.

So you can be anxious now and then. But never, ever give in to fear.

In this life you can be scared. You can be messed up. You can even be fucked up. But the most important thing is to show up. Always show up and give a good account of yourself and with God’s grace we will always triumph. God bless you. Baruch HaShem.

LEE KERN

[agentperezbian]

I find people tagging Amanda Young on that post about evil women who don't face consequences funny because like. She does face consequences. So many in fact. And not just like a lot of villainous or morally gray characters where they suffer consequences when they're killed or defeated. That woman suffered more than Jesus every single day of her life.

[whats-amata-you]

Alright y’all hear me out, but I kinda like this interpretation of the Kaiba brothers where they have to deal with the consequences of a very codependent sibling relationship. Not like in the “something happens to Mokuba and Seto has a crisis” kind way, but in the “Mokuba doesn’t know who the hell he is outside the context of being Seto’s little brother” kind of way.

Literally everything Seto ever did from the day Mokuba was born was toward the singular goal of Mokuba’s wellbeing. He sacrificed everything to give Mokuba better opportunities, a more stable home life, a better chance at happiness than Seto ever really had for himself. Seto even gave up huge swaths of who he himself was to work toward that goal. It was all for Mokuba.

But Mokuba was right there with him, the whole time, watching his brother suffer and doing everything in his power to protect him. Mokuba’s whole identity revolves just as much around Seto as Seto’s does around Mokuba.

And that’s fucked up all well and good when Seto’s a teenager and Mokuba hasn’t even hit puberty and only one of them is really taking on any serious adult responsibility. But imagine what that must be like when Mokuba grows up.

Imagine being 20 and as long as you can remember you’ve been worrying about keeping your older brother alive. Maybe he’s in late twenties or early thirties now, and life has finally forced him to either do the work of healing and moving on or else spiraling into self-destruction to the point that not even you can save him anymore. Maybe he’s married off and happy in his own life, or maybe he’s dead or missing and left you behind as his only heir to the family fortune.

And you’re just as completely, utterly lost either way because either way, he doesn’t need you the same way anymore. And on top of that, you realize you don’t really need him the same way anymore.

His routines aren’t yours anymore. His moods don’t set the tone for your whole day anymore. You don’t plan your life around him and his needs anymore.

So. What do you do when you’re suddenly cut loose and left adrift?

I imagine Mokuba floating through life a lot for his twenties, maybe into his thirties. He’s got no sense of direction or purpose without Seto being the center of it all. He realizes he doesn’t have to become a businessman like Seto and help run Kaiba Corporation, but doesn’t know what the hell else he might even want to do. Doesn’t even have a clue. He goes into business anyway because he knows he has to do something, but he doesn’t really enjoy it and it wears on him. He’s popular with women but can’t make a relationship last more than a few weeks; they keep fizzling out because he just doesn’t seem to have any ambition.

It’s super easy for Mokuba to see and acknowledge how Seto was always sort of his dad when they were kids, as well as his brother. Seto actively took up the role and wasn’t shy about saying so outright. But I don’t think either of them realizes quite as easily just how much Mokuba was parentified too, even from a very young age. Seto made Mokuba’s physical health and overall wellbeing his business on purpose, but Mokuba accidentally stumbled into providing a level of emotional support to Seto that no child should ever be responsible for. That kind of relationship would fuck anyone up.

I feel like an interpretation of them Kaiba brothers that had a Mokuba who ended up being rather directionless and having issues with his sense of who the hell he is after Seto’s inevitable Character Development one way or the other is worth exploring. People change over time, and if a fic is set a decade or more post-canon…idk, I just feel like Mokuba’s trauma deserves some serious exploration, too.

