#and when i did it was justified tbh

[rinringringu]

I think it's more embarrassing to make a million posts about how much you hate a ship than making a million posts of how much you like it. Just saying!

[beanghostprincess]

the whole "doflamingo has always been evil" thing doesn't sit right with me. idk. maybe it's because i think the environment during childhood is what shapes someone's personality, especially if there's a traumatic experience. and call me crazy, but perhaps being raised in a world full of supremacists and classists with an extreme god complex can affect your views on the world and yourself at a very early age. and perhaps i'm being a bit insane here, but, like, idk. maybe being fucking tied up and tortured and seeing everything you love burnt down to ashes while a whole town tells you you're evil for your mere existence could make you develop a hatred towards them. and, wow! maybe i'm saying something wild, but if you're taking care of your little brother and an older man tells you you're the chosen one to create a fucking mafia and he boosts your god complex to an insane, unhealthy, and almost grooming-like extent, of fucking course you're gonna end up like doflamingo.

but idk, call me crazy.

[chatdae]

love how the older skaters in the senior division give Yurio encouragement and that each time it pisses Yurio off. JJ is intentionally condescending so that makes sense, but with Viktor and Yuuri they're not even being condescending. Yurio's just dialed in on being a hater... and i love that for him <3

[imminent-danger-came]

tbh you are so real for talking about the misogyny targeted to mei & other women in the lmk fandom. in general its like people only value mei as: a: the wingman to some basic mlm ship or b: macaque 2.0. its honestly crazy how so many male side characters overshadow her in the fanbase despite not even having a FRACTION of her screen time. idk chat i feel like the reason people dont care about mei but care about some random male side/background character is less because they're inherently more likeable but because some of you view women as inherently less likable. and everyone is always like "mei is so girlboss pussy cunt slay shes the only reason theyre still alive because she keeps them safe from their silly boy shennanigans shes their ultimate wingman shes so badass shes their lesbian best friend i totally paid attention to her when i watched this show LOL" and even ignoring the obvious misogyny here (ie. how people reduce her to being the male characters babysitter) its like... okay... i know mei is cool & badass already... could you name literally ANY other character trait she has. like people just value her as being "the braincell" who can get red son and mk together or something stupid and its like are we having fun still is this still fun. literally every day i go into the mei tag its like "look at mei shes red sons wifey and shes vaguely in the background of this drawing of red son and mk staring into each others eyes #trafficlighttrio am i right oh look shes macaques niece now this post is about ao lie why is it in the mei tag"

and thats literally JUST talking about mei and it doesnt even begin to cover the other female characters. chang'e constantly gets reduced to being red sons aunt/mom/big sister despite them like. not having any actual interactions in the show. lady bone demon constantly gets overshadowed by her minion who has like 2 seconds of screen time, or she gets made into a cartoonishly abusive madwoman who people call lady bitch demon. just in general people act like shes a horrible person for like. being a villain. liks yeah the trying to destroy everything was bad but also she was an antagonist and thats what antagonists do LOL. spider queen gets completely ignored. princess iron fan gets made into a cartoonishly abusive mother so that way red son can have a poor angsty backstory and some male character (usually nezha, macaque, swk) can take care of him.

(also theres just a great deal of ethnocentrism in the lmk fanbase? like im white so take what İ say here with a grain of salt but so many people will misconstrue aspects of chinese culture for their own personal hcs. people will say male characters are transfem or nonbinary while completely ignoring the time period/culture their from where thats the norm. like yippee youve implied that an east asian man is feminine/emasculine because he has long hair. how do you not see the negative connotations with this. people also turn pif (& lbd to an extent) into a dragon lady which obviously has negative racial connotations lol.)

anyway this is where my unhinged rambling ends have a good day have a good night İ had more to say here but İ reached the text limit. İ dont see a lot of people talk about the misogyny thats prevalent in the lmk fanbase so İm glad youre pointing it out lol.

