#and the grey area too

[southofeerie]

the way early cj cregg’s automatic response to any personal crisis it to hit a little button that says “IGNORE” is such an interesting character trait and also so funny. same response for a month-long toothache, an unfortunate crush, and a stalker sending her threats. Totally Normal Functional Response.

(and in manchester, in that gray area between personal and professional crisis, THAT’S when she fucks up.)

[dirtytransmasc]

I'll never not believe that Davos is the one who fell first and harder. that he wasn't the one getting his heart truly broken. the one fighting for Aaron's love and attention and aching when he is denied. the one longing for Aeron and having to reckon with the fact that he can never truly have him, there's too much keeping them apart.

sure, Aeron has his own feelings, his own longing, his dread.

but you can see it in their faces, it's Davos's heart that's a mess, his soul that is aching, while Aeron is more confused and unsure of his own feelings and where they lie in the mess that is feuds and war and blood and kin.

Davos is angry but full of bitter, rage filled acceptance. Aeron is scared, confused, and stuck between acceptance and denial. and it's breaking me.

[anistarrae]

shadow bandee design i made awhile ago :D (jan 17th, 24)

i feel like mirror bandee would be very skilled without putting the effort in, getting where they are by power, instead of earning it through putting the work in. this would lead to them becoming over-confident and become the cause their biggest weakness. a friend pointed out this would mirror dedede in the beginning of the series too!

[stardust-falling]

Having more thoughts about Shen Jiu because of course I am.

I don’t think he has the capacity for empathy or genuine selflessness.

He spent the entirety of his formative years deep in survival mode, and because of that, he evaluates people solely based off of how they might threaten or ensure his safety and/or comfort. As far as individual people themselves with their own perspectives… honestly I don’t think he even thinks of that.

Maybe a controversial opinion, but I don’t think even YQY is exempt.

Shen Jiu doesn’t have a moral code. When every day is spent on surviving, a moral code is a luxury.

And really, he just never got out of that mode. See, the thing is, once you’ve had enough adverse experiences it only takes a little bit to trigger you back into that mindset. Shen Jiu was used to being scolded and then beaten or abused, so for him, even a simple chiding is a precursor to abuse— even if he DOES recognize that nothing more will happen, his body and mental patterns will still go into that preparation time.

So of course he never left survival mode, because even if nothing is actively happening, your mind will keep reinforcing those patterns.

For someone with a normal upbringing, as far as I can tell, empathy is something you learn and develop from those around you. Many seem to think it’s something innate and natural and if you don’t have it then there’s something wrong with you from birth. I think Shen Jiu falls into exactly this category of thought— and so he doesn’t even consider that he could try to learn and develop it as a skill he can perform, even if it doesn’t come naturally.

Of course, would he even try? He hasn’t been given any incentive. Any time he has tried to do something good, he ends up getting hurt (saving Yue Qi leading to being taken by QJL) or misinterpreted and admonished (the well ghost incident, keep in mind my earlier point about scoldings perpetuating the same patterns).

So he stays in that same vicious cycle, perpetually in survival mode and unable to escape, even in a relatively secure position (see: his paranoia).

Now, this is all relevant to the discussions of SJ’s feminism, misogyny, and/or lack thereof. I feel like a lot of discussions aren’t really getting the full picture.

SJ sees people, no matter who they are, as solely how they can affect him. Just because this isn’t exclusive to women, or because if comes from a reasonable place, does that really mean it doesn’t play into misogyny?

Let’s take another angle.

I think his abuse of LBH and other talented disciples also is rooted, deep down, in this same issue. He’s not just hurting LBH only to hurt him, his aim is specifically to stunt his cultivation. There’s jealousy at play there of course, but there’s a bit more layers to it too— SJ doesn’t think he’s capable of goodness. So reasonably, he’ll be a bad teacher. He already knows what happens when someone becomes more powerful than their oppressor. LBH may be a child now, but a part of SJ whether he acknowledges it or not sees him as a future threat that needs to be treated as such.

It’s rooted in fear— because everything is with SJ.

So does that mean it’s not actually abuse?

No. The behaviors he shows are still abusive, the reasoning just gives a lens for understanding.

Now, with his views on women— I mentioned in the tags of my original post that I don’t think he views women as people. This is based in that earlier idea of how he interprets others based off their risk and benefit to him. For women specifically, though, there’s another layer.