[daydadahlias]

it is so hard to be hated by the masses bc there’s so many beautiful gifsets i want to reblog but i am so blocked by so so many people

[tariah23]

The manga industry, especially JUMP, needs to hurry up and do away with weekly scheduling for mangaka. There needs to better regulations put into place for their health and safety because this is pitiful. Two weeks - monthly updates should’ve already been the standard for the manga industry at this point. These money grabbers will only continue to put the lives of these artists at stake for the sake of capitalism unless some serious changes are implemented.

[nonomives]

Zesty tangerini bougadi or someshit--

@vistareal2000 thanks for the request and also sorry this took a while :')))

Reference:

[captain-astors]

Creature. (The rendered ones are referenced from manga panels)

[miutonium]

All I want for Christmas is a silly nerdy boyfriend 🎄🎁

Also taking the chance to wish everymeow a Miu-ry Christmas! 🎄🎄🎄

[dreadnotau]

Happy three years everybody! As always, there’s a lot to say on the occasion, so pop in at the end of the post for the tl;dr if you don’t have time for my detailed diatribes, haha

Boy, time flies, huh? Feels like the second anniversary was just yesterday, but maybe that’s just the several long hiatuses getting to me. I’ve been scarce on uploading anything anywhere for a while now, even though I promised I’d actually pick up the slack this time around. What gives? Well…

For one, college hell, and for two, a lot of unfounded anxiety about putting my art out there. Allow me some theatrics for a moment and I’ll actually get back to the comic at hand… I’ve never had an exceptionally supportive environment for making art. It wasn’t suppressive, not in the slightest, but it also wasn’t… encouraging. It was always treated as a hobby or a distraction rather than something I was allowed to be fully proud of, especially because a lot of my art focused on more cartoon-y and fantasy ideas, rather than still life studies and painting (which people generally outside of the art sphere tend to value more, arbitrarily). Couple that with a childhood full of being bullied over minute shit you hadn’t even considered could be an issue before, and you get a teenager hellbent on never sharing his interests or ideas with anyone, mostly due to the fear of rejection.

I’ve grown, thankfully, but that paranoia and fear doesn’t go away overnight. As I’m sure you all know, Meowchela was the one who originally encouraged me to post this comic, and the only reason she succeeded was because she was the first person in a long time who listened and engaged with my interests and my art in a meaningful way. It’s kind of obvious her friendship had a profound impact on me, and I’d cite her as one of the reasons I was even hopeful enough to apply to an art college in the first place! This comic, and that bond with another person, proved that maybe these things I’m so passionate about weren’t duds, and weren’t something I had to keep to myself.

So, fast forward a few years. About three years, in fact.

During one of my classes, right before this hellish two weeks of exams started, one of the class assistants talked me into showing my comic pages to one of my professors. He’s generally a pretty open guy when it comes to new mediums, but I’m always… apprehensive about showing my less “traditional art”-y things to professors, but, he ended up being genuinely proud of it. Specifically, I showed him pages 85-87 (because they’re my favourites) and, he didn’t read the text, just the visuals were enough for him to say “good job, keep it up” (which is HIGH praise from that guy). When I mentioned I’ve been meaning to simplify the visuals because I didn’t have time to work on the comic very often because of college and classes, he dismissed it on principle. I was honestly caught off guard. Heavily paraphrasing, he suggested that worsening the visuals for an arbitrary deadline was counterproductive to making something that’s Good™.

That’s kinda stuck with me. For a good few years now I was more focused on optimisation rather than visual improvement for the comic, and though it HAS contributed to better visuals in some ways (cutting corners sometimes makes for a less pointy and jagged end result), it’s kind of weird I’m treating an art project that way, isn’t it? I set a lot of… arbitrary deadlines and standards for myself, in the form of expectations and what I “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing at certain stages in my life. I’ve thought of Dread Not as a passion project second and a stepping stone first, if I’m being honest. As if it was too… fandom-y and derivative to be treated with more gravity than that, like it’s an immature project because I was still a child when I came up with it. As if it was something I’m making to Build Up to Something Else, something Bigger and Cooler and More Important, and… the more I think about the future of Dread Not, and even my future career options, the more I realised that’s, ironically, a really immature way to think about it.