Yeah, I totally hear you. The lmk fandom has plenty of issues with misogyny and, like you said, ethnocentrism. It's definitely something worth having a discussion about, along with these issues in fandom as a whole.

[prouvaireafterdark]

I personally don't think season 3 will or should be Lestat writing his own book. First of all, because of the abuse, I sincerely think any Lestat POV also needs another party present to call him out and not just let the audience assume his side is the truth, otherwise it will seem like the show is implicitly taking the abuser's side of the story (especially after how it framed Daniel's role in digging through Louis's story). Either he will show up to the penthouse and continue the "interview" framing or he will tell his story to Louis so both can be there to hash out what happened between them or something of that sort.

A straight up Lestat POV where he gets to paint himself as the victim would be pretty gross after what we've seen him do honestly and honestly why would the audience take anything he has to say seriously?

Okay I'm gonna be really honest here, unless Louis and Lestat's reunion has already happened and/or he's in a coma in the basement, I have no idea how people expect him to crash the interview at this point. Like it just does not make sense to me that he would just magically appear like that.

Honestly, I would much prefer that Lestat skips the memoir part and becomes a famous rockstar after reading Louis' interview and asks Louis to meet him with his song lyrics/media exposure so he can tell Louis his story himself before the San Francisco concert because that means we get maximum Louis. If Daniel is there to call him out on his bullshit, all the better, but I do want the story from Lestat's lips because the comedy of his narration is just too good to pass up. I've waited 15 years to hear Lestat describe himself with his own clown mouth and I hope season 3 doesn't disappoint.

Also, I just want to mention this because I feel like when people talk about Lestat there's a tendency to think about Lestat discussing his trauma as him painting himself as the victim and it really grates on me because two things can be true at once. Like, Lestat isn't the victim in his relationships with Louis and Claudia, obviously, but he absolutely was a victim. He was horrifically abused and neglected by his family his entire life growing up and was abandoned by every person he ever loved, even his own mother after he saved her life by making her a vampire bc she never wanted to be his mom (or a mom at all) in the first place. He is profoundly fucked up because of these traumatic events and they have a direct relationship to why he was so abusive to Louis and Claudia. Like he's probably got every trauma-induced personality disorder in the DSM-5 and literally cannot regulate his emotions or make himself stop being terrible until Louis hits his hard factory reset button and gives him an intervention by making him rot in the dump for a while so he's forced to think about what he's done.

Does that excuse any of his horrific behavior? No.

Does that mean he shouldn't have to atone for his bad decisions and the pain he's inflicted on other people? No.

Does that mean we should take every word he says as gospel and cast suspicion on Louis and Claudia's narratives? No.

But that doesn't mean every word out of his mouth is a lie either, and honestly, it's not like Lestat ever says "actually, every bad thing Louis and Claudia said I did was a lie because they're liars and I was a perfect father and husband and they tried to kill me for no reason." He fully admits that Claudia was right to kill him and that it's the kind of thing he would have done himself.

And like, in order for there to be a cycle of abuse, one has to first be abused. That's just how it works. And I don't really get why people are so set on erasing Lestat's traumatic history or viewing it as an either/or situation where only one of them is allowed to have been a victim of abuse and that if Lestat is allowed to talk about his abuse in season 3 he's by definition excusing his actions and challenging Louis' narrative.

I feel like part of the point of Anne Rice's work is that these vampires are, all of them, extremely monstrous AND deeply traumatized. They are both victims AND victimizers. It's what makes them so compelling and nuanced. I don't understand why some people want Lestat to be a cartoon villain with no redeeming qualities or path to redemption, and I also don't know why people seem to think that a season 3 from Lestat's perspective can only mean that the audience will not be asked to question or interrogate his perspective the way they've been asked to with Louis and Claudia in season 1.

