yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.
to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!
i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.
also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.
they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.
they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.
i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.
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In talking about Chaucer (p. 74), I said that, in general, puns and verbal connections of sound were unimportant and not to be sought out; and now, you will say, I have been using them to explain cruces in Shakespeare. Alas, you have touched on a sore point; this is one of the less reputable aspects of our national poet.
A quibble is to Shakespeare [Johnson could not but confess] what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind.... A quibble was for him the fatal Cleopatra for whom he lost the world, and was content to lose it.
Nor can I hold out against the Doctor, beyond saying that life ran very high in those days, and that he does not seem to have lost the world so completely after all. It shows lack of decision and will-power, a feminine pleasure in yielding to the mesmerism of language, in getting one's way, if at all, by deceit and flattery, for a poet to be so fearfully susceptible to puns. Many of us could wish the Bard had been more manly in his literary habits, and I am afraid the Sitwells are just as bad.
William Empson, 7 Types of Ambiguity, ch 2 pp 100-101
i'm sorry this is so fucking funny. that pathetic loser shakespeare who loved puns so much it cost him everything, except of course his status as the most famous, most read, most immortal english-language author of all time. but everything else, he lost and it's all because of how weak he was to resist a pun :/ pouring one out for my sad little girly man who could have had it all if only he was better at writing, the thing he is the most famous guy in the world for.
even empson, who disagrees with johnson that shakespeare "lost the world", is like, too bad our favorite poet is susceptible to the thing that made him famous :/ really tragic that the guy whose wordplay we've been talking about for 300 years likes wordplay :///
also i can't get over writing a book about the types of ambiguity and NOT INCLUDING PUNS?? sorry but puns are ambiguous! that's where their juice comes from! imagine liking ambiguity so much you write a book about it but never mention puns except to dunk on them. imagine being a POET and POETRY CRITIC who looks down on sound-based ambiguity! could not be me!!
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Now asking: how do you think would be Edd's relationship with the kids post-BPS, who seems to be the least commented and speculated. In the show proper we see the kids like and tolerate Edd the most and Edd is fairly nice and gentle to them, but he never seemed that interested on making friends with them compared to Eddy or even Ed. I guess every one in cul-de-sac living in peace always had been Edd's dream, but he don't seem to have so much in common with them nevertheless. I guess he could form a genuine, close bond with Nazz, Jimmy (and who know, Sarah), but his relationship with Rolf and Jonny always is somewhere between either being ''neutral friendly'' or just undefined. Ideas?
(Unpopular headcanon: I think would be really funny if Kevin and Eddy ultimately perceive how much in common they do have, would get closer and closer, and become best friends... and Edd would be somewhat jealous or resented of this, like shovelchin had kind of ''stole'' his best friend. Quite unlikely, but a really funny scenary on my mind).
yeah i personally don't think edd has much interest in being friends with most of the other kids on any meaningful level. he and jimmy's friendship could very well continue to grow after bps, but i don't see him making an effort to hang out with kevin, jonny, rolf, sarah, etc. he and rolf would be semi-friends because he's intrigued by rolf's culture and rolf has always been pretty decent to the eds. plus he's good friends with ed. jonny is also ed's buddy but edd still finds jonny kind of unbearable and keeps his distance. edd and kevin have their own drama (see below) and don't get along, and he flat out just doesn't like sarah. but of course he's very personable when eddy drags him along to the occasional shindig.
he and may are friendly, again, mostly because of her relationship with ed. he and marie strike up a conversation when he notices that her interest in him has significantly diminished. edd (being the snob he is) is surprised to find that she's really smart and funny oh and gay. he's possibly the first person she tells bc she knows he's a good guy. lee on the other hand, doesn't trust him as far as she can throw him and thus does not like him.
edd and nazz flirt back and forth for a long time and eventually date in high school. my own hcs about it are still sort of being developed but i for sure think they'd date and possibly maintain or rekindle a friendship after they breakup. eddy doesn't care!!!!.... 😐 he just thinks it's funny that-
kevin and eddy do have stuff in common but not so much that i see them building a real friendship over it- certainly not long-term. eddy might end up redirecting his admiration for bro onto kevin after bps bc he does still crave that sweet validation from someone (older?) who he sees as cool, well-liked, masculine, has a giant chin, etc. he'd be disappointed again when being friends w kevin doesn't live up to his overly idealized expectations. during the time that they're being weirdly pally, edd is on standby waiting for the other shoe to drop. he just hates to say "i told you so", but does he really?
kevin revokes eddy's dork status and invites him to the get-togethers. at first it's out of pity for what he witnessed but he's shocked when eddy turns out to be fun to be around. eddy's not really interested in the things that kevin is (bmx, monster trucks, 60 minutes) but pretends to be so that he can fit in. and get jawbreakers.
but that's exhausting and they start to grow apart when eddy gets too comfortable and starts letting the less palatable parts of his personality come through, namely his irritability and bluntness. by high school they're on not-so-great terms again, in part due to the whole edd and nazz thing really pissing kev off. he expects eddy to do something about it, "tell double dickweed to stay away from nazz" type stuff.