If there’s one thing going to this art college has taught me, is that there’s no “right” way to make art, and there’s no “right” way to success as an artist. There’s no clear-cut paths, just more commonly treaded roads, but even those are heavily overgrown. Why should I try to box myself into thinking I have to make things from complete scratch to be taken seriously? What’s so bad about Dread Not as a story and as a comic that’s caused me to vaguely keep it under wraps when conversing with people in my day-to-day life? Why wouldn’t I put all these skills I’ve acquired to improve and expand this project that’s Right There, WAITING for me to finally get off my ass and get pages out there again?

I wish I could say I’ve used all this time away in a particularly clever way, but I really haven’t - at least, it feels like I haven’t. My art has undoubtedly improved over time (though admittedly the art for this post was Very rushed, fuckin exams), and while I’ve been working on projects in the background, chipping away at them in a VERY disorganised way, I haven’t been posting that progress anywhere, and I haven’t made any good progress on my biggest project, Dread Not, because of the other ones. And, honestly? Admitting that kinda stings. This comic means a lot to me, and I wish I actually gave it the time and attention it deserves instead of letting it sit out hiatus after hiatus because I keep failing at structuring my time.

So, my new plan is a little more abstract: find a way to work Dread Not into my school schedule, and slowly build a habit of working on it more often. No clue how long that’ll take, but I think it’ll be worth it to consider it as an option, and hopefully finally end these long, drawn out hiatuses with short bursts of uploads in-between. HOPEFULLY. Building habits was never my strong suit, so please bear with me while I figure this out in what will probably be the most hectic upload schedule in this comics history, which is: no schedule at all.

From now on (until the end of Act 1), I’ll upload pages when they’re ready, and depending on how the weeks go and how complex the page is, they could be weeks or days apart from one another. Hell, some might even take a month to finish if school stuff gets REALLY hectic (god knows Hellish Exam Week number 1 and number 2 won’t be giving me much time to work on the comic), but I’m determined to do this. I want to be able to put my all into this project again!!

(And hopefully finish Act 1 by the end of this semester…)

TL;DR: College is giving me life lessons I didn’t expect, and because of them I’ve decided to give myself a non-existent upload schedule for Dread Not: Pages will be posted when they’re ready, and the spacing between pages could wildly vary depending on circumstances and the actual complexity of the page itself.

As always, thank you for being here, thank you for reading, and thank you for being patient!

If all goes well, there will be new content very, very soon.

[lemongogo]

[watchandyoullsee]

Ariel Takes the Wheel

Scene 1: Ariel "Just Forgot"

King Triton (1989): "I just don't know what we're going to do with you, young lady."

Ariel (1989): "Daddy, I'm sorry, I just forgot, I--"

King Triton (2023): "It's irresponsible. Your sisters are only here for one phase of the Coral Moon. Can you imagine any one of them missing the gathering?"

Ariel (2023): "No, you're right. I'm sorry." (Excuse the watermark; I don't know where else to find images.) Of course, Flounder comes to her defense in the LA just like the 1989 version, saying it wasn't her fault, but Ariel realizes her mistake and takes full responsibility.

Scene 2: Blaming Sebastian

Ariel never blames anyone but herself in the 2023 version. She knows it's wrong to make the deal with Ursula in both versions, but the Live Action Ariel does not do it just for herself, but for both worlds -- after all, humans and merpeople may be different, but that doesn't make them enemies. Shipwrecks are alarmingly frequent, taking the lives of humans and damaging the seafloor below. Were the relations between the two peoples mended, perhaps their respective worlds could mend as well.