Like, after everything they made Lestat do in season 1, if you're genuinely worrying that the writers are going to say "none of Louis or Claudia's trauma happened at all and actually Lestat was a perfect, sad angel the whole time who was unjustly wronged by Louis and Claudia and this is something you, the audience, are meant to uncritically believe because Lestat bat his eyelashes while he said it," I literally don't know what to say. It sounds ridiculous because it is.

There's just no way they're doing that and I think everyone should take a breath and stop stressing over it.

[heloflor]

You know, considering how many posts I recently made about Movie Peach and how negative they are, there’s something I feel the need to clarify since I wouldn’t be surprised if people had some assumptions and I don’t want words I didn’t say being put into my mouth (Tl;Dr at the end):

As a completely original character, fully detached from everything other than the movie, I have no issues with Movie Peach. She’s badass in a fun way, spunky, has a few cute faces, and I especially appreciate how despite being a strong female character stereotype she’s very supportive of Mario and builds him up rather than putting him down, it makes her likeable and their relationship very cute.

And yes, this is the way I perceived her from the get-go, but only mentioned it in my movie reaction post made all the way back when said movie came out, hence needing to say it again now. To quote that post: “Least favorite character is DK. It could’ve been Peach but my issues with her stem from how different she is from her games counterpart. If you take her movie character as a brand-new character rather than a game adaptation, she’s actually pretty great as a guide and strong mentor.” And while there are things in this post I now disagree with, this part remains my current opinion.

So yeah, as an original character, she’s pretty great...but that’s also the issue.

Movie Peach is not an original character. She’s supposed to be an adaptation of a pre-existing character who already has her own personality. And as an adaptation, Movie Peach fails at every level. Not only that, but several dialogues keep hyping her up in a way that comes off as Illuminations looking down on Games Peach, you know, the character their own Peach is supposed to be an adaptation of.

That’s why I take such issue with Movie Peach. It’s not the character itself, it’s how bad of an adaptation she is. And if I did my job correctly, every single time I talk negatively of her in my posts, it’s about her as an adaptation specifically. The only instance of me being an ass for no reason is in my table comparison post where I call her a dumbass, which I point out in the tags to be me throwing shade and not something I actually believe.

Now I also want to say that I hate Movie Peach for what she represents and the consequences of her existence on Peach’s character and her perception by the public, so to keep it short I’m going with bullet points:

It annoys me a lot that a multi-million dollars company couldn’t be bothered to adapt her character properly, especially since they apparently closely worked with Nintendo and the concept art very much show them who Peach is as a person (the one where she’s encouraging Mario to fight DK reminds me of the 86 Anime where she keeps having Mario fight her battles while powerless to defend herself; also it’s funny how in the art of Games Peach reacting to Movie Peach it’s obvious the artist had no idea what personality Movie Peach has). The fact she’s a favorite character of mine doesn’t help and makes me feel robbed from seeing a beloved character on the big screen for the first time. And obviously them low-key insulting her by hyping up Movie Peach makes it worse.

Even before getting into the fandom I knew that Peach isn’t the most well-liked character, with many gamers especially finding her bland and boring. This was already sad on its own, but now those same people are praising a character who’s completely different from her for being “so much better” or “finally giving her a personality”. It sucks. Games Peach deserves better than that.

With those things in mind I don’t think I need to explain why the fact this characterization is possibly bleeding out into the games is something I dread. Now I can live with a cover art change, but if they change her actual character I’m going to scream. Especially if they only do it to Peach and no other character. And yes I know some people also pointed out a possible direction change for her voice but 1. for some reason I don’t really care, possibly because she’s been through quite a lot of voice-actors already 2. we only clearly hear her voice in the Showtime trailer during the Kung-Fu part so maybe her voice will differ depending on the costume, it is a stageplay after all, and 3. the Wonder short with Bowser has her let out four noises, one of which has a different tone while the other three keep her usual high octave, so I’m not sure if they truly intend on changing her voice. Haven’t played Wonder yet tho so I can’t speak to all her other voicelines.