Shen Jiu grew up in a society where women are inherently lesser— and he grew up in an extreme version of this. He saw women being treated as property firsthand(both as slaves, as well as QJL’s views on his sister). Your worldview is shaped by the world that you view during those early years. Whether he agreed or not, SJ would still take on the patterns of his environment. This, though, is just the same as general societal misogyny and ingrained bias. I don’t think he’s any different than anyone else in this way.

But where SJ’s particular flavor comes in is that to him, women are a source of comfort. For various reasons— positive past experiences, less threatening (or at least don’t carry the dangers men do). He craves comfort— needs it really, because he doesn’t get it and his cortisol levels are always so high they’re poisoning his body. Women are the best source of that comfort for him.

It’s not that he likes them— at least, not any more than someone would like drinking water, or a coat in the winter. They’re fulfilling a survival need for him.

That is what the objectification is where SJ is concerned.

So… is it misogyny?

I’d say yes, in a way it still is. It’s not violent, and it doesn’t come from some inherent sense of “superiority as a man” but at the core of it all, he’s still not viewing women as people, and he has no interest in changing the status quo, because it benefits him to be able to go purchase comfort at a pleasure house, even if it’s not what people usually do there. The picture is bigger than just misogyny, but the traits taken as themselves are misogynistic nonetheless.

I could go into his specific relationships with women and how that informs his character, but this post is already long enough. We know that he mentally divides people by sex, and that distinction has a lot of weight in his judgment of them. Even if it comes from a place of trauma, even if it comes from a general worldview that applies to everyone, he still views women as a commodity— so on some level, and from an outside perspective, he is misogynistic.

In the end, though, it still all comes from him being stuck in survival mode. His lack of empathy, his viewing others as risks and benefits— these things themselves aren’t moral failings— it’s just a consequence of his environment. He’s a bad person because he won’t confront this, develop a moral code, and act on it, not because he doesn’t experience empathy.

But in his circumstance, there’s not really a chance for him to choose to be good. Because he’s still trying to survive, and goodness is a luxury he doesn’t realize he can afford now.

He’s scum, but pitiful, you know?

[total-drama-brainrot]

Noah is canonically the youngest of eight sibling. Eight.

You don't grow up in a family that large, as the youngest and therefore the favourite victim, and not have a super casual relationship with touch.

This guy is light enough to be literally blown away by a strong breeze; if you think even for a second that his family didn't take turns carrying him around like a briefcase and abducting him from whatever he was doing into a Family Pile™ then you're objectively wrong.

(You also can't convince me that he wasn't spoiled rotten as the baby of the family.)

So frequent platonic touching is pretty normal for him, expected even, and he tends to be more tactile than his personality or demeanour would suggest.

He gives Owen side-hugs and pats on the arm every time the two interact, and wilfully flops himself onto Eva whenever he's overwhelmed and wants the company of someone comparatively quiet (she always uses it as an excuse to carry him to the gym and encourage him to bulk up, though it never works). He tries to tire out Izzy's boundless energy by play-fighting and grappling with her (much to his chagrin) despite him essentially ending up as her glorified chew toy, and often times passes out due to being a stick insect in human form.

It's unexpected, just how casually clingy he is to the people he trusts/likes.

But you know who isn't used to physical contact?

Cody E.J. "my parents forgot my birthday" Anderson

This wet noodle of a boy bigs himself up as a ladies' man and a hot commodity but wouldn't know what to do with himself if someone held his hand. The concept of affection of any kind is so foreign to him, especially positive physical contact- I wouldn't be surprised if he could count the amount of hugs his parents had given him on one hand.

And this is backed by his canonical desperation for acknowledgement! Every time he pursues Gwen, even when he's directly shot down and sometimes harshly rejected, he still tries to win her affections and festers the delusion that she likes him. After all, everyone who's supposed to care about him does the same! His parents, 'friends' or lack thereof, ect.; they all ignore/rebuff him so it must be a sign of endearment.

Additionally, he sleeps with a stuffed emu at the ripe age of 16/17- as stated by Sierra, which he never denies (not that there's anything wrong with that, stuffed animals are top tier imho). You know who else sleeps with stuffed animals? Touch-starved people.

Cody is incredibly attention-starved, touch-starved and, post World Tour, in all likelihood somewhat touch-averse- at least when it comes to other people initiating contact.