Thus, the stakes are higher. Had Triton been willing to listen while she had her voice (and it is understandable why he wasn't), she would never have had to give it up to be heard. 2023 Ariel not only rebels against her father because he made her upset (and she's obsessed with a human prince), but because she is doing what she believes is right for herself and her people. Since she heard Eric express a similar desire to bridge the gap between their kingdoms and the rest of the world (a desire she has never heard expressed by anyone else), it is only natural that she forms an immediate attachment to him. His beautiful face is not a motivating factor, but a nice bonus, and proof that humans are not all monsters.

Scene 3: Ariel "Didn't Mean To"

Ariel (1989): "Daddy, I'm sorry, I-I didn't mean to! I didn't know!"

Ariel (2023): "I'm sorry, Father, this was all my fault."

The point of this comparison is to highlight how important it was that Ariel took the wheel of the ship at the end. These are two very different characters, and thus their character arcs are different. Ariel in 1989 was curious, naïve, stubborn, rebellious in the typical adolescent fashion, and innocent as an infant. Her arc wasn't the noblest for a princess, as notwithstanding her mistakes and lack of character growth, she managed to receive all that she desired in the end. She didn't need to kill Ursula because Eric was there to do it for her, just as Scuttle was there to stall the wedding and retrieve her voice, and Sebastian was there all the way along to get her closer to Eric. Animated Ariel did not take responsibility for her actions. How could she, when she didn't know any better? Every movement she made was in her own self-interest (though I think by the end she really did love Eric as a person and not just a pretty face). Still, we love her because she is the picture of wide-eyed, adventurous youth, and there is much room for her yet to grow up, even after she's married. Because of her carefree innocence, it's nigh impossible to hate her.

Live Action Ariel is also carefree to a point, but the weight of her title and responsibilities shines through in her character. She is ignorant about the Above World (by no means from lack of effort), but clearly educated as a princess should be regarding her own. She is less stubborn in her naivety and more secure in her sense of right and wrong. There is an important distinction to be made between knowing what is right and remaining steadfast in that knowledge, versus remaining immovable in one's obliviousness.

So why was it important that Ariel took the wheel in the climax? Because she had taken the wheel all along. Had she been trapped in a vortex like in the cartoon, a damsel in distress, it would have been a disservice to her particular character arc -- that of a girl who took responsibility for her actions at every turn. "Those sacrifices you made were a choice that you can't undo," she sings in 'For the First Time.' This thread of action->consequence->action would have been left dangling, unresolved if she had suddenly lost all power.

Does this in any way diminish Eric's character? Not at all. He was willing to sacrifice his life to be with Ariel through the storm. He did everything in his power to save her. He still threw the spear, which undoubtedly saved her life in that moment (and, might I say, was a display of incredible competence to have an aim underwater like that). In that way, he repays her in kind, after she'd rescued him from drowning.

As an aside, she mimics his exact movement when he had steered the ship earlier in the film. Had she not observed what he did in that storm, she might not have known what to do in the final battle.

Ariel still needed help -- she still needed the support and aid of her animal companions, Eric, the castle staff, and her father. BUT she also took plenty of action to satisfy her arc, avenged her father's death, and she gave credit where it was due:

Ariel (2023): "You gave your life for me."

King Triton (2023): "And you fought to get my life back."

Ariel (2023): "I didn't fight alone, Father. Eric was with me."

I hope this post makes it a little clearer why robbing Ariel of her ability to act in the climax of the film would have been a poor choice, specifically in the Live Action. And, by the way, you can still prefer one or the other, or neither. While I don't dislike the cartoon, I obviously prefer the more mature and responsible Ariel.

[somegrumpynerd]

Staring out the window longingly when will my motivation to draw return from war

[ot3]

So badly I wish you guys could see the ace attorney fanfictions that exist in my head

[sableeira]

out of all the bsd characters I want to suffer severe consequences for their actions. He is number one.

[thekidsarentalright]

3 days post fob and my voice is entirely completely gone 😭 which is so funny bc ive never fully lost it after any other concert but ig fob was on a mission to kill me and they succeeded fjdndkd