Hopefully this will be my last post about this outside of answering asks and reblogs as I’m always open to discussions/debates. I don’t like bringing negativity and especially not drama to my blog but, considering the extensive rant I made about this, it only feels right to make sure people don’t misinterpret where my issues come from, since I can absolutely understand people seeing my posts and concluding that I hate Movie Peach for who she is rather than what she represents.

Now, instead of being negative about Movie Peach I’d rather focus on being positive about Games Peach, mostly through the fics I’m working on.

Tl;Dr: Movie Peach would be genuinely great as an original character but alas she was put inside the skin of someone with a completely different personality from hers. And it's very hard to look past this given the consequences of Movie Peach's existence on how people percieve Peach as a whole now on top of a possible change in her games character.

[pwurrz]

what?? no. no he doesn’t. he knew from the outset that childe was going to be sent to liyue harbour and stir up chaos. in fact that’s exactly what zhongli wanted him to do. why tf would zhongli feel betrayed?? while childe did technically use zhongli for information on rex lapis, he was only doing what was required of him by the tsarista for the mission of retrieving rex lapis’ gnosis.

zhongli was the one who lied about his identity and strung childe along only to use him as a pawn in his retirement plan. childe didn’t make friends with zhongli to eventually betray him because he had no idea that zhongli was rex lapis. but it could be argued from childe’s perspective that zhongli befriended him for the purpose of using him. in fact, that could actually just be what happened, because zhongli did want to make sure that childe was out of the loop and there was no better way to do that other than making sure of that himself.

anyway that’s why i think childe was completely justified in how he reacted and that his reaction does not make him a hypocrite. it’s clear that childe expected betrayal from signora and therefore doesn’t care that much, but he did genuinely think he was on good terms with zhongli and did not expect to be used the way he was. that’s why he’s so angry and that’s why he specifically asks zhongli why he’s not saying anything after making a fool out of him (paraphrasing).

and i don’t think zhongli is a jerk or an asshole from an objective standpoint. i don’t think he meant to hurt childe at all. and i completely understand why he did what he did. trust me i am a big advocate for zhongli retiring and taking care of himself. it’s completely possible that zhongli didn’t think of the effect his actions would have on others. which is unfortunate yeah but it doesn’t make zhongli a bad guy.

tldr the zhongchili breakup was just a big misunderstanding on both sides and the actions of both sides are justified. zhongli was justified in using childe to stir up chaos in liyue (because he didn’t have a choice, childe was assigned to the mission) and childe was justified in using zhongli to get information (because again, he didn’t have a choice. it was for the mission). because of that initial misunderstanding, childe might feel like his friendship with zhongli was just a lie, which would suck because zhongli is like his only friend, but if they talked to each other it would become clear that zhongli never harboured any ill intentions towards childe and didn’t intend to hurt him and i think they’d be fine.

[mostlikelytofangirl]

Was JGY supposed to be a villain, a sympathetic character, or both?

Well anon, this is completely my fully personal opinion on the matter, I'm not the writer and only she can tell what her real intensions behind the characterizations were.

To me, he is definitely a tragic character first and foremost, one who had as miserable a life as it gets, and was rarely given a break from misfortune until his very, very bitter end.

Now, that doesn't mean that he hadn't committed crimes, but you know what? For me, a villain is someone who purposedly sets out to cause harm and evil upon the world. You have WRH, for example. The argument can totally be made that what he did to NMJ was as villainous as it gets, and it would be correct! You see, he is someone's villain; he is the villain in NHS' story.

But from a classical narrative pov, with a hero and a villain that have personal stakes in each other's lives and plans... WWX had nothing against JGY. JGY had nothing against WWX. If the revenge plot had never been set in motion, those two could have gone on their entire lives without giving a casual thought to what the other was doing (kindasorta as WWX would still be dead lol).