To elaborate; Sierra is constantly breaching his personal bubble non-consensually, which would inadvertently condition anyone into being at least a little haphephobic, but Cody himself is more than happy to instigate contact with people he trusts (i.e. hugging Alejandro when he protects Cody from Sierra overnight in Rapa Phooey!).

...See where I'm going with this?

We see these two cuddling twice in canon; once in the Awake-a-thon and again in the Celebrity Manhunt. Once is happenstance, but twice indicates a pattern or coincidence but I'm going to gloss over that for the sake of this post.

Plus, with their consistent proximity during Action, they had plenty of time to form some type of relationship be it friendly or more.

(Wouldn't you want to at the very least get some closure from the guy who kissed you/you kissed for the world to see? It would be awkward to completely ignore each other, and they literally shared a cabin at one point so it's not like they were strangers either. So of course they're at least cordial from Action onwards.)

Then, as Noah becomes more comfortable around Cody, his tactile tendancies come to play.

Cody, predictably, reacts skittishly at the alien phenomenon known as friendly touch and tries to play it off to preserve his cool-guy image. Except Noah's not falling for it. He's observant, if emotionally illiterate, and watching the guy you just backpatted in greeting jump five feet into the air and screech like a falcon is a flashing red alarm for even the most empathetically challenged people.

Eventually, Noah gets Cody to divulge his issues with human contact and offers his assistance to the brunette. If giving his pal a hug every now and then, and letting him in turn initiate whatever he's comfortable with, would help him overcome his rocky relationship with touch then Noah is more than happy to oblige. It's not like it's out of the norm for him, so he doesn't mind at all.

Then, gradually, Cody loses his touch aversion.

But a lifetime of isolation won't be magically cured that easily, and he finds himself craving Noah's embrace more and more. Again, the taller of the two is content to give him what he wants. Their agreement evolves into the duo napping together and feeding into Noah's sleep-hugging habit, or just spending quality time in a heap of pretzeled limbs under a weighted blanket.

(Whether their relationship is platonic or romantic is entirely up to interpretation, though I'm partial to the two being friends who are just Like That since it allows for the funniest potential character interactions. The bromance is real.)

That's as good a place as any to end the post, before I end up writing a whole drabble.

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

Sum Hawke kimsses <3

[eloquentsisyphianturmoil]

finrod deserved better

[starrynightarchive]

you know what's so disappointing? the way people keep saying 'don't be afraid to portray mental illness and disability in media!! in your art and writing!!! normalise it and don't shun it!!!' and then the MOMENT you bring up a symptom that's too messy and uncomfortable to handle, they take a fuckin u-turn and go "UM no that's bad. like. you're a bad person if you do that. that's weird and it makes me uncomfortable so it's wrong."

here's the thing!!!!!!! it's not convenient!!!!! it's not simple!!!! i can't be honest and keep writing about how depression paints your whole world blue and all that shit!!!!!! because guess what!!!! depression and disabilities and borderline personality disorder and SO many other things are just. not neat and clean or easily consumable. they WILL make you uncomfortable and sad. they WILL make you feel bad. honesty is not easy. it's not meant to be.

and dehumanisation of sociopaths and psychopaths is genuinely distressing. not all of them!!! are!!!! bad people!!! it's a medical condition!!!! a mental illness!!! a person's illness doesn't make them bad. their actions and the decisions they take decide that and I am SO sick and tired of people watering down every complex human trait and toxic behaviour as good and bad and right and wrong. don't you see!!! some things are simply just. human. that's all. people fuck up. badly, sometimes. but that doesn't mean they are not people. I'm not saying you should forgive everyone and become a full time saint. you are entitled to your anger. i'm just asking you: don't take away a person's right to err and still be considered human. not all actions fall in the neat divisions of right and wrong. some things just are. grow some balls if you want to see true suffering in media. because it is Not easy or pretty. not even close. you will be conflicted and uncomfortable and troubled. make peace with that fact.

[dice-n-antlers]

Thinking about Astarion (because of course I am) and the spell True Resurrection.

There’s been some debate over the dates on his headstone and how long he’s been dead and how old he was when he died. The dates are listed kinda weird, but the general consensus is that he’s exactly at or just under 200 years (un)dead.

It is true that, as written, the creature must be dead “no longer than 200 years” for the spell to work.

However.

I think you can argue that in Astarion’s case (and for vampires in general) that it doesn’t matter.