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y'know, I've been hearing about the new Zelda's $70 pricetag a lot -- but I've also been enduring a rough patch at uni, so I haven't been able to do any of the thinking or researching that I'd want to do before throwing my lot in there. regardless, there are two... fragments of points that I've had bouncing around in my head for a while, and I never see anyone getting close to them, so I figured I might as well lob them out to the internet to see if they'll bounce around enough to inspire some completed thoughts in anyone
the first thing: while Nintendo was the one that decided to take the first shot here and now, with a very highly anticipated title in one of its absolute flagship franchises, the matter of fact is that bumping up the Standard AAA Game Pricetag -- and to $70 exactly, even -- has been a talk in the industry for many, many years now. it's not a coincidence, or even just the industry's typical unparodiably vulture-like behavior, that as soon as Nintendo took the first shot, other studios were tripping over themselves to pin their next big releases at $70 as well.
(if you ask someone speaking for the studios, they'll probably tell you that $60 has been a downright generous pricetag for a long while now given how much production costs have soared in that time, and even $70 is still a steal all things considered. a less charitable point of view would invite you to consider why production costs are increasing so much anyway, despite that consumer satisfaction has long stopped increasing proportionally to that metric. is it an oversight, or a decision in the service of someone besides the consumer? that's not a rhetoric question, incidentally -- I did say these aren't finished thoughts.)
the second thing: first worlders have been much worried about what a price hike in games would mean for children, and to that I say: you may have more insight on the present situation if you look to countries where this sort of thing already has or still does happen.
I can say at the very least that, for a solid while here in Brazil -- that solid while having peaked around the 00s -- economic factors made the seemingly reasonable pricetag worldwide an oft-unthinkable one for most consumers (and the few that could actually afford videogames straight-up were still a stingy lot regardless). and what we did about it was... rampant piracy. and I don't just mean downloading shit, I mean that parents were buying their kids the sketchiest disks you can imagine to pop into their PS2s at home that probably weren't 100% the legit article either. owning a completely legitimate copy of any game was seen as some sort of Collector's Edition kind of rarity, even. anyway, I'm not exactly making predictions about how your first-world markets are going to adapt when/if videogames seriously slip out of the average consumer's grasp -- again, unfinished thoughts here -- but if you've been thinking about it, then this kind of thing may be worth studying up on.
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gosh i cant stop thinking about red being an old god because. there are SO many things u can work into that concept when it comes to worldbuilding (esp if you work in stuff with ash). like, the idea of red being an old god and ash being a newer god who shares a few practices with red's religion (and also lets be real since this ramble is gonna follow a lot of stuff with greek mythology)/cult is soooo fascinating to me bc it leads to fun things like the same rituals being done but for different reasons is sooooo interesting to me
like for example in my made up symbolism about them, i think that they'd both use blood in their rituals, but have different concepts/ideas for them. like with red's religion, i can imagine that rituals are often done with your own blood and mostly done for blood pacts, as red has a ton of themes of loyalty and that being reflected in his religion is sooo interesting. but on the other hand, ash's religion would use your enemy's blood as a sacrifice/sign of triumph, as well as a sign of loyalty to ash as a god. i think it would fit in so well with his constant hunt on having the upper hand/power and its sooooo. its so interesting to me this concept scratches my brain soooo bad
and going along with the old god thing, i think it would be fun if both of their cults met up enough that they started sharing their cultures with the other, and eventually adopting some of the same rituals into their respective beliefs. red would be the older religion that's not as worshiped compared to ash's (probs bc im thinking of red's religion as more of an ideology than a religion that offers stuff like grace or material goods LOL), but the fact they'd slowly be involved with the other to the point where you can feel the other's religion effect the other even if one has more followers than the other is soooooo. imagine the mythology with them it would go SO HARD
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in @magthemage and I’s Android AU, Risotto Nero is a medical android who has a very rocky (dubious) past and is kinda finding his way as he goes - v much a ‘do what I must to survive’ kind of guy... though he draws a line at senseless loss of ('good’) human life - whether due to his programming or his sentience, is up for debate.
...That’s not to say he hasn’t taken lives before, however...
He’s v likely the reason Miriam (my OC) survives her encounter with EcciDiO (because of his medical capabilities) that led to her meeting Professor Brando and started the events of our shared AU! (the ‘current’ events, anyway) - their meeting was completely by chance but taking a chance on him proved to be the right call, and now he’s in the service of Professor Brando because she encouraged him to pursue his sentience and what he *wanted* to do...
I’ve been having big brain rot about Nero (and how Miriam passed up the chance to date him in the au, smh) BUT one of the perks of being an artist is I can just *make* that content i passed up, and no one can stop me hehe 😏
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(Mag is actively encouraging it tho so it is supported and not really rebellious lmao)
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anyway I haven’t drawn him much and wanted to give it another go! medical androids have all kinds of tools hidden just beneath the skin... so I think it goes well with his ‘canon’ version of himself too in that regard hahaha
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the AU has a lot of canon characters in it, but because of the fact so many androids are ‘model lines’, they may come off as ‘ooc’ to a degree, and that’s intended! i think of it like every android has a little piece of the canon character in them (the multiple Dios being the best example imo), it just varies on their circumstances and experiences!
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