Also, a villain is someone who throughout the story is shown to be this evil force that is bringing upon the world desolation and chaos. The cultivation world under JGY's administration was the most peaceful it had been in over a decade, he had social projects going on and all! He was doing absolutely nothing nepharious when the entire plot happened.

JGY is a polarizing character, a morally dubious one with heavy allegations weighing on him (the fact that some of those got never fully proven is vital to the parallel with WWX). But if he had been supposed to be seen as a full blown villain that all heroes despised, he wouldn't have been written to be so sympathetic, wouldn't have his good deeds shown as well, and he would have personal beef with WWX and the other protagonists.

So tldr, I personally think he is a both, but with the BIG caviet that the villain part only applies to a specific set of characters that are not even the "heroes" of the story. Ultimately, he is mostly a narrative foil to highlight the dangers and cyclic nature of mob mentality and cancel culture, and I think that's what's we are supposed to focus on more than whether he truly had it coming or not.

[galacticlamps]

actually ascension needs its own post since that's the one with the most details to speculate over and im starved for soho talk so i will talk to myself if need be

First the cover again, because I kinda can't get over it:

my only thing is that I had been hoping we might get Lizbeth on a cover again since she's never been on one of the boxsets before, despite being the 2nd person credited on all 4 of them (even if that's just alphabetical, still, she's the only one of the four main characters who never makes the cover)

But letting that go...

I know we already kinda knew the brief for this one but damn I didn't expect it to go quite this hard. Maybe that's just because the Parasite & Ashenden covers were (comparatively) similarish to each other and I was so pleased with Unbegotten's, and then got so used to it as the placeholder for Ascension while they kept postponing it, I wasn't expecting anything this colorful or detailed or with what I can't help but register as Fun New Outfits even though these are still like, pretty damn basic as far as costumes go. Still, it's a different vibe from everyone in suits and trenchcoats on every cover, technically. (Oh the woes of being an audio fan such that two characters owning sweaters actually does qualify as new information)

On top of just being visually delightful though, I know we knew religion was gonna be a fairly big part of this one, but I didn't actually expect to get quite this much of it - though I'm glad of it for a number of reasons. The BF twitter already made the ineffable joke so I don't have to, but also yeah I did very much spend all of season 2 episode 4 of good omens half convinced Samuel Barnett & Dervla Kirwan were about to pop up around any given corner (if you will go around being gay supernatural and horrible at your messy bureaucratic jobs in midcentury soho then I'm sorry, this is where my brain's gonna go) - so, fuel to that fire. But in terms of actual important things, at least one of my Soho wishes looks to be being granted because we have a Rev Edward Folgate on the cast list, which must mean we're finally meeting Norton's father, even if his mother & brother don't appear (which they could, technically, I've definitely seen BF not list all the doublings on their cast tabs before). Religion, domesticity, and the nuclear family are all things that absolutely fascinate me when it comes to Norton's character, so getting any amount of story involving his father & his church is something I've been actively hoping for for a long time now.

(I will say I'm a tiny bit bummed Saffron Coomber isn't on the cast list to play Mia again, but I kinda figured she wasn't going to be since Greg Austin's Armitage, who's making his first recurring appearance after originating in Unbegotten, was listed ever since the boxset was announced - presumably if she was also returning, that would've been handled in the same way. But since Unbegotten ended with Lizbeth and Mia going on a date, I still held out hope. Who knows though, maybe things did go well for them and Lizbeth just has a better work/life balance than Norton so she can date someone without them getting dragged into every scifi plot. I know that's not a very common accomplishment for any Torchwood agent, but a gal can hope)

At this point I know I'm completely in the realm of speculation & even wishful thinking, but I'm really really hoping we get some more clues as to Norton's overall timeline in this one, and I have a feeling that even if there's nothing as direct as dates given, the events of a plot like this one are going to heavily influence my personal interpretation of it.