Of course, to work within the confines of the game, the spell has to be written with specific rules and limits. However, rules can be bent and in a tabletop setting, this would be up to DM discretion. As you can see in the spell description, the soul of the creature must also be free and willing to return to life and their body must not have died of old age. So, why the 200-year restriction? To answer that question, let’s talk about souls in the Forgotten Realms.

In general, when an ensouled creature dies, the soul moseys on over to the fugue plane over the course of a few days or even up to a month. This is why there are different resurrection spells that have to be used within a minute or ten days; because the soul is still sorta hanging around.

Once on the fugue plane, the soul just kinda hangs out. Waiting. After about a tenday-ish, a divine postal worker from the soul’s chosen deity comes to pick up the soul and deliver it to its final resting place on the home plane of their deity. The soul can’t be forced or tricked into following the wrong mailman. And there are exceptions to this rule as well. For instance, a soul who wasn’t particularly faithful might end up waiting centuries before someone shows up. If they wait too long, the soul may fade out of existence or Kelemvor may judge them before then.

Once the soul has been prime-delivered to their deity’s planar doorstep, they become a petitioner and their form and the nature of the afterlife can vary wildly depending on who they follow. Some exist in bliss or anguish. Memories of their life on Toril may fade. In the case of elves, they tend to retain their individuality and identity and may eventually be reincarnated in a cycle seeking perfection.

(Note: non-elven petitioners of the Seldarine pantheon of Arvandor could appear as elven or with elven features in death even if they were not elves in their mortal life. Same goes for drow, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings and their respective gods and planes. So you could even make the argument that a non-elf could then enter the elven reincarnation cycle and be elven in their future life if they worship Sehanine Moonbow or Corellon Larethian, etc. Consider also that the Reincarnation spell has the potential to change a dead creature into almost any race without effecting their soul; therefore reincarnating an elf into a tiefling but not removing them from their normal elven reincarnation cycle.)

(But I digress)

The point is, when you are raising a creature from the dead, you are pulling them from somewhere in that natural process. Depending on how long they have been dead, they may no longer exist, or may have little to no memory of their mortal life, they may not want to come back, they may have already been reincarnated into another life, or you might be pissing off some deity. In fact, once a soul is a petitioner, their deity has to approve of their return to life as well. Not to mention, for most souls there may not be much worth coming back to after 200 years; there is likely nothing remaining of their former life and loved ones.

Again, the soul must be both free and willing.

So what about Astarion? To bastardize his own quote: his soul is RIGHT THERE.

He died, sure, but his soul didn’t go anywhere. If you didn’t ascend him, you know his soul exists intact. It’s not on the fugue plane or any final resting plane and hasn’t been reincarnated. His body is dead(ish), but didn’t die of old age. Not to mention, the Monster Manual specifically lists (re)killing them and bringing them back to life as a potential way to cure a vampire.

Assuming that Astarion is willing to return to a full, mortal life, I see no barrier to True Resurrecting him… except that you might need to kill him first… and you need a fuckton of diamonds.

In short: think of the 200-year thing as more of a guideline than a rule. Alternatively, consider that Astarion may have been un-dead for a good long time, but he has not been dead-dead for 200 years.

Now, go forth Tavs! Go kill and resurrect your vampire boyfriend!

[michi-chelle-draws]

thinking about my guilty pleasure trio again 👉🏼👈🏼

[maiawhimsy]

Look at the cat boy! @ravenmoodle 's oc Grey

My part of the "How your oc would look like in my story" themed Art Trade :3

[cradle-of-darkness]

COOKIES OF DARKNESS NATION WE ARE OFFICIALLY BACK 💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

(long rambling in tags if u care)

[shine-reblogs]

So, I always found the 'soulmates always find each other and fall in love' trope kinda... lame?

Now, soulmates that always find each other because their souls are tied together but form a variety of relationsips? Soulmates that can be lovers, but also besties, and enemies, and mentor and student, and mother and daughter, and siblings, and... fuck, I don't know, someone needing a transplant and their donor? Now THAT'S my shit!

Ironically, I also find the second one to be a far more romantic idea than the 'always fall in love' one xD

[chipped-chimera]

Just outing myself as a Solas hater ahead of time but like, a hater in the way I think he's funny. He's just funny to me. Egg man. Baldy. Baldy bald man with the long face. Condescending hedgehog-personality man. I want to play his cranium like a drum. He delights me.