To say that life & death are major themes for the soho crew feels wildly reductive, but even by Torchwood's standards and taking into account its origins as a piece of media with Jack Harkness & his newfound immortality at the heart of it, the living/dead status of this bunch has always been fantastically up in the air to me. Obviously Ghost Mission introduced Norton as kind of a ghost before revealing more obvious ghostly characters later on to which the title might have been referring, but his being from the past did beg the question of his survival into Torchwood's present era all the same, which Outbreak later alludes to much more directly, and his habit of showing up via hologram in multiple stories only further obfuscates any certainty we might have about where & when he definitely can be said to be alive and well. Then you've got Lizbeth and Gideon both being effectively 'brought back to life' via paradoxes that prevented them ever having died in the first place. Again, they are very very far from being the only Torcwhood characters this happens to (for a sprawling EU, it's really rather impressive how often & in how many different ways Torchwood as a whole manages to circle back to being about like. chaotic undead queers at the end of every day. though I suppose that consistency is part of why I keep falling in love with its different iterations again and again). That's without even getting into the question of Norton's dubious fate in God Among Us - and I say dubious because I know some people take that to be his ultimate death, but I personally think that reading something as vague as that as having any kind of finality rather goes against the spirit of this whole world/series, not just because I want him to live. (There are obviously other ways to make him survive/reappear, but I don't see this as a River Song scenario where we can safely assume one of his earlier-released adventures had to happen at the end of his personal timeline). But wherever God Among Us falls for him, he does very much meet God in it - or at least, a god, since the sentinel in Unbegotten is also described as a god of sorts, and even if he doesn't ultimately have the status of the god Jacqueline King is playing there, Unbegotten is still full to bursting with ghosts/undead/came back wrong/echo characters to continue underscoring that life/afterlife theme.

So all things considered, even allowing for the fact that we know Norton's twin hobbies are lying about himself and abusing time travel to suit his own ends/ever-shifting alliances, I find it difficult to believe we could get through a whole 6-part boxset about religion & death without something providing some kind of compelling evidence about where this adventure fits in among his other run-ins with apocalypses and gods and ghosts and dead-but-still-here characters/creatures, so I'm very much looking forward to any further exploration on that front.

And lastly, and least intellectually, I really want to know what the hell 20th-century Torchwood's obsession with Reginalds is. Reading through the cast list, I had to do two separate doubletakes over the character 'Sir Reginald Peebles' - firstly, because I had Reginald Rigsby on the brain, this being Soho (and the other Troughton brother being so active on BF's releases for this same month) - and secondly, because reading this in conjunction with the announcement for the July monthly adventure in which the new main Torchwood guy of the 20s is apparently called Sir Reginald Dellafield, there was a brief moment where I took that monthly release to be a tie-in with Ascension. I don't expect it to be, but damn. was it really so popular a name?

anyways, catch me thinking about those stained glass windows for the next couple months I guess (and knowing Torchwood Soho, for a long long time after it comes out as well lol)

[todayisafridaynight]

Personal tier list of main yakuza antagonist deaths ranked from Least Aggravating to I’m Going To Eat Drift Wood ok it goes mine → nishiki → ryuji → aoki

[xx-justsomeguy-xx]

Feeling a bit hmm about the day… got lots done but i think there’s still some regret about not having really finished the stuff i planned for the day? Got to chip away at something important + do some errands that i know my mom has been looking forward to me doing + inspiration struck for like 5 different ideas that i got to sketch but it doesnt feel like enough

[bidisaster-peanut-romano]

anyway i think that one thing that bugs me so much about the way johnny/peanut is usually portrayed in the fandom - which extends to other mlm ships with johnny btw - is how the narratives are put in a way that doesn't require johnny to challenge the misogyny he regularly displays in game which is what really damaged the relationship with lola on his part and one of his flaws as a character

[gandreida]

hheeeuuurrgghppbbtttt

[snekdood]

if you take someones outdoor cat i will break into your house and steal all of your cats, hope this helps! xoxo❤️💋😘

[redflannelsheets]

.

[coridallasmultipass]

.