My inquisitor got along with him fine just, not BFFs. Or Fs even just 'co-workers' kind of vibe. She (as a human mage) felt a bit belittled by the dude and did not appreciate. As for me personally he's fine he's just ... not for me? In personality or face.

Anyway that's the heads up, but y'all can continue enjoying the egg man, please enjoy the return of your blorbo.

[sysig]

Incomplete exchange (Patreon)

[frozen-fountain]

Since the feature is due to be discontinued along with much else of what made the site worth using, I got possibly my last ever Reddit award for this analysis of Reeve/Cait Sith I wrote a couple of months ago. I thought I'd commemorate it here, too. Here's why my view of the character is essentially the joke about Cait being a fursona but like, taken seriously:

"Cait Sith's a weird one. I'm not surprised the character is as unpopular as he is because the execution is pretty bizarre, the rest of the party's reaction to both his tagging along and his betrayal are underwritten which adds to the weirdness, and I'm not going to try to defend his gameplay mechanics here - but from a narrative standpoint, I think there's stuff worth digging into. Especially when you consider the man behind the controller.

Regarding the Temple of the Ancients - I think the melodrama of it is purposeful. To all intents and purposes it plays like the typical Hollywood noble sacrifice, a redemptive moment for this creature before the end... and then his replacement comes along, making a big joke out of the moment. The purpose, as I see it, is to contrast Aerith's death as well as many of the others we see on screen. They all meet their ends in ways that are sudden and brutal and don't leave time for last words or moments of closure. I think it's a brilliant addition to what the game is saying about the transience of life and unromanticised inevitability of death.

As for the betrayal (and not to mention the part where a four-year-old girl is taken hostage), yep, that was a lousy thing to do. So was Vincent being a contract killer, Cloud and Tifa and especially Barret disregarding collateral damage and innocent bodies during the reactor bombings, and Cid heaping years of verbal abuse onto a woman who feels codependently indebted to him. They're all broken people in impossible situations left with no recourse, and in the case of Cait and his handler, I think it's easy to imagine Reeve looking on what he's doing as helping to not make a bad situation worse. He can keep Marlene safe from potentially cruel treatment by his peers while maybe doing his part to bring a dangerous guerrilla group to heel. It's still wrong, and I don't agree his methods are either moral or effective - but he's the same as everyone else in the game and doing the best he can with the inadequate hand he has.

And in a story that examines the toll a brutally hierarchical society like the one Shinra imposes on the world takes on the people in it, and the difficulty in resisting it in meaningful ways that don't cause a heap of collateral damage, Reeve is there to represent the futility of trying to change such a system that's already so far gone from the inside. We see him bullied by his coworkers for being such a dreamy idealist as to suggest maybe not crushing thousands upon thousands of people to death to increase the chance of apprehending six, and he then has to watch as the city he worked so hard to improve is treated as a disposable thing to destroy at will. He's also only thirty-five years old, which is terribly young to be in as high a position as he is. So what can we infer about this little-seen character from the avatar that joins the party?

The boundary between headcanon and reading between the lines starts to blur here. But I think to be an engineer, or a scientist of any stripe, you've got to have a streak of imagination and whimsy about you. I've always imagined Reeve, college-aged at best, showing up for work in the resplendent Shinra Tower and immediately boxing away his youth to act professional. And over the years, one moral after another joins his childhood in being repressed and squashed down so he can do his job on the faint promise he can leverage his position to change things for the better. And I think we're meant to see Cait Sith as an alter-ego and manifestation of this - something childlike, which is what the world keeps telling Reeve his moral compass is. His time observing Avalanche makes him question this, and over time, he sees he has people in the party who might genuinely care for him in a way the Shinra higher-ups he's been surrounded by never will. If you take a moment in each scene to imagine what's going on in Reeve's head as he sits alone, weighing it all up, his robot becomes a fantastic addition to the story and a necessary layer to its political commentary.

I am admittedly also a cat lady, though, so perhaps there's some bias creeping in."

I imagine I meant to get into how I see the multiple Cait models as a reflection of Reeve's fear of being replaceable and disposable in the aftermath of the plate drop, and then an affirmation of the opposite ("There's only one me!") as he starts to reintegrate his whole self in the wake of changing allegiances, but apparently that fell by the wayside. My point is that I love the game for daring to make the emotions underpinning a major character's redemptive plotline exist almost entirely between the lines, though it's also hard not to want to see that journey play out. Hence writing fic about it, I suppose.